The protection given by the Church to freed slaves was so manifest and known to all, that the custom was introduced of especially recommending them to her. This recommendation was sometimes made by will, as the Council of Orange, which I have just quoted, gives us to understand; for it orders that the emancipated who had been recommended to the Church by will, shall be protected from all kinds of servitude, by ecclesiastical censures.
But this recommendation was not always made in a testamentary form. We read in the sixth canon of the sixth Council of Toledo, held in 589, that when any enfranchised persons had been recommended to the Church, neither they nor their children could be deprived of the protection of the Church: here they speak in general, without limitation to cases in which there had been a will. The same regulation may be seen in another Council of Toledo, held in 633, which simply says, that the Church will receive under her protection only the enfranchised of individuals who shall have taken care to recommend them to her.
In the absence of all particular recommendation, and even when the manumission had not been made in the Church, she did not cease to interest herself in defending the freed, when their liberty was endangered. He who has any regard for the dignity of man, and any feeling of humanity in his heart, will certainly not find it amiss that the Church interfered in affairs of this kind; indeed, she acted as every generous man should do, in the exercise of the right of protecting the weak. We shall not be displeased, therefore, to find in the twenty-ninth canon of the Council of Agde in Languedoc, held in 506, a regulation commanding the Church, in case of necessity, to undertake the defence of those to whom their masters had given liberty in a lawful way.
The zeal of the Church in all times and places for the redemption of captives has no less contributed to the great work of the abolition of slavery. 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,