SLAVERY
38
SLAVERY
validity of marriages contracted with full knowl-
edge of the circumstances between free persons and
slaves (Councils of Verberie, 752; of Compiegne, 759);
rest for slaves on Sundays and feast days (Council
of Auxerre, 578 or 585; of Chalon-sur-Saone, middle
of the seventh centurj-; of Rouen, 650; of Wessex,
691; of Berghamsted, 697); prohibition of Jews to
possess Christian slaves (Council of Orleans, 541;
of Macon, 581; of Clichy, 625; of Toledo, 5S9, 633,
656); suppression of traffic in slaves by forbidding
their sale outside of the kingdom (Council of Chalon-
sur-Saone, between 644 and 650) ; prohibition against
reducing a free man to slavery (Council of Clich}',
625). Less liberal in this respect than Justinian
(Novella cxxiii, 17), who made tacit consent a
sufficient condition, the Western discipline does not
permit a slave to be raised to the priesthood without
the formal consent of his master; nevertheless the
councils held at Orleans in 511, 538, 549, while im-
posing canonical penalties upon the bishop who ex-
ceeded his authority in this matter, declare such an
ordination to be valid. A council held at Rome in
595 under the presidency of St. Oregon,- the Great
permits the slave to become a monk without any
consent, express or tacit, of his master.
At this period the Church found itself becoming a great proprietor. Barbarian converts endowed it largely with real property. As these estates were furnished with serfs attached to the cultivation of the soil, the Church became by force of circumstances a proprietor of human beings, for whom, in these troublous times, the relation was a great blessing. The laws of the barbarians, amended through Christian influence, gave ecclesiastical serfs a priv- ileged position: their rents were fixed; ordinarily, they were bound to give the proprietor half of their labour or half of its products the remainder being left to them (Lex Alemannorum, xxii; Lex Bajuva- riorum, I, xiv, 6). A council of the sixth century (Eauze, 551) enjoins upon bishops that they must exact of their serfs a lighter service than that per- formed by the serfs of lay proprietors, and must remit to them one-fourth of their rents. Another advantage of ecclesiastical serfs was the permanency of their position. A Roman law of the middle of the fourth century (Cod. Just., XI, xlvii, 2) had forbidden rural slaves to be removed from the lands to which they belonged: this was the origin of serfdom, a much better condition than slavery properly so called. But the barbarians virtually suppressed this beneficent law (Gregory of Tours, "Hist. Franc", VI, 45) ; it was even formally abrogated among the Goths of Italy by the edict of Theodoric (§ 142). Nevertheless, as an exceptional privilege, it remained in force for the serfs of the Church, who, like the Church itself, remained under Roman law (Lex Burgondionum, LVIII, i; Louis 1, "Add. ad legem Langobard.", Ill, i). They shared besides, the inalienability of all ecclesiastical property which had been established by councils (Rome, 502; Orleans, 511, 538; Eponc, 517; Clichy, 625; Toledo, 589); they were sheltered from the exactions of the royal officers by the immunity granted to ahnost all church lands (Kroell, "L'immunite franquc", 1910); thus their position was generally envied (Flodoard, "Hist, eccl. Remensis", I, xiv), and when the royal liberality assigned to a church a portion of land out of the state property, the serfs who cultivated were loud in tlieir expressions of joy (Vita S. Eligii, I, xv).
It has been asserted that the ecclesiastical serfs were less fortunately situated because the inalien- ability of church property prevented their being enfranchised. But this is inexact. St. Gregory tlie Great enfranchised serfs of the Roman Church (Ep. vi, 12), and there is frequent discussion in the councils in regard to ecclesiastical free<lmen. The Council of Agdo (506) gives the bishop the right to
enfranchise those serfs "who shall have deserved it"
and to leave them a small patrimony. A Council
of Orleans (541) declares that even if the bishop
has dissipated the property of his church, the serfs
whom he has freed in reasonable number {numero
competenli) are to remain free. A Merovingian
formula shows a bishop enfranchising one-tenth of
his serfs (Formulae Biturigenses, viii). The Spanish
councils imposed greater restrictions, recognizing
the right of a bishop to enfranchise the serfs of his
church on condition of his indemnifying it out of his
own private property (Council of Seville, 590; of
Toledo, 633; of Mefida, 666). But they made it
obligatory to enfranchise the serf in whom a serious
vocation to the priesthood was discerned (Council
of Saragossa, 59.3). An Enghsh council (Celchyte,
816) orders that at the death of a bishop all the other
bishops and all the abbots shall enfranchise three
slaves each for the repose of his soul. This last
clause shows again the mistake of saying that the
monks had not the right of manumission. The
canon of the Cotmcil of Epone (517) which forbids
abbots to enfranchise their serfs was enacted in
order that the monks might not be left to work with-
out assistance and has been taken too literally. It
is inspired not only by agricultural prudence, but
also by the consideration that the serfs belong to
the community of monks, and not to the abbot indi-
vidually. Moreover, the rule of St. Ferreol (sixth
century) permits the abbot to free serfs with the
consent of the monks or without their consent,
if, in the latter case, he replaces at his own expense
those he has enfranchised. The statement that
ecclesiastical freedmen were not as free as the freed-
men of lay proprietors will not bear examination
in the light of facts, which shows the situation of the
two classes to have been identical, except that the
freedman of the Church carried a higher wergheld
than a lay freedman, and therefore his life was
better protected. The "PoU-])tych of Irminon",
a detailed description of the abbey lands of Saint-
Germain-des-Pres, shows that in the ninth century
the serfs of that domain were not numerous and led
in every way the life of free peasants.
III. The CHnRCH and Modern Slavery. — In the Middle Ages, slaverj-, properly so called, no longer existed in Christian countries; it had been replaced by serfdom, an intermediate condition in which a man enjoyed all his personal rights except the right to leave the land he cultivated and the right to freely dispose of his property. Serfdom soon disappeared in Catholic countries, to last longer only where the Protestant Reformation prevailed. But while serftlom was becoming extinct, the course of events was bringing to pass a temporary revival of slavery. As a consequence of the wars against the Mussulmans and the commerce maintained with the E;ist, the European countries bordering on the Mediterranean, particularly Spain and Italy, once more had slaves — Turkish prisoners and also, unfortunately, captives imported by conscienceless traders. Though these slaves were generally well treated, and set at liberty if they asked for baptism, this revival of slaverj', lasting until the seventeenth century, is a blot on Christian civilization. But the number of these slaves was always very small in comparison with that of the Christian captivea reduced to slavery in Mussulman countries, partic- ularly in the Barbary states from Tripoli to the Atlantic coast of Morocco. These captives were cruelly treated and were in constant danger of losing their faith. Many actually did deny their faith, or, at least, were driven by despair to abandon all religion and all morality. Religious orders were foimded to succour and redeem them.
The Trinitarians, fovmded in 119S by St. John of Matha and St. Felix of Valois, established hospitals
