We know that a considerable portion of slaves owed their servitude to the reverses of war. The mild character which we see in modern wars would have appeared fabulous to the ancients. Woe to the vanquished! might then be said with perfect truth; there was nothing but slavery or death. The evil was rendered still greater by a fatal prejudice, which was felt with respect to the redemption of captives – a prejudice which was, nevertheless, founded on a trait of remarkable heroism. No doubt the heroic firmness of Regulus is worthy of all admiration. The hair stands upon our head when we read the powerful description of Horace; the book falls from our hands at this terrible passage:
"Fertur pudicæ conjugis osculum
Parvosque natos, ut capitis minor,
Ab se removisse, et virilem
Torvus humi posuisse vultum." – Lib. iii. od. 5.
Nevertheless, if we lay aside the deep impression which such heroism produces on us, and the enthusiasm at all that shows a great soul, we must confess that this virtue bordered on ferocity; and that, in the terrible discourse of Regulus, that is a cruel policy, against which the sentiments of humanity would strongly recoil, if the mind were not, as it were, prostrated at the sight of the sublime disinterestedness of the speaker. Christianity could not consent to such doctrines; it could not allow the maxim to be maintained that, in order to render men brave in battle, it was necessary to deprive them of hope. The wonderful traits of valor, the magnificent scenes of force and constancy, which shine in every page of the history of modern nations, eloquently show that the Christian religion was not deceived; gentleness of manners may be united with heroism. The ancients were always in excess, either in cowardice or ferocity; between these two extremes there is a middle way, and that has been taught to mankind by the Christian religion. Christianity, in accordance with its principles of fraternity and love, regarded the redemption of captives as one of the worthiest objects of its charitable zeal. Whether we consider the noble traits of particular actions, which have been preserved to us by history, or observe the spirit which guided the conduct of the Church, we shall find therein one of the most distinguished claims of the Christian religion to the gratitude of mankind.
A celebrated writer of our times, M. de Chateaubriand, has described to us a Christian priest who, in the forests of France, voluntarily made himself a slave, who devoted himself to slavery for the ransom of a Christian soldier, and thus restored a husband to his desolate wife, and a father to three unfortunate orphan children. The sublime spectacle which Zachary offers us, when enduring slavery with calm serenity for the love of Jesus Christ, and for the unhappy being for whom he has sacrificed his liberty, is not a mere fiction of the poet. More than once, in the first ages of the Church, such examples were seen; and he who has wept over the sublime disinterestedness and unspeakable charity of Zachary, may be sure that his tears are only a tribute to the truth. "We have known," says St. Clement the Pope, "many of ours who have devoted themselves to captivity, in order to ransom their brethren." (First Letter to the Corinth. c. 55.) The redemption of captives was so carefully provided for by the Church that it was regulated by the ancient canons, and to fulfil it, she sold, if necessary, her ornaments, and even the sacred vessels. When unhappy captives were in question, her charity and zeal knew no bounds, and she went so far as to ordain that, however bad might be the state of her affairs, their ransom should be provided for in the first instance. (Caus. 12, 5, 2.) In the midst of revolutions produced by the irruption of barbarians, we see that the Church, always constant in her designs, forgot not the noble enterprise in which she was engaged. The beneficent regulations of the ancient canons fell not into forgetfulness or desuetude, and the generous words of the holy Bishop of Milan, in favor of slaves, found an echo which ceased not to be heard amid the chaos of those unhappy times. We see by the fifth canon of the Council of Mâcon, held in 585, that priests undertook the ransom of captives by devoting to it the Church property. The Council of Rheims, held in 625, inflicts the punishment of suspension from his functions on the bishop who shall have destroyed the sacred vessels; but with generous foresight, it adds, "for any other motive than the redemption of captives;" and long afterwards, in the twelfth canon of the Council of Verneuil, held in 844, we find that the property of the Church was used for that merciful purpose. When the captive was restored to liberty, the Church did not deprive him of her protection; she was careful to continue it, by giving him letters of recommendation, for the double purpose of protecting him from new trouble during his journey, and of furnishing him with the means of repairing his losses during his captivity. We find a proof of this new kind of protection in the second canon of the Council of Lyons, held in 583, which ordains that bishops shall state in the letters of recommendation which they give to captives, the date and price of their ransom. The zeal for this work was displayed in the Church with so much ardor, that it went so far as to commit acts of imprudence which the ecclesiastical authority was compelled to check. These excesses, and this mistaken zeal, prove how great was the spirit of charity. We know by a Council, called that of St. Patrick, held in Ireland in the year 451 or 456, that some of the clergy ventured to procure the freedom of captives by inducing them to run away. The Council, by its thirty-second canon, very prudently checks this excess, by ordaining that the ecclesiastic who desires to ransom captives must do so with his own money; for to steal them, by inducing them to run away, was to expose the clergy to be considered as robbers, which was a dishonor to the Church. A remarkable document, which, while showing us the spirit of order and equity which guides the Church, at the same time enables us to judge how deeply was engraved on men's minds the maxim, that it is holy, meritorious, and generous to give liberty to captives; for we see that some persons had persuaded themselves that the excellence of the work justified seizing them forcibly. The disinterestedness of the Church on this point is not less laudable. When she had employed her funds in the ransom of a captive, she did not desire from him any recompense, even when he had it in his power to discharge the debt. We have a certain proof of this in the letters of St. Gregory, where we see that that Pope reassures some persons who had been freed with the money of the Church, and who feared that after a time they would be called upon to pay the sum expended for their advantage. The Pope orders that no one, at any time, shall venture to disturb either them or their heirs, seeing that the sacred canons allow the employment of the goods of the Church for the ransom of captives. (L. 7, ep. 14.)
The zeal of the Church for so holy a work must have contributed in an extraordinary way to diminish the number of slaves; the influence of it was so much the more salutary, as it was developed precisely at the time when it was most needed, that is, in those ages when the dissolution of the Roman empire, the irruption of the barbarians, the fluctuations of so many peoples, and the ferocity of the invading nations, rendered wars so frequent, revolutions so constant, and the empire of force so habitual and prevailing. Without the beneficent and liberating intervention of Christianity, the immense number of slaves bequeathed by the old society to the new, far from diminishing, would have been augmented more and more; for wherever the law of brute force prevails, if it be not checked and softened by a powerful element, the human race becomes rapidly debased, the necessary result of which is the increase of slavery. This lamentable state of agitation and violence was in itself very likely to render the efforts which the Church made to abolish slavery useless; and it was not without infinite trouble that she prevented what she succeeded in preserving on one side, from being destroyed on the other. The absence of a central power, the complication of social relations, almost always badly determined, often affected by violence, and always deprived of the guarantee of stability and consistency, was the reason why there was no security either for things or persons, and that while properties were unceasingly invaded, persons were deprived of their liberty. So that it was at that time necessary to fight against the violence of individuals, as had been formerly done against manners and legislation. We see that the third canon of the Council of Lyons, held about 566, excommunicates those who unjustly retain free persons in slavery; in the seventeenth canon of the Council of Rheims, held in 625, it is forbidden, under the same penalty, to pursue free persons in order to reduce them to slavery: in the twenty-seventh canon of the Council of London, held in 1102, the barbarous custom of dealing in men, like animals, is proscribed: and in the seventh canon of the Council of Coblentz, held in 922, he who takes away a Christian to sell him is declared guilty of homicide; a remarkable declaration, when we see liberty valued at as high a price as life itself. Another means of which the Church availed herself to abolish
