340                        CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY.
many peaceful victories, won no longer over Constantines
or Justinians, in the bosom of civilized empires, but at an
epoch when Italy belonged to the Lombards (568 - 778),
Gaul to the Franks, Spain to the Goths, Portugal to the
Suevi, Germany and the North to nameless hordes, evan-
gelized by St. Boniface, to whom Pope Gregory III., in 735,
wrote to strive to put an end to the sale of slaves destined for
human sacrifices ; England to the Britons, Picts, and Scots ;
Africa to the Visigoths, Vandals, and Moors ; the East to
Phocas (602 - 610) and Chosroes (531 - 579) while awaiting
Mahomet.
What ! the Council-General of Algiers still expressed
the fear, at the close of 1858, that French tribunals could
not be made applicable to Mussulmans ; in English India,
the rulers dare not thwart the usages of those they govern ;
yet we demand that the Church, the only moral force that
struggled against heathenism and barbarism should, after
scarce two centuries of systematic influence, have wrested
servitude from hordes that hardly knew the meaning of
property or family, and whose whole history was limited to
subjugating or being subjugated.
Wherever it could do more, the Church went further;
and, to its glory as well as to the honor of France, it is
glorious to cite this Canon of the Council of Chalons-sur-
Saone, held in 650, under the reign of Clovis II.
" Pietatis est maximes et religionis intuitus, ut captivi-
tatis vinculum omnino a christianis redimatur. Unde sancta
synodus noscitur censuisse, ut nullus mancipium extra fines
vel terminos qui ad regnum domini Clodovei regis pertinent,
penitus debeat venumdare ; ne quod absit per tale commer-
cium aut captivitatis vinculo, vel quod pejus est, Judaica
servitute mancipia Christiana teneantur implicita."
In the religious statutes of Ina, king of Wessex, about
692, we find : —
" III. Servus si quid operis patrarit die dominico ex prse-
cepto domini sui, liber esto."