How is it possible for someone to condone the enslavement of other human beings? How could anyone justify or tolerate slavery?
While twenty-first-century Westerners may find it unthinkable, many cultures throughout history have accepted slavery—that is, the practice of a person being owned by someone else and forced to work for that person—as an institution.
What else could an army in the ancient world do with the soldiers they had defeated? Enslaving them was more profitable than executing them and less dangerous than letting them go free. In cultures without bankruptcy laws, selling oneself or one’s children into slavery was often the only way to pay off debts. Tribes from Africa and the Americas sometimes kidnapped and enslaved members of other tribes to demonstrate their superior strength. Many cultures have also permitted slavery for a much more practical reason: profit.
Racial slavery in North America, for example, arose out of the colonists’ desire to make themselves more profitable to the British Crown. Some of the labor-intensive crops planted in the New World required a lot of cheap labor, and the cheaper the better. By the time of the Civil War, Southern states had become so financially dependent on enslaved labor that they were willing to fight and die rather than give it up.
Something similar had happened a few centuries earlier in the Spanish-controlled regions of the New World. When the Spaniards founded the city of Cartagena (in modern Colombia) in 1533, their profit motive was gold. They needed a lot of it to pay off their war debts. The conquistadores tried enslaving the native Americans to work in their gold mines, but the natives couldn’t handle the difficult conditions. That’s why they decided to import people from Africa to work as slaves in the mines.
Young Saint Peter Claver (1581-1654) had no idea that most of his life’s work would involve caring for African slaves. He was just the son of a Spanish farmer who was intelligent enough to study at the University of Barcelona and was accepted into the Jesuit order. Peter was somewhat timid by nature, and he was probably astonished when his community’s doorkeeper, of all people, prophesied that he would be sent to evangelize in South America. Of course, the future saint Alphonsus Rodriguez (d. 1617) was no ordinary doorkeeper. But when the prediction came true and Peter’s superiors decided to send him to Colombia, he obeyed.
Although a third or sometimes even half of the Africans died while traveling to South America, slave traders could still make a profit from the survivors. Driven by their desire for that profit, the slavers and the rest of society ignored the many condemnations of the slave trade made by popes, as well as by individual priests and bishops.
With frightening regularity, a thousand African slaves arrived in Cartagena each month. These men, women, and children had been chained together and cooped up in the ship’s hold, had endured a long sea voyage in stifling heat, and were living in the stench of blood, refuse, and other human beings. It is not surprising that some Africans immediately jumped into the sea when they got off the boat, drowning themselves to end their suffering. They had been separated from their families, were confused about their new surroundings, and spoke many different dialects, none of which was Spanish.
When Peter arrived in Colombia, he had not yet been ordained. He was first sent to a poor, understaffed Jesuit community to complete his studies, and there he humbly accepted the lowest duties in the house. He even tried to convince his superiors to let him remain a religious brother, but they simply ordered him to accept ordination as a priest.
Peter was first assigned to assist the priest he was replacing, Father Alfonso de Sandoval. Sandoval admitted that he was completely overcome every time a slave ship arrived. The sights, sounds, and smells of hundreds of screaming, crying, disoriented, hungry, sick, and dying people were overwhelming. But not for Peter, whose heart filled with joy as he saw so many people in need of material, emotional, and spiritual aid. He immediately and famously declared himself a “slave” of these slaves.
During the decades that Peter cared for the Africans who arrived in Colombia, he learned African dialects so he could speak with them, and he found translators to communicate with those speaking dialects that he could not speak. He brought them food and gifts, sometimes taking a small boat to an arriving ship to greet the Africans even before they disembarked. As Peter distributed gifts to those he served, he told his assistants, “We must speak to them with our hands, before we try to speak to them with our lips.”1 He cared for the sick, sought out those in prison, and comforted the dying. In brief, he tirelessly showed them the love of Jesus Christ by his presence and won their hearts through his kindness.
Of course, as a priest, he also evangelized them. With the help of his translators, whom he trained as catechists, he taught them about God and explained how much God loved them. Peter baptized babies and the dying, as well as those he was able to formally instruct about the Catholic faith. Through his preaching of the Good News, he offered the hope found in Jesus Christ to thousands of hopeless people—300,000 by his own count.
The slavers hated him, and local leaders caused him endless trouble and humiliation. Some wealthy women publicly whined about the indignity of having to attend Mass in the same church with their slaves. When these women complained about being forced to use the same confessional, Fr. Claver very humbly disarmed them by saying, “My confessional was never meant for ladies of quality. It is too narrow for their gowns. It is only suited to poor… women.”2
Peter Claver could not and did not end slavery in Colombia. From a political perspective, he did not even try. Abolition only occurred through a gradual process, involving decrees, rebellions, and an insurrection, officially ending in 1851, fourteen years before abolition occurred in the United States.
Unfortunately, slavery is still alive and well in our own time, although in different forms. A forced labor camp in a communist country is an obvious example. Slavery is common in many countries today in the Middle East. Human trafficking is a widespread form of slavery found even in Western countries. Human trafficking is a vile but not surprising result of the Sexual Revolution, which promotes and encourages the uncontrolled sexual desires of adults. While we can certainly hope that none of the 32,000 unaccompanied minors who have disappeared in our country between 2019 and 2023 are being trafficked for work or sex, it is more likely that at least some are.
What can we learn from Saint Peter Claver about how to fight slavery? Peter recognized that, as a priest, God was calling him to pour himself out to meet the spiritual and material needs of slaves. We may not be called to the same level of heroic sacrifice for this one issue, but we should at least be aware of the warning signs that indicate that a person is being trafficked, particularly if we regularly interact with children or teens. We can also seek out resources inside and outside the Church to be better educated and equipped about this form of modern slavery.
Peter’s most effective weapon in confronting slavery, however, does not require priestly ordination or access to the internet. It was his Christlike compassion. He fought the evils of slavery simply by treating every human being as a child of God and letting his Christlike example gradually work in the hearts and consciences of those around him.
After all, it is only when we allow our hearts to grow hardened that we prefer our own financial comfort over the rights of other human beings. Then we allow evils like slavery to become cultural institutions. We can win the battle to end slavery—and other cultural ills, such as abortion—by beginning all our efforts with the compassion of Jesus Christ, just like Saint Peter Claver.
(Editor’s note: This essay was posted originally on September 9, 2024.)
Endnotes:
1 Arnold Lunn, A Saint in the Slave Trade: Peter Claver (1581-1654) (Manchester, New Hampshire: Sophia Institute Press, 2021), 104.
2 Ibid, 110.
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But note: St. Peter ministered to the physical and spiritual needs of the enslaved. He was no less involved in evangelizing them as he was in feeding them. Three hundred years later we remember him for good reason.
Good article. But please let us remember, too, the extraordinary work of St. John of Matha, who founded one of the two orders dedicated to help the millions of enslaved Christians. See below the link to a scholarly interview on the subject by CWR Fr. Connollly. The facts cited in the interview show how a non-Christian religion actually promoted the enslaving of Christians. This is an excerpt:
“While celebrating his first Mass, St. John of Matha (1160-1213)—whose Feast is celebrated on December 17th—was granted the signal favor of having God’s Will for his priesthood revealed clearly to him. At the elevation of the Host, he fell into ecstasy at the sight of an angel appearing to him clad in a white robe with a red and blue cross upon his breast. The angel had his arms crossed with his hands resting protectively upon two manacled slaves on each side, a white man and a black man. Divinely illumined, John of Matha resolved to dedicate his priesthood to the mission of ransoming Christian slaves held captive by the Muslims.”
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/12/16/the-forgotten-history-of-christian-slavery-under-islam/
A graphic portrayal of the horrors of slavery, the ship transport account. Slavery a cultural institution before Christ, during his institution of the Church, and long after. It wasn’t until the African slave trade became an industry for slavers that national consciences were aroused the Church much earlier among missionary priests and bishops.
Insofar as slavery today the issue that evolved from it is today’s human trafficking which Ms Beutner adroitly attacks. That slavery is most inhuman and usually ends with death by substance overuse or a million cuts. Children are especially the most vulnerable countless little lives swallowed up at the southern border exploited by cartels purchased and violated until death in America. All under the vacant eyes of this Administration and the pious eyes of our bishops who adamantly defend the open border that the Administration maintains to gain votes.
That leaves space for internet missionary priests. Those of us who have served in the African missions and those who are committed to their parish. I’m confidant a bishop or two reads CWR and gets the drift of what most of us have to say about the border crisis and child trafficking, and the imputed moral responsibility for those who defend open borders and illegal migration despite what His Holiness says in calling those who willfully oppose migration serious sinners.
St.Peter Claver, Sj….pray for us
Amen
I tend to reject the concept that there was a “racial’ necessity to slavery. The issue was never about a specific race, but exclusively about cheap labor. In the Americas there were cases of white men being enslaved – they were enslaved not due to race, but due to being a case of cheap slavery. The slavery of black people was not a case of race, but of being cheaply purchased and used for a myriad of purposes.
The continent of Africa was rife with slavery from the Muslim slave traders of northern Africa to the three kingdoms of middle and south Africa whose entire economies were built on slavery – specifically blacks owning blacks for slave labor.
Slavery has been found on every populated continent since time began. It has never been about race; racial activists choose to make it about race to achieve their own activist objectives.
Exactly so. There was no intrinsic connection between race and slavery throughout history. Here are a few random examples. In the 17th C, rebel Englishmen were sentenced to slavery in the sugar islands, the worse of all places to be a slave in the New World. There were more white Europeans enslaved in Muslim North Africa than enslaved black Africans brought to the U.S. The busiest slave traders in early medieval Europe were the Vikings who sold white captives to white masters. Perhaps 20% of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves, from every color and ethnic group in their known world. A major difference between Roman slaves and those in the antebellum South is that the former had a better chance of manumission and integration into free society.
I’m reasonably certain that almost all of us with roots in Europe and the Middle East had had slave ancestors somewhere, some time. (It wasn’t quite slavery, but I can document that some of my German forebears were serfs of the Abbey of Schwartzach.)
But after slavery came separate drinking fountains! Race?
Yes, Br. Jacques. Separate drinking fountains were about race even if slavery wasn’t always about that.
Exceedingly unpleasant, but not in fact found everywhere in the US. And bias, even nasty bias, is a long way from being a slave. Change happens slowly.
Thank you LJ. That’s true. Separate drinking fountains weren’t found everywhere in North America but historically, slavery was.
Over 40% of colonial New York City households had slaves. Colonial Connecticut had virtual plantations. Newport, Rhode Island was an important center for the slave trade.
The South for better and for worse has always been behind the times and as you state correctly, change happens slowly.
And slavery preceded European settlement. The indigenous tribal peoples were practicing slavery- just like the rest of us were.
And after separate drinking fountains (which no longer exist) came the sexual enslavement of 7K Yezidi women and girls by ISIS in 2014-2015. To this day, some have not returned home to their families.
If you all cared about ending slavery you would push back on modern day wage slavery and the notion that one must “earn” a living. The whole concept of “earning a living” is a Satanic evil that too many within the church push and promote under the lie that it is one’s “purpose”. If your purpose in life is toiling away day after day so some lazy person can reap the fruit of your labor you are lost and never had a “purpose” to begin with. No one asked to be born. None of us asked to be here at all, so this notion that we must work to “earn” our living and to find “purpose” is a whole lot of malarky.
Reject wage slavery. Reject work. Reject the sin of doing something for someone else in exchange for “payment”
What do you propose instead of work? Nothing? Govt welfare? Communism? How do you plan to buy food, darling?
In fact I oppose the recent trend to mandatory excessive minimum wages. California just lost 18,000 minimum wage jobs due to the institution of this know-it-all legislation. The companies voted to leave California, taking their jobs with them. Far too many workers by my observation do their jobs badly, and sloppily, or with an attitude. It would be no shock if instead of a raise, many were fired. No shock either to observe so many companies turning to technology ( automated ordering systems at MCDonalds) rather than use poorly motivated human labor.
Evangelization and conversion are ongoing and never-ending opportunities. Slavery needs to be banished from the face of the earth. Slave owners and their victims need to be evangelized. St. Peter Claver – Pray for us.
“Racial slavery in North America, for example, arose out of the colonists’ desire to make themselves more profitable to the British Crown. Some of the labor-intensive crops planted in the New World required a lot of cheap labor, and the cheaper the better.”
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Convicts actually offered cheaper labor.
In early colonial days thousands of British convicts-men , women, & children were transported & sold to the highest bidder to work in the Virginia & Maryland tobacco fields. They could be purchased for less than African slaves & if they survived, their limited term of servitude wasn’t always honored.
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“Indentured servants voluntarily entered into the master-servant arrangement for a specified number of years (between five and seven), made the decision themselves to go to the colonies, and had to be given a freedom fee, clothes, and seeds at the end of their service. Thus, it was more economical for some planters to purchase British felons who also served for seven years in most cases, but who did not have to be paid at the end of their term of labor. The purchase price of convicts was also lower than that of indentured white and enslaved African laborers. Late in the colonial period, a male enslaved person cost between £35 and £44. Most male convicts sold for less than £13 and the women for £7 to £10. Even semiskilled convicts could be purchased for £7 to £14 and skilled felons for £15 to £25. A final inducement for buying convicts came from the fact that because they were already outlaws from society’s rules, they could more easily be exploited.”
https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/convict-labor-during-the-colonial-period/