Note 242 — Chapter XXVII · SLAVERY

Cf. Rivière, op. cit. p. 511. Babington says (op. cit. p. 148 sq.) that in the five-hundred pages of Wilkins’ Concilia, which comprise the ecclesiastical documents of the British churches in the thirteenth century, we only find the following regulations concerning the unfree population:—that neither freemen nor villeins are to be impeded in making their wills when death approaches; that monks are not to alienate their less useful slaves (famulos); that Jews are not allowed to possess Christian slaves.—It was said that “he puts a disgrace on God who raises a villein above his station” (ibid. p. 150).