But let it not be supposed, after what I have just said, that in attributing so much importance to Christian ideas and manners, I mean that the triumph of these ideas and manners was abandoned to that force alone, without that co-operation on the part of the Church which the time and circumstances required. Quite the contrary: the Church, as I have already pointed out, called to her aid all the means the most conducive to the desired result. In the first place, it was requisite, to secure the work of emancipation, to protect from all assault the liberty of the freed—liberty which unhappily was often attacked and put in great danger. The causes of this melancholy fact may be easily found in the remains of ancient ideas and manners, in the cupidity of powerful men, the system of violence made general by the irruptions of the barbarians, in the poverty, neglect, and total want of education and morality in which slaves must have been when they quitted servitude. It must be supposed that a great number of them did not know all the value of liberty; that they did not always conduct themselves, in their new state, according to the dictates of reason and the exigences of justice; and that, newly entered on the possession of the rights of freemen, they did not know how to fulfil all their new obligations. But these different inconveniences, inseparable from the nature of things, were not to hinder the consummation of an enterprise called for both by religion and humanity, and it was proper to be resigned to them from the consideration of the numerous motives for excusing the conduct of the enfranchised; the state which these men had just quitted had checked the development of their moral and intellectual faculties.
The liberty of newly-emancipated slaves was protected against the attacks of injustice, and clothed with an inviolable sanctity, from the time that their enfranchisement was connected with things which then exercised the most powerful ascendency. Now the Church, and all that belonged to her, was in this influential position; therefore the custom, which was then introduced, of performing the manumission in the churches, was undoubtedly very favorable to the progress of liberty. This custom, by taking the place of ancient usages, caused them to be forgotten; it was, at the same time, a tacit declaration of the value of human liberty in the sight of God, and a proclamation, with additional authority, of the equality of men before Him; for the manumission was made in the same place where it was so often read, that before Him there was no exception of persons; where all earthly distinctions disappeared, and all men were commingled and united by the sweet ties of fraternity and love. This method of manumission more clearly invested the Church with the right of defending the liberty of the enfranchised. As she had been witness to the act, she could testify to the spontaneity and the other circumstances which assured its validity; she could even insist on its observance, by representing that the promised liberty could not be violated without profaning the sacred place, without breaking a pledge which had been given in the presence of God himself. The Church did not forget to turn these circumstances to the advantage of the freed. Thus we see that the first Council of Orange, held in 441, ordains, in its 7th canon, that it was necessary to check, by ecclesiastical censures, whoever desired to reduce to any kind of servitude slaves who had been emancipated within the enclosure of the church. A century later we find the same prohibition repeated in the 7th canon of the fifth Council of Orleans, held in 549.
The protection given by the Church to freed slaves was so manifest and known to all, that the custom was introduced of especially recommending them to her. This recommendation was sometimes made by will, as the Council of Orange, which I have just quoted, gives us to understand; for it orders that the emancipated who had been recommended to the Church by will, shall be protected from all kinds of servitude, by ecclesiastical censures.
But this recommendation was not always made in a testamentary form. We read in the sixth canon of the sixth Council of Toledo, held in 589, that when any enfranchised persons had been recommended to the Church, neither they nor their children could be deprived of the protection of the Church: here they speak in general, without limitation to cases in which there had been a will. The same regulation may be seen in another Council of Toledo, held in 633, which simply says, that the Church will receive under her protection only the enfranchised of individuals who shall have taken care to recommend them to her.
In the absence of all particular recommendation, and even when the manumission had not been made in the Church, she did not cease to interest herself in defending the freed, when their liberty was endangered. He who has any regard for the dignity of man, and any feeling of humanity in his heart, will certainly not find it amiss that the Church interfered in affairs of this kind; indeed, she acted as every generous man should do, in the exercise of the right of protecting the weak. We shall not be displeased, therefore, to find in the twenty-ninth canon of the Council of Agde in Languedoc, held in 506, a regulation commanding the Church, in case of necessity, to undertake the defence of those to whom their masters had given liberty in a lawful way.
The zeal of the Church in all times and places for the redemption of captives has no less contributed to the great work of the abolition of slavery. We know that a considerable portion of slaves owed their servitude to the reverses of war. The mild character which we see in modern wars would have appeared fabulous to the ancients. Woe to the vanquished! might then be said with perfect truth; there was nothing but slavery or death. The evil was rendered still greater by a fatal prejudice, which was felt with respect to the redemption of captives—a prejudice which was, nevertheless, founded on a trait of remarkable heroism. No doubt the heroic firmness of Regulus is worthy of all admiration. The hair stands upon our head when we read the powerful description of Horace; the book falls from our hands at this terrible passage:
"Fertur pudicæ conjugis osculum
Parvosque natos, ut capitis minor,
Ab se removisse, et virilem