nd
that fully five times that number perish either by being massacred in
the slave hunt, or from hunger and hardship on the journey. Thus the
lives or liberty of an immense number of the human race are each year
sacrificed on the altars of lust and mammon. No pagan government of
antiquity ever framed any law aiming at the immediate or gradual
extinction of slavery. The same is true of modern nations outside the
pale of Christianity.[482]

With the life and teaching of Christ and the preaching of his gospel
by his Apostles, began a new era in the history of slavery. The
Apostles and their successors pursued a policy that without injustice,
violence or revolution, led to the gradual emancipation of the slaves.
The labors and influence of the Roman Catholic Church, which have been
that of organized Christianity, make a long story, reaching through
all the Christian ages. The early Church mitigated the condition of
the slave, by teaching him the consoling doctrines of Christ. She
taught the slave and master reciprocal duties, prescribing laws that
exercised a salutary restraint on the authority of the one, and
sanctified the obedience of the other; she contributed to the moral
elevation of the slave by leveling all distinctions between bond and
free in her temples and religious assemblies.[483] Masters were
encouraged to emancipate their slaves by a public ceremony of
manumission celebrated in the church on festival days. The dignity and
duty of labor for all is inculcated by St. Paul and the early
Christian teachers in opposition to the pagan practice, which scorned
labor as being only fit for slaves. The absolute religious equality
proclaimed in the Church was the negation of slavery as practiced by
pagan society. The Church made no account of the social condition of
the faithful. Bond and free received the same sacraments. Clerics of
servile origin were numerous. The very Chair of St. Peter was occupied
by men who had been slaves--Pius in the second century and Callistus
in the third.[484] The names of slaves are numbered among the martyrs
of the Christian faith and they are inscribed on the calendar of
saints honored by the Church.

In giving them a place in religious society, the Church restored to
slaves the family and marriage. In Roman law, neither legitimate
marriage nor regular paternity, nor even any impediment to the most
unnatural unions had existed for the slave. In upholding the moral
dignity and prerogati