Law And Slavery

Quote from Letter 4,21 - to Venantius, bishop of Luni. May 594

It has reached us through the reports of many that Christian slaves are being kept for servitude by Jews living in the city of Luni. This matter has seemed to us all the more bitter, as the patience of your Fraternity carried it out. Indeed you were obliged, out of respect of your position and with regard to the Christian religion, to leave no opportunity for simple souls to be slaves somehow to the Jewish superstition, not so much through persuasion as through the right of ownership.
Therefore we exhort your Fraternity, in accordance with the tenor of the most pious laws, not to allow any Jew to keep a Christian slave under his control.
(..) In all of these matters, therefore, we want you to apply yourself wisely so that you are not on trial as pastor of a dismembered flock, and your lack of zeal does not make your Fraternity reprehensible in our view.

Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), I: 303