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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Slavery and Christianity |
 | | Religious equality was the negation of slavery as it was practiced by pagan society. |
 | | It must have been an exaggeration, no doubt, to say, as one author of the first century said, that "slaves had no religion, or had only foreign religions" (Tacitus, "Annals", XIV, xliv): many were members of funerary collegia under the invocation of Roman divinities (Statutes of the College of Lanuvium, "Corp. Inscr. |
 | | But in many circumstances this haughty and formalist religion excluded slaves from its functions, which, it was held, their presence would have defiled. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/14036a.htm (3481 words) |
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