In the early periods of modern Europe slavery was a general custom,
which yielded only gradually to the humane influences of Christianity.
It prevailed in all the countries of which we have any records.
Fair-haired Saxon slaves from distant England arrested the attention
of Pope Gregory in the markets of Rome, and were by him hailed as
_Angels_. A law of so virtuous a king as Alfred ranks slaves with
horses and oxen; and the Chronicles of William of Malmesbury show
that in our mother country there was once a cruel slave-trade in
whites. As we listen to this story, we shall be grateful again to that
civilization which renders such outrage more and more impossible.
"Directly opposite to the Irish coast," he says, "there is a seaport
called Bristol, the inhabitants of which frequently sent into Ireland
to sell those people whom they had bought up throughout England. They
exposed to sale girls in a state of pregnancy, with whom they made
a sort of mock marriage. There you might see with grief, fastened
together by ropes, whole rows of wretched beings of both sexes, of
elegant forms, and in the very bloom of youth,--a sight sufficient to
excite pity even in barbarians,--daily offered for sale to the first
purchaser. Accursed deed! infamous disgrace! that men, acting in a
manner which brute instinct alone would have forbidden, should sell
into slavery their relations, nay, even their own offspring!"[21] From
still another chronicler we learn, that, in 1172, when Ireland was
afflicted with public calamities, there was a great assembly of the
principal men, _chiefly of the clergy_, who concluded, as well they
might, that these evils were sent upon their country for the reason
that they had formerly purchased English boys as slaves, contrary to
the right of Christian liberty,--the poor English, to supply their
wants, being "accustomed to sell even their own children, not to bring
them up": wherefore, it is said, the English slaves were allowed to
depart in freedom.[22] Earlier in Irish history a boy was stolen from
Scotland, who, after six years of bondage, succeeded in reaching his
home, when, entering the Church, he returned to Ireland, preached
Christianity, and, as St. Patrick, became the patron saint of that
beautiful land.[23]
[21] Life of St. Wulstan, Book II. Chap. 20.
[22] Chronica Hiberniæ, or the Annals of Philip Flatsbury (in the
Cottonian Library, Domitianus XVIII. 10); quoted in Stephen on West
India Slavery, Vol. I. p. 6.
[23] Biographie Générale (Hoefer), Art. _Patrice_.
On the Continent of Europe, as late as the thirteenth century, the
custom prevailed of treating all captives in war as slaves. Here
poetry, as well as history, bears its testimony. Old Michael Drayton,
in his story of the Battle of Agincourt, says of the French:--
"For knots of cord to every town they send,
The captived English that they caught to bind;
_For to perpetual slavery they intend
Those that alive they on the field should find_."[24]
[24] Battle of Agincourt, st. 144.
And Othello, in recounting his perils, exposes this custom, when he
speaks
"Of being taken by the insolent foe
_And sold to slavery_; of my redemption thence."
It was also held lawful to enslave an infidel, or person who did not
receive the Christian faith. The early Common Law of England doomed
heretics to the stake; the Catholic Inquisition did the same; and the
laws of Oléron, the maritime code of the Middle Ages, treated them "as
dogs," to be attacked and despoiled by all true believers. Philip le
Bel of France, grandson of St. Louis, in 1296 presented his brother
Charles, Count of Valois, with a Jew, and paid three hundred livres for
another Jew,--as if Jews were at the time chattels, to be given away
or bought.[25] The statutes of Florence, boastful of freedom, as late
as 1415 allowed republican citizens to hold slaves not of the Catholic
Christian faith,--_Qui non sunt Catholicæ fidei et Christianæ_.[26]
Besides captive Moors, there were African slaves in Spain, before
Christopher Columbus; and at Venice Marco Polo for some time held a
slave he had brought from the Orient in the age of Dante. The comedies
of Molière, _L'Étourdi_ and _Le Sicilien_, depicting Italian usages
not remote from his day, show that at Messina even Christian women
continued to be sold as slaves.
[25] Encyclopédie Méthodique (Jurisprudence), Art. _Esclavage_.
[26] Biot, De l'Abolition de l'Esclavage Ancien en Occident, p.
440,--a work crowned with a gold medal by the Institute of France,
which will be read with some disappointment.
This rapid sketch, which brings us down to the period when Algiers
became a terror to the Christian nations, renders it no longer
astonishing that the barbarous States of Barbary--a part of Africa,
the great womb of slavery, professing Mahometanism, which not only
recognizes slavery, but expressly ordains "chains and collars" to
infidels[27]--should maintain the traffic in slaves, particularly in
Christians, denying the faith of the Prophet. In the duty of constant
war upon unbelievers, and in the assertion of right to the service
or ransom of their captives, they followed the lessons of Christians
themselves.
[27] Koran, Chap. LXXVI.
It is not difficult, then, to account for the origin of this cruel
custom. Its _history_ forms our next topic.