The fourteenth enacts that a free woman who shall unite herself to the male slave of another, and remain so for a year and a day, shall, together with her children, become enslaved to her husband’s owner.
The fifteenth regulates that if the free husband of a free woman shall, for crime or debt, bring himself into servitude to another, and she not consent to remain with him, the children are free; but if she die, and another free woman, knowing his condition, marries him, the children of this latter shall be slaves.
A number of chapters are also on these records showing the insufficiency of servile testimony. Others provide against the oppression of poor freemen, so that they shall not be easily compelled to sell themselves into slavery.
About the year 860, Pope Nicholas I. sent to the newly converted Christians of Bulgaria answers to several inquiries which they made for the regulation of their conduct. The ninety-seventh regards slaves who accuse their masters to the prince or to the court: and the pope refers them to the obligation of the master as given in chapter vi. of the epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians, (not to use threatenings towards their servants,) and then asks, how much more strongly does the spirit of this maxim of kindness and affection bear upon the servant, and teach him to be of an humble and forgiving disposition, such as that chapter enjoins; referring also to the direction of our Saviour, Luke vi. 37, and the injunction of the apostle, 1 Thess. v. 15, for their direction.
At this period of time, the piratical wars of the Northmen, who were perpetually making inroads on the rest of Europe, kept the whole of Christendom in commotion, and marked perhaps the darkest period of the dark ages.
LESSON XVIII.
UNCONNECTED FACTS.
In 1030, Peter, bishop of Girona, in Spain, came to Rome, and begged leave of the pope (John XIX.) to wear the pall twelve days in the year, promising to redeem thirty slaves then in captivity among the Saracens, provided his holiness granted him this request. It was readily granted. See Bower, vol. v. p. 153.
Shortly after the 30th October, 1051, Pope Leo IX., having visited Vercelli and Augsburg, returned to Rome, and held a council soon after Easter, in which he excommunicated Gregory, bishop of Vercelli, for committing adultery with a widow betrothed to his uncle. The bishop was absent when this sentence was given, but he flew to Rome as soon as he heard of it; and upon his promising to perform the penance that his holiness imposed upon him, he was absolved from the excommunication, and restored to the functions of his office. On that occasion the canons issued by other councils against the incontinence of the clergy were confirmed, and “some new ones were added, and, in order to check more effectually the scandalous irregularity of the Roman clergy in particular, it was decreed, at the request of the pope, that all women who should for the future prostitute themselves to the priests within the walls of Rome should be condemned to serve as slaves in the Lateran palace.” See Herman, ad an. 1051; also Bower, idem, p. 183.