Freethought & Rationalism Archive

12-12-2003, 03:38 AM

This is most surprising and likely to offend contracycle.

It appears that the RCC condemned slavery in no mean terms and excommunicated the perpetrators in 1462, 1537, 1639, 1741 and 1839. Now what is interesting about this is, not just that no one had a clue it happened, but also that at the time no one took any notice. It would seem that the influence of the papacy over matters of real economic importance was just about nil.

But this church opposition, which didn't exist in the Britain until later, did lead to legal codes that meant slaves held by the French and Spanish had more protection than those of the British. This is born out by comparing mortality rates, reproduction rates and free black populations. However, it seems to me that this accommodation by catholicism to bring short term improvement to slaves lives meant that abolitionist pressure was lower than it quickly became in Britain once Methodists and Quakers had mobalised.

Still, this is a very surprising discovery and turns several assumptions on their heads.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

contracycle · 12-12-2003, 04:29 AM

Cites and quotes please, your assertion alone is insufficient.

Toto · 12-12-2003, 01:23 PM

I am not sure what the point of the OP is.

If the church condemned slavery in 1462, what was it doing for the previous 1100 or so years?

From Pharsea's web page (maintained by a gay traditional Catholic, with a very nuanced view) I read:

Quote:

The history of the Church with respect to slavery is not one-sided. Much of the past can be excused with reference to the prejudice of the time. The problem for conservative Catholics, is that they wish to argue that the moral values in historic fact propounded by the Ordinary Magisterium are absolute and inerrant. Any Catholic apologetic that acknowledges the Church's past complicity in slavery has to discount such absolutism. While it might be argued that in practice Church authorities may have done the best they could; for the first eighteen hundred years of Christianity they both aided and abetted slavery and taught explicitly the theory that slavery was in accordance with Natural Law.

. . .

Chattel slavery was never approved of by the Church. The Fathers regarded all people as equal, in some sense, and refused to regard slaves as without rights and dignity. Slavery was never understood to be a good thing. According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia:

"Although the civil law on slavery still lagged behind the demands of Christianity .... nevertheless very great progress had been made. It continued in the Eastern Empire, but in the West it was abruptly checked by the barbarian invasions.... Here again the Church intervened. It did so in three ways: redeeming slaves; legislating for their benefit in its councils; setting an example of kind treatment."

Still, those theologians who considered slavery never doubted that it was legitimate. Their only difficulty was establishing how one person could obtain title over another.

. . .

It does appear that the Catholics were better than the southern US Protestants, who quoted the Bible to support slavery. But it does not appear that the church put its moral stance ahead of practicality.

Goliath · 12-12-2003, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by contracycle
Cites and quotes please, your assertion alone is insufficient.

I'll second this. Why in the nine hells should we believe you, Bede?

Sincerely,

Goliath

Toto · 12-12-2003, 02:18 PM

Goliath: please don't escalate or give Bede an excuse to complain about anything else. I think it's the middle of the night in Bede's time zone, so give him time to come back.

I expect he will be quoting from Rodney Stark's book. I am not sure if he can back up an assertion that the Catholic Church condemned the entire institution of slavery in 1462 or in the other years he cited, or just some particular instance of it, or why he thinks that this is important. But I will wait for his reply.

Toto, who is neither omniscient nor omnipresent.

Nomad · 12-12-2003, 02:37 PM

From Slavery and the Catholic Church citing Pope Eugene IV's Papal Bull Sicut Dudum (1435):

Quote:

...They have deprived the natives of their property or turned it to their own use, and have subjected some of the inhabitants of said islands to perpetual slavery, sold them to other persons and committed other various illicit and evil deeds against them... We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex that, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands...who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of any money... [Panzer, The Popes and Slavery p. 8; also pp. 75-78 with original critical Latin text]

And from Pope Paul III's Sublimis Deus (1537):

Quote:

...The exalted God loved the human race so much that He created man in such a condition that he was not only a sharer in good as are other creatures, but also that he would be able to reach and see face to face the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good... Seeing this and envying it, the enemy of the human race, who always opposes all good men so that the race may perish, has thought up a way, unheard of before now, by which he might impede the saving word of God from being preached to the nations. He (Satan) has stirred up some of his allies who, desiring to satisfy their own avarice, are presuming to assert far and wide that the Indians...be reduced to our service like brute animals, under the pretext that they are lacking the Catholic faith. And they reduce them to slavery, treating them with afflictions they would scarcely use with brute animals... by our Apostolic Authority decree and declare by these present letters that the same Indians and all other peoples - even though they are outside the faith - ...should not be deprived of their liberty... Rather they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery... [Ibid., pp.79-81 with original critical Latin text]

The site goes on to tell us:

Quote:

Popes Gregory XIV (Cum Sicuti, 1591), Urban VIII (Commissum Nobis, 1639) and Benedict XIV (Immensa Pastorum, 1741) also condemned slavery and the slave trade. Unlike the earlier papal letters, these excommunications were more directed towards the clergy than the laity. In 1839, Pope Gregory XVI issued a Bull, entitled In Supremo. Its main focus was against slave trading, but it also clearly condemned racial slavery:

We, by apostolic authority, warn and strongly exhort in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare bother unjustly, despoil of their possessions, or reduce to slavery Indians, Blacks or other such peoples. [Ibid., pp.101]

Unfortunately a few American bishops misinterpreted this Bull as condemning only the slave trade and not slavery itself. Bishop John England of Charleston actually wrote several letters to the Secretary of State under President Van Buren explaining that the Pope, in In Supremo, did not condemn slavery but only the slave trade (Ibid., pp. 67-68).

So it looks like the Popes spoke, and most either didn't listen, or they misunderstood/misinterpretted what they had said.

Nomad

Toto · 12-12-2003, 05:24 PM

It would appear that the Catholic tradition is inconsistent and mixed. It does not appear that the early Popes condemned slavery as an institution, although they appear to have condemned specific instances of it, or the mistreatment of slaves, or the slave trade, or slavery based only on racial or national criiteria.

In the science and Christianity thread, contracycle posted some quotes, about half involving Catholics, the rest pro-slavery American Protestants. I tracked them down (not too hard). Does anyone claim that these are misquoted or out of context?

24. Cruel avarice has so seized the hearts of some that though they glory in the name of Christians they provide the Saracens with arms and wood for helmets, and become their equals or even their superiors in wickedness and supply them with arms and necessaries to attack Christians. There are even some who for gain act as captains or pilots in galleys or Saracen pirate vessels. Therefore we declare that such persons should be cut off from the communion of the church and be excommunicated for their wickedness, that Catholic princes and civil magistrates should confiscate their possessions, and that if they are captured they should become the slaves of their captors.

Third Lateran Council (1179)

27 . . . With regard to the Brabanters, Aragonese, Navarrese, Basques, Coterelli and Triaverdini, who practise such cruelty upon Christians that they respect neither churches nor monasteries, and spare neither widows, orphans, old or young nor any age or sex, but like pagans destroy and lay everything waste, we likewise decree that those who hire, keep or support them, in the districts where they rage around, should be denounced publicly on Sundays and other solemn days in the churches, that they should be subject in every way to the same sentence and penalty as the above-mentioned heretics and that they should not be received into the communion of the church, unless they abjure their pernicious society and heresy. As long as such people persist in their wickedness, let all who are bound to them by any pact know that they are free from all obligations of loyalty, homage or any obedience. On these and on all the faithful we enjoin, for the remission of sins, that they oppose this scourge with all their might and by arms protect the christian people against them. Their goods are to be confiscated and princes free to subject them to slavery.

Third Lateran Council (1179)

"It is certainly a matter of faith that this sort of slavery in which a man serves his master as his slave, is altogether lawful. This is proved from Holy Scripture. It is also proved from reason for it is not unreasonable that just as things which are captured in a just war pass into the power and ownership of the victors, so persons captured in war pass into the ownership of the captors. . . All theologians are unanimous on this."
[Leander: Quaestiones Morales Theologicae, Lyons 1668 - 1692, Tome VIII, De Quarto Decalogi Praecepto, Tract. IV, Disp. I, Q. 3.] quoted by Religious Tolerance site on Christianity and Slavery and here, which states:

Quote:

It is embarrassing to admit that no serious objection to slavery was raised by Christians prior to the eighteenth century. True, the Manicheans in the fourth century had urged slaves to emancipate themselves. But they were heretics and their opinions on this score were contradicted by orthodox churchmen. Augustine, for instance, seems to have regarded slavery as a necessary evil in a fallen world. While not unreservedly endorsing the institution, he nevertheless permitted it by the same kind of pragmatic arguments that were used to defend the "just war". The legitimacy of slavery was thereafter enshrined in canon law. In 1519 Bartholomew De Las Casas, a Dominican monk, dared to challenge it, at least in respect to the enslavement of American Indians. But he was scorned as an eccentric fool. The Papacy itself owned many hundreds of slaves and had done so for centuries. How could the practice possibly be wrong? Only two conditions were laid down to limit the acquisition of slaves. They had to be non-Christian (i.e. pagan or Muslim) and they had to be captured during "just" warfare (i.e. one fought by the armies of a "Christian" nation). In the late seventeenth century the Roman Catholic theologian, Leander, could confidently declare:

"It is certainly a matter of faith that this sort of slavery ... is proved from Holy Scripture.... All theologians are unanimous on this."

The scriptural support to which Leander and others referred was two-fold. First, Moses in the Old Testament law made provision for slavery as an institution within Israel. Second, neither Jesus nor the apostles raised any moral objection to slavery within the Roman empire. In fact both Paul and Peter advise Christian slaves to accept their servitude with meekness, obedience and dignity (Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:22, I Peter 2:18-21).

In 1685, the Spanish Government's Council of the Indies reported to the King: "The can be no doubt as to the necessity of those slaves for the support of the kingdom of the Indies....; and [that] with regard to the point of conscience the trade may continue because of the reasons expressed, the authorities cited, and its long lived and general custom in the kingdoms of Castile, America and Portugal, without any objection on the part of his Holiness or ecclesiastical estate, but rather with the tolerance of them all"
Elkins: "Slavery" (1968) pp 68-72 cited here

In 1866, the Holy Office of the Vatican issued a statement that read: "Slavery itself...is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law...The purchaser [of the slave] should carefully examine whether the slave who is put up for sale has been justly or unjustly deprived of his liberty, and that the vendor should do nothing which might endanger the life, virtue, or Catholic faith of the slave." Quoted by Religious Tolerance on CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY: THE FINAL ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN CHRISTIAN LANDS

Compare that last with Pope Gregory's 1839 statement. The church seems to be groping towards a condemnation of slavery, but can't find a basis to condemn all slavery, since the Bible supports the institution of slavery.

yummyfur · 12-12-2003, 06:42 PM

well ignoring serfdom which the Church was the main participant in.

We have the Pope Nicholas V bulls

Quote:

The policies and ideas that flowed from these understandings of African inferiority only served to crystallize racial hierarchies, not only in Iberia, but across Europe. The first transnational, institutional endorsement of African slavery occurred in 1452 when Pope Nicholas V issued the bull, Dum Diversas, which granted King Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce to �perpetual slavery� all �Saracens and pagans and other infidels and enemies of Christ� in West Africa. In 1454, the Pope followed up Dum Diversas with Romanus Pontifex, which granted Portugal the more specific right to conquer and enslave all peoples south of Cape Bojador.

http://www.yale.edu/glc/events/race/Sweet.pdf

Most of the other bulls state that it is wrong to enslave certain christians. latter adding persons found capable of becoming christians by possessing "human nature" as determined by the church. So those who were considered sub human(Africans) were fine, also those beyond redemption.

For example the bull "Sublimus Dei" from 1537

Quote:

it is necessary that he should possess the nature and faculties enabling him to receive that faith; and that whoever is thus endowed should be capable of receiving that same faith.

http://www.newadvent.org/docs/pa03sd.htm

Only clearly states that the Indians have the capacity for Faith, and make no specific mentions of Africans, which the Church was aware of way before Indians, so they don't constitute "who may later be discovered by Christians". Considering that there was already a large Christian African slave trade, it's pretty strange for him not to say specifically that African's are "truly men". In fact all the "anti-slavery" bulls until 1839 make no mention of the largest slave trade in Africa, they all refer to Indians.

The key to this may be found in the Bull of Alexander VI who states that many of the Indians already seem to believe in One God already, so they must merely be instructed on being Catholics. It might have been thought that since sub-saharan Africans were generally polytheists, they were not clearly capable of Christian Faith. There was also a general concensus that "cannibal" Indians were fair game. For example in 1503 the Spanish Crown forbid making slaves or taking liberty or possesions of Indians, with the exception of those determined to be cannibals. Not suprisingly the number of "cannibals" rose. The Crown, of course, never forbid enslaving Africans.

Also, since the Vatican had granted the Portugese a perpetual monopoly on trade in African, any other country trading in Africa was violating this Papal bull, so sometimes the Popes would criticize the Spanish African slave trade, but for the wrong reasons (violation of a Papal monopoly).

And finally the Church gartuitosly approved of brutal conquest of non-Catholics for conversions sake.

Patrick Schoeb

12-13-2003, 10:58 AM

It seems fairly clear that up until the twelfth century the church did not condemn enslaving non-Christians, which meant saracens in particular. Thus Moslems and Christians happily enslaved each other for centuries.

Then we find slavery per se condemned by Aquinas in his Summa although it wasn't something that existed away from the borders of Europe. As Stark details this was the start of a sea change in Catholic attitudes. In the 1430s Eugene IV condemned the Spanish enslaving the newly colonised Canary Islanders in the bull Sicut dudum which was followed up by both Pius II and Sixtus IV. Clearly the Spanish weren't taking much notice.

After Domincan pressure to end the enslavement of Indians in the New World, Paul III issued a bull that stated:

Quote:

notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

http://www.newadvent.org/docs/pa03sd.htm

Contrary to yummyfur's out of context quote, this clearly applies to all peoples.

This also had no effect even though re-enacted by Urban VIII in 1639. The Holy Office, that Religious Tolerance claims said slavery is OK in 1866, actually condemned it outright on March 20, 1686.

Details from Stark, 2003 pages 330-332. Extract reprinted here

It seems we have two different stories. Will we find the religioustolerance.org. story to be as mythical as most of the rest of the site? I'll look up the Nicholas V bulls that no-one has a reference for and see what else I can find.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

12-12-2003, 03:38 AM	#1
Bede Guest Posts: n/a	Catholicism and Slavery This is most surprising and likely to offend contracycle. It appears that the RCC condemned slavery in no mean terms and excommunicated the perpetrators in 1462, 1537, 1639, 1741 and 1839. Now what is interesting about this is, not just that no one had a clue it happened, but also that at the time no one took any notice. It would seem that the influence of the papacy over matters of real economic importance was just about nil. But this church opposition, which didn't exist in the Britain until later, did lead to legal codes that meant slaves held by the French and Spanish had more protection than those of the British. This is born out by comparing mortality rates, reproduction rates and free black populations. However, it seems to me that this accommodation by catholicism to bring short term improvement to slaves lives meant that abolitionist pressure was lower than it quickly became in Britain once Methodists and Quakers had mobalised. Still, this is a very surprising discovery and turns several assumptions on their heads. Yours Bede Bede's Library - faith and reason

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12-12-2003, 04:29 AM	#2
contracycle Banned Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: London Posts: 1,425	Cites and quotes please, your assertion alone is insufficient.

12-12-2003, 02:18 PM	#5
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Goliath: please don't escalate or give Bede an excuse to complain about anything else. I think it's the middle of the night in Bede's time zone, so give him time to come back. I expect he will be quoting from Rodney Stark's book. I am not sure if he can back up an assertion that the Catholic Church condemned the entire institution of slavery in 1462 or in the other years he cited, or just some particular instance of it, or why he thinks that this is important. But I will wait for his reply. Toto, who is neither omniscient nor omnipresent.

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