§ 20. THE IJsSTITUTION OF SLAVERY. 121
opposed to social revolution and violent measures of reform yet in its inmost instincts and ultimate tendencies favored the universal freedom of man, and, by elevating the slave ti spiritual equality vrith the master, and uniformly treating hire as capable of the same virtues, blessings, and rewards, hag placed the hateful institution of human bondage in the way of gradual amelioration and final extinction. This result, however, was not reached in Em'ope till many centuries after our period, nor by the influence of the church alone, but with the help of various economical and political causes, the unprofitableness of slavery, especially in more northern latitudes, the new relations introduced by the barbarian conquests, the habits of the Teutonic tribes settled within the Roman empire, the attachment of the rural slave to the soil, and the change of the slave into the serf, who was as immovable as the soil, and thus, in some degree inde])endent on the caprice and despotism of his master.
5. The poor and unfortunate in general, above all the widows and orphans, prisoners and sick, who were so terribly neglected in heathen times, now drew the attention of the imperial legislators. Constantine in 315 prohibited the branding of criminals on the forehead, " that the human countenance," as he said, " formed after the image of heavenly beauty, should not be defaced." ' He provided against tlie inhuman maltreatment of prisoners before their trial.'' To deprive poor parents of all pretext for selling or exposing their children, he had them furnished with food and clothing, partly at his own expense and partly at that of the state.' He likewise endeavored, particularly by a law of the year 331, to protect the poor against the venality and extortion of judges, advocates, and tax collectors, who drained the people by their exactions." In the year 334 he ordered that widows, orphan g,
» Cod. Theod. ix. 40, 1 and 2.
' C. Theod. ix. tit. 3, de custodia reorura. Comp. later similar laws of the yeai 409 in 1. 7, and of 529 in the Cod. Justin, i, 4, 22.
' Comp. the two laws De alimentis quae inopes parentes de publico petere debent, in the Cod. Theod. xi. 27, 1 and 2.
* Cod. Theod. I. tit. 7, 1. 1 : Cessent jam nunc rapaces officialium marLiJS, ccsmst'. inquam I nam si monii non cessaverint, gladiis prscidentur.
122 THIRD PKEIOD. A.D. 311-590.
the sick, and tlie poor should not be compelled to appear ho' fore a tribunal outside their own province. Yalentinian, in 365, exempted widows and orphans from the ignoble poll tax.' In 364 he intrusted the bishops with the supervision of tii« poor. Ilonorius did the same in 409. Justinian, in 529, aa we have before remarked, gave the bishops the oversight .: f the state prisons, which they were to visit on Wednesdays and Fridays, to bring home to the unfortunates the carnestnesa and comfort of religion. The same emperor issued laws against usury and inhuman severity in creditors, and secured benevolent and religious foundations by strict Laws against alienation of their revenues from the original design of the founders. Several emperors and empresses took the church institutions for tlie poor and sick, for strangers, widows, and oi-plians, under their special patronage, exempted them from the usual taxes, and enriched or enlarged them from their private funds.' Yet in those days, as still in ours, the private beneficence of Christian love took the lead, and the state followed at a distance, rather with ratification and patronage than with independent and original activity.^
§ 21. Abolition of Gladiatorial Shows,
6. And finally, one of the greatest and most beautiful victories of Christian humanity over heathen barbarism and cruelty was the abolition of gladiatorial contests, against which the apologists in the second century had already raised the most earnest protest.*
' The capitatio plebeja. Cod. Theod. xiii. 10, 1 au 1 4. Otbor laws in behalf of widows, Cod. Jui5t. iii. 14; ix. 24.
' Cod. Thcod. xi. 16, xiii. 1 ; Cod. Jiust. i. .3 ; Nov. 131. Comp. here in general Chastel: The Charity of the rrimitivc Churclies (tniiisl. by Matile), pp. 281-293.
* Comp. Chastel, 1. e., p. 293: "It appears, then, ;is to charitable institution.^, the part of the Christian emperors was much less to found them.sclves, than to recognize, to regulate, to guarantee, sometimes also to enrich with their private gifts, that which the church had founded. Everywhere the initiative had been taken by religious charity. Public charity only followed in the distance, and when it attomptfd to go ahead originally and alone, it soon found that it had strayed .laide, and waj constrained to withdraw."
' ConiTi. vol. ii. ^ '.)."> (p. .'5o8 sqq.).