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, o…

[German Version] I. General The word slavery denotes a social structure (including its normative legal and ethical standards) in which certain individuals are considered and treated as objects. A slave owner has the right to decide what the slaves do, as well as where and how they live; the owner also has an absolute right of disposition over their bodies and lives and the right to sell them like any other property. The far-reaching implications of this definition distinguish slavery from other forms of unfreedom such as debt servitude, serfdom, and bondage. Slavery was widespread in antiquity. There were many ways for a person to be enslaved: being taken as a prisoner of war, being captured (often by pirates at sea), over-indebtedness (although debt servitude was not at all points identical with slavery), as punishment for a crime, or by birth. Poverty and dependence as such – widespread in Late Antiquity – were not the same as slavery, although de facto the impoverished found themselves far below the average situation of slaves. Aristotle classically defined a slave as an animated instrument, not a person in the strict sense.…