Catholics and the Negro
In order to understand and to gain an adequate idea of what Catholics and their ancient Church have done for the American Negro, it is necessary to take into account the facts and testimony of impartial history in regard to human slavery among the nations, and the influence which the Roman Catholic Church brought to bear on that institution. We must study and remember the conditions and customs in pre-Christian times in regard to slaves, and we should also note the gradual transition from the state of things existing in the heathen world to that prevailing in our modern Christian civilization.
The student of history observes that ideas and principles take their rise and, growing, permeate society, bringing about a change in the morals and manners of a nation. These changes, which may be for good or evil, do not come of a sudden. Even during the Christian ages the principles of the gospel do not always prevail in their fulness and beauty. At times, through the passions of men, non-Christian and pagan ideas gain ground and for a time predominate. It is only by dealing tactfully with human nature and by persistent efforts that the Church has been enabled to make Christian ideals prevail.
At the dawn of Christianity, slavery was an established institution in all countries.[478] Some pagan philosophers, like Seneca, maintained that all men are by nature free and equal, still by the law of nations slavery was upheld in all lands; and it was an axiom among the ruling classes, that "the human race exists for the sake of the few." Aristotle held that no perfect household could exist without slaves and freemen and that the natural law, as well as the law of nations, makes a distinction between bond and free.[479] Plato avowed that every slave's soul was fundamentally corrupt and should not be trusted.[480] The proportion of slaves to freemen varied in different countries, though usually the former were largely in excess of the free population. In Rome for a long time, according to the testimony of Blair, the slaves were three to one. At one time they became so formidable there that the Senate, fearing that if conscious of their own numbers the public safety might be endangered, forbade them a distinctive dress. Atrocious laws regulated the relations of master and slaves. The head of the family was absolute master of his slaves, having over them the power of life and death. Moral and social degradation was the common lot of slaves. Their wretched condition in pagan times was often rendered more intolerable by aggravating circumstances. Many of them had once enjoyed the blessings of freedom, but had been reduced to bondage by the calamities of war. Unlike the Negro slaves of America, they were usually of the same color as their masters; and in some instances, better educated, more refined, and of more delicate frame, than those whom they served. Epictetus, one of the ablest of the Stoic philosophers, was a slave. Horace and Juvenal were the sons of freedmen.[481]
There is something of the ruthlessness of the ancient pagans in the atrocities practiced in later times, and even in our day, by the Mohammedans in Africa. Livingstone, Cameron, and still more recently Cardinal Lavigerie, Archbishop of Carthage, who was furnished with information by his missionaries, declare that at least 400,000 Negroes are annually carried into bondage in Africa by Mussulman traders, and that fully five times that number perish either by being massacred in the slave hunt, or from hunger and hardship on the journey. Thus the lives or liberty of an immense number of the human race are each year sacrificed on the altars of lust and mammon. No pagan government of antiquity ever framed any law aiming at the immediate or gradual extinction of slavery. The same is true of modern nations outside the pale of Christianity.[482]
With the life and teaching of Christ and the preaching of his gospel by his Apostles, began a new era in the history of slavery. The Apostles and their successors pursued a policy that without injustice, violence or revolution, led to the gradual emancipation of the slaves. The labors and influence of the Roman Catholic Church, which have been that of organized Christianity, make a long story, reaching through all the Christian ages. The early Church mitigated the condition of the slave, by teaching him the consoling doctrines of Christ. She taught the slave and master reciprocal duties, prescribing laws that exercised a salutary restraint on the authority of the one, and sanctified the obedience of the other; she contributed to the moral elevation of the slave by leveling all distinctions between bond and free in her temples and religious assemblies.[483] Masters were encouraged to emancipate their slaves by a public ceremony of manumission celebrated in the church on festival days. The dignity and duty of labor for all is inculcated by St. Paul and the early Christian teachers in opposition to the pagan practice, which scorned labor as being only fit for slaves. The absolute religious equality proclaimed in the Church was the negation of slavery as practiced by pagan society. The Church made no account of the social condition of the faithful. Bond and free received the same sacraments. Clerics of servile origin were numerous. The very Chair of St. Peter was occupied by men who had been slaves—Pius in the second century and Callistus in the third.[484] The names of slaves are numbered among the martyrs of the Christian faith and they are inscribed on the calendar of saints honored by the Church.
In giving them a place in religious society, the Church restored to slaves the family and marriage. In Roman law, neither legitimate marriage nor regular paternity, nor even any impediment to the most unnatural unions had existed for the slave. In upholding the moral dignity and prerogatives of the slave, the Church was striking a blow for his civil freedom. Though she was not charged with the framing of the civil laws, she moved the hearts of the slaveowners by moral suasion, and she moulded the conscience of legislators by an appeal to the innate rights of men. In the early Fathers of the Church, like St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John Chrysostom, the most energetic reprobation of slavery may be found.
The redemption of captives was another work which engaged the pious solicitude of the Church. From the fourth to the fourteenth century Europe was periodically a prey to northern invaders. The usual fate of the vanquished was death or slavery. They who escaped were carried into bondage. A more wretched fate awaited the female sex, for they were reserved to gratify the caprices of their conquerors. Religious orders were founded to succor and redeem them.[485] "Closely connected with the influence of the Church," says Mr. Lecky, "in destroying hereditary slavery, was its influence in redeeming captives from servitude. In no other form of charity was its beneficial character more continually and more splendidly displayed."[486]
Among the forces enlisted in the cause of freedom the most potent came from the Papacy. In every age the voice of the Popes resounded clearly throughout the world in the interests of human freedom. They either commended the slaves to the humanity of their masters, or advocated their manumission, and also condemned the slave trade with all its abuses. Pope Gregory the Great, who occupied the chair of Peter from 590 to 604, wrote: "Since our Blessed Redeemer, the Author of all life, in His goodness assumed our human flesh, in order that by breaking the bond of servitude in which we were held, the grace of His divinity might restore us to our original liberty, it is a wholesome deed by the benefits of emancipation to restore the freedom in which they were born, to men whom nature, in the beginning brought forth free, and whom the law of nations has subjected to the yoke of slavery."[487]
On October 7, 1462, Pope Pius II issued a letter in which he reproved and condemned the slave trade then carried on. Again, a short time later Leo X denounced slavery in 1537. Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians. In the later centuries on the revival of slavery by some of the nations, especially among those coming under the power of Mohammedanism in Persia, Arabia, Turkey and Africa, as also on account of the enslavement of Negroes and Indians in the Americas, other Popes proclaimed the Christian law in regard to the cruelties of the slave trade. Again Urban VIII, in 1639, and Benedict XIV, in 1741, were defenders of the liberty of the Indians and blacks even though they were not as yet instructed in the Christian faith.[488] In 1815, Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna the suppression of the slave trade. In the Bull of Canonization of St. Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius IX speaks of the "supreme villainy" of the slave-traders. Gregory XVI, in 1839, published a memorable encyclical in which the following strong language occurs: