d Genoese were selling young persons from all countries in
Egypt.[859] Pope Nicholas V, in 1454, gave Portugal the right to
subjugate western Africa, supposed to be lands which belonged to the
Saracens, and "to reduce the persons of those lands to perpetual
servitude," expressing the hope that the negroes would be thoroughly
converted. Margry puts in the year 1444 the first sale of negroes as
slaves, under the eyes of Don Enrique of Portugal.[860] As early as 1500
Columbus suggested to the king of Spain to use negroes to work the mines
of Hispaniola. The king decreed that only such negroes should be taken
to Hispaniola as had been Christianized in Spain. In 1508 the Spaniards
took negroes to the mines to work with Indian slaves. The slave trade
was authorized by Charles V in 1517.[861] Christian slaves existed in
Spain until the seventeenth, perhaps until the eighteenth, century. If
blacks and Moors are included, slavery has existed there until the most
recent times.[862]

+304. Slavery in Europe. Italy in the Middle Ages.+ Slavery existed in
Italy in the thirteenth century, by war, piracy, and religious hatred.
The preaching friars, by preaching against all property, helped to break
it down, and it began to decline.[863] The religious hatred is
illustrated by the act of Clement V ([Symbol: cross] 1314). When he
excommunicated the Venetians for seizing Ferrara he ordered that
wherever they might be caught they should be treated as slaves.[864]
Not until 1288 was a law passed at Florence forbidding the sale of serfs
away from the land. Such a law was passed at Bologna in 1256, and
renewed in 1283. Such laws seem to have been democratic measures to
lessen the power of nobles in the rural districts.[865] A man who made a
slave woman a mother must pay damages to her owner. In a contract of
1392 a man in such a case confesses a debt, as for money borrowed. By a
statute of Lucca, in 1539, a man so offending must buy the woman at
twice her cost and pay to the state a fine of one hundred lire. By a
statute of Florence, 1415, it was affirmed that the quality of Christian
would not exempt from slavery.[866] In a contract of sale of a woman at
Venice, 1450, it is specified that the seller sells _purum et merum
dominium_.[867] The Italian cities continued to protect the slave trade
until the middle of the sixteenth century.[868] The Venetians and
Genoese carried on the trade actively, except in times of great public
or general cala