Finishing reading _The Slaves of the Churches: A History_ by Mary E. Sommar and it is simply staggering how many enslaved persons were owned by early churches well into the medieval period. I just, seeing it all laid out is a lot. global.oup.com/academic/pro...
Early Christians were as socially conditioned as everyone else in antiquity and late antiquity to embrace opportunities to dominate others and to view rigid hierarchies strictly enforced & maintained as indisputably good.
Yes, I am quite aware. This reading is for my slavery in antiquity class, which I have been teaching since 2011 (=13 years + many publications). Still doesn't make it any less abhorrent.
I took one grad level class on late antiquity, and ended up writing my seminar paper on how Jerome talks about the enslaved women belonging to holy women in his letters of advice to the latter. It was... rough, doing the research. Very valuable for my later dissertation work! But... a lot. Yeah.
