Ebook The Negro in Maryland

But it was in Christ only that all men were brethren. The captive heathen or infidel became usually the slave of his Christian conqueror. It was due chie?y to the conquest of the Spaniards over the Moors and to the rising trade of the Spaniards and Portuguese with Africa, that there grew Up for Europe a new form of chattel slavery. And if the zeal Of the earlier church had helped the fall of the old slavery, the' zeal and bigotry of good churchmen of this age certainly had a part, conscious or unconscious, in the rise Of the new. Whole droves Of slaves, wrote Bodin, in 1576, are sold and that openly in all parts of Portugal, as if they were beasts. 3 By the trade with Africa, negro slaves were brought, to a limited extent, to Portugal and Spain. Prince Henry of Portugal, in 1442, insisted that negroes should be brought there; for whatever number he should get, he would gain souls, because they might be converted to the faith, which could not be managed with the Moors.4 And certainly, adds the Old chronicler, his thought was not vain, for as soon as they had knowledge of our language, they readily became Christians. It is not necessary to dwell on the extreme zeal of the Church in that age — so well seen in the Inquisition. It was the received Opinion, says Prescott.