The slaves of the churches : a history / Mary E. Sommar.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This is the story of how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and for others' behavior towards such slaves. The story begins in the New Testament era, when the earliest Christian norms were established and continues through the Late Roman Empire, the Germanic kingdoms, and the Carolingian empire, to the thirteenth-century establishment of a body of ecclesiastical regulations (canon law) that would persist into the twentieth century. Along with an analysis of the various policies and statutes, chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods provide insight into the situations of these unfree ecclesiastical dependents. The book stops in the thirteenth century, which was a time of great changes, not only in the history of the legal profession, but also in the history of slavery as Europeans began to reach out into the Atlantic. Although this book is a serious scholarly monograph about the history of church law, it has been written in such a way that no specialist knowledge is required of the reader, whether a scholar in another field or a general reader interested in church history or the history of slavery. Historical background is provided and there is a short Latin lexicon"--