SLAVERY IN THE SIGHT OF CHRISTIANITY.           341
In the statutes of Withred, King of Kent, about 697,
rendered after the Council of Berghamstead, near Canter-
bury, we read again : —
" Ninth Canon. Si quis servum ad altare manumiserit,
liber esto."
" Fifteenth Canon. Si quis servo carnem in jejunio dede-
rit comedendam, servus liber exeat."
At the same epoch, Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury
(deceased in 690), who summed up in his person the East
and the West, since he was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, like
St. Paul, writes in his canonical rules, 117, "Servo pecu-
niam per laborem comparatam nulU licet auferre."
It would be as easy to multiply these quotations, bor-
rowed from the sixth and seventh centuries, as difficult to
find anything similar in the entire repertory of the laws of
the Southern United States in the nineteenth century.
IV. But, alas ! the march of humanity is not Uke the flow
of a peaceful river, but that of a torrent, — to-day dried up,
to-morrow swollen anew by the storm and overflowing tho
dikes raised to restrain it. Mahomet appeared. A new in-
vasion of barbarians overrun the world like a deluge. The
Saracens, Danes, Normans, and Moors filled Europe with
their depredations ; their victims, their captives, their
slaves, were counted by thousands ; the work of the Church
was to be recommenced ; it was recommenced. This it
was that baptized Bollo, arrested Genseric and Attila,
softened the manners of so many savage oppressors ; its
bishops protected the slaves and set the example of eman-
cipation ; new councils promulgated new decrees of gentle-
ness and justice, and even at London, in 1102, seven cen-
turies before the laws of Parliament, a council, assembled
by St. Anselm, interdicted the traffic in slaves, tolerated
during the whole of the Anglo-Saxon period (Lib. I. cap.
xxvii.) : " Ne quis illud nefarium negotium quo hactenus
in Anglia solebant homines sicut bruta animalia venumdari,