‘Augustine was wrong about slavery’ (p. 1). Toni Alimi’s study of its role in the work of the most important late antique church father does not shy away from strong opinions from this very first sentence on. This approach reveals what the book does not set out to be: a broad socio-historical supplement to works on slavery in Late Antiquity in general, such as those presented in comprehensive fashion by Kyle Harper.[1] Instead, Alimi aims to show that Augustine, as a true Roman, viewed slavery as a fact of life that, while it might have unfortunate consequences, did not contradict the Christian message and which he therefore did not oppose. He himself at one point, his family and later the clergy of his monastic community owned slaves. Although his view of slavery can be explained by the context of the realities of life in Late Antiquity, he was aware of the negative attitude of other church fathers towards it—and yet he did not fight it himself. Rather, slavery played a central role for the philosophy of the bishop of Hippo. The fact that Augustine, one of the most influential thinkers in the Western world, did not fundamentally reject slavery, had an impact on its classification well into the modern age—especially for thinkers influenced by Augustine, whom Alimi refers to as ‘Augustinians’. This thesis of the importance of slavery for Augustine offers completely new impulses for understanding his works. Alimi thus complements studies on slavery in Augustine by Gervase Corcoran, Peter Garnsey or Matthew Elia.[2]
In order to discuss the role of slavery in Augustine’s work, Alimi divides his book into three parts, each of which is subdivided into two (part 1) or three (part 2 and 3) chapters. The aim of the first part is to understand Augustine’s attitude towards slavery as a real-life social institution. To do this, Alimi first sheds light on the reality of late antique slavery, particularly in North Africa, in a short explanatory chapter (pp. 21-30). He relies almost exclusively on Augustine’s sermons and does not relate them to the attitudes of the intended (or actual) audience or to autobiographical passages in the Confessions—socio-historical considerations remain subordinate to an approach interested more in intellectual history throughout the work.[3] The narrow focus on Augustine himself is surprising; the book cover shows a late antique slave collar from North Africa, including the inscription—the use of such evidence would have made the often brutal reality of slavery even more vivid. On the other hand, another reality is also absent: the prospect of manumissio, emancipatio or the possibility of buying one’s own freedom. These must have significantly determined the relationship of many enslaved persons with their (former) masters and shaped the perception of slavery in the minds of contemporaries. Slavery in Late Antiquity could thus have been presented in a more differentiated way than in the conclusion that slaves in Augustine’s world were potentially abused dependents, property, but nevertheless human beings. In the second, much longer chapter (pp. 31-73), Alimi shows that the church father from Hippo did not reject slavery, but he sought answers in the writings of Roman intellectuals to the question of why it existed. Alimi argues conclusively that Augustine adopted and modified three central views on slavery: slavery could be useful even for the enslaved (an interpretation of Cicero), slavery was not generally immoral (taken from Seneca), and all people are slaves of God (taken from Lactantius). The study is generally excellent at tracing such lines of tradition in the history of ideas.
The second part focuses on the relationship between man and God in Augustine’s thought, strongly associated with a slave/master relationship. Alimi sticks to his approach of identifying patterns of thought that Augustine adopted from earlier Roman authors. In the third chapter (pp. 77-103), Alimi works his way through Cicero and Lactantius; he shows that Cicero’s conception of religion as virtue influenced the attitude of Lactantius, who identified all religions as either true or false. For the Christian Lactantius, only his own religion was true—and all others were superstition. This apparent digression from the book’s central theme is resolved in the next chapter (pp. 104-128), in which Alimi shows that Augustine embraces the concept of true and false religion. All humans are slaves to God, but those who belong to a ‘false’ religion ultimately serve superstitious human inventions—Augustine’s critique of Roman religion based on Varro’s remarks is skilfully applied to the concept of slavery. Augustine rejected the notion that human beings could by nature be the slaves of others. In chapter five (pp. 129-153), Alimi attempts to show that the slave/master relationship between humans and God was, however, central to Augustine. Nevertheless, as Alimi himself recognises, this relationship was by no means so rigidly defined for Augustine. An approach based exclusively on intellectual history must inevitably fall short here to explain these contradictions due to the complexity of the realities of life for slaves in Late Antiquity and their relationships with their masters—a more detailed examination of slavery in Augustine’s world would have been all the more desirable.
The third part finally locates the general role of freedom and slavery in the philosophy of the church father. In the sixth chapter (pp. 157-197), Alimi examines how Augustine tried to balance the temporary loss of freedom through laws and institutions—especially slavery—against the gain of eternal freedom through the (forced) conversion to the Christian faith. Alimi convincingly links the role the Donatist schism played in Augustine’s justification of the use of coercion to convert to (Catholic) Christianity with his view that slavery could lead to freedom if Christian masters forcibly converted their slaves. Building directly on this, the seventh chapter (198-221) shows how, for Augustine, the slave/master relationship with God not only defined freedom, but also constituted what it means to be a citizen of the civitas Dei—a clear departure from the Ciceronian dichotomy of citizenship and slavery. In the eighth chapter (222-253), Alimi expands his observation and concludes that Augustine rejected Roman republican imperialism because it denied the common citizenship of all people as slaves of God. In a final section (254-262), Alimi provides a concise, almost sermon-like review of the Augustinian attitude to slavery, before skilfully summarising the central themes of his study. At the core of his work is the conclusion that, while Augustine used the typically Roman sharp distinction between slave and master in his thinking and preaching, he dissolved it in his conception of the universal slavery to God.
Alimi’s stylistically fluid and excellently written investigation is based on a rich knowledge of Augustine’s works—certainly one of the book’s greatest strengths. He contrasts Augustine’s attitude in a very illuminating way with that of the ‘other Romans’ mentioned in the title—particularly Cicero, Seneca and Varro, but also Christian authors, especially Lactantius, whose attitude towards slavery Alimi sees in disparity to Augustine’s—maybe too strong of a claim.[4] One aim of the book is to locate Augustine’s romanitas in his attitude to slavery. This is an important achievement, since Augustine’s thinking has often been set mainly in relation to Greek philosophy or his Christian predecessors and contemporaries. Nevertheless, it is surprising that Greek texts, which are important for understanding the attitudes of contemporaries towards slavery, are not used. Inscriptions or papyri—crucial sources for the reality of ancient slavery—are also not mentioned.
The sources are viewed critically: ‘If the subaltern could speak, we cannot hear them now’ (p. 1). At times, Alimi suggests that a general acceptance of slavery in Antiquity can be explained by the fact that the sources only reflect the attitudes of the upper class. But there is simply no evidence that the enslaved themselves had any sense of class or expressed a fundamental rejection of slavery. Augustine’s attitude towards slavery was probably shared by broad sections of the Roman free, freed (and unfree) population. Furthermore, as Lisa K. Bailey has shown, it is even possible through patristic sources and their focus on the sermo humilis to focus on larger sections of the population and their attitudes. So, despite the source bias towards the wealthier people of the Roman world, one should by no means assume a solely elite discourse.[5]
Although the bibliography on Augustinian thought is quite extensive, Alimi does not consider some key publications on slavery, Late Antiquity and Augustine. In particular, the 2012 edited volume by Mark Vessey, which could have enriched the study with its contributions on Augustine’s non-Christian and Christian intellectual forerunners, is missing.[6] Also missing are publications in French, Italian or German—the bibliography consists almost exclusively of titles in English.[7] The book is in general aimed primarily at a broader English-speaking audience, especially one that is new to Augustine’s thought. Clear definitions and explanations of central concepts contribute to an easier understanding of the complex topic. The summaries at the end of each chapter also greatly enhance the comprehensibility of the arguments. The consistency with which Alimi builds his arguments on one another is exemplary—each chapter benefits from the results presented in the previous one. The translations from Latin are excellent throughout and consistently and laudably avoid the sometimes euphemistic terminology for delicate antique social realities of earlier translations. Three appendices provide a glossary, a timeline of Lactantius and Augustine and a very useful overview of the classical text that are referenced in the works of Lactantius and Augustine.
Slaves of God is a stimulating read about the role of slavery for Augustine. However, the real institution of slavery in the time of the church father unfortunately remains in the background—one wonders whether the everyday reality of slavery did not influence Augustine’s thinking more than his reading of Cicero, Seneca or Lactantius. After all, as a bishop, he was in constant contact with the people of his community, great and small.[8] The book is therefore more of an attempt to understand how Augustine worked with the concept on an intellectual level, particularly with regard to his Latin-speaking predecessors. In this respect, Alimi’s argument is convincing. The question of the extent to which the moral judgement of Augustine’s attitude towards slavery, as presented in the introduction, is appropriate, is one that the book must certainly accept, especially with an approach to the topic based on intellectual and conceptual history.[9] For European readers, the impression that the author is playing to the expectations of a particularly US-American zeitgeist sometimes could arise, even if the insights into the effects of Augustine’s thinking, for example on the transatlantic slave trade, are fascinating. Overall, Toni Alimi contributes to a much more nuanced understanding of the mind of the most important Western church father. Greek and Roman slavery, its persistence and especially its role in the history of ideas in Late Antiquity has not been sufficiently studied—Slaves of God is therefore an important, a necessary book.
Bibliography
K. Chambers, Slavery and Domination as political Ideas in Augustine’s City of God, Heythrop Journal 54 (2013), 13-28.
K. Cooper, Queens of a Fallen World. The Lost Women of Augustine’s Confessions, New York 2023.
G. Corcoran, Saint Augustine on Slavery (Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 22), Rome 1985.
M. Elia, The Problem of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery, New Haven, CT 2024.
S. Elm, Sold to Sin through Origo: Augustine of Hippo and the Late Roman Slave Trade, Studia Patristica 98 (2017), 1-21.
P. Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine, Cambridge 1996.
J. Grethlein, Antike und Identität. Die Herausforderungen der Altertumswissenschaften, Tübingen 2022.
M. Hahn, Laici religiosi. Überwachung, soziale Kontrolle und christliche Identität in der Spätantike (Vestigia. Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte 78), München 2024.
K. Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425, Cambridge 2011.
R. Klein, Die Sklaverei in der Sicht der Bischöfe Ambrosius und Augustinus (Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei 20), Stuttgart 1988.
I. L. E. Ramelli, Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery. The Role of Philosophical Asceticism from Ancient Judaism to Late Antiquity, Oxford 2016.
M. Vessey (ed.), A Companion to Augustine, Chichester 2012.
Notes
[1] Harper 2011.
[2] Corcoran 1985; Garnsey 1996; Elia 2024; also Chambers 2013; Elm 2017.
[3] Studies such as Cooper 2023 on women in Augustine’s Confessiones are not taken into account.
[4] Ramelli 2016, 147-151.
[5] Bailey 2015.
[6] Vessey 2012.
[7] The immense body of research of e.g. Charles and Luce Pietri or Jean Gaudemet is to be mentioned. The relevant series “Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei” with important volumes on church fathers (including Augustine) is also missing from the bibliography, see e.g. Klein 1988.
[8] Hahn 2024.
[9] On the subject of politics and classics, see Grethlein 2022.