V The Slave in Early Christian Life
There was ever present in these early assemblies of Christians one class of persons who had no rank, no place in Roman society,—a class in which Cicero had declared that nothing great or noble could exist. Slavery has been well characterized as the “most frightful feature of the corruption of ancient Rome, and it extended through every class of the community.” Economically, “the poor citizen found almost all the spheres in which an honourable livelihood might be obtained, wholly or at least in a very great part preoccupied by slaves.” Morally, “the slave population was a hotbed of vice, and it contaminated all with which it came in contact.”70
Now what position did the slave occupy in early Christian society? It is quite clear that the primitive Christians had no idea of abolishing slavery. It was part of the ancient society, and they accepted it even amongst themselves—apparently made no effort to abolish it; but the view they took of it in reality dealt a death-blow to the unhappy and miserable institution. It is true that whilst Christianity gradually modified its most painful and objectionable features by example and by precept, it was only after long, long years that it succeeded by a bloodless revolution to wipe away the awful curse—“The mills of God grind slowly.”
But the New Testament simply directs slaves to be faithful and obedient. In the letter to Philemon, Paul never even hints at the release of the slave Onesimus, who was very dear to him.
In 1 Cor. vii. 20, Paul urges every man to abide in the calling (i.e. the state of life or condition) in which he was when he was called to God; and even advises the slave to be content to remain a slave even if the opportunity to become free presents itself; for this is the interpretation which a chain of the best commentators gives to the words “use it rather.” See, too, Eph. vi. 5–9; Tit. ii. 9; 1 Pet. ii. 18.71
The earliest Christian writings take the same view of the question of slavery as we find in the Epistles of Paul and Peter. So in the Didaché we read: “Thou shalt not give directions when thou art in anger to thy slave or thy handmaid, who trust in the same God, lest perchance they shall not fear the Lord who is over you both; for He cometh not to call men according to their outward position, but He cometh to those whom the Spirit hath made ready. And ye slaves, ye shall be subject to your masters as to God’s image, in modesty and fear” (chap. iv.).
Aristides writes as follows: “But as for their servants or handmaids, or their children if any of them have any, they (the Christians) persuade them to become Christians, for the love that they have towards them; and when they have become so, they call them without distinction Brethren.”—Apol., chap. xv.
But although slavery as an institution72 was left for the time virtually untouched, Christianity in its own circles worked an immediate and vast change in the condition of the slave: “It supplied a new order of relations, in which the relations of classes were unknown, and it imparted a new dignity to the servile classes.”73
In the assemblies of the Christians of the first days on which we have been dwelling, the social difference between master and slave was quite unknown. They knelt side by side when they received the Holy Eucharist. They sat side by side as the instructions were given and the words of the Lord Jesus were expounded. Their prayers ascended together to the mercy-seat of the Eternal. While not unfrequently a slave was promoted to be the teacher; the highest offices in the congregation74 were now and again filled by chosen members of the slave class. They suffered with their masters, and shared with them the glory of martyrdom.
The Acts of the Martyred Slaves were read to the congregations of the faithful, and the highest honour and veneration was paid to their memory. The slaves Blandina of Lyons, Felicitas of Carthage, Emerentiana of Rome the foster-sister of Agnes, the famous martyr—are names which deservedly rank high in the histories of the early heroines of the Church.
But although slavery was still recognized in the new Society which outwardly made no abrupt changes, which desired no sudden and violent uprooting in the old Society, a marvellous change passed over the ordinary conception of the slave.
An extract from a letter of Paulinus of Nola to Sulpicius Severus, the disciple and biographer of S. Martin of Tours (circa the last years of the fourth century), will give some idea of the regard so largely entertained by Christian thinkers for the slave members of the community. Thanking Sulpicius for a young slave he had sent him, Paulinus of Nola, recognizing in the slave an earnest and devout soul, writes to his friend as follows: “He has served me, and woe is me that I have allowed him to be my servant—that he who was no servant of sin, should yet be in the service of a sinner! Unworthy that I am, every day I suffered him to wash my feet; and there was no menial duty he would not have performed had I allowed him, so unsparing was he of his body—so watchful for his soul. Ah, it is Jesus Christ that I venerate in this young man; for surely every faithful soul proceeds from God, and every humble man of heart comes from the very heart of Christ.”75
There is little doubt but that this authoritative teaching of the Christian masters in the matter of the perfect equality of the slave in the eyes of God, and the consequent tender and often loving treatment meted out to the Christian members of the despised and downtrodden class, gravely misliked the more thoughtful among the pagan aristocracy of Rome, and that this teaching and practice of Christians in the case of the vast slave class in the pagan Empire ranked high among the dangers which they felt threatened the existence of the old state of things. Grave considerations of this kind must have strongly influenced the minds of men like Pius and Marcus and their entourage, before they determined to carry out their bitter policy of persecution.
The Romans of the old school could have well afforded to regard with comparative indifference the enfranchisement of any number of Christian slaves. Freedmen, especially in the imperial household, were very numerous in the days of the Antonines. But the teaching that these slaves—while still slaves—were their brethren, and ought to be treated with love and esteem, was a new and disturbing thought in the Empire of the great Antonines.
Lecky, in his History of European Morals (chap. iv.), has a fine passage in which he sums up the great features of the new movement of Christian charity, and its results on the world at large. It runs as follows:
“There is no fact of which an historian becomes more steadily or more painfully conscious than the great difference between the importance and the dramatic interest of the subjects he treats. Wars or massacres, the horrors of martyrdom or the splendour of individual prowess, are susceptible of such brilliant colouring that with but very little literary skill they can be so portrayed that their importance is adequately realized, and that they appeal powerfully to the emotions of the reader. But this vast and unostentatious movement of charity, operating in the village hamlets and in the lonely hospital, staunching the widow’s tears and following all the windings of the poor man’s griefs, presents few features the imagination can grasp, and leaves no deep impression upon the mind. The greatest things are those which are most imperfectly realized; and surely no achievements of the Christian Church are more truly great than those which it has effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in the history of the world it has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of all worldly interests, and often under circumstances of extreme discomfort or danger, to devote their entire lives to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole pagan world. It has indissolubly united in the minds of men the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence.”
The foundation stories of all this vast movement of charity and altruistic love were laid in the early years of Christianity.
The assemblies—the meetings together of the Christians of the first days—constructed and developed, as we have seen, the laws of charity; indicating the persons who were to be assisted, suggesting, too, the means and resources out of which the sufferers—the forlorn and needy—might be helped and comforted in life and in death.
All that happened subsequently—the mighty organizing work of great masters of charity, such as Basil of Cappadocian Cæsarea, and later of members of the monastic orders—was simply the development, the expansion, the application to individual needs of the primitive ordinances of the first days which we have been sketching out,—ordinances all founded upon the advice, the injunctions, the commands which we find in early Christian writings such as the Didaché, the 1st Epistle of Clement of Rome, the Apology of Aristides, the Shepherd of Hermas, the writings of Justin Martyr and Minucius Felix, and a very little later in the more elaborate works of Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, and repeated in the first half of the third century by eminent teachers such as Origen and Cyprian of Carthage; all primarily based more or less exactly upon the words of the Lord Jesus and of His own immediate disciples.
In the primitive assemblies of the Christian Brotherhood these things formed the groundwork of the instructions and exhortations of the teachers and preachers, and were united with the dogma of the Atonement, with the tidings of immortality, the promises of bliss and eternal peace in the life beyond the grave.
Entering into one of these early assemblies held in an upper chamber or courtyard of a wealthy Christian brother, or in one of those dark and gloomy chambers of the catacombs, “we step,” as it has been well said, “into a whole world of sympathy and of love.”