Schmidt published an essay
on the "Civil Society of the Roman World and its Transformation by
Christianity," in which he thought it right to attribute all the
softening of the mores in the first three Christian centuries to
Christianity. Lecky, on the other hand, says: "Slavery was distinctly
and formally recognized by Christianity, and no religion ever labored
more to encourage a habit of docility and passive obedience."[804]
Schmidt is obliged to take the ground that Christianity received and
accepted slavery as a current institution, in which property rights
existed, and that it suffered these to stand. If that is true, then
Christianity could not exert much influence on civil society. What
Christianity did was to counteract to a great extent the sentiment of
contempt for slaves and for work. It did this ritually, because in the
church, and especially in the Lord's Supper, all participated alike and
equally in the rites. The doctrine that Christ died for all alike
combined with the philosophical and humanitarian doctrine that men are
of the same constitution and physique to produce a state of mind hostile
to slavery. In the fourth century the church began to own great
possessions, including slaves, and it accepted the standpoint of the
property owner.[805] In the Saturnalia of Macrobius (fl. 400 A.D.)
Praetextatus reaffirms the old neostoic doctrine about slavery, of Seneca
and Dio Chrysostom. Dill[806] takes the doctrine to be the expression of
the convictions of the best and most thoughtful men of that time. It is
not to be found in Jerome, Augustine, or Chrysostom. Nevertheless the
church favored manumission and took charge of the ceremony. It
especially favored it when the manumitted would become priests or monks.
The church came nearest to the realization of its own doctrines when it
refused to consider slave birth a barrier to priesthood. In all the
penitential discipline of the church also bond and free were on an
equality. The intermarriage of slave and free was still forbidden.
Constantine ordered that if a free woman had intercourse with her slave
she should be executed and he should be burned alive.[807] The pagan law
only ordered that she should be reduced to slavery. The manumissions
under Constantine were believed, in the sixteenth century, to have
caused almshouses and hospitals to be built, on account of the great
numbers of helpless persons set adrift.[808] Basil the Macedonian
([Symbol: cross] 886) f