should rather buy than sell them."^343 Individual emancipation was constantly encouraged as a
meritorious work of charity well pleasing to God, and was made a solemn act. The master led the
slave with a torch around the altar, and with his hands on the altar pronounced the act of liberation
in such words as these: "For fear of Almighty God, and for the care of my soul I liberate thee;" or:
"In the name and for the love of God I do free this slave from the bonds of slavery."
Occasionally a feeble voice was raised against the institution itself, especially from monks
who were opposed to all worldly possession, and felt the great inconsistency of convents holding
slave-property. Theodore of the Studium forbade his convent to do this, but on the ground that
secular possessions and marriage were proper only for laymen.^344 A Synod of Chalons, held between
644 and 650, at which thirty-eight bishops and six episcopal representatives were present, prohibited
the selling of Christian slaves outside of the kingdom of Clovis, from fear that they might fall into
the power of pagans or Jews, and he introduces this decree with the significant words: "The highest
piety and religion demand that Christians should be redeemed entirely from the bond of servitude."^345
By limiting the power of sale, slave-property was raised above ordinary property, and this was a
step towards abolishing this property itself by legitimate means.
Under the combined influences of Christianity, civilization, and oeconomic and political
considerations, the slave trade was forbidden, and slavery gradually changed into serfdom, and
finally abolished all over Europe and North America. Where the spirit of Christ is there is liberty.
Notes.
In Europe serfdom continued till the eighteenth century, in Russia even till 1861, when it
was abolished by the Czar Alexander II. In the United States, the freest country in the world, strange
to say, negro slavery flourished and waxed fat under the powerful protection of the federal
constitution, the fugitive slave-law, the Southern state-laws, and "King Cotton," until it went out
in blood (1861–65) at a cost far exceeding the most liberal compensation which Congress might
and ought to have made for a peaceful emancipation. But passion ruled over reason, self-interest
over justice, and politics over morals and religion. Slavery still lingers in nominally Christian
countries of South America, and is kept up with the accursed slave-trade under Mohammedan rule
in Africa, but is doomed to disappear from the bounds of civilization.
§ 78. Feuds and Private Wars. The Truce of God.
A. Kluckhohn: Geschichte des Gottesfriedens. Leipzig 1857.
Henry C. Lea: Superstition and Force. Essays on the Wager of Law—the Wager of Battle—the
Ordeal—Torture. Phila. 1866 (407 pages).
Among all barbarians, individual injury is at once revenged on the person of the enemy; and
the family or tribe to which the parties belong identify themselves with the quarrel till the thirst for
(^343) Hefele III. 103; comp. IV. 70. Balmes, p. 108.
(^344) Overbeck, l.c., p. 219.
(^345) Conc. Cabilonense, can. 9: "Pietatis est maximae et religionis intuitus, ut captivitatis vinculum omnino a Christianis
redimatur." The date of the Council is uncertain, see Mansi, Conc. X. 1198; Hefele, III. 92.