All historians agree that the Sclavonians, who at an early age made
their appearance on the north-eastern borders of Europe, came, a
countless multitude, pouring down upon those countries from the middle
regions of Asia.
The precise place from which they originated, the causes of such
emigration, and the successive impulses that pushed them westward, have
now, for centuries, been buried beneath the rubbish of the emigrants
themselves and the general ignorance that overspread the events of that
age.
But there are some facts that assign to them a place among the Hindoo
tribes. Brezowski, speaking the Sclavonic of his day, in his travels
eastward, was enabled to understand the language of the country as far
east as Cochin-China; and scholars of the present day find numerous
Indian roots in this language. A similarity of religious rites is to be
noticed between the ancient Sclavonians and the Hindoos. They burned
their dead, and wives ascended the funeral piles of their husbands.
Their principal gods were Bog, and Seva, his wife. They worshipped good
spirits called Belbog, and bad spirits called Czarnebog.
These hordes overspread the countries from the Black Sea to the Icy
Ocean; and, in their turn, were forced westward by similar hordes of
Wends, Veneti, Antes, Goths, and Huns. Thus attacked and pushed in the
rear, they poured themselves upon the inhabitants of the more western
regions, who, more warlike, and with superior arms, put them to death by
thousands, until the earth was covered with the slain. Thus fleeing from
death, they met it in front, until the nations then occupying the north
and east of Europe, satiated and sickened by their slaughter, seized
upon their persons as slaves, and converted them into beasts of burden.
Their numbers exceeding every possible use, the captors exported them to
adjoining countries as an article of traffic; and the Venetians, being
then a commercial people, enriched themselves by this traffic for many
years. All continental Europe was thus filled by this race, from the
Adriatic to the Northern Ocean. Thus their national appellation became
through Europe the significant term for a man in bondage; and although
in their own language their name signified _fame_ and _distinction_, yet
in all the world besides, it has superseded the Hebrew, the Greek, and
Roman terms, to signify the condition of man in servitude. Thus the
Dutch and Belgians say _slaaf_; Germans, _sclave_; Danes, _slave_ and
_sclave_; Swedes, _slaf_; French, _esclave_; the Celtic French, &c.,
_sclaff_; Italians, _schiavo_; Spanish, _esclavo_; Portuguese,
_escravo_; Gaelic, _slabhadh_; and the English, _slave_.
Nor was this signification inappropriate to their native condition. For
these countless hordes were the absolute property of their leaders or
kings, who were hereditary among them,—as was, also, their condition of
bondage.
The Romans called their language _Servian_, from the Roman word
_servus_, a bond-man; and from the same cause, also, a district of
country low down on the Danube, _Servia_, which name it retains to this
day. This country belongs to Turkey, from whence they took the name
_serf_. This term has been borrowed from thence, by the Sclavonic
Russians, to signify a man in bondage. The whole number of their
descendants is now estimated at 100,000,000; and notwithstanding their
amalgamation has identified them with the nations with whom they were
thus intermingled, yet a thousand years have not ended their condition
of bondage in Russia, and 40,000,000 are accounted only as an
approximation to the number that still remain in servitude in the north
of Europe and Asia.
“The unquestionable evidence of language,” says the author of the
Decline and Fall, “attests the descent of the Bulgarians from the
original stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly Slavonian, race; and
the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians, Rascians, Croatians,
Walachians, followed either the standard or example of the leading
tribes, from the Euxine to the Adriatic, in the state of captives, or
subjects, or allies, or enemies; in the Greek empire, they overspread
the land: and the national appellation of the SLAVES has been degraded
by chance or malice from the signification of _glory_ to that of
_servitude_. Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the identity of
the language of the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians, Bulgarians, Poles,
(_De Rebus Turcitis_, 1. x. p. 283,) and elsewhere of the Bohemians, (1.
ii. p. 38.) The same author has marked the separate idiom of the
Hungarians.
See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, _De Originibus Sclavicis,
Vindobonæ_, 1745, in four parts. Jordan subscribes to the well-known and
probable derivation from _slava_, _laus_, _gloria_, a word of familiar
use in the different dialects and parts of speech, and which forms the
termination of the most illustrious names. _De Originibus Sclavicis_,
part i. p. 40, part iv. p. 101, 102.
This conversion of a national into an appellative name appears to have
arisen in the eighth century, in the oriental France, where the princes
and bishops were rich in Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian
(exclaims Jordan) but of Sorabian race. From thence the word was
extended to general use, to the modern languages, and even to the style
of the last Byzantines. (See the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange;
also Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iv. p. 38.)
The Moors, with whom the early Christians in the south of Europe had so
many and frequent contentions, at this day differ from all the other
African races, in their physical and mental development;—in person,
black, with the straight hair of the Arab, whom they exceed in stature
and intellect.
The Arabs are admitted to be an amalgamation of the descendants of Shem,
of Canaan, and Misrain. Into the particulars of their admixture, it will
be as useless to inquire as it would be into the paternity of the goats
on their mountains.
The Moors, according to King Hiempsal’s History of Africa, as related by
Sallust, are descended from an admixture of Medes, Persians, and
Armenians with the Libyans and Gætulians, the original occupants of the
country. His statement is, that Hercules led a large army of the people
to conquer new and unknown countries; that after his death in Spain, it
became a heterogeneous mass, made up of a great number of nations, among
whom were many ambitious chiefs, each one aspiring to rule; that a
portion of this mass, mostly of Japhanese descent, passed over to Africa
and seized on the shores of the Mediterranean; that their ships, being
hauled ashore, were used for shelter; that the Persians among them
passed on to the interior, and mingled with the Gætulians, and in after
times were known as Numidians,—whereas those who remained upon the coast
intermarried with Libyans, and in course of time, by a corruption of
their language, Medi, in the barbarous dialect of Libya, became
_Mauri_—now Moor.
To the foregoing, digested from Hiempsal, as given by Sallust, we may
add:—To this amalgamation was also adjoined, from time to time, large
parties of adventurers from the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and from almost
every part of Europe, which were all absorbed by the native masses; and
between the years 850 and 860, large masses of the Scandinavian hordes
were also absorbed into this general amalgam of the races of man.
The instances of slavery, and the laws and customs of the church
regulating it, as presented in this study, with few exceptions, have
pointed to the case where the white races have been enslaved or have
enslaved one another; where no strongly marked physical impediment has
branded amalgamation with deterioration and moral disgust; nor is it
thought necessary to present an argument to prove that, under such a
state of facts, the condition of Europe at the present moment is in
strict conformity with the result produced by the unchangeable laws of
God touching the subject.
God always smiles upon the strong desire of moral and physical
improvement. Had Europe remained under deteriorating influences which
determined her moral and physical condition two thousand years ago, her
condition as to slavery could not have changed. Nor is it seen that she
is yet in so highly favoured a condition as to call upon her the
providence of God, charging her with the pupilage of the backslidden
nations of the earth.
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