r_, says Gaius.

"As soon as the Church met in council, it launched an anathema against
the masters who had exercised over their slaves this terrible right of
life and death. Were not the slaves, thanks to the right of sanctuary
and to their poverty, the dearest proteges of religion? Constantine, who
embodied in the laws the grand ideas of Christianity, valued the life of
a slave as highly as that of a freeman, and declared the master, who had
intentionally brought death upon his slave, guilty of murder. Between
this law and that of Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral
ideas: the slave was a thing; religion has made him a man."

Note the last words: "Between the law of the Gospel and that of
Antoninus there is a complete revolution in moral ideas: the slave was
a thing; religion has made him a man." The moral revolution which
transformed the slave into a citizen was effected, then, by Christianity
before the Barbarians set foot upon the soil of the empire. We have
only to trace the progress of this MORAL revolution in the PERSONNEL
of society. "But," M. Laboulaye rightly says, "it did not change the
condition of men in a moment, any more than that of things; between
slavery and liberty there was an abyss which could not be filled in a
day; the transitional step was servitude."

Now, what was servitude? In what did it differ from Roman slavery, and
whence came this difference? Let the same author answer.

2. Of servitude.--"I see, in the lord's manor, slaves charged with
domestic duties. Some are employed in the personal service of the
master; others are charged with household cares. The women spin the
wool; the men grind the grain, make the bread, or practise, in the
interest of the seignior, what little they know of the industrial arts.
The master punishes them when he chooses, kills them with impunity, and
sells them and theirs like so many cattle. The slave has no personality,
and consequently no _wehrgeld_ [59] peculiar to himself: he is a thing.
The _wehrgeld_ belongs to the master as a compensation for the loss of
his property. Whether the slave is killed or stolen, the indemnity does
not change, for the injury is the same; but the indemnity increases or
diminishes according to the value of the serf. In all these particulars
Germanic slavery and Roman servitude are alike."

This similarity is worthy of notice. Slavery is always the same, whether
in a Roman villa or on a Barbarian farm. The man,