ABSTRACT
Slavery, indeed, which had revived into new life during the two centuries of the invasions, was tending to become transformed and to disappear during the last four centuries of the Dark Ages. Just as the lack of labour and the needs of agrarian colonization forced the landowners to bind down the colonus to the soil, so also it became necessary to keep the slave on the land and to encourage his labour by raising his status. Moreover, Christianity, which proclaims the dignity and equality of all human beings, sapped the foundations of the institution of slavery. It is true that war, misery, criminal justice, and civil law continued to augment the ranks of those who were slaves by birth, and there were slave-markets and slave-traders. Human cattle abounded still, and the price of slaves fell even lower, so low that in 725 it was between twelve and
fifteen gold pieces for children and women. In Ireland an adult female slave was worth three milch cows. All the social classes which had access to landownership-kings, nobles, bishops, clerks, monks, freemen-possessed slaves. It was even advantageous to be a slave of the royal domain (fiscelanus) or on an ecclesiastical estate (servus ecclesiasticus), because a certain status and a few privileges attached to these. The position of the slave was still at first a very hard one; he had no civil personality and no legal family; he was master neither of his wife, nor of his children, nor of his possessions; he was classed with the beasts, and in a barbarous age was subjected to treatment at which humanity shudders. But little by little, under the influence of economic necessity, which caused a greater and greater value to be attached to his life and labour, and under the action of those Gospel maxims of charity which the leaders of religion professed, slavery grew milder. The sale of slaves was regulated or prohibited, their life was guaranteed by religious or civil law, their spiritual personality was recognized, since they were admitted to the priesthood, and their moral value was elevated, since they were proclaimed to be sons of the same God as their master, and, like him, destined for the rewards and punishments of the future life. The marriage of a slave and certain of his family rights were recognized. He acquired the beginnings of a civil status. His right to movable property was recognized, since he was allowed to own his " hoard " of possessions. The Sabbath rest was assured to him, and his masters were taught that they had certain charitable duties towards him.
