Christian slavery and the conversion of pagans
On conversion of pagans without compulsion. And Christian approval of slavery. About sex slaves, the conversion of a tourist paradise, and exploitation by the village priest.
Slavery has a bad press, nowadays. I don't think I need to explain the connection with toleration. In this article, we are going to look at the role of the Church of Rome in legitimising slavery and the conversion of pagans.
As this article progresses, we come to the church's attitude towards the enslavement of non-Christians from Latin America, India and Africa and towards the Transatlantic slave trade.
The church does not come off nicely in this article, but the church also had a moderating influence. Slavery, colonisation, and mass conversions were legitimised, but excesses were also combated by the church.
A pope is having a chat at the slave market
Saint Gregorius was bishop of Rome from 590 to 604. He was the first to officially call himself the superior of all other bishops.
One day Gregorius was strolling through the slave market of Rome. He was in a good mood. He chatted with the merchants and the slaves in good spirits. Then his eye fell on interesting merchandise: a pagan group of pale young men with blonde curls. He chatted with them.
"Where are you from, guys?"
"From Anglia, sir, we are Angles"
"Well, to me you are angels of God!", Gregorius joked.He asked what their king's name was.
"Our king's name is Aelle," replied one.
"Allelujah!" cried Gregorius.
Everyone laughed, of course."What is the name of your tribe?"
"Deira," was the reply.
Gregorius, apparently never shy of a pun, exclaimed: "De ira Dei confugientes ad fidem". That means: for the wrath of God, they will flee to faith.
I reproduce this rather lame anecdote from an anonymous nun or monk at Whitby Abbey (Yorkshire, England), who recorded the story in a manuscript from 713, more than a hundred years after Gregorius’ death. Whether it is true is therefore unlikely. But it offers many clues to begin the story of pagans and slavery in Christianity.
For Christians, slavery was not controversial at all.
Gregorius was a pivot in the expansion of Christianity after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. All pagans had to be converted.
The use of Christian slaves gradually became more and more controversial. As a rule, only pagans were doomed to slavery, especially if they did not convert.
First of all, there is a great theological difference between heretics and pagans. Heretics are stray Christians who need to be put on the right track. We've talked about heretics before.
Pagans are savages who have never heard of the holy trinity. Or they do, and still stubbornly cling to their own primitive beliefs.
Then there’s also an intermediate category: the people of the book. They believe in the same god, but do not recognise the divinity of Jesus. Then we are talking about Jews and Muslims in particular, we will discuss them later.
So now the pagans. Let's start with the view of slavery in Christianity.
The Christian view of slavery
How did the Christians view slavery? Neutral, is presumably a correct answer.
In the Gospels there are sometimes encounters of Jesus with slaves. Despite comments that may be found ironic (Matthew 18:21-35; Luke 17:7-10), Jesus did not speak out clearly against slavery. In fact, where he usually stood up for all kinds of losers, he didn't mention slaves. While he might have: the related Jewish sect of the Essenes categorically rejected slavery. Slaves were a fact of life for Jesus.
For Paulos, too, the existence of slavery was the most common thing in the world. However, it is well documented that slaves could also convert, according to Paulos. They could be baptised and join the Christian community. Whether they occupied an equal position there is doubtful. It is not plausible that slaves could decide to join on their own. If the pater familias decided to convert, the whole household, including the slaves, usually followed.
There is a curious phrase in Paulos' first letter to the church in Thessalonica 4:4. The New International Version states: "that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honourable." But that is a prudish translation. In reality, Paulos used the Greek word skeuos, vessel: "that each of you must know how to obtain his own vessel.”
There is strong evidence that Paulos implicitly meant here that you could always fuck your slave, if there was no spouse available. In any case, that is better than extramarital sex or prostitution. Slaves were used in his time for all kinds of tasks: industrial labour, housekeeping, but also for sex. A sex slave in your household, no one bothered about that at the time.
Even after Paulos, there was remarkably little resistance to the phenomenon of slavery in early Christianity. Everyone was equal under God, created in God's image, there was free will, and the golden rule applied. But apparently it didn't occur to anyone that this should also apply to slaves.
Augustinus muttered a bit. In North Africa, where he was rooted, the slave trade was getting out of hand. The area was in danger of becoming depopulated, and too often parents were forced to sell their children as slaves.
But Augustinus did not oppose the phenomenon of slavery itself. On the contrary, he legitimised it. His reasoning was as follows. People should not rule over other people. But slavery is a punishment for sin. We have already read how Augustinus thought about punishment.
The origin of the Latin word for slave is supposed to be found in the circumstance that those who by the law of war were liable to be killed were sometimes preserved by their victors, and were hence called servants. And these circumstances could never have arisen save through sin. For even when we wage a just war, our adversaries must be sinning; and every victory, even though gained by wicked men, is a result of the first judgement of God, who humbles the vanquished either for the sake of removing or of punishing their sins. (…) The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the dominion of his fellow — that which does not happen save by the judgement of God, with whom is no unrighteousness, and who knows how to award fit punishments to every variety of offence. (…) And therefore the apostle admonishes slaves to be subject to their masters, and to serve them heartily and with good-will, so that, if they cannot be freed by their masters, they may themselves make their slavery in some sort free, by serving not in crafty fear, but in faithful love, until all unrighteousness pass away, and all principality and every human power be brought to nothing, and God be all in all.
— Augustinus Hipponensis, De civitate Dei (426), XIX:15 (latin / english)
Slavery was a punishment for sin, he thought. Since every human being is sinful, slavery can happen to anyone. As a human being, we should not worry about whether someone has earned a punishment if that punishment comes from God. It will be part of God's plan.
Children of slaves also became slaves; that will also be God's intention. For the sins of the parents pass to the children. After all, God himself had said:
You said that you are very patient, but that you will punish everyone guilty of doing wrong — not only them but their children and grandchildren as well.
— Numbers 14:18
The only early theologian whose principled opposition to the phenomenon of slavery has been recorded was the holy Cappadocian bishop Grigorios Nyssis (c. 335-394). Grigorios considered slavery an insult to God and mankind, and believed that slavery should be radically abolished. But his voice was that of a loner. His kindred theologians were even less principled about the phenomenon centuries after him. At best, Christian clergy advocated the manumission of slaves or felt that a good Christian should not keep slaves. But that was certainly not shared everywhere: a categorical condemnation was not recorded. Even the church itself kept slaves.
In fact, in 340 the following text was agreed, which was part of the canon law of the church of Rome until the 18th century:
If any one shall teach a slave, under pretext of piety, to despise his master and to run away from his service, and not to serve his own master with good-will and all honour, let him be anathema.
— Canon 3 of the Synod of Gangra (340), later incorporated into the Decretum Gratiani (1140)
The conversion of pagans
We are working towards the Church's conception of the transatlantic slave trade: the massive use of Africans in plantations on the American continent.
Slavery was perfectly normal in the early church. Later the church did have reservations about the use of Christians as slaves. But the Africans were not Christians; they were heathens. The church wanted everyone in the world to be Christian. How did the Church go about converting pagans? Initially this was purely voluntary, but when the Roman Empire became Christian, it gradually became more and more coercive.
Voluntary conversion
Traditionally, Christianity held that you may only be converted voluntarily. Forced conversion was wrong. The church father Tertullianus (c. 160 – c. 230) was a Roman from Carthage who converted to Christianity in 190. Christian persecution was pervasive. He vehemently opposed the pagans and the Jews, but advocated religious toleration for his own club, the Christians:
It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps another man.
— Tertullianus, Ad scapulam (212)
To what extent this religious tolerance was also a duty of Christians towards other religions was less important to Tertullianus, but his appeal to natural law became mainstream. Paulo had previously written about natural law among Gentiles in his letter to the Romans:
God will reward each of us for what we have done. (…) It doesn't matter if they are Jews or Gentiles. But all who do right will be rewarded with glory, honour, and peace, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. God doesn't have any favourites! Those people who don't know about God's Law will still be punished for what they do wrong. And the Law will be used to judge everyone who knows what it says. (…) Some people naturally obey the Law's commands, even though they don't have the Law. This proves that the conscience is like a law written in the human heart.
— Paulos of Tarsos, Epistle to the Romans 2
In short, as long as pagans follow natural law, you should leave them alone. That natural law, of course, was not in any code. When Paulos referred to it, he probably had in mind a kind of ius gentium, a Roman legal concept of the right of peoples. The Romans had never bothered to specify that right, but it probably came down to ideas like peaceful coexistence, no aggression, keeping your agreements and the golden rule: what you do not want to happen to you...
Augustinus emphasised credere non potest nisi volens: only faith based on inner conviction pleases God. Such faith must develop itself from within, without external pressure. He disapproved of forced faith, even when it came to true faith.
But Augustinus, in the same breath with approval, gave a whole series of examples of pagans who, under threat of violence combined with proper education, had become good Christians. We read earlier that Augustinus did not shy away from violence to enforce the faith.
Paulos and Tertullianus thus advocated religious tolerance at a time when Christianity was a minority religion. But did this view hold up even later?
Conversion under the Christian emperors
To be fair, the first wave of pagan conversions in the Roman Empire up to, say, 400 was largely nonviolent. The Christian community had an enormous appeal of its own. The entry of emperor Constantinus into the community in 312 of course also helped enormously.
Under Constantinus, there was still religious freedom, but his Christian successors increased the pressure. By the end of the 4th century, pagan temples were systematically confiscated (and often transformed into Christian church buildings), pagan statues and writings were systematically destroyed, and pagan rituals were banned. But there was usually no real compulsion to join the Christian community.
After the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395, the Roman Empire was split into a Western Roman Empire with capital Rome, and an Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, with Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) as its capital. In parallel, western Christianity (Roman Catholic, the church of Rome) and eastern Christianity (Eastern Orthodox) would also grow apart in the following centuries. The Western Roman Empire continued to decline in size and power and faced numerous incursions from neighbouring peoples, mostly barbarian, pagan tribes from the north and east.
In the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire collapsed. Europe was again divided into a patchwork of kingdoms, some of which embraced Christianity, and many of which did not. With that, the dream of a Christian world was shattered. The bishop of Rome had very little to say. The Christianisation of Europe was far from complete. He had to start again.
Conversion of the Brits
The aforementioned Pope Gregorius handled it well. He sent missionaries, including to the British Isles, and they were well equipped for their task. Especially the missionary Paulinus dealt with it capably. In the wonderful book The barbarian conversion (1997), Richard Fletcher described how. England at that time had disintegrated into a mosaic of kingdoms. Paulinus did not engage with the common people: he immediately presented himself to the court.
It was a reflex of the church of Rome to seek power. In the empire, that had worked just fine: there was synergy, so to speak. Separate responsibilities but with mutual coordination. In the previous episode, we saw how Bishop Augustinus hid behind the emperor's power, and that would remain a pattern for centuries. In the next newsletter in this series, we will take a closer look at this symbiotic relationship between church and state.
How did Paulinus succeed in converting English monarchs? With tact and diplomacy, Paulinus and his later colleagues made flawless use of the weak spots of the local monarchs.
In the first place, of course, because those war lords were all bothering each other. A clever guy could play them off against each other.
Secondly, the kings really realised that they were just measly monarchs compared to the (faded) glory of the Roman Empire. They could use a bit of that old glamour: connections with the bishop of Rome (and even the emperor in Constantinople sometimes gave a nudge) were helpful.
The conversion of the emperors of Rome had certainly not led to mass Christianisation in all corners of the empire, but the religious infrastructure was still there. There were bishops and monasteries here and there within the empire, they were still in contact with each other and also with the remaining Christian kings in the empire. A king who joined the church could make use of that network.
And thirdly, mission could be left to the missionaries. The early Christians knew exactly how to market their religion to pagans; They had centuries of experience in this. Bishops and missionaries exchanged tips among themselves, and they had access to a manual written by Augustinus.
Without exception, the king was promised great victories if he had God by his side. Also, a missionary usually was well versed in miraculous healings and exorcisms. In any case, the devil played a greater role in Christian theology than before. They could scare the commoners with it, and pagan gods and rituals were without exception portrayed as devils.
Fourth, a uniform religion in a kingdom also offered other advantages to the king: with the help of the clergy, you kept them better under control. Morale thrived; not least in a fiscal sense.
The mission in the British Isles was such a success that the Christianisation of Europe would then largely follow the British model. Famous early missionaries such as Colmcille, Columbán, Willibrord and Wynfrith Bonifatius all came from the British Isles.
Symbiosis between kings and bishops
The bishops could afford a few things to the kings. For example, a letter from Bishop Remigius of Reims to the young Frankish king Clovis has been preserved, barely on the throne and at that time still a pagan. He is warmly congratulated on his appointment, and in the same breath the bishop urges him to maintain a good relationship with the bishops in his empire. The church is a powerful party, he you have to keep at his good side, was the closely veiled threat.
The bishop of Rome had gradually acquired more and more power and began to behave more and more as head of the church even after the fall of the empire of Rome. The bishop allied with a distant successor of Clovis, the Frankish king Carolus Magnus (Charlemagne) and crowned him emperor of Rome in 800. On the one hand, Carolus acknowledged that the bishop apparently held that title, and on the other hand, he positioned himself as the successor of the Roman emperors. The coronation of Carolus would be the beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, which would act as the successor to the Roman Empire for a thousand years, under the auspices of the Pope.
Partly due to the efforts of missionaries, Christianity had already managed to spread, even beyond former Roman territory. Carolus succeeded in bringing together a great empire with conquests, especially by bringing pagan territories under his control. Wars of conquest in pagan regions were rife in medieval Europe. It was a lucrative occupation: looting yielded a lot. And of course, the areas had to be Christianised. But that didn't always go smoothly: it must have been far too slow for the king.
Violent conversion of the Saxons
The Saxons were a test case. Bonifatius and his successor Lul had tried in vain to convert the Saxons. Carolus, who saw it as his task to establish Christianity everywhere in his expanding empire, was stuck with it. Lul was getting desperate: this stubborn people could not be converted; we will have to force them. Carolus decided on a violent campaign against the Saxons with a combined deployment of forces, missionaries, deportations, slavery and death sentences on pagan customs. The approach was successful in the year 782.
Carolus had not been bothered by the clergy. Forced conversions, yet fundamentally contrary to Christian teaching, were condoned. It was for their own good, wasn't it?
The high cleric Ealhwine (Alcuinus) had second thoughts. He was a prominent advisor to the king, an intellectual, and how the Saxons dealt with their forced conversion he could follow closely from Aachen. The vanquished Saxons had to pay a tithe to the church immediately after their baptism. That caused bad blood among the Saxons. Although Ealhwine did not explicitly speak out against the forced baptism of the Saxons, he did muse about a better strategy for conveying the faith. The Saxons were now especially angry with the church. Surely that could be improved? To convert conquered nations requires patience, and a lot of effort. The church had better send missionaries into the area to teach it. Over time, they will come to the right faith on their own.
Ealwhine's pious exhortations did have some effect. Vanquished peoples such as the Avars (an originally Turkic people who lived in the area we now know approximately as Czechia) were converted with a little more caution. Gradually, the church gained more experience in the conversion of conquered nations. Occasionally a monarch went off track, as in the conversion of the pagan Vikings and Balts. But the church became an expert on the borderline between coercion and compulsion. This knowledge later came in handy for the approach in other parts of the world, as we will read later.
The church on forced conversions
You have to give it to the church: even when the church held power, it remained fundamentally opposed to forced conversions. Tomasso d'Aquino, for example, saw nothing in it.
Although the unbelievers sin by their worship, yet one may tolerate them, either for some good that follows from it, or for some evil that one avoids by it. (...)
Among the unbelievers there are those who have never accepted the faith, such as the Gentiles and the Jews, and they should in no way be forced to believe, for in order to believe one must want it.
— Tomasso d'Aquino, Summa theologiae (1265)
Pope Innocentius III also spoke out against forced conversion in 1201, but at the same time he acknowledged that those who were forcibly converted could also be saved. It typifies the church's dual attitude towards religious toleration in general: doctrinally, the church tended to be tolerant, but when the stakes were high, there was room for compromise, as long as the church could keep its hands formally clean.
The church and the pagan colonies
In Europe, around the 15th century, the supply of pagans was almost exhausted. Only in the backwaters of Europe, the Baltic interior, were there still a few pagan tribes.
Slavery race with Muslims
With the rise of the Islamic State, the European expansion of the Umayyads from North Africa and the rise of the Ottoman Empire from Asia Minor, the Christian world had increasingly come into contact with Muslim brothers. Back and forth, prisoners were held in slavery.
On the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century, Christian kings were victorious. The reconquista, in which the peninsula was conquered from the Moors, was almost complete.
The development of shipping made it possible to explore new areas, especially along the west coast of Africa. And with shipping, the demand for galley slaves increased. So the supply dried up, and the demand increased. What does one do then? One looks for fresh supply.
At the beginning of the 15th century, the Canary Islands became sailable. The inhabitants were quickly Christianised. Shrewd Christian slave traders also saw a market: the natives, including the Christianised ones, looked forward to a career as galley slaves. Christians could also be slaves to other Christians. As you just read, that was already in use in the congregations of Paulos.
But with the Muslim brothers, things started to get out of hand. The pope was concerned about the Christian slaves in the Islamic world. The pope spoke out against enslaving Christians. Whoever did so would be excommunicated.
From about 1450 onwards, this was the Vatican's red line: do what you want with pagans, but you stay away from Christians, even if they have just converted.
Formally, this is not forced conversion, but the effect is the same. Remain a pagan and you will spend the rest of your life in slavery. Or repent, and you avoid that fate.
Colonisation on the authority of the Pope
In bulls such as Dum diversas (1452) by Pope Nicholaus V, the king of Portugal was instructed to conquer the explored territories, Christianise pagans and Muslims, expropriate the land of pagans and keep them in eternal slavery. At the time, this regarded Africans; America hadn’t been discovered yet.
The Portuguese sailed steadily along the coast of the African continent, passing the Cape of Good Hope and sailing up the Indian Ocean in the hope of discovering new trade routes. In 1492 Columbus discovered the Antilles. Not soon after, the Spaniards explored the entire coast of Latin America. In 1498, the Portuguese arrived in India. Brazil was discovered in 1500. They arrived in China in 1513 and Japan in 1543. The conversion of pagans could resume in full force.
The church and the colonisation of Latin America
In a series of bulls from 1493, the Pope granted the kings of Spain and Portugal the right to exploit Latin America. But in return, they had a duty to Christianise the original inhabitants.
In a delightful book in 1982, the historian Adriaan van Oss, described the role of the church in the colonisation of Guatemala. It was not the usual ecclesiastical hierarchy that accounted for colonial Christianisation. The bishops had never been very interested in the conversion of pagans in Europe. Instead, monastic orders such as the Dominicans and the Franciscans were put in charge.
The Spanish state had little military presence. The church largely took care of the exploration of the colony. But the church was also only sparsely present. Because: who would pay for that? After all, there were no parishioners yet. Also, the colonies initially yielded hardly anything in terms of gold and silver. Moreover, the priests who were sent to the colonies were not quite the golden boys of the church. Those who were too retarded for a position in Europe were sent to the colonies. Only a handful of inventive clergies set out the guidelines.
As the church had already done in Europe for centuries, the missionaries immediately targeted the elite. The native nobility was showered with gifts, especially if they were baptised. After the conversion of a headman, the rest followed naturally. Violence was hardly used, but locals were well aware that the newcomers had militarily superior technology. Because of the presence of the clergy, the inhabitants were tamer than pigeons, the viceroy wrote. One friar was worth more than an entire Spanish army, he wrote.
In the Latin American colonies, the state had little to say: the monastic orders were in charge, especially the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Ecclesiastical tithes were not levied, for which the faith of the indigenous population was considered too fragile. Instead, the chieftains had to pay taxes for their inhabitants. That money was intended for the parishes, but most of it disappeared directly into the coffers of the monastic orders. The local priest had to earn himself additional income; that necessity was inventively turned into a virtue. In all kinds of ways, the local population was squeezed out by the local priest, who lived well. If a parishioner became rebellious, the priest did not hesitate to hand out corporal punishment. A lot of money went into the construction of monumental churches, proudly situated at the town square, surrounded by slums.
Overseas trade did take place, but was of marginal importance to the average colony. The monastic orders lived well from it, and they had no interest in prying eyes. In practice, every valley was almost an autarky with a well-fed clergy at the top of the food chain. Charity or care for the sick, officially a task of the clergy, was neglected. Grinding poverty among the local population was no exception.
The church in Latin America until decolonisation does not look pretty in Van Oss' book. But forced conversions and slavery do not occur in the book.
But that doesn't mean everything. As early as 1513, the Spanish authorities issued a proclamation to the original population, the Requerimiento:
Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you (…) that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings (…) and that you consent and give place that these religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid.
If you do so, you will do well, (…) and we in their name shall receive you in all love and charity, and shall leave you, your wives, and your children, and your lands, free without servitude, that you may do with them and with yourselves freely that which you like and think best, and they shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, as almost all the inhabitants of the rest of the islands have done. (…)
But, if you do not do this, (…) I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them (…); and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, (…) and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault (…).
Requerimiento (1513)
In short, they had to recognise the authority of the church, the pope, and the king, and you were not allowed to hinder attempts at conversion. But when the Spanish invaders were hindered, slavery, dispossession and death followed. And that would be your own fault. So, strictly speaking, it was enforced religious tolerance, but not forced conversion.
Slavery initially did occur, but was abolished in 1542 in the Leyes Nuevas after protests from the church. In those laws, the colonial administration was stripped of its sharpest edges. Brutal treatment was common, but was mainly due to plantation owners and mine operators.
The conversion of Hindus in Goa
Goa is now a tourist paradise, the beach destination of India. Unlike in the rest of India, a large part of the population is Christian. This was due to the centuries-long presence of Portuguese there, who controlled the area as a colony since 1510.
Forced conversions were also prohibited in Goa. But the church (especially Franciscans and Jesuits) and the Portuguese coloniser really pushed the boundaries there. For example, Hindu orphans were baptised on a large scale, as were prisoners. If you didn't convert, you wouldn’t qualify for any job. Hindu shrines were widely destroyed, religious ceremonies banned.
If anyone was caught with a Hindu figurine, they could only escape punishment by being baptised. Missionaries went on Christianisation campaigns accompanied by Portuguese soldiers, and Hindu priests were kept away with threats of violence. If a Hindu promised that he wanted to be converted, he was fed beef, which cut him off from his caste. Those who did not participate in Hindu rituals after conversion were rejected by their family. There was no going back.
In any case, the pressure for conversion was so great that the sincerity of the new Christians could be doubted. There was a lot of syncretism: a mixture of Christianity with "pagan" rituals. But once someone had been baptised, they had submitted to the authority of the church, the Inquisition to be precise, and they weren't gentle. Torture and forced confessions were the order of the day. Between 1561 and 1774 thousands of Hindu Christians died a gruesome death after confessing heresy and apostasy.
Christian justification of the Transatlantic slave trade
Around the same time, the Transatlantic slave trade took off: pagan slaves were bought in Africa and put to work in Latin America. Until the 19th century, chattel slavery of pagans in Christian colonies remained ubiquitous.
About pagan slaves, the church did not bother. We already read how Augustinus had set out the doctrine on slavery. If you make prisoners in a war, it is better to enslave them than to kill them.
Outside of a war (e.g., the one with the Muslims of North Africa), Christians generally did enslave people; the slaves from Africa were bought from traders who profited from wars between African tribes, who enslaved each other. The buyer kept clean hands.
And if you still had doubts about the justice of that trade, you could always appeal to Noah's curse on his son Ham. Ham had snitched on his father to his brothers when Noah had fallen asleep in a tent, naked and drunk (Genesis 9). Noah then became so angry that he cast a curse on Ham and all his descendants. Traditionally, the myth had arisen that the dark population of Africa were descendants of Ham, and thus cursed forever. So, they’re fine slave material.
Until well into the 17th century, no one doubted this reasoning. The phenomenon of chattel slavery in itself was not controversial. John Locke, we have read about him elsewhere, was one of the first to categorically condemn the phenomenon. But ironically, he helped bring about North American slavery laws, and became a shareholder in the Royal African Company, which became rich from the slave trade.
Despite several papal bulls condemning ill-treatment of slaves, Pope Pius IX refused to condemn slavery on principle as late as 1866. He saw that his view would meet with resistance, so he let the former Inquisition speak. Whether the ruling was authorised by him was left open.
Slavery in itself, judged by its essential nature, is not at all contrary to natural law and divine law, and there may be several justifications for slavery.
— Instruction of the Sanctum Officium dated June 20, 1866
The church was struggling with the issue of slavery. The legitimacy of slavery was firmly established theologically. But the zeitgeist changed. It was not until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) that slavery was categorically condemned by the Roman Catholic Church.
For further reading
Tertullianus, Ad scapulam (212)
Augustinus Hipponensis, De catechizandis rudibus (399), also translated in English
Augustinus Hipponensis, De civitate dei (426), also translated in English
Anoniem, Vita beatissimi papae Gregorii Magni antiquissima (713), also translated in English
Thomas Bokkenbotter, A concise history of the Catholic Church (1977/2005)
Adriaan van Oss, Catholic colonialism: a parish history of Guatemala, 1524-1821 (1982)
Richard Fletcher, The barbarian conversion. From paganism to Christianity (1997)
Henry Chadwick, The church in ancient society from Galilee to Gregory the Great (2001)
Délio de Mendonça, Conversions and citizenry: Goa under Portugal, 1510-1610 (2002)
Jennifer Glancy, Slavery in early Christianity (2002)
David Brion Davis, The problem of slavery in Western culture (2008)
Steven Stofferahn, Staying the royal sword: Alcuin and the conversion dilemma in early medieval Europe, The Historian (2009)
Ilaria Ramelli, Gregory of Nyssa’s position in late Antique debates on slavery and poverty, and the role of asceticism, Journal of Late Antiquity (2012)
Jan Bremmer, Religious violence between Greeks, Romans, Christians and Jews, in: Albert Geljon, Riemer Roukema (red.), Violence in ancient Christianity: victims and perpetrators (2014)
This was the sixth newsletter in the series on Toleration and Christianity. The episodes so far are:
Before Christ
Jesus of Nazareth had some exceptionally tolerant ideas. In order to understand them, we need to know more about Jesus's Jewish background: the history of the Jewish people, their god and their law.Where Jesus' tolerant ideas came from
In some ways, Jesus was a tolerant thinker. But he didn't have all his views of his own. About Jesus' simple origins, the halakhic tradition and Hellenic influences.How this contrarian apostle accidentally founded a world religion
About the tragic life and the miraculous survival of Paulos of Tarsos, the orphaned Jesus community in Jerusalem, the mission in the pagan West and the irrelevance of the Jewish Law.No Jewish law for Christians, but what then?
Why Christian law is not in the Bible. About Paulos's selective application of Jesus' instructions, and his remarkable views on sex, women, and men with long hair.With blood on their hands and tears in their eyes
In the 4th century, the Church of Rome gained power and lost its innocence. The unity of the church became the main thing, and heresy a sin. After Augustinus’ struggle, the church got a killer instinct.Christianity, slavery and the conversion of pagans
On conversion of pagans without compulsion. And Christian approval of slavery. About sex slaves, the conversion of a tourist paradise, and exploitation by the village priest.The clean hands of the Church, the dirty hands of the State
How the popes let the Christian monarchs do the dirty work. But separation of church and state later came to mean something else: a secular government.The just war against Islam
A clash between Christianity and Islam was inevitable. Not only because they got into each other's way, but also because they used different justifications for warfare.