1ock. And this is to be observed with regard to those where there has been a lawful union, and with the will of the owners."

In the year 816, a council was held at Aix-la-Chapelle, in which a large portion of the canon law then in force regarding the clergy was imbodied into one hundred and forty-five chapters. After the session of the council, the emperor published a capitulary containing thirty chapters; the sixth of which complains of the continued indiscretion of bishops in ordaining servants, contrary to the canons, and forbids such ordinations except upon the master's giving full liberty to the slave. If a servant shall impose upon a bishop by false witnesses or documents of freedom, and thus procure ordination, he shall be deposed and taken back by his owner. If the descendant of a slave who came from abroad shall have been educated and ordained, where there was no knowledge of his condition, should his owner subsequently discover him and prove his property, if this owner grants him liberty, he may keep his clerical rank; but if the master asserts his right and carries him away, though the slave does not lose his character of order, he loses his rank, and cannot officiate. Should masters give servants freedom that they may be capable of ordination, it shall be in the master's discretion to give or to withhold the property necessary to enable the person to get orders.

The archbishops are to have in each province the emperor's authority in the original, to authorize their ordaining the servants of the church, and the suffragan bishops are to have copies of this original, and when such servant is to be ordained, this authority must be read for the people from the pulpit or at the corner of the altar. The like form was to be observed when any of the laity desired to have any servant of the church promoted to orders, or when the like promotion was petitioned for by the prior of a chapter or of a monastery. Lotharius, the emperor, published a capitulary in Rome, in 842.

In the third chapter of the first part, we find the following expression:

In electione autem Romani pontificis nullus, sive liber sive servus, præsumat aliquod impedimentum facere.

"Let no one, whether freeman or slave, presume to create any impediment in the election of the Roman pontiff."

Which leads us to suspect that some slaves possessed considerable power or influence.

In the second chapter, fines are imposed for creating riots in

any church. words:

And the chapter concludes in the following

Et qui non habet unde ad ecclesiam persolvat, tradat se in servitio eidem ecclesiæ, usque dum totum debitum persolvat.

"And let him who has not the means of paying the church, give himself in servitude to that same church until he pays the

whole debt."

By the tenth chapter he restrained the power of manumission. Quod per xxx annos servus liber fieri non possit, si pater illius servus, aut mater ancilla fuit. Similiter de Aldionibus præcipimus. "That a slave whose father or whose mother was a slave cannot become free before thirty years of age. We order that the same shall be the case respecting Aldions."

In the twelfth he states that these are but a continuance of the laws of his grandfather Charles and of his father Louis. And in tit. i. 12 of Ulpian, reference is made to a variety of enactments of the ancient Roman law, that a slave manumitted under the age of thirty could not be a Roman citizen except by a special grant of a court.

The thirteenth declares that free women who unite with their own slaves are in the royal power, and are given up, together with their children, to slavery among the Lombards.

The fourteenth enacts that a free woman who shall unite herself to the male slave of another, and remain so for a year and a day, shall, together with her children, become enslaved to her husband's owner.

The fifteenth regulates that if the free husband of a free woman shall, for crime or debt, bring himself into servitude to another, and she not consent to remain with him, the children are free; but if she die, and another free woman, knowing his condition, marries him, the children of this latter shall be slaves.

A number of chapters are also on these records showing the insufficiency of servile testimony. Others provide against the oppression of poor freemen, so that they shall not be easily compelled to sell themselves into slavery.

About the year 860, Pope Nicholas I. sent to the newly converted Christians of Bulgaria answers to several inquiries which they made for the regulation of their conduct. The ninety-seventh regards slaves who accuse their masters to the prince or to the court: and the pope refers them to the obligation of the master as given in chapter vi. of the epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians,

(not to use threatenings towards their servants,) and then asks, how much more strongly does the spirit of this maxim of kindness and affection bear upon the servant, and teach him to be of an humble and forgiving disposition, such as that chapter enjoins; referring also to the direction of our Saviour, Luke vi. 37, and the injunction of the apostle, 1 Thess. v. 15, for their direction.

At this period of time, the piratical wars of the Northmen, who were perpetually making inroads on the rest of Europe, kept the whole of Christendom in commotion, and marked perhaps the darkest period of the dark ages.

LESSON XVIII.

UNCONNECTED FACTS.

IN 1030, Peter, bishop of Girona, in Spain, came to Rome, and begged leave of the pope (John XIX.) to wear the pall twelve days in the year, promising to redeem thirty slaves then in captivity among the Saracens, provided his holiness granted him this request. It was readily granted. See Bower, vol. v. p. 153.

Shortly after the 30th October, 1051, Pope Leo IX., having visited Vercelli and Augsburg, returned to Rome, and held a council soon after Easter, in which he excommunicated Gregory, bishop of Vercelli, for committing adultery with a widow betrothed to his uncle. The bishop was absent when this sentence was given, but he flew to Rome as soon as he heard of it; and upon his promising to perform the penance that his holiness imposed upon him, he was absolved from the excommunication, and restored to the functions of his office. On that occasion the canons issued by other councils against the incontinence of the clergy were confirmed, and "some new ones were added, and, in order to check more effectually the scandalous irregularity of the Roman clergy in particular, it was decreed, at the request of the pope, that all women who should for the future prostitute themselves to the priests within the walls of Rome should be condemned to serve as slaves in the Lateran palace." See Herman, ad an. 1051; also Bower, idem, p. 183.

By one of Constantine's laws, they who ravished virgins or stole them, even with their consent, against the will of their parents,

(with the view to make slaves of them or not,) were burned alive. Cod. Theodos. 1. ix. tit. 29, leg. 1. The severity of this law was somewhat mitigated by Constantius, but he still made it a capital offence. Ibid. leg. 2. It was upon this law, Pope Hadrian II. applied to the emperor for redress against Eleutherius, who had carried off his daughter Stephania by force, and married her, although she was betrothed to another. See Bower, idem, p. 11. We have a remarkable letter, written by Gregory VII., in January, 1080, in answer to one he had received from Vratislaus, duke of Bohemia, desiring leave to have Divine service performed in the Sclavonian tongue, that is, in the language of the country. That letter the pope answered in the following words:

"As you desire us to allow Divine service to be performed among you in the Sclavonian tongue, know that by no means can I grant your request, it being manifest to all, who will but reflect, that it has pleased the Almighty that the Scripture should be withheld from some, and not understood by all, lest it should fall into contempt, or lead the unlearned into error. And it must not be alleged that all were allowed, in the primitive times, to read the Scriptures, it being well known that in those early times the church connived at many things, which the holy fathers disapproved and corrected when the Christian religion was firmly established. He cannot therefore grant, but absolutely forbid, by the authority of Almighty God and his blessed apostle Peter, what you ask, and command you to oppose to the utmost of your power all who require it." Greg. 1. vii. ep. ii.; also Bower, idem, p. 279.

On the subject of the above letter, it should be remembered none spoke the Sclavonic at that day except the Sclavonians themselves; that the great mass of that people were slaves, either to some few individuals of their own nation, or to the other European nations, by whom they had been captured, or to whom they had been sold. They were a nation of slaves, and hence the Romans called their language Servian, from servus, a slave. There is still extant among the ancient German archives some account of the physical and moral appearance of this people, representing them as robust, filthy, faithless, and extremely wicked. They called themselves sclava or sclavas, &c., which word, in their language, implied an elevated distinction, and was in common use as a suffix to individual names, indicating that the person was highly elevated among his countrymen, as in this case, Vrati-Slaus-indi

cating the fact that Vrati was famous, elevated, a man of high and honourable distinction. Such men often held immense numbers of their less elevated countrymen in bondage. From the form and meaning of this suffix, some modern scholars have erroneously supposed it to have come from the Latin, laus. We may form some idea of the feelings of Pope Gregory VII., upon this application, by imagining what would have been the feelings of a Virginia legislature, fifty years ago, had some free African, then there, petitioned to have the laws published in Eboe, for the benefit of the slaves. In the above letter, the meaning of the assertion, "in those early times the church connived at many things which the holy fathers disapproved," &c., at this late day is very liable to be misconceived. He does not allude to any thing said or done by Jesus Christ or his apostles, but to the action of his predecessors in the pontificate on this very subject. About the year 860, Pope Nicholas I. granted this very privilege to the Sclavonians in Moravia; and about ten years after, the same was renewed by Hadrian II., upon the request of St. Cyril, the apostle of the Moravians. See the Life of Cyril, (Latin,) page 22. And John VIII., in the year 882, confirmed the same, at the request of Sfento Pulcher, prince of Moravia, calling it the license granted by Pope Nicholas, "of saying the canonical hours and celebrating mass in their native language."

"The Sclavonian language we justly commend," says the pope in his letter to the prince," and order the praise and the works of Christ our Lord to be celebrated in that tongue, being directed by Divine authority to praise the Lord, not in three only, but in all languages, agreeably to what we find in holy writ- Praise ye the Lord, all ye nations, and bless him, all ye people.' The apostles announced the wonderful works of God in all languages," &c., "and he who made the three chief languages, the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin, created all the rest for his praise and glory." See Johan. ep. 247.

The same privilege was granted by the Greek church to the Russians, who speak the Sclavonian language; and they perform, to this day, as well as the Moravians, Divine service in their native language. The pope, however, ordered the gospel to be first read in Latin, and afterwards, for the sake of those who understood not that language, in the Sclavonian. (See Bower, idem, p. 37.) It is not relevant to our subject to inquire what facts presented themselves to the mind of Gregory VII., whereby he apprehended that the Scripture might "fall into contempt," or they "lead the un