Bishop England has, in his eighth letter, alluded to the state of
society in England and Ireland at this early day, for the purpose of
elucidating the fact that the doctrines of the church concerning slavery
and the civil condition of those regions were materially without
difference from the other parts of Europe. Some portions of his letter,
although, perhaps, too distant from our subject, are, nevertheless, too
interesting to omit.
About the year 462, Niell Naoigialluch, or Neill of the Nine Hostages,
ravaged the coast of Britain and Gaul. In this expedition a large number
of captives were made. One youth, sixteen years of age, by the name of
Cothraige, was sold to Milcho, and was employed by him in tending sheep,
in a place called Dalradia—within the present county of Antrim. This
Cothraige was St. Patrick, subsequently the apostle of Ireland.
St. Patrick, in his Confessions, states that many of his unfortunate
countrymen were carried off and made captives, and dispersed among many
nations.
The Romans had possession of Britain, and even had not slavery existed
there previously, they would have introduced it; but, the Britons needed
not this lesson; they had been conversant with it before: we shall see
evidence of the long continuance of its practice.
About the year 450, a party of them, among whom were several that
professed the Christian religion, made a piratical incursion upon the
Irish coast, under the command of Corotic, or Caractacus, or Coroticus.
Lanigan compiles the following account of this incursion from the
_Eccles. History of Ireland_, vol. i. c. iv.
“This prince, Coroticus, though apparently a Christian, was a tyrant, a
pirate, and a persecutor. He landed, with a party of his armed
followers, many of whom were Christians, at a season of solemn baptism,
and set about plundering a district in which St. Patrick had just
baptized and confirmed a great number of converts, and on the very day
after the holy chrism was seen shining in the foreheads of the
white-robed neophytes. Having murdered several persons, these marauders
carried off a considerable number of people, whom they went about
selling or giving up as slaves to the Scots and the apostate Picts. St.
Patrick wrote a letter, which he sent by a holy priest whom he had
instructed from his younger days, to those pirates, requesting of them
to restore the baptized captives and some part of the booty. The priest
and the other ecclesiastics that accompanied him being received by them
with scorn and mockery, and the letter not attended to, the saint found
himself under the necessity of issuing a circular epistle or declaration
against them and their chief Coroticus, in which, announcing himself a
bishop and established in Ireland, he proclaims to all those who fear
God, that said murderers and robbers are excommunicated and estranged
from Christ, and that it is not lawful to show them civility, nor to eat
or drink with them, nor to receive their offerings, until, sincerely
repenting, they make atonement to God and liberate his servants and the
handmaids of Christ. He begs of the faithful, into whose hands the
epistle may come, to get it read before the people everywhere, and
before Coroticus himself, and to communicate it to his soldiers, in the
hope that they and their master may return to God, &c. Among other very
affecting expostulations, he observes that the Roman and Gallic
Christians are wont to send proper persons with great sums of money to
the Franks and other pagans, for the purpose of redeeming Christian
captives; while, on the contrary, that monster, Coroticus, made a trade
of selling the members of Christ to nations ignorant of God.”
The Britons were frequently invaded by the Scots, upon the abandonment
of their country by the Romans; and at the period here alluded to, it is
supposed by many that the captives taken from Ireland were in several
instances given by their possessors to the plundering and victorious
Northmen, by the Britons, in exchange for their own captured relatives,
whom they desired to release.
About the year 555, Pope Pelagius held, under the protection of King
Childebert, the third council of Paris, in which we find a canon,
entitled, “De Servis Degeneribus,” concerning “bastard slaves,” as
follows: (See Du Cange.)
Canon ix. De degeneribus servis, qui pro sepulchris defunctorum pro
qualitate ipsius ministerii deputantur, hoc placuit observari, ut sub
quâ ab auctoribus fuerint conditione dimissi, sive heredibus, sive
ecclesiis pro defensione fuerint deputati, voluntas defuncti circa eos
in omnibus debeat observari. Quod si ecclesia eos de fisci functionibus
in omni parte defenderit ecclesiæ tam illi, quam posteri eorum,
defensione in omnibus potiantur, et occursum impendant.
_It is enacted concerning bastard slaves who are placed to keep the
sepulchres, because of the rank of that office, that whether they be
placed under the protection of the heirs or of the church for their
defence, upon the condition upon which they were discharged by their
owners, the will of the deceased should be observed in all things in
their regard. But, if the church shall keep them entirely exempt from
the services and payments of the fisc, let them and their descendants
enjoy the protection of the church for defence, and pay to it their
tribute._
The _auctores_, or authors, in the original sense, were _owners_ or
_masters_; and subsequently, especially in Gaul, it was often taken to
mean _parents_, which probably, from the context, is here its meaning;
and, we find a new title and a new class, where the master having
committed a crime with his servant, the offspring was his slave; yet,
his natural affection caused the parent to grant him a conditioned
freedom, to protect which this canon specified the guardian to be either
the heir or the church.
Martin, archbishop of Braga, who presided at the third council of that
city, in the year 572, collected, from the councils of the east and the
west, the greater portion of the canon law then in force, and made a
compendium thereof, which he distributed into eighty-four heads, which
formed as many short canons, and thenceforth they were the basis of the
discipline in Spain.