RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
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were barbarians; while Cato reckoned slaves as farm implements. Toward the end of the Roman Republic the status and treatment of slaves changed partly under the influence of Greece and the superior culture of the Greek slaves, and partly through the Stoic doctrine of the equality of all men. Hadrian deprived the master of the right to put his slave to death and allowed him to be tried (as he always had been at Athens) in the courts; and Marcus Aurelius even permitted slaves to lodge complaints against their masters in certain cases, while manumission was made increasingly easy. In all this, however, there is no demonstrable trace of either Christian or Jewish influence, the real operative force being that of Greece. At the same time, the ancient world never dreamed of a society without slaves, except as a sort of Utopia or as a reminiscence of the golden age, which the Roman Saturnalia and similar slave festivals in Athens, Cydonia, etc., sought to typify, and the Essenes, Therapeutse, and such Gnostic sects as that of the Carpocratian Epiphanes to realize.
With such tendencies as these Christianity had nothing in common. It simply accepted slavery as a necessary constituent of ancient civilization, nor is there the slightest evidence that it either condemned slavery as a principle or sought to abolish it. In his parables Christ presupposed the natural relations of master and slave (Matt, xviii. 3. Slavery 23 sqq., xxv. 14 sqq.; Mark xiii. 34; and the Luke xii. 42 sqq., xvii. 7 sqq.); and Early Paul expressly declared that Christian- Church, ity made no change in existing conditions, and that he who was a slave ought to remain one, even were freedom offered him (I Cor. vii. 21; cf. also the attitude assumed toward Onesimus in Philemon 16). All the gentile Christian communities contained large numbers of slaves (cf. Rom. xvi. 10-11; I Cor. i. 11; Phil. iv. 22), although these communities were far from consisting predominantly of bondmen. There were also Christian masters, as is clear from the admonitions in Eph. vi. 9; Col. iv. 1; I Tim. vi. 2 (cf. Clement of Alexandria, Pcedagogus, III., iv. 26, xi. 73, xii. 84; Chrysostom, Horn, on I Cor. xl. 6). Of the conditions in Judeo-Christian households little is known (cf. Acts xii. 13). The Apostolic Constitutions (ii. 62) enumerate the purchase of a slave among the necessities of life which justify a Christian in visiting the marketplace; the Acts of Thomas represent the apostle as the slave whom Christ sells to a king of India; and Ignatius (Epist. ad Polycarpum, iv. 3) discourages the ransom of slaves at the expense of the community (cf. Salvianus, Ad eccl., iii. 7), which seems to have intervened only when a slave's Christianity was endanged. On the other hand, wealthy Christians appear to have bought Christian slaves to manumit them (cf. Hermas, Shepherd, " Similitudes," i. 8; Apostolic Constitutions, iv. 9), and cases are also recorded in which Christians voluntarily sold themselves into slavery to aid the poor with their price (cf. I Clement, lv.). But despite external continuity, there was a change of spirit, kindness of masters and fidelity of slaves becoming a matter of Christian principle, instead of personal character, as in paganism (cf . Eph. vi. 5 sqq. ; Col. iii. 22sqq.,iv. 1; I Tim. vi. 1-2; Tit. ii. 9-10; Philemon
16; I Pet. ii. 18 sqq; Didache iv. 10-11; Apostolic Constitutions, iv. 12), while Augustine, commenting on Ps. cxxv. 7 (NPNF, 1st series, viii. 602), expressly declares: "He (Christ) hath not made men free from being servants, but good servants from bad servants " (cf. Conf., IX., viii. 17). Christians sought, moreover, to save the souls of slaves (Acts. xvi. 16 sqq.; Aristides, Apol., xv.; Augustine, Be sermone Domini in monte, i. 59). Christianity did even more than this— it gave the slave the status of a man (I Cor. xii. 13; Gal. iii. 28; Col. iii. 11; cf. Irenams, Hcer., IV., xxi. 3; Origen, Contra Celsum, iii. 54; Lactantius, Institutio, v. 15). It is true that a slave required his master's permission before he could be baptized (Hippolytus, Canones, x. 63), but even if this were refused, he could still be an associate member of the congregation; and if he were baptized, he enjoyed the same rights as a freeman. Slaves might take orders, and some, as Calixtus I., even became popes, while many slaves were venerated as martyrs, among them Blandina and Potamisna (qq.v.). Not only were Christian slaves forbidden to sacrifice for their masters, whether pagan or Christian (Tertullian, De idolatria, xvii.; Peter of Alexandria, Canones, vi.-vii.), but the new faith energetically combated the vices to which slaves of both sexes had been compelled to minister, besides doing away with execution by crucifixion and the branding of fugitive slaves.
The Christian Church, interested only in the faith of the slave, and leaving his legal position entirely to the State, made no attempt to abolish slavery. With the increasing secularization of religious life, the social cleavage between bond and 4. The free became wider still, and only the Medieval monasteries clung to the concept, based Church and on a commingling of classic Stoicism Slavery, and early Christianity, of the equal rights and the human status of the slave. It was from the monasteries, indeed, that the revolution with regard to slavery was destined to come. During the imperial period of Rome the importation of slaves had decreased, and they had largely been replaced by coloni, or serfs, whose number might include slaves, and more often free peasants. This system, aided by the subjection of the conquered peoples in the new German Empire, persisted in places as late as the eighteenth century; and though the Church took little part in all this, and though she frequently protected the oppressed and even recruited her clergy from the serfs, she herself exercised seigniorial rights and proved unable to exercise a moral influence sufficient to alter conditions. There were, moreover, actual slaves until late in the Middle Ages. Even the Church owned them and vigorously asserted her rights over them; but though the slave might still be bought and sold, and required his master's permission in the most important and personal decisions of life, he enjoyed (as in Greek and later Roman legislation) a limited freedom in regard to rights and property, as well as the protection of the wergild. The Church took these rights under her protection, afforded asylum to those seeking refuge, insisted on humane treatment of slaves, sought to make masters responsible for the morality of their slaves, for-
Slavery