38. Ep. 10*.2–8 (BA 46B:168–82); trans. Eno, FOTC 81:76–80.
The Bishop 103 have been sold by their parents, and these people buy them, not as Roman law permits, as indentured servants for a period of twenty-five years, but in fact they buy them as slaves and sell them across the sea as slaves.37 True slaves are sold by their masters only rarely. Now from this bunch of merchants has grown up a multitude of pillaging and corrupting "dealers" so that in herds, shouting, in frightening military or barbarian attire, they invade sparsely populated and remote rural areas and they violently carry off to these merchants those they seek. . . .
(7) Even if I wished to list all the crimes—just the ones we have had contact with—it would not be possible to do so. Listen to this one case, from which you can get some idea of what is going on all over Africa, and especially in the coastal areas, but especially from Numidia; people were being brought by Galatian merchants—these are especially avid and throw themselves into this type of business—for transportation from the shores of Hippo. There are not lacking faithful Christians who, knowing our custom in missions of mercy of this kind, made this known to the church. Immediately, partially from the ship in which they had already been loaded, partially from the spot where they had been hidden prior to boarding, about 120 were freed by our people, though I myself was absent. Scarcely five or six were found to have been sold by their parents.
(8) Your Holy Prudence can imagine how much similar trafficking in unfortunate souls goes on in other coastal areas, if at Hippo Regius, where in God's mercy the great vigilance of the church is on the watch so that poor people can be freed from captivity of this sort, and these people who carry on such a trade, though far from suffering from the severity of this law, are nevertheless punished, at least by the loss of the money they originally spent; so great is the greed of these people, so bold the barbarism of these Galatians. I beseech you, through your Christian charity, that these words have not been written to your Charity in vain. For these Galatians do not lack advocates, with whose support they demand back from us those whom the Lord has freed, restored through the action of the church, even those already restored to their own families who had been seeking them and who came to us with letters from bishops. Even as I dictate these lines, they are beginning to upset several of the faithful, our sons, with whom some of those entrusted to them have been staying—for the church could not feed all those whom it freed. Despite the fact that a letter has come from an authority they could fear, they have not in any way halted their efforts to get their captives back.38
37. "Indentured servants": We may find it appalling, but it was legal for parents to "rent" their children as servants, a sort of temporary slavery. On this, Michel Humbert, "Enfants à louer ou à vendre: Augustin et l'authorité parentale (Epist. 10* et 24*)," in Leppelley, Les Lettres découvertes, 189–204.
38. Ep. 10*.2–8 (BA 46B:168–82); trans. Eno, FOTC 81:76–80.