Slavery

SLAVERY. - From the ancient German slav, a word applied by the Germans to the Slavic peoples whom they took captive, and it may be defined as the state of a person who belongs to another as a thing and depends entirely on another's will.

Captivity in war is the oldest and most universal way of falling into slavery, inasmuch as the prisoner becomes the property of the one who captured him. This is the servitus that Roman law admits by virtue of the law of nations. Alongside captivity in war (external war, however, not civil or brigandish) there is a slavery that arises either from a condition of nature: thus the child of a slave woman is a slave; or from special circumstances in which the individual has come to be placed: thus in Rome the insolvent debtor becomes a slave, sold by the creditor trans Tiberim (that is, outside Roman territory); he who evades military service or enrollment in the census lists (and who, by order of the consuls, is likewise sold trans Tiberim); the free woman who has relations with a slave, against the will of the latter's master; in the imperial era, the one condemned ad bestias or ad metalla (servitus poenae).

I. SLAVERY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

The importance and extent of slavery in the ancient world rests on the fact that the entire economy was based on manual labor, which, in countries with a centralized regime, such as the Empires of the East, which regard their subjects as the property of the sovereign, of his great feudal lords and of the temples administering large estates, is performed by the inhabitants of the country; whereas in countries with a free political regime (city-states), in which the citizens are absorbed by the cares of the State, the work is performed by servile labor.

Aristotle himself in the Politics bases the necessity of slavery on the impossibility for the citizen to attend to works that are not reconcilable with his condition as a free man, and justifies the right of war, which is its principal feeder, in that the victor manifests an external superiority that demonstrates his good inner qualities. This point of view had already been expressed by Heraclitus, who affirms that war, by setting forces in contrast, sorts out the powerful from the weak and thereby founds and organizes society.

Plato too in the Republic takes no account of the servile mass, inasmuch as it has neither the time nor the means to acquire the culture of the spirit which alone gives the right to govern the State.

The slaves in the Athens of the 5th and 4th centuries are reckoned at more than 100,000, either in the service of the family in which they were born (σίλωγενεῖς) or of the State (δημόσιοι), which employs them in armed police service (τοξέται) or in other public duties. They could be manumitted, that is, regain their freedom (ἀπελεύθεροι), in various ways: either by consecrating them to a divinity, or by proclaiming them free by means of a herald, or by virtue of a testament.

In Rome in the most ancient times slaves were not numerous; the names Marcipor, Gaipor, that is, slave of Marcus or of Gaius, served to indicate that one was content with a single slave. Then they increased greatly. Augustus fixed their number at 20, but on the estate (familia rustica under the direction of a vilicus, himself also a slave) the number was unlimited and certainly exceeded that of free men

Even in the city (familia urbana) the number of slaves was considerable and provided not only for the needs of the household, but also for cultural tasks, such as the copying of books, concerts, lectures.

In Rome too the slave could be manumitted, thus passing to the condition of freedman; this could come about through particular legal transactions, such as the testament, the in iure cense (manumissio vindicta) and the enrollment of the slave, with the authorization of the master, in the census lists (manumissio censu). Alongside these forms of manumission, called civil, which, in the historical era, make the freed slave a Roman citizen, there are others, lacking solemnity (manumissions inter amicos, per mensam, etc.), whose effectiveness, in the course of time, is guaranteed by the praetor.

With the advent of Christianity a new form of manumission is introduced, with the same effects as the civil forms, the manumissio in ecclesia.

The condition of slaves, at first harsher in Rome than in Greece, gradually softened under the Empire, precisely when, owing to the wretched conditions of agriculture, because of the boundless latifundia and the abundance of free labor no longer employed in wars, slavery came gradually to diminish also for lack of importation of slaves, while free labor under a regime of colonate increased.

Claudius declared free every slave of whom the master wished to rid himself because of old age or illness; Hadrian and Antoninus Pius took from the master the right to kill slaves; Constantine regarded the killing of a slave in the same light as that of a free man.

Nicola Turchi

II. SLAVERY IN THE BIBLE

Among the ancient Hebrews, as among other peoples, prisoners of war fed the slave market in a particular way (I Sam. 30:3; Am. 1:9; Ez. 27:13; I Mach. 3:41). Moreover, all the children of a slave were considered the property of the master (Ex. 21:4). An Israelite could not be sold as a slave to foreigners; indeed, he should never have been reduced to such a condition (Lev. 25:42-46). In practice, however, often, for financial reasons or for insolvency toward a creditor, even Israelites were subjected to slavery (II Reg. 4:1; Neh. 5:5, 8). A thief who could not return the stolen goods became the property of the one he had robbed (Ex. 22:3). The poor sometimes found themselves in such conditions that they had to sell their family and themselves (ibid. 21:7 ff.).

Hebrew legislation in many cases limited the master's right, to whom it prohibited the sale of his slaves. Indeed, he was required to grant freedom to his fellow-countrymen slaves after six years of service, assuring them a minimum essential for living (Lev. 25:39-54; Ex. 21:2; Deut. 15:12-18). The slave was permitted to renounce his freedom; in that case he remained the property of the master (Ex. 21:5, 6). Freedom could also be regained through flight (Deut. 23:16 ff.) or following mistreatment by the master (Ex. 21:26, 27).

The law insists on prescribing humane treatment, especially adducing religious motives. Slavery among the Hebrews was much more bearable than that in use among the pagans. The Essenes and the Therapeutae declared themselves openly opposed to it. But in practice the condition of those wretched people must not have been at all enviable. The very humane law, which obliged the return to freedom of a Hebrew slave after six years of service, was never observed. In the Bible only once is a general manumission of slaves described, but it was immediately followed by the far from generous claim to reclaim the right of property, as soon as the danger of the capture of Jerusalem seemed averted (Jer. 34:8-22).

Angelo Penna

III. CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY

Against slavery, Christianity did not organize revolutions, but acted through an indirect, patient, constant effort, aimed at creating the premises and the favorable environment so that slavery would be almost naturally and logically eliminated from society; it acted by teaching and putting into practice the principles of equality, brotherhood, and love among all men within its own institutions. It exhorted slaves, it is true, to be patient, resigned, obedient, but at the same time it commanded masters to treat them as brothers, as themselves, because before God there is neither slave nor free (Gal. 3:28; Eph. 6:5-9; Col. 3:22-24). Moving is St. Paul's letter to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus, his runaway slave, received, converted and sent back to his master: "receive him no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother" (v. 16).

In the Church slaves enjoyed all the rights, privileges, and faculties of the other free faithful; they took part without any discrimination in the liturgical assemblies, and once freed they could become clerics and even bishops. Their physical and moral personality was protected, since masters were forbidden any act that could in any way offend it; even their intimate feelings were respected, and their unions, by virtue of the sacrament of Matrimony, were not considered a mere contubernium, but a true coniugium, a sacred, indissoluble marriage. Pope Callistus I bore the marks of a runaway slave; many female slaves contributed to the spread of the Gospel, several were deaconesses; notable was the number of male and female slaves who were martyrs of the faith (St. Felicity, St. Blandina, St. Theodulus, Sts. Agricola and Vitalis, Sts. Protus and Hyacinth) and of chastity (St. Potamiaena,

St. Dula). Alongside this work of moral redemption, the Church also sought to restore to those wretched people the longed-for good of liberty. Not only did it concern itself with emancipating those who had become slaves by right of war or for other reasons, alienating and selling even the sacred vessels and furnishings for that purpose, but it induced masters to do so spontaneously. No less intense was the Church's activity in combating the proximate causes of slavery; it condemned excessive luxury and the ambition to possess many slaves, sanctified family affections in order to prevent the exposure of children, and above all ennobled work by removing from it the humiliating mark of degradation and presenting it as a means of elevation and sanctification. The Church furthermore gave a strong impulse to the emancipation of slaves.

The Church's long and patient activity was accelerated and legalized by the Christian emperors. It was forbidden to imprint the mark on the forehead of slaves, and the torture of the cross, already reserved for them, was abolished; according to the decree of the Council of Elvira (305), which imposed excommunication ad tempus on masters who in any way procured the death of slaves, it was established that a master who directly caused the death of a slave should be punished (Codex Theodosianus, ed. Th. Mommsen, Berlin 1905, IX, 12, 1). It was forbidden that in the division of an inheritance the families of slaves should be scattered (ibid., II, 25, 1), the slaves were granted the right to defend in court their free origin (ibid., IV, 8, 5), and it was established that a slave sold as a child, upon becoming an adult, could claim his freedom (ibid., IV, 8, 6). To the various forms of manumission was added that practiced in church in the presence of the bishop; full civil rights were granted to such freedmen, and if the master was an ecclesiastic, a simple declaration without any formality sufficed (ibid., IV, 7, 1). Slaves sold by their parents for economic necessity recovered their freedom without any compensation for the master, for whom the service already rendered had to suffice as adequate recompense (ibid., III, 3, 1); masters who prostituted their female slaves were punished (ibid., XV, 8, 1) and these could appeal to the bishop, who had the power to declare them free (ibid., XV, 8, 2); finally the right of asylum already sanctioned for churches was extended also to the buildings and lands attached to them (ibid., IX, 45, 4). Special privileges were granted to the Christian slaves of pagan or Jewish masters; the latter were forbidden to buy Christian slaves under penalty of death (ibid., XVI, 9, 4-5), and if a master had his slave circumcised, the slave became free and the master was punished with death (ibid., XVI, 9, 2). The same provisions applied to heretical masters who forced their Catholic slaves to act against the faith (ibid., XVI, 5, 40; XVI, 6, 4; XVI, 9, 4).

With Justinian the liberal movement of legislation reached its peak and slavery continually lost substance. In the 4th-6th centuries it was very common to see masters freeing their slaves, either in the act of embracing a more perfectly Christian life, or at the moment of receiving Baptism, or more often at the point of death, pro remedio animae, as it was said.

Naturally in this work of redeeming slaves there was a difference between the city and the countryside; social demands and economic necessities did not permit a total and complete abolition of slavery: servile labor was still considered too indispensable for it to be eliminated outright. Despite this, even for rural slaves, albeit slowly, progress was achieved; the law that forbade selling slaves independently of the land on which they worked, creating the stabilitas loci, was the origin of the gradual passage from true and proper slavery to the colonate, to the serfs; it was not yet complete abolition, but it undoubtedly constituted a great step forward, especially considering the initial state.

Agostino Amore

IV. SLAVERY IN INTERMEDIATE LAW

As regards the Middle Ages, it has been believed that a failure to condemn slavery corresponded to a not unfavorable evaluation of it, whereas the ecclesiastical sources of East and West offer various judgments and solutions, with a constant and lively concern for the problem. The Church admits slavery, but advises manumission whenever possible, and while it establishes between slave and free man a relationship of "proportional equality" (Imbert), it protects the slave from the cruelties of the master and the master from the anarchic violence of the slave. The doctrine of the Church, elaborated in the first centuries, has as its sources the Hebrew tradition, the New Testament, and within certain limits Stoic philosophy, jurisprudence and pagan literature. Of the equality of all men, both before God and in the essential conditions of the human personality, in the end (salvation of the soul), in the means (participation in Grace), without distinction of races, of goods, of doctrine, of social conditions, the word προσωπολογία, exclusive to the sacred texts, is an expression. The fundamental norm is the acceptance of one's own state.

The explanation of slavery found in its origin does not make it accepted passively: "Poverty and wealth, freedom and servitude were introduced into life together with vice and drew their origin from vice... But look to the original equality, not the subsequent division" (St. Gregory of Nazianzus); the maintenance of slavery, due only to temporal exigencies, will end with the triumph of truth: "The natural order willed that rational man should not lord it over others, but slavery is ordered by that law which commands that the natural order be preserved; therefore slaves... if they cannot be free, let them make their servitude almost free, until iniquity passes away and every principality ceases and God is in all things" (St. Augustine). And indeed it is the very nature of slavery that makes it worthy of condemnation: "Slaves steal out of misery, flee out of fear... they lie out of fear, they are gluttonous for lack of goods; masters flee the Lord and show graver faults. The lesser guilt of certain slaves compared with that of certain masters shows that if both dishonor the whole Christian people, the latter discredit in particular the class to which they belong" (Salvian). In opposition to the Hebrew concept of manual labor as punishment, and to the pagan one that excludes it for citizens as artes sordidae, the Christian concept exalts it as the fulfillment of a sacred duty determined by three causes: the expiation of sin, the remedy for the passions, the testimony of love for God. The interpreters of this are the Apostolic Constitutions, directing to rich and slaves alike the exhortation to work and the condemnation of laziness. This critical process arrives at a terminological point: the title of master in the proper sense is exclusive to God, abusive when applied to man (St. Cyril of Jerusalem). Its contrary proves it: "If you have need of an inferior, you are not truly a lord" (St. Augustine). Thus, while the destruction of slavery was already in the premises of Christianity, the work of the Church gave it a non-perishable value and a defense.

Marriage and the Priesthood stood in opposition to an absolute equality. The Church did not intend to oppose the laws in force, and therefore did not establish canons contrary to the law and customs of the first centuries of the Christian era, but it wished to make indissoluble the union of man and woman, whether free or slave. Thus for its validity the consent of the master was required, from which derived his commitment to respect it. Having remained without effect the premature authorization of Callistus, which permitted the marriage of the slave woman as of the free woman, various solutions were given by the Apostolic Constitutions and by the Sanctiones et Decreta of Nicaea, with the exclusion of marriage between slaves before manumission and the payment of a dowry. So too for the entry of a slave into the clergy, which some councils and St. Leo proposed under the condition of the master's assent, something that was a cause of abuses on the part of those who were merely desirous of escaping their own obligations by that means. But already in 452 Valentinian III, while admitting this practice, protected the threatened interests of the masters, and Zeno in 484 forbade every ecclesiastical office to slaves, establishing that freedom must precede the onores clericorum, except for anchorites as long as they remained such.

The Church adhered to the solution of Valentinian, granting to slaves the possibility of acceding to the sacred Orders, with certain guarantees for the masters. The Apostolic Constitutions provided for the protection of slaves by excluding the offerings of masters who maltreated slaves, which constituted almost a ban from the assembly of the faithful, as did the already mentioned Council of Elvira, while for the protection of masters the sect of the Eustathians, which incited slaves to class hatred and to the refusal of obedience, was struck with anathema.

Manumission, recommended also pro remedio animae, nevertheless always remained a work of charity that does not pass into the state of a juridical obligation. This explains how the Churches could have slaves for the ecclesiastical patrimony, to which they were attached as serfs, although the practice remained firm for wealthy Christians of ransoming slaves or prisoners: something that was done innumerable times even at the price of grave sacrifices and even by means of the sale of the ornaments of worship, on the part of St. Ambrose, of St. Augustine, of St. Hilary of Poitiers. This had as its counterpart an impressive increase in manumitted persons who had as their only possession freedom without knowing how to earn their bread; hence the advice to masters to first teach them a trade.

The barbarian invasions do not change the condition of Roman slaves. The general conditions of medieval society continue the movement already begun in the last Roman age, and the upheaval of the classes raises up again the ancient condition, equating in the cities slaves with the semi-free, extending in the countryside that form of colonate which includes the ancient serfs... These semi-free cultivators will be one of the most powerful elements for the origin of communal liberties (Roberti).

But already among the barbarian populations settled in Italy the slave, although held equal to a thing or an animal by the Salic Law as by the Edict of Rothari, had his own family, a limited capacity in law, could carry out juridical transactions, bring suit in court for his own cause. And just as the inhuman master was struck by the maximum ecclesiastical penalty, excommunication, so the Edict of Liutprand, influenced by the Church, denied the primitive right to kill the slave.

They were predominantly of Roman and Christian origin, the ways of emerging from slavery. Once captivity in war had almost disappeared, there remained birth, confirmed by Gratian's Decretum (C. 32, q. 4, c. 15) and by Romanic and Lombard sources; crime, extended further than in the Roman laws; the insolvency of certain obligations. Freedom was obtained by law when a conspiracy or a grave crime of the master was discovered: thus the Edict of Theodoric (c. 17-19) and perhaps the Lex Wistigothorum (c. VII, 6, 1) take up again the Roman provisions; or against the overbearing power of the master, as appears in the Edicts of Liutprand (c. 140) and of Ratchis (c. 7); for the protection of religion by excluding Christian slaves from [ownership by] Jews. The thirty-year prescription of the Romans was taken up again by the Lombards, not admitted by the Franks (Cap. It. Kar. M., c. 8 [a. 801]). Freedom was also obtained by manumission, in forms of Roman or Germanic law, solemn or private, by liberality or by onerous agreement. In the solemn forms, the intermediaries served as witnesses for any future disputes, and released the slave from every bond. The manumissio per gairethinx or in quarta mano delivered the slave from the master to three free men, and by the last of them he was led to a crossroads, furnished with arms, and left there.

The manumissio ante regem, among the Lombards and the Franks, derived perhaps from a Roman precedent, as Tamassia explained, entrusted the slave to the king, making him pay a symbolic coin. The manumissio in ecclesia circa altare was combined with a circuit of the slave, who carried a candle around the altar, with the clergy and the people present.

But people were also made free by a declaration of will inter amicos or per testamentum. Onerous redemption cost the slave his peculium, or else private individuals or religious associations [paid it], with certain offerings made pia causa.

But, as Schupfer noted, a point had been reached at which it was no longer possible to deny the slave a legal personality: «He will withdraw little by little his body and his land from the hands of the master, to answer only with a part of the labor and of the revenue, and slavery itself will end by changing into serfdom». Thus, once ancient slavery had disappeared, other forms of dependence arose.

With the feudal division of slaves into various categories, from the serfs of the glebe one rises through the aldi or freedmen and the coloni of Roman origin up to the semi-free coloni. More favored were the slaves of the churches, who had often given themselves voluntarily, the tenant slaves of the great domains; in the dwellings, alongside the humblest domestic slaves, the famuli, the vassi, the ministeriales, the pueri of the lord, of the king, of the church, who could become milites and nobles. This fragmentation determined the tendency to place on an equal footing slaves, semi-free men and free men who had fallen into decline (Roberti). Once the latter were confused with the others, it was easier for slaves to contest the master's right and to consider themselves almost all free, until, once the abolition of slavery had been affirmed by the statutes, the various groups of slaves, by then indistinguishable, would form the minores of the cities and of the countryside.

Characteristic of the 12th century and especially of the 13th century are the provisions in favor of serfs which, by diminishing the power of the great lay and ecclesiastical lords, give new authority to the Commune and at the same time bring about a profound social evolution that precedes in time and surpasses those much more celebrated ones of England and France. Between 1205 and 1289 Pistoia, Assisi, Piacenza, Padua, Vercelli, Bologna, and Florence issued solemn declarations of liberty, established the free boroughs, and reclaimed the rights of the human person.

In the cities the middle and lesser artisans would still endure certain political limitations, and the corporate organization, which would reach its greatest development in this period, would leave out the lowest: hence the discontent and the attempts of these to assert a right of their own within the Commune, which would also erupt in bloody episodes such as the revolt of the Ciompi, while in the Commune of the people the anti-magnate statutes would exclude, as at Viterbo and elsewhere, the nobility from residing in the city, or their houses would be demolished by the fury of the populace.

Without entirely erasing domestic servitude and serfdom, the Communes dealt them an almost everywhere most ferocious blow. Serfdom languished in the countryside with the dependence of the peasants on their masters. A special domestic slavery was in use during the age of the signorie, and the slave trade had moments of prosperity. Despite the proud deplorations of the popes Innocent IV, John XXII, and Martin V, from the Middle East, from the centers of the Black Sea and the African coasts, as also from naval victories over corsairs, the Venetians and Genoese obtained slaves for the European markets, of which traces have remained in wills and in dowry contracts. It was a boast of noble families to have black children as pages and Circassian or Saracen slave women assigned to the care of wives and daughters, but their condition was almost always good.

Against these remnants of ancient slavery were the Italian legislations of the 17th and 18th centuries: in Tuscany, Peter Leopold; in Piedmont after Emmanuel Philibert in 1561, the reforms of Charles Emmanuel III and Victor Amadeus II; elsewhere, the Code of Napoleon. In France serfdom was abolished on the crown lands and limited on seigneurial lands in 1779. After the seigneurial rights had been reaffirmed by the Estates General in June 1789, in August the feudal bonds of every kind were abolished without indemnity. Just as in other times the cities had preceded the countryside on the path of liberation, so the European nations preceded the colonies where the commerce and labor of slaves still went on unchecked. And in 1790, through the work of the Convention, came the extension to blacks of the rights belonging to French citizens. After some reversals during the Consulate, slavery was then definitively abolished.

Fulvio Crosara

V. SLAVERY IN MODERN TIMES. THE SLAVE TRADE

Under this name the shameful commerce in human flesh has passed into history, a commerce that began with the great discoveries, through the transfer of groups of population in a state of slavery from region to region, for the exploitation of colonial lands. In almost all cases these slaves were Negroes from Africa. To tell the truth, slavery had not entirely disappeared from Europe, since, apart from the Muslims, the traffic was still carried on by Christian countries; frequent are the mentions of slaves, mostly of Eastern origin, in Italian cities (cf. Pastor, cited in the bibliography).

Things took a different turn when Portugal came into contact with the black Continent, with the gradual discovery of the western coasts of Africa. The great ease of procuring slaves there meant that many were brought to Portugal and Spain, where there was a shortage of labor and the example of the Moors favored the institution of slavery. This moreover seemed morally legitimized by the savage state of many of those peoples, among whom slaves and human victims were numerous. From that time the importation of Negroes into Europe developed.

The discovery of the New World in 1492 gave slavery a new direction. The destruction, wrought by the adventurers, of the indigenous populations, refractory to labor and of scant productivity, gave rise to the idea of replacing the natives with Negro slaves imported from Europe, stronger and more robust, whose productivity gave greater hope of wealth. The idea, and its implementation, was for the moment only a lesser evil, in the sense that men of good will, deeply moved to pity by the fate of the Indians, suggested this expedient; it even appears that among its proponents was Bartolomé Las Casas (v.) himself, who in any case soon repented of it and in 1518 proposed a colonization project in which no mention is made of the importation of Negroes. Card. Ximenes (v.), regent of Castile, indignantly rejected the proposal to import Negroes into America; but with Charles V the dike was legally breached, and in 1517, after much hesitation, a first shipment of four thousand Negroes was authorized. From that time a veritable market was established between the Spanish government and private individuals or private companies; later the commerce in human flesh was conducted between State and State. All nations resorted to the slave trade, whether in the interest of their own colonies or that of others. Africa was invaded by the raids carried out by whites, who established veritable trading agencies there for this traffic, so that by the end of the 18th century there were thousands upon thousands of Negroes seized, sold and carried to America. Among all nations it was England that made itself most sadly notorious in this ignoble commerce. For while France was inclined to limit it and Spain (especially after the condemnation by Urban VIII in 1639) was for a long time without agencies in Africa, the English kings, from Elizabeth to the beginning of the 19th century, encouraged the slave trade, even threatening war against other nations, merely to preserve the monopoly they had managed to obtain.

At the beginning of the 19th century the pen of many writers stirred European public opinion, until at the Congress of Vienna (1815) a declaration against the slave trade was reached, which was signed by all the principal powers. However, the slave trade as contraband still lasted a long time and its extent cannot be calculated. The institution of slavery then continued to maintain itself through the children of slaves, and the concern to preserve them led to a veritable breeding, with all that is bestial that this word entails. Little by little, however, it weakened and diminished through the effect of missionary activity and of the ideological-social movement, which spread with the French Revolution and the wars that followed. Other international conventions for the repression of the slave trade came with the Treaty of London of 1841, with the Treaty between France and England of 1845; with the Treaty between the United States and England of 1862 (v. STATI UNITI).

Particular mention deserves the war in the United States, caused by the anti-slavery ideal of the 17 northern States (abolitionists) and the will to maintain slavery in the 15 southern States (anti-abolitionists). The antagonism began in 1780, but reached its crucial point in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln (v.) was elected president. The northern States, after bitter battles lasting from 1862 to 1865, managed to achieve complete victory, and it was the abolition of slavery. The example taught; it was gradually followed by all the States of the two Americas, Brazil being the last, in 1888, when the emperor Pedro II, with the cooperation of his consort and his daughter, to celebrate the sacerdotal jubilee of Leo XIII decreed the abolition of slavery.

A posthumous consequence of the slave trade even after the abolition of slavery is still today the state of inferiority, in force in some States, of Negroes and half-breeds with respect to whites before the law.

VI. THE WORK OF THE CHURCH

One must honestly acknowledge and give praise to the missionaries and the pontiffs who acted decisively against the slave trade and against slavery.

At first, when it was a matter of importing Blacks into Europe, these observations must be made: in many places the African population was already almost entirely composed of slaves; reduced to such a state either as punishment for some crime (adultery, theft, murder) for which the local laws decreed death, and this was commuted to slavery. Secondly, it was difficult for the missionaries to know exactly the provenance of the human merchandise, since the traffickers were very cautious in carrying out their raids, in places where they were not controlled. Given this, and given the ideas of the time, the missionaries found themselves driven to the conclusion that the sale and purchase of Blacks by Europeans was not entirely a true injustice for those who merely changed masters.

Regarding the slavery of the Indians of America, the documentation provided by Bartolomé Las Casas, the antagonist of slaveholding, is sufficient. The missionaries (Dominicans and Franciscans, and then all the others), who went to the New World in the wake of the explorers, soon found themselves having to struggle against the exploiters, and not a few had to suffer greatly and even death at the hands of the Europeans. When, subsequently, Blacks were imported especially from Africa, only the missionaries took pity on them and alleviated their sufferings, tried to move the colonizers to sentiments of human and Christian piety, sought by every means their redemption, denouncing with vivid writings the inhumanities committed. Among all, St. Peter Claver (v.) stood out. If first the cruelty, and then slavery, gradually disappeared, it is owed above all to the work of the missionaries. The certainty of the disappearance of slavery is to be attributed to the colonizers and the European men of government who had their interests in making it last.

As for the activity of the pontiffs, it is recalled that Pius II, on 7 Oct. 1462, at the beginning of the slave trade in Europe, denounced slavery as a magnum scelus and ordered the bishops to strike with ecclesiastical censures those who practiced it (O. Rainaldi, Annales, X [a. 1482], Lucca 1752, pp. 341-42). Paul III (Bullarium Taurinense, XIV, Turin 1868, pp. 712-13), on 29 May 1537, gave the archbishop of Toledo the mandate to protect the Indians of America and imposed excommunication, reserved to the pope, on those who would reduce them to slavery or despoil them of their goods. In the same year, with a bull to all Christendom, he pronounced the absolute condemnation of slavery, going so far as to invalidate, with retroactive effect, every contract of that kind, so that all slaves had the right to free themselves from their state. Urban VIII, on 22 Apr. 1639 (ibid., pp. 712-714), renewed these provisions with even stronger words. Slavery was diminishing, but too slowly, and Benedict XIV in 1741 wrote to the bishop of Brazil and to the king of Portugal, lamenting that the provisions of his predecessors had not been fully implemented (Bullarium Benedicti XIV, I, const. 38, Rome 1845, p. 123). Pius VII made his authority felt at the Congress of Vienna, so that the slave trade might be prohibited, and effectively obtained its proscription. Gregory XVI, on 3 Dec. 1837, issued an encyclical exhorting the bishops to employ every means so that slavery, by then illegal, might be eradicated and abolished, and the sufferings of slaves alleviated (Acta Gregorii XVI, II, Rome 1901, pp. 387 ff.). Pius IX raised his voice in the same sense when in 1851 he beatified St. Peter Claver (v.). Leo XIII, having seen the last remnants of slavery abolished in some parts of Brazil, with his letter to the bishops of that nation, rejoiced greatly (5 May 1888), at the same time summarizing the documentation of what the Church had always done in favor of slaves (Acta Leonis XIII, VIII, Rome 1889, pp. 169-92). Lastly, Pius X, with the letter Lacrimabili statu Indorum of 7 June 1912, reserved to the Ordinary the absolution of anyone who reduced a human being to a state of slavery (AAS, 4 [1912], pp. 521-25). Moralists dispute whether this provision is still in force.

In the Catholic episcopate and laity, the work carried out by Cardinal Lavigerie (v.) is very well known, as are the merits of the Claverian Sodality, founded on 29 Apr. 1894 by M. T. Ledóchowska. In Italy Giuseppe Tovini (v.) founded an anti-slavery Society.

Despite the Berlin Convention of 1885, the Brussels Convention of 1890, the St-Germain Convention of 1919, and the Geneva Convention of 1926, still recently a commission of experts of the League of Nations had to acknowledge the existence of slavery in certain nations: Tibet, Arabia, Abyssinia. For the latter country, the decree Paedoglio of 12 Apr. 1936, during the Italian occupation, was not entirely ineffective for the abolition of slavery. The subject of slavery and the slave trade has been revisited at the international level with the declaration of human rights (v.) at the UN (1948).

Elio Degano

VII. SLAVERY AND CHRISTIAN MORALITY

Slavery, understood and practiced as the full subjection of one man to another, or as the disregard of juridical personality (so that a man is regarded as a thing), or as the deprivation of the essential disposition of oneself, which is bound up with the autonomy of the human person, is contrary to natural law.

On the other hand, the opposition to the law of nature of a state of servitude in which the fundamental rights of the human person are recognized, but which, on the other hand, entails a permanent bond between servant and master, has not been demonstrated, even if a fuller disposal of one's own labor, as established by the law of all civilized nations, clearly proves more consonant with the autonomy and dignity of the human person.

It is a question, however, of a bond that does not touch the person as such, but only his labor: in order therefore to be able to demonstrate its opposition to the law of nature, one would have to be able to demonstrate the unnatural character of perpetual obligation.

Accordingly, for an ethical evaluation of slavery in the various forms in which it has been and still is, however illegally, practiced among certain peoples, it is necessary to take account of all the notes and circumstances that accompany it: one must distinguish between the law and the fact; and within the law itself it is necessary to consider all the norms and to be able to understand the very contradictions that are not infrequently found between one and another.

Thus, while the slave is not considered as a juridical person, on the other hand in some forms of slavery he is granted the right not only to marry, but also the fundamental right of redemption. If in addition one considers certain advantages that accrue to the slave from his state, such as, for example, the right to be supported by his master for his whole life and the connected economic security, it will not be difficult to understand how, even in a Christian climate, the institution of slavery was able to endure for so many centuries.

Pietro Palazzini