very took many forms." The
vicissitudes of life produced the strongest contrasts of fortune.
Freeman[852] mentions a case in which a boy king reigned, but his
mother, formerly a slave woman, reigned as queen in rank and authority,
and the power was really exercised by the man who was once her owner.
"In the system of a Frankish kingdom a slave-born queen could play, with
more of legal sanction, the part often played in Mohammedan courts by
the mother of the sultan, son of a slave." The Franks had a peculiar
ceremony of manumission. The lord struck a coin from the hand of his
slave to the ground, and the slave became free.[853] Philippe le Bel,
enfranchising the serfs of Valois, in the interest of the _Fiscus_,
uttered a generality which Louis le Hutin reiterated: "Seeing that every
human creature who is formed in the image of our Lord, ought, generally
speaking, to be free by natural right,--no one ought to be a serf in
France." In the eighth and ninth centuries serfs were sold to Jews who
sold them to Mohammedans. Montpelier carried on a slave trade with the
Saracens. The clergy joined in this trade in the twelfth century, and it
is said to have lasted until the fifteenth century.[854] The Romance of
Hervis (of about the beginning of the thirteenth century) turns on the
story of a youth who ransomed a girl who had been kidnapped by some
soldiers. They proposed to take her to Paris and sell her at the fair
there. The Parliament of Bordeaux, in 1571, granted liberty to
Ethiopians and other slaves, "since France cannot admit any servitude."
Still slavery existed in the southern provinces, including persons of
every color and nationality.[855] Biot[856] thinks that the slave trade
in the Middle Ages was carried on chiefly by pirates, so that slave
markets existed on the coast only, not inland. The Council of Armagh,
in 1171, forbade the Irish to hold English slaves and mentions the sale
of their children by the English.[857] Thomas Aquinas is led by
Aristotle to approve of slavery. Like Aristotle he holds it to be in the
order of nature.[858] A society was founded in Spain at the beginning of
the thirteenth century to redeem Christian captives from Moorish
slavery. The pious made gifts to this society to be used in its work.
Christians sold kidnapped persons to the Moors that they might be
redeemed again. In 1322 the Council of Valladolid imposed
excommunication on the sale of men. In the fourteenth century the
Venetians an