Tag: Slavery

Can you, must you for your own safety, keep a slave if you are an ascetic and renounce all your possessions?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A truly interesting and very well-written article has appeared in Early Medieval History this month.  Fortunately it is open-access.  The article is

T. Dailey & Justin Piggott, “Ascetics, slaves, and necessity in Late Antiquity: renouncing all wealth, but for a single slave”, Early Medieval Europe 34 (2026); https://doi.org/10.1111/emed.70055

It can be found online here.  Unfortunately the page numbers do not seem to be given on the website.  Here’s the abstract:

Slave owners in Late Antiquity viewed the possession of at least one slave to be a necessity and a defining mark that distinguished the dignified social classes from the poor. Ascetics who shared this perspective faced a choice when renouncing all worldly possessions in pursuit of spiritual perfection, one not merely about luxury, but also about status and perhaps even survival. Hagiographic literature and monastic rules reveal that the embrace of the ascetic life, in eremitic and coenobitic contexts alike, was often assumed to accommodate the retention of a single slave as a personal attendant.

That is the argument: that asceticism did not exclude having a slave, and indeed for elite people, required it as a signifier of social status.

The article is very well written and compelling, and the illustrations are also interesting.  Here is an excerpt.

High-status individuals of the late Roman world regarded the ownership of at least one slave as a necessity. Indeed, the ephemeral appearance of slaves in hagiographic narratives indicates that their literary function secured the high social status of their protagonist. By retaining one slave, an ascetic addressed the fear that total renunciation might destabilize their social status, in a manner distinct from other forms of wealth.8

Such sentiments appear in a story about the mistreatment of Fructuosus. According to his seventh-century Life,9 when he became separated from his entourage while praying in a secluded place in the woods, Fructuosus found himself confronted by a passing peasant. Alone, dressed in humble clothing, and with no other visible markers of his status, he was taken to be a runaway slave. The peasant shouted abuse and even struck the saint, who faced the risk of enslavement in a society that had particularly strong laws on the reclamation of runaway slaves.10

The Life, however, presented the peasant as behaving irrationally, under demonic influence, and the tension in the scene ended when the saint exorcized his assailant, who was miraculously restored to his senses. Divine intervention thus rescued Fructuosus from the unthinkable fate of equivalent treatment to a slave.

9. Life of St Fructuosus, c. 11, ed. M.C. Díaz y Díaz, La vida de San Frutuoso de Braga. Estudio y edición crítica (Braga, 1974).

St Fructuosus was previously unknown to me, but he is one of the Visigothic saints, belonging to the early 7th century.  The critical edition referenced is not accessible to me, and indeed this article states that it is “quite difficult to access.”1

The “Life” itself is apparently BHL 3194; CPL 1293; old Latin text in PL 87, cols 459-70.  Fortunately an English translation exists in the TTH series by A. T. Fear, Lives of the Visigothic Fathers, Liverpool (1997), p. 123-144.  Chapter 11, p.133, with an interesting footnote:

…. But, as we have said, when he was on that part of his journey which passed through the lands of Idanha-a-Velha, it happened that all the companions of the blessed man went ahead of him a little way,47 while he stopped in a secluded place in the woods, hidden away in the thick forests, and prayed a short while. While he lay prostrate in prayer, the Ancient Enemy, ever envious of all good men, swiftly brought a boorish countryman possessed by madness to the place where the man of God was praying. When he had seen the man of God from afar, catching sight of him alone amongst the trees, dressed in poor clothes with unshod, naked feet, as he had a peasant’s mind he despised him for his poor clothing and because of his mad rashness drew closer. Thinking Fructuosus a runaway slave, the peasant abused him with shameless words and did not delay to insult him with all kinds of vile expressions.48 But when the man of God replied to him with a tranquil mind, ‘I am clearly not a runaway’, the peasant, thinking on the contrary that he certainly was one, goaded by the impulse of the devil, struck him a blow with the staff he was carrying in his hands. The man of God bore this patiently, but the other did not cease from striking him, so soon he made the sign of the cross to him. At once the demon left the woodsman and passed into the earth,49 dashing him prostrate before the feet of the holy man and wounding him to such a degree in its fury that after cruelly lacerating him it left him lying in a pool of his own blood. 50 However, the man of God at once prayed and restored him to his previous state of health without any difficulty.

48.  Part of the problem might have been Fructuosus’ unkempt appearance. This probably involved growing his hair long, which was the sign of a slave – see LV 9.1.5 where it is made an offence to cut a fugitive slave’s hair. There would have been a potential reward of at least a tremiss for the countryman had Fructuosus been an escaped slave, LV9.l.l4. The problem of runaways seems to have been a persistent teature of the Visigothic kingdom. Leovigild legislated on this matter (LV 9 .1.3) as did many of his successors. See King [1972] 162 ff.

50.  Demons characteristically injure their victims when forced from their bodies.

The article is online, 22 pages of it, and so I won’t try to summarise it.  As we all knew from our student days, the summary is at the end anyway:

Slave owners in Late Antiquity viewed the possession of at least one slave to be a necessity and a defining mark that distinguished the dignified social classes from the poor. Ascetics drawn from this background shared the same perspective, and their renunciation of all worldly possessions often stopped short of releasing every slave. In many situations, whether within a hermitage or a monastery, one personal attendant remained, perhaps under legal slavery or perhaps under a freed status that left the same asymmetrical architecture of their relationship in place while maintaining a nominal distinction. …

Slave ownership, especially in the form of personal attendance, functioned as more than an economically oriented relationship. It also marked the high status of the slave owner and defined the identity of the elite. The slave who ran away from Monegund, and the faithful Galienus who remained with Merovech to the bitter end, might have been opposites in terms of their loyalty to their owners, but they shared one essential quality: for their owners, their presence was a matter of life and death.

When late antique authors claimed, consistently and repeatedly, that one slave was a necessity for their own existence as a social elite, they revealed a rare glimpse into the ideological and practical limits of asceticism and renunciation.

So what do we make of this argument?  Argument from scattered examples always carries the risk of generalising as a universal rule what is instead a series of unrepresentative local examples.  But the claim does have the ring of truth.

In all times, members of the elite have always found ways to communicate their status, and always will.  In England social status is conveyed by accent and language rather than dress, a means of communication that can pass unobserved to those unaware of it.  For instance readers of John Wesley’s Diary will remember the scene where he is grabbed by a local landowner and marched off, “to serve his majesty” as a conscript.2  It is only when his captor draws breath that Wesley calmly points out, in elite language, and no doubt in an Oxford accent, that such conduct is illegal.  Whereupon his captor suddenly realises that his victim is not a labourer as he had thought, but a gentleman.  Consternation! –

Upon this Mr. B. lost all patience, and cried out with all his might, “Seize him, seize him! I say, seize the Preacher for His Majesty’s service.” But no one stirring, he rode up and struck several of his attendants, cursing them bitterly for not doing as they were bid.

Perceiving still that they would not move, he leaped off his horse, swore he would do it himself, and caught hold of my cassock, crying, ” I take you to serve His Majesty.” A servant taking his horse, he took me by the arm, and we walked arm in arm for about three quarters of a mile. He entertained me all the time, with the “wickedness of the fellows belonging to the society.”

When he was taking breath, I said, “ Sir, be they what they will, I apprehend it will not justify you, in seizing me in this manner, and violently carrying me away, as you said, to serve His Majesty.” He replied, “I seize you! And violently carry you away! No, Sir; no. Nothing like it. I asked you to go with me to my house, and you said you was willing; and if so, you are welcome; and if not, you are welcome to go where you please.”

I answered, “ Sir, I know not if it would be safe for me to go back through this rabble.” “ Sir,” said he, “ I will go with you myself.” He then called for his horse, and anotherfor me,and rode back with me to the place from whence he tookme.

The slave as a marker of status is quite an argument, and rather compelling.  It will be interesting to see the responses.

What struck me here was that I had never imagined that this might be the case.  It is salutary to be reminded that a few minutes time-travel to late antiquity would most certainly up-end our mental picture of that period in all sorts of ways.

  1. Hérold Pettiau, “La Vie de saint Fructueux de Braga quelques aspects de la relation entre l’ascète et la société en Espagne wisigothique”, L. Lemoine & B. Merdrignac (eds), Corona Monastica, Rennes (2004) p. 51-63.[↩]
  2. July 3, 1745.[↩]

A fuller extract from Gregory of Nyssa on the evils of slavery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few years ago I found online an extract from Gregory of Nyssa against slavery which I wrote about here.  Today I came across the full text of the translation, and the passage is rather longer than I had thought, and well worth giving in full.

The passage appears in the Homilies on Ecclesiastes, homily 4.  Gregory is working his way through the text of Ecclesiastes, and the various ways in which Solomon attempted to fill his life with stuff, rather than with God.  In Ecclesiastes 2:7 he starts listing his possessions, which include slaves.

Note that the biblical Greek text on which Gregory commented is sensibly translated at the head of the passage, as it is not always the same as our modern texts which are based on the Hebrew.

Ecclesiastes 2:7 –

I got me slaves and slave-girls,
and homebred slaves were born for me,
and much property in cattle and sheep became mine,
above all who had been
before me in Jerusalem.
…

334.5. We still find the occasion for confession controlling the argument. The one who gives an account of his doings relates one after another almost all the things through which the futility of the activities of this life is recognized. But now he reaches as it were a more serious indictment of things he has done, as a result of which one is accused of the feeling of Pride. For what is such a gross example of arrogance in the matters enumerated above – an opulent house. and an abundance of vines, and ripeness in vegetable-plots, and collecting waters in pools and channelling them in gardens – as for a human being to think himself the master of his own kind? I got me slaves and slave-girls, he says, and homebred slaves were born for me.

Do you notice the enormity of the boast? This kind of language is raised up as a challenge to God. For we hear from prophecy that all things are the slaves of the power that transcends all (Ps 119/118,91). So, when someone [p335] turns the property of God into his own property and arrogates dominion to his own kind, so as to think himself the owner of men and women, what is he doing but overstepping his own nature through pride, regarding himself as something different from his subordinates?

335,5. I got me slaves and slave-girls. What do you mean? You condemn man to slavery, when his nature is free and possesses free will, and you legislate in competition with God, overturning his law for the human species. The one made on the specific terms that he should be the owner of the earth, and appointed to government by the Creator – him you bring under the yoke of slavery, as though defying and fighting against the divine decree.

335,11. You have forgotten the limits of your authority, and that your rule is confined to control over things without reason. For it says Let them rule over winged creatures and fishes and four-footed things and creeping things (Gen, 1,26). Why do you go beyond what is subject to you and raise yourself up against the very species which is free, counting your own kind on a level with four-footed things and even footless things? You have subjected all things to man, declares the word through the prophecy, and in the text it lists the things subject, cattle and oxen and sheep (Ps 8,7- 8). Surely [p336] human beings have not been produced from your cattle? Surely cows have not conceived human stock? Irrational beasts are the only slaves of mankind. But to you these things are of small account. Raising fodder for the cattle, and green plants for the slaves of men, it says (Ps 1041 103,14). But by dividing the human species in two with ‘slavery’ and ‘ownership’ you have caused it to be enslaved to itself, and to be the owner of itself.

336,6.  I got me slaves and slave-girls. For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness (Gen 1,26). If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? who is his seller? To God alone belongs this power; or rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable (Rom 11,29). God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom. But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?

336,20. How too shall the ruler of the whole earth and all earthly things be put up for sale? [p337] For the property of the person sold is bound to be sold with him, too. So how much do we think the whole earth is worth? And how much all the things on the earth (Gen 1,26)? If they are priceless, what price is the one above them worth, tell me? Though you were to say the whole world, even so you have not found the price he is worth (Mat 16,26; Mk 8,36). He who knew the nature of mankind rightly said that the whole world was not worth giving in exchange for a human soul. Whenever a human being is for sale, therefore, nothing less than the owner of the earth is led into the sale-room. Presumably, then, the property belonging to him is up for auction too.  That means the earth, the islands, the sea, and all that is in them. What will the buyer pay, and what will the vendor accept, considering how much property is entailed in the deal?

337,13. But has the scrap of paper, and the written contract, and the counting out of obols deceived you into thinking yourself the master of the image of God? What folly! If the contract were lost, if the writing were eaten away by worms, if a drop of water should somehow seep in and obliterate it, what guarantee have you of their slavery? what have you to sustain your title as owner? I see no superiority over the subordinate [p338] accruing to you from the title other than the mere title. What does this power contribute to you as a person? not longevity, nor beauty, nor good health, nor superiority in virtue. Your origin is from the same ancestors, your life is of the same kind, sufferings of soul and body prevail alike over you who own him and over the one who is subject to your ownership – pains and pleasures, merriment and distress, sorrows and delights, rages and terrors, sickness and death. Is there any difference in these things between the slave and his owner? Do they not draw in the same air as they breathe? Do they not see the sun in the same way? Do they not alike sustain their being by consuming food? Is not the arrangement of their guts the same? Are not the two one dust after death? Is there not one judgment for them? a common Kingdom, and a common Gehenna?

338,14. If you are equal in all these ways, therefore, in what respect have you something extra, tell me, that you who are human think yourself the master of a human being, and say, I got me slaves and slave-girls, like herds of goats or pigs. For when he said, I got me slaves and slave-girls, he added that abundance in flocks of sheep and cattle came to him. For he says, and much property in cattle and sheep became mine, as though both cattle and slaves were subject to his authority to an equal degree.

The Greek text translated is that in the modern Gregorii Nysseni Opera (GNO) series, (volume 5), and page and line numbers are indicated.

The translation itself is by the excellent Stuart G. Hall, and Rachel Moriarty.1  The latter contributes a preface indicating that unfortunately the translation has been tampered with in order to make it “gender neutral”.  The translation of the homilies is followed by a series of useful studies, and I could wish that others adopted such a format.

It’s obvious, in context, that Gregory is not preaching an abolitionist sermon, but an expository one.  He’s not calling for the institution of slavery to be abolished.  Indeed his hearers might not have been prepared for anything that radical.  But Gregory is worrying away at the idea.  The germ of the idea that led to abolition is present.

Useful to have this, and it is perhaps not as well-known as it might be.

  1. S. G. Hall, Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on Ecclesiastes. An English Version with Supporting Studies. Proceedings of the Seventh International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa. (St Andrews, 8 -10 September 1990).  De Gruyter, 1993, pp.72-4.[↩]

Gregory of Nyssa fails to adapt to then contemporary attitudes on slavery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Look at who is linking to you, and you can find some interesting things!  One was this post, and of course I shall have to read this blog some more!

Another of these is an extract from Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on Ecclesiastes here (over-paragraphing by me).  This is from Homily 4, on Ecclesiastes 2:7.

‘I got me slave-girls and slaves.’ For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling that being shaped by God?

God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness. If he is in the likeness of God, and rules the whole earth, and has been granted authority over everything on earth from God, who is his buyer, tell me? Who is his seller?

To God alone belongs this power; or, rather, not even to God himself. For his gracious gifts, it says, are irrevocable. God would not therefore reduce the human race to slavery, since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, spontaneously recalled us to freedom.

But if God does not enslave what is free, who is he that sets his own power above God’s?

This from St. Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes; Hall and Moriarty, trs., de Gruyter (New York, 1993) p. 74.

It is a pity that only the page reference to the translation is quoted, not the text reference with homily, chapter, etc.  But it is in fact I find from Homily 4, in the Greek p.335,4 – 338,22.1

What a world away this is, from the attitudes expressed in Martial, a man whose idea of a pleasant afternoon is to summon one of his slaves, and the girl-slave that the lad loves, and rape both of them.

  1. As given in the Hall translation pp.73-4.  The edition translated is In Ecclesiasten homiliae. Edidit Paulus Alexander in Gregorii Nysseni opera. Auxilio aliorum virorum doctorum edenda curavit Wernerus Jaeger. Volumen V (Leiden 1986), pp. 195-442.[↩]