19.13. The Church and the Moral Protection of Women and Children
Another domain in which the authority of the bishops found ample scope for its assertion was the sphere of moral police, if one may use the expression. To begin with, pious Christians were directed by the Gospel to visit prisoners, and this commandment of Christ became the foundation for a supervision of the Clergy over the state of prisons, their sanitary conditions — baths, food, the treatment of convicts, etc. In those times when terrible need and famines were frequent, parents had the legal right to sell their children directly after their birth (sanguinolenti) and a person who had taken care of a foundling was considered its owner.
It is to ecclesiastical authorities that the emperors turn in order to prevent these rights from degenerating into a ruthless kidnapping of children The Church enforces a delay of ten days in order that parents who wish to take back their offspring should be able to formulate their claims. If they have not done so within the days of respite, let them never try to vindicate their flesh and blood any more: even the Church will treat them as murderers (Council of Vaison, cc. 9, 10). Again, ecclesiastics are called upon to prevent the sale of human beings for immoral purposes: no one ought to be forced to commit adultery or to offer oneself for prostitution, even if a slave, and bishops as well as secular judges have the power to emancipate slaves who have been subjected by their masters to such ignominious practices. They are also bound to watch that women, either free or unfree, should not be constrained to join companies of pantomime actors or singers against their will (C Just. i. 4, 10).
In conclusion it may be useful to point out once more that the social process taking place in the Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries presented features of decline and of renovation at the same time. It was brought about to a great extent by the increased influence of lower classes and the influx of barbarous customs, and in so far it expresses itself in an undoubted lowering of the level of culture. The sacrifice of political freedom and local patriotism to a centralised bureaucracy, the rigid state of siege and the caste legislation of the Constantinian and Theodosian era produced an unhealthy atmosphere of compulsion and servility. But at the same time the Christian Church asserts itself as a power not only in the spiritual domain, but also in the legal and economic sphere. Society falls back to a great extent on the lines of local life and of aristocratic organisation, but the movement in this direction is not a merely negative one: germs appear which in their further growth were destined to contribute powerfully towards the formation of feudal society.
END CHAPTER 19
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