MEANS EMPLOYED BY THE CHURCH TO ENFRANCHISE SLAVES.
While improving the condition of slaves and assimilating it as much
as possible to that of freemen, it was necessary not to forget the
universal emancipation; for it was not enough to ameliorate slavery, it
was necessary to abolish it. The mere force of Christian notions, and
the spirit of charity which was spread at the same time with them over
the world, made so violent an attack on the state of slavery, that they
were sure sooner or later to bring about its complete abolition. It
is impossible for society to remain for a long time under an order of
things which is formally opposed to the ideas with which it is imbued.
According to Christian maxims, all men have a common origin and the
same destiny; all are brethren in Jesus Christ; all are obliged to
love each other with all their hearts, to assist each other in their
necessities, to avoid offending each other even in words; all are equal
before God, for they will all be judged without exception of persons.
Christianity extended and took root everywhere--took possession of
all classes, of all branches of society; how, then, could the state
of slavery last--a state of degradation which makes man the property
of another, allows him to be sold like an animal, and deprives him of
the sweetest ties of family and of all participation in the advantages
of society? Two things so opposite could not exist together; the
laws were in favor of slavery, it is true; it may even be said that
Christianity did not make a direct attack on those laws. But, on the
other hand, what did it do? It strove to make itself master of ideas
and manners, communicated to them a new impulse, and gave them a
different direction. In such a case, what did laws avail? Their rigor
was relaxed, their observance was neglected, their equity began to be
doubted, their utility was disputed, their fatal effects were remarked,
and they gradually fell into desuetude, so that sometimes it was not
necessary to strike a blow to destroy them. They were thrown aside
as things of no use; or, if they deserved the trouble of an express
abolition, it was only for the sake of ceremony; it was a body interred
with honor.
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
Torvus humi posuisse vultum."--Lib. iii. od. 5.
Nevertheless, if we lay aside the deep impression which such heroism
produces on us, and the enthusiasm at all that shows a great soul, we
must confess that this virtue bordered on ferocity; and that, in the
terrible discourse of Regulus, that is a cruel policy, against which
the sentiments of humanity would strongly recoil, if the mind were not,
as it were, prostrated at the sight of the sublime disinterestedness of
the speaker. Christianity could not consent to such doctrines; it could
not allow the maxim to be maintained that, in order to render men brave
in battle, it was necessary to deprive them of hope. The wonderful
traits of valor, the magnificent scenes of force and constancy, which
shine in every page of the history of modern nations, eloquently show
that the Christian religion was not deceived; gentleness of manners
may be united with heroism. The ancients were always in excess, either
in cowardice or ferocity; between these two extremes there is a middle
way, and that has been taught to mankind by the Christian religion.
Christianity, in accordance with its principles of fraternity and love,
regarded the redemption of captives as one of the worthiest objects of
its charitable zeal. Whether we consider the noble traits of particular
actions, which have been preserved to us by history, or observe the
spirit which guided the conduct of the Church, we shall find therein
one of the most distinguished claims of the Christian religion to the
gratitude of mankind.
A celebrated writer of our times, M. de Chateaubriand, has described
to us a Christian priest who, in the forests of France, voluntarily
made himself a slave, who devoted himself to slavery for the ransom
of a Christian soldier, and thus restored a husband to his desolate
wife, and a father to three unfortunate orphan children. The sublime
spectacle which Zachary offers us, when enduring slavery with calm
serenity for the love of Jesus Christ, and for the unhappy being for
whom he has sacrificed his liberty, is not a mere fiction of the
poet. More than once, in the first ages of the Church, such examples
were seen; and he who has wept over the sublime disinterestedness and
unspeakable charity of Zachary, may be sure that his tears are only
a tribute to the truth. "We have known," says St. Clement the Pope,
"many of ours who have devoted themselves to captivity, in order to
ransom their brethren." (_First Letter to the Corinth._ c. 55.) The
redemption of captives was so carefully provided for by the Church
that it was regulated by the ancient canons, and to fulfil it, she
sold, if necessary, her ornaments, and even the sacred vessels. When
unhappy captives were in question, her charity and zeal knew no bounds,
and she went so far as to ordain that, however bad might be the state
of her affairs, their ransom should be provided for in the first
instance. (_Caus._ 12, 5, 2.) In the midst of revolutions produced by
the irruption of barbarians, we see that the Church, always constant
in her designs, forgot not the noble enterprise in which she was
engaged. The beneficent regulations of the ancient canons fell not
into forgetfulness or desuetude, and the generous words of the holy
Bishop of Milan, in favor of slaves, found an echo which ceased not to
be heard amid the chaos of those unhappy times. We see by the fifth
canon of the Council of Mâcon, held in 585, that priests undertook
the ransom of captives by devoting to it the Church property. The
Council of Rheims, held in 625, inflicts the punishment of suspension
from his functions on the bishop who shall have destroyed the sacred
vessels; but with generous foresight, it adds, "for any other motive
than the redemption of captives;" and long afterwards, in the twelfth
canon of the Council of Verneuil, held in 844, we find that the
property of the Church was used for that merciful purpose. When the
captive was restored to liberty, the Church did not deprive him of
her protection; she was careful to continue it, by giving him letters
of recommendation, for the double purpose of protecting him from new
trouble during his journey, and of furnishing him with the means of
repairing his losses during his captivity. We find a proof of this
new kind of protection in the second canon of the Council of Lyons,
held in 583, which ordains that bishops shall state in the letters of
recommendation which they give to captives, the date and price of their
ransom. The zeal for this work was displayed in the Church with so
much ardor, that it went so far as to commit acts of imprudence which
the ecclesiastical authority was compelled to check. These excesses,
and this mistaken zeal, prove how great was the spirit of charity.
We know by a Council, called that of St. Patrick, held in Ireland in
the year 451 or 456, that some of the clergy ventured to procure the
freedom of captives by inducing them to run away. The Council, by its
thirty-second canon, very prudently checks this excess, by ordaining
that the ecclesiastic who desires to ransom captives must do so with
his own money; for to steal them, by inducing them to run away, was to
expose the clergy to be considered as robbers, which was a dishonor to
the Church. A remarkable document, which, while showing us the spirit
of order and equity which guides the Church, at the same time enables
us to judge how deeply was engraved on men's minds the maxim, that _it
is holy, meritorious, and generous to give liberty to captives_; for
we see that some persons had persuaded themselves that the excellence
of the work justified seizing them forcibly. The disinterestedness of
the Church on this point is not less laudable. When she had employed
her funds in the ransom of a captive, she did not desire from him any
recompense, even when he had it in his power to discharge the debt.
We have a certain proof of this in the letters of St. Gregory, where
we see that that Pope reassures some persons who had been freed with
the money of the Church, and who feared that after a time they would
be called upon to pay the sum expended for their advantage. The Pope
orders that no one, at any time, shall venture to disturb either them
or their heirs, seeing that the sacred canons allow the employment of
the goods of the Church for the ransom of captives. (L. 7, ep. 14.)
The zeal of the Church for so holy a work must have contributed in
an extraordinary way to diminish the number of slaves; the influence
of it was so much the more salutary, as it was developed precisely
at the time when it was most needed, that is, in those ages when the
dissolution of the Roman empire, the irruption of the barbarians, the
fluctuations of so many peoples, and the ferocity of the invading
nations, rendered wars so frequent, revolutions so constant, and the
empire of force so habitual and prevailing. Without the beneficent and
liberating intervention of Christianity, the immense number of slaves
bequeathed by the old society to the new, far from diminishing, would
have been augmented more and more; for wherever the law of brute force
prevails, if it be not checked and softened by a powerful element,
the human race becomes rapidly debased, the necessary result of which
is the increase of slavery. This lamentable state of agitation and
violence was in itself very likely to render the efforts which the
Church made to abolish slavery useless; and it was not without infinite
trouble that she prevented what she succeeded in preserving on one
side, from being destroyed on the other. The absence of a central
power, the complication of social relations, almost always badly
determined, often affected by violence, and always deprived of the
guarantee of stability and consistency, was the reason why there was
no security either for things or persons, and that while properties
were unceasingly invaded, persons were deprived of their liberty. So
that it was at that time necessary to fight against the violence of
individuals, as had been formerly done against manners and legislation.
We see that the third canon of the Council of Lyons, held about 566,
excommunicates those who unjustly retain free persons in slavery; in
the seventeenth canon of the Council of Rheims, held in 625, it is
forbidden, under the same penalty, to pursue free persons in order to
reduce them to slavery: in the twenty-seventh canon of the Council of
London, held in 1102, the barbarous custom of dealing in men, like
animals, is proscribed: and in the seventh canon of the Council of
Coblentz, held in 922, he who takes away a Christian to sell him is
declared guilty of homicide; a remarkable declaration, when we see
liberty valued at as high a price as life itself. Another means of
which the Church availed herself to abolish slavery was, to preserve
for the unfortunate who had been reduced to that state by misery, a
sure means of quitting it.
We have already remarked above that indigence was one of the causes
of slavery, and we have seen that this was frequently the cause among
the Gauls, as is evidenced by a passage of Cæsar. We also know that
by virtue of an ancient law, he who had fallen into slavery could not
recover his liberty without the consent of his master; as the slave
was really property, no one could dispose of him without the consent
of his master, and least of all himself. This law was in accordance
with Pagan doctrines, but Christianity regarded the thing differently;
and if the slave was still in her eyes a property, he did not cease
to be a man. Thus on this point the Church refused to follow the
strict rules of other properties; and when there was the least doubt,
at the first favorable opportunity she took the side of the slave.
These observations make us understand all the value of the new law
introduced by the Church, which ordained that persons who had been
sold by necessity should be able to return to their former condition
by restoring the price which they had received. This law, which is
expressly laid down in a French Council, held about 616 at Boneuil,
according to the common opinion, opened a wide field for the conquests
of liberty; it supported in the heart of the slave a hope which urged
him to seek and put into operation the means of obtaining his ransom,
and it placed his liberty within the power of any one who, touched with
his unhappy lot, was willing to pay or lend the necessary sum. Let us
remember what we have said of the ardent zeal which was awakened in
so many hearts for works of this kind; let us call to mind that the
property of the Church was always considered as well employed when it
was used for the succor of the unfortunate, and we shall understand the
incalculable influence of the regulation which we have just mentioned.
We shall see that it was to close one of the most abundant sources of
slavery, and prepare a wide path to universal emancipation.