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Christian Slavery - Bad News About Christianity

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Children inherit their parents' status. They are free who issue from a free<br />

marriage. The children of a free man and a slave girl are of servile condition.<br />

Those born always follow the worse part. (Decretum gratiani, Case 32, q IV, C15)<br />

A slave manumitted on condition that he become a monk or serve a monastery<br />

should be compelled to obey the desire of the one manumitting, or should be<br />

returned to servility if he prefers that. (Decretals of Gregory IX, Book Four,<br />

Conditions Set in Betrothals or Other Contracts, C. 2.)<br />

If a free man has unknowingly contracted with a slave girl, and did not consent<br />

when he discovered this, the matrimony may be put asunder, and he can contract<br />

with another (Decretals of Gregory IX, Book Four, Title VIII, C. 4). 16<br />

The Church found new reasons to take people into slavery. The Third Synod of Toledo in 589<br />

decreed that women found in the houses of a clergyman in suspicious circumstances should be<br />

sold into slavery by the clergyman's bishop 17 . Another synod of 655 declared that priests'<br />

children should be treated as slaves — an idea ratified in 1022 at Pavia and around 1140 by the<br />

Decretum gratiani. In attempting to enforce clerical celibacy popes revived the idea of taking the<br />

wives and concubines of churchmen into slavery 18 . Leo IX (Pope 1049-1054) had priests' wives<br />

taken into slavery for service at the Lateran Palace 19 . At the Synod of Melfi, in 1089, Pope Urban<br />

II tried the idea against subdeacons' wives 20 . In 1095 wives of priests were sold into slavery —<br />

presumably the Lateran had a full complement of female slaves by then. Saints, popes and<br />

Church officials approved the practice of slavery for centuries. The Church's greatest scholastic<br />

authorities, such as Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus and Duns Scotus concurred. As Aquinas<br />

explained, a slave was merely an "inspired tool of his master" and a "non-member of society",<br />

just like any other beast of burden. Slaves were listed in inventories under "Church property". He<br />

defended slavery as having been instituted by God as punishment for sin. He justified it as being<br />

part of the 'right of nations' and of natural law. He confirmed the view that children of a slave<br />

mother become slaves even though they have not committed personal sin, a view cited and<br />

confirmed by later Popes.<br />

Popes sentenced millions to slavery, although the<br />

sentences could not always be carried out. The Third<br />

Lateran Council 1179 imposed slavery on those<br />

helping the Saracens. The same council also imposed<br />

slavery on anyone who opposed the papacy. The<br />

citizens of Venice were condemned to slavery in 1309,<br />

1482, and again in 1506. The same thing happened to<br />

the whole of England in 1508. Papal galleys went on<br />

slave-hunting expeditions along the coast of Africa.<br />

In 1226 the legitimacy of slavery was confirmed in the<br />

Corpus Iuris Canonici, promulgated by Pope Gregory<br />

IX. This would remain part of Church the law until<br />

1913. Canon lawyers worked out four "just titles" for<br />

holding slaves:<br />

slaves<br />

captured<br />

in war,<br />

persons<br />

condemned<br />

to slavery for a crime;<br />

persons selling themselves into slavery, including a father selling his child;<br />

children of a mother who is a slave.<br />

<strong>Slavery</strong> was a major trade in Christendom. Until the early tenth century the main Venetian export<br />

was slaves from central Europe. The English word Slav is derived from the Middle English word<br />

sclave, borrowed from Medieval Latin sclavus meaning slave - a reminder of the European<br />

<strong>Christian</strong> slave trade of the day in central Europe. This was not the only <strong>Christian</strong> slave trade in<br />

Christendom. During the Crusades a large Mediterranean slave trade was concentrated in<br />

<strong>Christian</strong> hands — the hands of the military monks and men like Pelius, a papal legate. Later the<br />

Genoese developed another major Mediterranean slave trade 21 .

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