being wholly harmful. Slaves were not a very large proportion of the ancient labour force, since the cost
of a slave to his owner exceeded that of employing free wage-labourers. Slaves in a good household
with a reasonable master enjoyed a security and standard of living that seldom came the way of free
wage-labourers. But not all slaves had good masters, and in special cases bishops used the church chest
to pay the costs of emancipation. Refusal on moral grounds to own slaves became a rule for monasteries.
The ancient Church deeply disapproved of capital punishment and judicial torture. A Roman church-
order of about 200 forbids a Christian magistrate to order an execution on pain of excommunication. No
Christian layman could tolerably bring a charge against anyone if the penalty might be execution or a
beating with lead-weighted leather thongs. There was a tendency, first apparent in the fifth century, to
modify rigorism against capital punishment in all circumstances; Pope Innocent I (405) ruled against
excommunicating magistrates who imposed it, which was not to say that such penalties were welcome.
Torture forced so many innocent people to confess to crimes they had not committed that the Christian
hatred of it commanded wide assent. Nevertheless, by what were deemed necessities of state it
continued. In the Merovingian period conciliar canons had to be content with forbidding clergy to be
present in the torture chamber. The Bulgar king was probably little moved when in 866 Pope Nicolas I
told him that torture is contrary to both divine and human law. The military impact of Islam first made
some Christians argue the controversial thesis that one could resort to violence to withstand the infidel.
Even after that had been admitted and implemented in the Crusades, in the west it was not effectively
until the age of the papal monarchy that torture and execution began to be deployed against heretics, and
there were those at the time who noted the break with immemorial tradition. Although Augustine
justified coercion against the Donatist schismatics of north Africa, seeing how successful the policy was,
nevertheless he laid down strict limits to the penalties that might be imposed, and refused all resort to
force. The pain of his legacy arose from his need to reason out a theoretical justification of the coercion,
and this survived the particular situation and his mitigating hand.
People bequeathed estates to churches and monasteries, and landownership brought responsibilities for
the work-force and for correct financial trusteeship which were a source of anxiety to bishops and
abbots, but nevertheless gave them powers of patronage. As the barbarian kingdoms took control in the
West, aristocratic and cultured Romans, such as Sidonius Apollinaris in Gaul, found a bishopric a
vantage-point for preserving independence and for protecting the secular interests of church members
before an unsympathetic government. A bishop was not expected to confine himself to preaching good
expository sermons. He had to be a community leader. In Syria Theodoret of Cyrrhus built porticos,
baths, two bridges, and an aqueduct for his little town. Christianity never shrugged off its origins as an
urban religion moving from the town out into the surrounding countryside which was slow to be
converted and tenacious of old peasant superstitions. The Church was joined by many women and
manual workers, but never had a proletarian ethos. From the start (as I Corinthians shows) it contained a
proportion of well educated people, capable of private Bible study at home. In a society where rhetoric
was a part of the school curriculum eloquent sermons were appreciated, but it was often observed that
sincerity and personal passion in the preacher mattered more than a fine turn of phrase. The bishops,
based in the city, became identified with the city community in a way which, after the barbarian
invasions, became socially important. Even by the third century bishops signed their names appending
an adjectival form of the name of their town.