Slavery

Influence of Christianity.

The rise of Christianity in the Roman world still further improved the condition of the slave. The sentiments it created were not only favourable to the hu mane treatment of the class in the present, but were the germs out of which its entire liberation was destined, at a later period, in part to arise. It is sometimes objected that the Christian Church did not denounce slavery as a social crime and insist on its abolition. We have seen that slavery was a fundamental element of the old Roman constitution. When the work of con quest had been achieved, it could not be expected that a radical alteration should be suddenly wrought either in the social system which was in harmony with it, or even in the general ideas which had grown up under its influence. The latter would, indeed, be gradually affected; and accordingly, we have observed a change in the policy of the law, indicating a change in sentiment with respect to the slave class, which does not appear to have been at all due to Christian teaching. But the institution itself could not be at once seriously disturbed. The results must have been disastrous, most of all to the slave population itself. Before that end could be accomplished, an essentially new social situation must come into existence. But in the meantime much might be done towards further mitigating the evils of slavery, especially by impressing on master and slave their relative duties and controlling their behaviour towards one another by the exercise of an independent moral authority. This was the work open to the Christian priest hood, and it cannot be denied that it was well discharged. Whilst the fathers agree with the Stoics of the 2nd century in represent ing slavery as an indifferent circumstance in the eye of religion and morality, the contempt for the class which the Stoics too often exhibited is in them replaced by a genuine sympathy. They protested against the multiplication of slaves from motives of vanity in the houses of the great, against the gladiatorial combats (ultimately abolished by the noble self-devotion of a monk) and against the consignment of slaves to the theatrical profession, which was often a school of corruption. The Church also encour aged the emancipation of individual slaves and the redemption of captives. And its influence is to be seen in the legislation of the Christian emperors, which softened some of the harshest features that still marked the institution. But a stronger influence of Chris tianity appears in Theodosius, and this influence is at the highest in the legislation of Justinian. Its systematic effort is, in his own words, "pro libertate, quam et fovere et tueri Romanis legibus et praecipue nostro numini peculiare est." Law still refused in gen eral to recognize the marriages of slaves; but Justinian gave them a legal value after emancipation in establishing rights of succes sion. Unions between slaves and free women, or between a free man and the female slave of another, continued to be forbidden, and were long punished in certain circumstances with atrocious severity. As witness, the slave was still subject to the question ; as criminal, he was punished with greater rigour than the free man. If he accused his master of a crime, unless the charge was of treason, he was burnt. But he could maintain a legal claim to his own liberty, not now merely through an adsertor, but in person. A female slave was still held incapable of the offence of adultery ; but Justinian visited with death alike the rape of a slave or freedwoman and that of a free maiden. Already the mas ter who killed his slave had been punished as for homicide, except in the case of his unintended death under correction ; Constantine treated as homicide a number of specially enumerated acts of cruelty. Even under Theodosius the combats of the amphitheatre were permitted, if not encouraged, by the State authorities; these sports were still expected from the candidates for public honours. Combats of men with beasts were longest continued ; they had not ceased even in the early years of the reign of Justinian. A new process of manumission was now established, to be performed in the churches through the intervention of the ministers of reli gion; and it was provided that clerics could at any time by mere expression of will liberate their slaves. Slaves who were admitted to holy orders, or who entered a monastery, became freemen.

under certain restrictions framed to prevent fraud or injustice. Justinian abolished the personal conditions which the legislation of Augustus had required to be satisfied by the master who eman cipated and the slave who was manumitted, and removed the limitation of number. The liberated slave, whatever the process by which he had obtained his freedom, became at once a full citi zen, his former master, however, retaining the right of patronage, the abolition of which would probably have discouraged emanci pation.

Transition to Serfdom.

The slavery of the working classes was not directly changed into the system of personal freedom. There was an intermediate stage which has not always been suffi ciently discriminated from slavery. We mean the regime of serf dom. In studying the origin of this transitional state of things, four principal considerations have to be kept in view. (I) As Gibbon observes, the completion of the Roman system of con quest reduced the supply of slaves. It is true that, when the barbarian invasions began in the 3rd century, many captives were made, who, when not enrolled in the army, were employed in agri culture or domestic service ; but the regular importation was increasingly diminished. This improved the condition of the slave by rendering his existence an object of greater value to his mas ter. It was clearly to the interest of each family to preserve indefinitely its own hereditary slaves. Hence the abolition of the external slave trade tended, in fact, to put an end to internal sales, and the slaves became attached to the households or lands of their masters. (2) The diminished supply of slaves further acted in the direction of the rehabilitation of free labour. A gen eral movement of this kind is noticeable from the and century onwards. Freemen had always been to some extent employed in the public service. In private service superior posts were often filled by freedmen ; the higher arts—as medicine, grammar, paint ing—were partly in the hands of freedmen and even of ingenui; the more successful actors and gladiators were often freedmen. In the factories or workshops kept by wealthy persons slave labour was mainly employed ; but free artisans sometimes offered their services to these establishments or formed associations to compete with them. We have seen that free persons had all along been to some

extent employed in the cultivation of land as hired labourers, and, as we shall presently find, also as tenants on the great estates. How all this operated we shall understand when we examine the remark able organization of the State introduced by Diocletian and his successors. (3) This organization established in the Roman world a personal and hereditary fixity of professions and situations which was not very far removed from the caste system of the East. The purpose of this was doubtless to resist by a strong internal consoli dation the shock of the invasions, to secure public order, to enforce industrious habits, and to guarantee the financial resources of the State. Personal independence was largely sacrificed, but those still more important ends were in a great measure attained. This sys tem, by diminishing the freeman's mastery over himself and his power to determine his occupation, reduced the interval between him and the slave ; and the latter on the one hand, the free domes tic servant and workshop labourer on the other, both passed insens ibly into the common condition of serfdom. (4) The corresponding change, in the case of the rural slaves, took place through their being merged in the order of coloni. The Roman colonus was originally a free person who took land on lease contracting to pay to the proprietor either a fixed sum annually or (when a colonus partiarius) a certain proportion of the produce of the farm. Under the emperors of the 4th century the name designated a cultivator who, though personally free, was attached to the soil, and transmitted his condition to his descendants; and this became the regular status of the mass of Roman cultivators. The class of coloni appears to have been composed partly of tenants by contract who had incurred large arrears of rent and were detained on the estates as debtors (obaerati), partly of foreign captives or immigrants who were settled in this condition on the land, and partly of small proprietors and other poor men who voluntarily adopted the status as an improvement in their position. They paid a fixed proportion of the produce (pars agraria) to the owner of the estate, and gave a determinate amount of labour (operae) on the portion of the domain which he kept in his own hands (mansus dominicus). The law for a long time took no notice of these customary tenures, and did not systematically constitute them until the 4th century. It was, indeed, the requirements of the fiscus and the conscription which impelled the imperial Govern ment to regulate the system. The coloni were inscribed (ad scripti) on the registers of the census as paying taxes to the State, for which the proprietor was responsible, reimbursing himself for the amount. In a constitution of Constantine (A.D. 332) we find the colonus recognized as permanently attached to the land. If he abandoned his holding he was brought back and punished ; and anyone who received him had not only to restore him but to pay a penalty. He could not marry out of the domain ; if he took for wife a colona of another proprietor, she was restored to her original locality, and the offspring of the union were divided between the estates. The children of a colonus were fixed in the same status. They and their descendants were retained, in the words of a law of Theodosius, "quodam aeternitatis jure," and by no process could be relieved from their obligations. By a law of Anastasius, at the end of the 5th century, a colonus who had voluntarily come into an estate was by a tenure of 3o years for ever attached to it. The master (dominus) could inflict on his coloni "moderate chastisement," and could chain them if they attempted to escape, but they had a legal remedy against him for unjust demands or injury to them or theirs. In no case could the rent or the labour dues be increased. The colonus could possess property of his own, but could not alienate it without the con sent of the master. Thus, whilst the members of the class were personally free, their condition had some incidents of a semi servile character. They are actually designated by Theodosius, "servi terrae cui nati sunt." And Salvian treats the proposition "coloni divitum fiunt" as equivalent to "vertuntur in servos." This is, indeed, an exaggeration ; the colonat-us was not an oppressive system ; it afforded real security against unreasonable demands and wanton disturbance, and it was a great advance on the sys tem of the familia rustica. But the point which is important is that there was a certain approximation between the condition of the colonus and the slave which tended towards the fusion of both in a single class.

Besides the coloni there were on a great estate—and those of the 4th century were on a specially large scale—a number of predial slaves, who worked collectively under overseers on the part of the property which the owner himself cultivated. But it was a common practice to settle certain of the slaves (and pos sibly also of the freedmen) on other portions of the estate, giving them small farms on conditions similar to those to which the coloni were subject. These slaves are, in fact, described by Ulpian as quasi coloni. They had their own households and were hence distinguished as casati. In law these slaves were at first absolutely at the disposal of their masters ; they had no property in the strict sense of the word, and could be sold to another proprietor and separated from their families. But the landlord's interest and the general tone of feeling alike modified practice even before the intervention of legislation ; they were habitually continued in their holdings, and came to possess in fact a perpetual and hereditary enjoyment of them. By a law of Valentinian I. (377) the sale of these slaves was interdicted unless the land they occupied was at the same time sold. The legal distinction between the coloni and the slave tenants continued to exist after the invasions; but the practical difference was greatly attenuated. The colonus often occupied a servile mansus, and the slave a mansus originally appro priated to a colonus. Intermarriages of the two classes became frequent. Already at the end of the 7th century it does not appear that the distinction between them had any substantial existence.

The influence of the Northern invasions on the change from slavery to serfdom was, in all probability, of little account. The change would have taken place, though perhaps not so speedily, if they had never occurred. For the developments of the middle ages see SERFDOM and VILLEINAGE.