§ 20. SOCIAL REFORMS. 115
§ 20. Social Heforms. The Institution of Slavery.
4. The institution of slavery ' remained throiigliout the ern pi re, and is recognized in the laws of Justinian as altogcthef legitimate.^ The Justinian code rests on the broad distinction of the human race into freemen and slaves. It declares, indeed, the natural equality of men, and so far rises above the theory of Aristotle, who regards certain races and classes of men as irrevocably doomed, by their physical and intellectual inferiority, to perpetual servitude ; but it destroys the practical value of this concession by insisting as sternly aa ever on the inferior legal and social condition of the slave, by degrading his marriage to the disgrace of concubinage, by refusing him all legal remedy in case of adultery, by depriving him of all power over his children, by making him an article of merchandise like irrational beasts of burden, whose transfer from vender to buyer was a legal transaction as valid and frequent as the sale of any other property. The pm'chase and sale of slaves for from ten to seventy pieces of gold, according to their age, strength, and training, was a daily occurrence.' The number was not limited ; many a master owning even two or three thousand slaves.
The barbarian codes do not essentially difi'er in this respect from the Roman. They, too, recognize slavery as an ordinary condition of mankind, and the slave as a marketable commodity. All captives in war became slaves, and thousands ol human lives were thus saved from indiscriminate massacre and extermination. The victory of Stilicho over Khadagaisus threw 200,000 Goths and other Germans into the market, and lowered the price of a slave from tweny-five pieces of gold to one. The capture and sale of men was part of the piratical system
' Comp. vol. ii. § 97, and the author's "Hist, of the Apost. Church," § 113.
' lustit. lib. i. tit. 5-8 ; Digest. 1. i. tit. 5 and 6, etc.
* The legal price, which, however, was generally under the market price, wat thus established under Justinian (Cod. 1. vi. tit. xliii. 1. 3) : Ten pieces of gold for an ordinary male or female slave under ten years ; twenty, for slaves over ten ; thirty, for such as understood a trade ; fifty, for notaries and scribes ; sixty for physicianj and midwives. Eunuchs ranged to seventy pieces.
116 THIKD PERIOD. A,D. 311-590,
along all the shores of Europe. Anglo-Saxons were freely sold in Rome at the time of Gregory the Great, The barbarian codes prohibited as severely as the Justinian code the debasing alliance of the freeman witli the slave, but they seem to excel the latter in acknowledging the legality and religious sanctity of maiTlages between slaves ; that of the Lombards on the authority of the Scripture sentence : " Whom God haa joined together, let no man put asunder."
The legal wall of partition, which separated the slaves from free citizens and excluded them from the universal rights of man, was indeed undermined, but by no means broken down, by the ancient church, who taught only the moral and religious equality of men. We find slaveholders even among the bishops and the higher clergy of the empire. Slaves belonged to the papal household at Rome, as we learn incidentally from the acts of a Roman synod held in 501 in consequence of the disputed election of Symmachus, where his opponents insisted upon his slaves being called in as witnesses, while his adherents protested against this extraordinary request, since the civil law excluded the slaves from the rii^ht of i^ivin": testimony before a court of justice.' Among the barbarians, likewise, we read of slaveholding churches, and of special provisions to protect their slaves." Constantino issued rigid laws against intermarriage with slaves, all the oflspring of which must be slaves ; and against fugitive slaves (a. d. 319 and 326), who at that time in great multitudes plundered deserted provinces or joined with hostile barbarians against tho empire. But on the other hand he facilitated manumission, permitted it even on Sunday, and gave the clergy the right to emancipate their slaves simply by their own word, without the witnesses and ceremonies required in other cases.' By Theodosius and Justinian the liberation of slaves was still fiir-
' Comp. Ilefclo : " Conciliongt>schichte," ii. p. 620 ; and Milman : " Latin Christianity," vol. i. p. 419 (Am. ed.), who infers from thin fiiut, "that slaves formed the household of the Pope, and that, by law, they were yet liable to torture. T\ai seems clear from the words of Ennodius."
' Comp. Milman, /. c. i. 531.
» In two laws of 316 and 321 ; Corp. Jur. 1. i. tit. 13, 1. 1 and 2.