The twenty-seventh regulated the punishment of the person who permitted a thievish slave to escape, and, respecting the slave himself, concluded thus:

Si quis eum occiderit, domino ejus dimidium pendito.

"If any one shall slay him, let him pay to his master onehalf."

In Germany, however, as yet, in most places paganism prevailed, and human sacrifices were offered. St. Boniface had been sent by the Holy See to endeavour to reclaim to religion and to civilization the nations or tribes that composed this undefined extent of territory. We find in a letter of Pope Gregory III., written in answer to his request for special instructions, about the year 735, the following paragraph:

Hæc quoque inter alia crimina agi in partibus illis dixisti, quod quidam ex fidelibus ad immolandum paganis sua venumdent mancipia. Quod ut magnopere corrigere debeas, frater, commonemus, nec sinas fieri ultra: scelus est enim et impietas. Eis ergo qui hæc perpetraverunt, similem homicidæ indices pœnitentiam.

"You have said that, among other crimes, this was done in those parts, that some of the faithful sold their slaves to pagans to be immolated. Which you should use all your power to correct, nor allow it to be done any more: for it is wickedness and impiety. Impose then upon its perpetrators the same penance as for homicide."

LESSON XVI.

THEODORE, archbishop of Canterbury, governed the English church from 670 to 690, when he died. The following extracts are from his canonical regulations:

VII. Græci et Romani dant servis suis vestimenta, et laborant excepto Dominico die. Græcorum monachi servos non habent, Romani habent.

"The Greeks and Romans give clothing to their slaves, and they work except on the Lord's day. The Greek monks have not slaves, the Romans have."

XVII. Ingenuus cum ingenuâ conjungi debet.

"A free man should be married to a free woman."

LXV. Qui per jussionem domini sui occiderit hominem, dies xl. jejunet.

"He who, by the command of his master, shall kill a man, shall fast forty days."

The seventy-first prohibits the intermarriages of those slaves whose owners will prevent their living together.

The seventy-fourth regulates, that if a free pregnant woman be sold into slavery, the child that she bears shall be free; all subsequently born shall be slaves.

LXXIX. Pater filium necessitate coactus in servitium sine voluntate filii tradat.

"A father, compelled by necessity, may deliver his son into slavery without the will of that son."

LXXXIX. Episcopus et abbas hominem sceleratum servum possunt habere, si precium redimendi non habet.

"A bishop or an abbot can hold a criminal in slavery, if he have not the price of his redemption."

CXVII. Servo pecuniam per laborem comparatam nulli licet auferre.

"It is not lawful for any one to take away from a slave the money made by labour."

In the council of Verberie, held in a palace of King Pepin, the sixth canon made regulations in the case of marriage between free persons and slaves. The following are its provisions:

1. If any free person contracted marriage with a slave, being at the time ignorant of the state of bondage of that party, the marriage was invalid.

2. If a person under bond should have a semblance of freedom by reason of condition, and the free person be ignorant of the bondage, and this bond person should be brought into servitude, the marriage was declared originally void.

3. An exception was made where the bond person, by reason of want, should, with the consent of the free party, sell himself or herself into perfect slavery with the consent of the free party; then the marriage was to stand good, because the free party had consented to the enslavement, and profited of its gains.

The seventh canon would seem to show that a slave could hold property in slaves:

Si servus suam ancillam concubinam habuerit, si ita placet, potest illâ dimissâ comparem suam ancillam domini sui accipere: sed melius est suam ancillam tenere.

"If a man-servant shall have his own female slave as a concubine, he shall have power, if he wishes, leaving her, to marry his equal, the female servant of his master: but it is better that he should keep his own servant in wedlock."

The eighth canon provided, in the case of a freedman who, subsequently to his liberation, committed sin with the female slave of his former master, that the master should have power, whether the freedman would or not, to compel him to marry that female slave; and should this man leave her, and attempt a marriage with another woman, this latter must be separated from him.

The thirteenth declares that when a freeman, knowing that the woman whom he is about to marry is a slave, or, not having known it until after marriage, voluntarily upon the discovery consents to the marriage, it is thenceforth indissoluble.

The nineteenth declares that the separation of married parties, by the sale of one who is a slave, does not affect the marriage. They must be admonished, if they cannot be reunited, to remain continent.

The twentieth provides for the case of a male slave freed by letter, (chartellarius,) who, having for his wife taken a slave with the lawful consent of her master, and leaving her, takes another as his wife. The latter contract is void, and the parties must separate.

Another assembly was held by King Pepin, in Compeigne, fortyeight miles north-east of Paris, where he had a country-seat. At this assembly also the prelates held a council in 757, and made eighteen canons. The fourth makes provision for the case of a man's giving his free step-daughter in wedlock to a freeman or to a slave. The fifth declares void the marriage between a free person and a slave, where the former was ignorant of the condition of the latter. The sixth regards a case of a complicated description, where a freeman got a civil benefice from his lord, and takes his own vassal with him, and dies upon the benefice, leaving after him the vassal. Another freeman becomes invested with the benefice, and, anxious to induce the vassal to remain, gives him a female serf attached to the soil as his wife. Having lived with her for a time, the vassal leaves her, and returns to the lord's family, to which he owed his services, and there he contracts a marriage with one of the same allegiance. His first contract was invalid, the second was the marriage.

In the year 772, a council was held in Bavaria, at a place called

Dingolvinga, the present city of Ingolstadt, in the reign of Tassilo, duke of Bavaria. The tenth canon of this council decides that a noble woman, who had contracted marriage with a slave, not being aware of his condition, is at liberty to leave him, the contract being void, and she is to be considered free and not to be reduced to slavery. By noble we are here to understand free, as distinguished from ignoble, that is, a slave.

We have then sixteen amendments of the national law.

The first regulates, by the authority of the prince and consent of the whole assembly, that henceforth no slave, whether fugitive or other, should be sold beyond the limits of the territory, under penalty of the payment of his weregild.

In the second, among other things, it is enacted that if a slave should be killed in the commission of house-breaking, his owner is to receive no compensation; and should the felon who is killed in man-stealing, when he could not be taken, whether it be a freeman or a slave that he is carrying off, no weregild shall be paid by the slayer, but he shall be bound to prove his case before a court.

The seventh regards the trial by ordeal of slaves freed by the duke's hand.

The eighth establishes and guards the freedom, not only of themselves, but of their posterity, of those freed in the church, unless when they may be reduced to slavery from inability to pay for damages which they had committed.

The ninth contains, among other enactments, those which explain the tenth canon of the council. After specifying different weregilds for freed persons, it says

Si ancilla libera dimissa fuerit per chartam aut in ecclesiâ, et post hæc servo nupserit, ecclesiæ ancilla permanebit.

"Should a female slave be emancipated by deed or in the church, and afterwards marry a slave, she shall be a slave to the church."

It then continues, respecting a woman originally free, and the nobilis of canon x.:

Si autem libera Bajoaria servo ecclesiæ nupserit, et servile opus ancilla contradixerit, abscedat.

"But if a free Bavarian female shall have married a servant of the church, and the maid will not submit to servile work, she may depart."

Si autem ibi filios et filias generaverit, ipsi servi et ancillæ permaneant, potestatem exinde (exeundi) non habeant.

"But if she shall have there borne sens and daughters, they shall continue slaves, and not have power of going forth."

Her freedom was not, however, immediately destroyed, for the law proceeds

Illa autem mater eorum, quando exire voluerit, ante annos iii, liberam habeat potestatem.

"But she, their mother, when she may desire to go forth before three years, shall have free power therefor."

In this case the marriage subsisted, but the free woman could separate, without however the marriage-bond being rent. If she remained beyond the time of three years, she lost her freedom; and it shows us that, probably, previous to this amendment, any free woman who married a slave, thereby lost her own freedom; and that the tenth canon, showing the marriage of which it treated to be invalid, showed that the woman should not lose her liberty. The concluding provision of the ninth law is as follows:

Si autem in annos induraverit opus ancillæ, et parentes ejus non exadomaverunt eam ut libera fuisset, nec ante comitem, ducem, nec ante regem, nec in publico mallo, transactis tribus kalendis Martis, (Martu,) post hæc ancilla permaneat in perpetuum, et quicumque ex ea nati fuerint servi et ancillæ sunt.

"But if she shall have continued three years doing the work of a slave, and her relations have not brought her out so that she should be free, either before the count, or the duke, or the king, or in the public high court, (mall,) when the kalends of March shall have thrice passed, after this she shall remain perpetually a slave, and they who shall be born of her, male and female, shall be slaves."

In 774, Pope Adrian I. delivered to Charlemagne a digest of canon law, then in force, in which we find

"The third of Gangræ, condemning as guilty of heresy those who taught that religion sanctioned the slave in despising his master; the thirtieth in the African collection, which showed that the power of manumission in the church was derived from the civil authority; the one hundred and second of the same, which declared slaves and freed persons disqualified to prosecute, except in certain cases and for injuries done to themselves."

In a capitulary of Charlemagne, published in such a synod and general assembly in 779, in the month of March, in the eleventh year of his reign, at Duren, on the Roer, (Villa Duria,) between Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle, there being assembled episcopis,