Untitled - African American History

CX HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SLAVERY.
While this was the teaching of the Fathers, and such
was the effect of the principles of Christianity, yet it does
not appear that the Church was at all forward in manu-
mitting her slaves. The villains upon the Church lands
were among the last emancipated. 1
Villanage has never been entirely extinct in Germany.
The distinction between the villain and the ordinary
the situa-
peasant is more in name than in fact. Indeed,
tion of the peasantry of the present day, differs but
little from their condition when they were coloni and
rustici. Mr. Hallam, speaking of the latter, says :
" Even where they had no legal title to property, it was
accounted inhuman to divest them of their little possession
(the peculium of the Eoman law) ; nor was
their poverty perhaps less tolerable upon the whole, than
that of the modern peasantry in most countries of Eu-
rope." 3
In Gaul, the feudal system had a more extensive and
general sway, and continued for a longer time, than in
Germany. Under that system, the mass of the people
were bondmen not absolute slaves, perhaps, but far
from exercising the privileges of freemen. Prior to
that system the bondmen in Gaul were numerous.
After the invasion of the Goths, the Burgundians and
Franks, who possessed themselves of different portions
of Gaul, the feudal system with its servitudes became
permanently fixed. The frequent conquests of Gaul,
and the consequent number of captives, swelled greatly
the list of bondmen, and the subsequent intestine wars
among the conquering hordes themselves, rendered ser-
vitudes more general in France than in any other of the
European countries. 3 As these conquering nations were
manded all slaves, by the mouth of St. Paul, to remain in their estate,
and did not force their masters to enfranchise them." Cinquieme Aver-
tiss. aux Protestants,
50.
1 Hallam's Mid. Ages, Pt. II, ch. ii.
* Ibid.
3
Montesq. Esp. des Lois, Lib. XXX, ch. ii ; Histoire des Paysans, by
Eugene Bonnemere.