Note 284 — Chapter XVIII
Reading edition
How significant are the words famulus and famula, by which the household servants are designated in the unclassical Latin of the Middle Ages! The servus of the Romans was, we know, nothing more than a slave; but the famulus, whether bond or free, was a member of the family, and a servant only in that sense in which his master owned himself the servant of Christ—famulus Christi.