Search

Among Constantine’s broad legal and institutional reforms, manumissio in ecclesia (“manumission in the church”) named a new public act to release a person legally from slavery and into full Roman citizenship. The enfranchisement took the form of solemn rites performed by the owner in a church before the witnesses of its congregation and presided over by clergy (priests, the bishop; Priest/Presbyter; Bishop [Episcopos]), empowered like civil magistrates to become the legal guarantors.Antecedents Manumissio in ecclesia had several classical models. Religious temples, oracles, and shrines had long enjoyed recognition in Greco-Roman culture as places of legal asylum for slaves (Slave/Slavery) and customary locations of their manumission. Especially in the Greek East, abundant sacral manumission inscriptions attest that the personal liberation of a slave before priests in a temple was a common Hellenistic practice. The multifarious rites consecrated or otherwise sold the slave to a divinity in a public a…