“It is not lawful for any one to take away from a slave the money made
by labour.”
In the council of Verberie, held in a palace of King Pepin, the sixth
canon made regulations in the case of marriage between free persons and
slaves. The following are its provisions:
1. If any free person contracted marriage with a slave, being at the
time ignorant of the state of bondage of that party, the marriage was
invalid.
2. If a person under bond should have a semblance of freedom by reason
of condition, and the free person be ignorant of the bondage, and this
bond person should be brought into servitude, the marriage was declared
originally void.
3. An exception was made where the bond person, by reason of want,
should, with the consent of the free party, sell himself or herself into
perfect slavery with the consent of the free party; then the marriage
was to stand good, because the free party had consented to the
enslavement, and profited of its gains.
The seventh canon would seem to show that a slave could hold property in
slaves:
Si servus suam ancillam concubinam habuerit, si ita placet, potest illâ
dimissâ comparem suam ancillam domini sui accipere: sed melius est suam
ancillam tenere.
“If a man-servant shall have his own female slave as a concubine, he
shall have power, if he wishes, leaving her, to marry his equal, the
female servant of his master: but it is better that he should keep his
own servant in wedlock.”
The eighth canon provided, in the case of a freedman who, subsequently
to his liberation, committed sin with the female slave of his former
master, that the master should have power, whether the freedman would or
not, to compel him to marry that female slave; and should this man leave
her, and attempt a marriage with another woman, this latter must be
separated from him.
The thirteenth declares that when a freeman, knowing that the woman whom
he is about to marry is a slave, or, not having known it until after
marriage, voluntarily upon the discovery consents to the marriage, it is
thenceforth indissoluble.
The nineteenth declares that the separation of married parties, by the
sale of one who is a slave, does not affect the marriage. They must be
admonished, if they cannot be reunited, to remain continent.
The twentieth provides for the case of a male slave freed by letter,
(_chartellarius_,) who, having for his wife taken a slave with the
lawful consent of her master, and leaving her, takes another as his
wife. The latter contract is void, and the parties must separate.
Another assembly was held by King Pepin, in Compeigne, forty-eight miles
north-east of Paris, where he had a country-seat. At this assembly also
the prelates held a council in 757, and made eighteen canons. The fourth
makes provision for the case of a man’s giving his free step-daughter in
wedlock to a freeman or to a slave. The fifth declares void the marriage
between a free person and a slave, where the former was ignorant of the
condition of the latter. The sixth regards a case of a complicated
description, where a freeman got a civil benefice from his lord, and
takes his own vassal with him, and dies upon the benefice, leaving after
him the vassal. Another freeman becomes invested with the benefice, and,
anxious to induce the vassal to remain, gives him a female serf attached
to the soil as his wife. Having lived with her for a time, the vassal
leaves her, and returns to the lord’s family, to which he owed his
services, and there he contracts a marriage with one of the same
allegiance. His first contract was invalid, the second was the marriage.
In the year 772, a council was held in Bavaria, at a place called
_Dingolvinga_, the present city of Ingolstadt, in the reign of Tassilo,
duke of Bavaria. The tenth canon of this council decides that a noble
woman, who had contracted marriage with a slave, not being aware of his
condition, is at liberty to leave him, the contract being void, and she
is to be considered free and not to be reduced to slavery. By _noble_ we
are here to understand _free_, as distinguished from _ignoble_, that is,
a slave.
We have then sixteen amendments of the national law.
The first regulates, by the authority of the prince and consent of the
whole assembly, that henceforth no slave, whether fugitive or other,
should be sold beyond the limits of the territory, under penalty of the
payment of his weregild.
In the second, among other things, it is enacted that if a slave should
be killed in the commission of house-breaking, his owner is to receive
no compensation; and should the felon who is killed in man-stealing,
when he could not be taken, whether it be a freeman or a slave that he
is carrying off, no weregild shall be paid by the slayer, but he shall
be bound to prove his case before a court.
The seventh regards the trial by ordeal of slaves freed by the duke’s
hand.
The eighth establishes and guards the freedom, not only of themselves,
but of their posterity, of those freed in the church, unless when they
may be reduced to slavery from inability to pay for damages which they
had committed.
The ninth contains, among other enactments, those which explain the
tenth canon of the council. After specifying different weregilds for
freed persons, it says—
Si ancilla libera dimissa fuerit per chartam aut in ecclesiâ, et post
hæc servo nupserit, ecclesiæ ancilla permanebit.
“Should a female slave be emancipated by deed or in the church, and
afterwards marry a slave, she shall be a slave to the church.”
It then continues, respecting a woman originally free, and the _nobilis_
of canon x.:
Si autem libera Bajoaria servo ecclesiæ nupserit, et servile opus
ancilla contradixerit, abscedat.
“But if a free Bavarian female shall have married a servant of the
church, and the maid will not submit to servile work, she may depart.”
Si autem ibi filios et filias generaverit, ipsi servi et ancillæ
permaneant, potestatem exinde (exeundi) non habeant.
“But if she shall have there borne sons and daughters, they shall
continue slaves, and not have power of going forth.”
Her freedom was not, however, immediately destroyed, for the law
proceeds—
Illa autem mater eorum, quando exire voluerit, ante annos iii, liberam
habeat potestatem.
“But she, their mother, when she may desire to go forth before three
years, shall have free power therefor.”
In this case the marriage subsisted, but the free woman could separate,
without however the marriage-bond being rent. If she remained beyond the
time of three years, she lost her freedom; and it shows us that,
probably, previous to this amendment, any free woman who married a
slave, thereby lost her own freedom; and that the tenth canon, showing
the marriage of which it treated to be invalid, showed that the woman
should not lose her liberty. The concluding provision of the ninth law
is as follows:
Si autem iii annos induraverit opus ancillæ, et parentes ejus non
exadomaverunt eam ut libera fuisset, nec ante comitem, ducem, nec ante
regem, nec in publico mallo, transactis tribus kalendis Martis, (Martu,)
post hæc ancilla permaneat in perpetuum, et quicumque ex ea nati fuerint
servi et ancillæ sunt.
“But if she shall have continued three years doing the work of a slave,
and her relations have not brought her out so that she should be free,
either before the count, or the duke, or the king, or in the public high
court, (mall,) when the kalends of March shall have thrice passed, after
this she shall remain perpetually a slave, and they who shall be born of
her, male and female, shall be slaves.”
In 774, Pope Adrian I. delivered to Charlemagne a digest of canon law,
then in force, in which we find—
“The third of Gangræ, condemning as guilty of heresy those who taught
that religion sanctioned the slave in despising his master; the
thirtieth in the African collection, which showed that the power of
manumission in the church was derived from the civil authority; the one
hundred and second of the same, which declared slaves and freed persons
disqualified to prosecute, except in certain cases and for injuries done
to themselves.”
In a capitulary of Charlemagne, published in such a synod and general
assembly in 779, in the month of March, in the eleventh year of his
reign, at Duren, on the Roer, (Villa Duria,) between Cologne and
Aix-la-Chapelle, there being assembled episcopis, abbatibus, virisque
illustribus, comitibus, unà cum piissimo domino nostro,—“the bishops,
abbots, and the illustrious men, the counts, together with our most
pious lord,”—we find the following chapter:
XX. De mancipiis quæ venduntur, ut in præsentiâ episcopi vel comitis
sit, aut in præsentiâ archdiaconi, aut centenarii, aut in præsentiâ
vicedomini, aut judicis comitis, aut ante bene nota testimonia. Et foras
marcham nemo mancipium vendat. Qui fecerit, tantis vicibus bannos
solvet, quanta mancipia vendidit. Et si non habet precium vivadio, pro
servo semetipsum donet comiti, usquèdum ipsos bannos solvat.
“Concerning slaves that are sold, let it be in presence of the bishop,
or of the count, or in presence of the archdeacon, or of the judge of
the hundred, or in presence of the lord’s deputy, or of the judge of the
county, or of well known witnesses. And let no one sell a slave beyond
the boundary. Whosoever shall do so shall pay as many fines as he sold
slaves. And if he has not the money, let him deliver himself to the
count in pledge as a slave until he shall pay the fines.”
In a capitulary of Pope Adrian I., containing the summary of the chief
part of the canon law then in force, as collected from the ancient
councils and other sources, delivered to Ingilram, bishop of Metz, or,
as it was then called, Divodurum, or oppidum Mediomatricorum, on the
19th of September, xiii. kalendas Octobris, indic. ix. 785, the
sixteenth chapter, describing those who cannot be witnesses against
priests, mentions not merely slaves, but quorum vitæ libertas nescitur,
those _who are not known to be free_; and in the notes of Anthony
Augustus, bishop of Tarragona, on this capitulary, he refers for this
and another passage, viles personae, _persons of vile condition_, which
is the appellation of slaves, to decrees of the earliest of popes, viz.,
Anacletus, A.D. 91, and Clement his immediate successor; Evaristus, who
was the next, and died A.D., 109; Pius, who died A.D. 157; Calistus, in
222; Fabian, 250; and several others. In chapter xxi. among incompetent
witnesses, are recited, nullus servus, nullus libertus—_no slave, no
freedman_. The notes of the same author inform us that this portion of
the chapter is the copy of an extract from the first council of Nice,
and that it is also substantially found in a passage from Pope
Pontianus, who died in 235, as well as in several of the early African
and Spanish councils, which he quotes.
One of these assemblies, in which Charlemagne published a capitulary,
was held at Aix-la-Chapèlle (Aquisgranum) in 789, in which eighty-two
chapters were enacted. No. xxiii. is founded upon canon iv. of the
council of Chalcedon, and upon an enactment of Leo the Great. It
prohibited all attempts to induce a slave to embrace either the clerical
or monastical state without the will and license of the master. No. xlv.
prohibits, among others, slaves from being competent witnesses, or
freedmen against their patrons: founded upon the ninety-sixth canon of
the African councils. No. lvii. referring to the third canon of the
council of Gangræ, prohibits bishops ordaining slaves without the
master’s license.
In 794 a council was held at Frankfort on the Maine, at which the
bishops of a large portion of Europe assisted; the twenty-third canon of
which is the following:
De servis alienis, ut a nemine recipiantur, neque ab episcopis sacrentur
sine licentiâ dominorum.
“Of servants belonging to others: they shall be received by no one, nor
admitted to orders by bishops, without their masters’ license.”
In the year 697, at another assembly held at Aix-la-Chapelle, the
capitulary for the pacification and government of Saxony was enacted by
Charlemagne. The eighth chapter is—
Si quis hominem diabolo sacrificaverit, et hostiam in more paganorum
dæmonibus obtulerit, morte moriatur.
“If any person shall sacrifice a man to the devil, and offer him as a
victim to devils after the fashion of pagans, he shall be put to death.”
An explanation of this will be found where Pope Gregory III. answers St.
Boniface, who informed him that unfortunate slaves were bought to be
thus immolated.