irst enacted that slaves might have an
ecclesiastical marriage, but the prejudice of centuries made this
enactment vain.[809] The abolition of crucifixion had special value to
the slave class. There was no longer a special and most infamous mode of
execution for them. A law of Constantine forbade the separation of
members of a family of slaves.[810] These are the most important changes
in the law of slavery until the time of the codex of Justinian. Lecky
thinks that Justinian advanced the law beyond what his predecessors had
done more in regard to slavery than on any other point. His changes
touched three points: (1) He abolished all the restrictions on
enfranchisement which remained from the old pagan laws, and encouraged
it. (2) He abolished the freedmen as an intermediate class, so that
there remained only slave and free, and a senator could marry a freed
woman, i.e. a slave whom he had already freed. (3) A slave might marry a
free woman, if his master consented, and her children, born in slavery,
became free if the father was enfranchised. The punishment for the rape
of a slave woman was made death, the same as for the rape of a free
woman.[811] Isidore of Seville ([Symbol: cross] 636) said: "A just God
alloted life to men, making some slaves and some lords, that the liberty
of ill-doing on the part of slaves might be restrained by the authority
of rulers." Still he says that all men are equal before God, and that
Christ's redemption has wiped away original sin, which was the cause of
slavery.[812]

+297. The colonate.+ At the end of the empire population was declining,
land was going out of use and returning to wilderness, the petty
grandees in towns were crushed by taxes into poverty, artisans were
running away and becoming brigands because the state was immobilizing
them, and peasants were changed into colons. The imperial system went on
until the man, the emperor, was above all laws, the senate were slaves,
and the provinces were the booty of the emperor. The whole system then
became immobilized. What the colons were and how they came into
existence has been much disputed. They were immobilized peasants. We
find them an object of legislation in the _codex Theodosianus_ in the
fourth century. They were personally free (they could marry, own
property, could not be sold), but they were bound to the soil by birth
and passed with it. They cultivated the land of a lord, and paid part of
the crops or money.[813] Marqua