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Longer Rules

St Basil the Great, tr. Lowther Clarke, 1925

11. Rule 11: Concerning Slaves

When slaves who are under the yoke flee to the brotherhoods, they should be admonished and made better, and then restored to their masters. So doing we imitate the blessed Paul, who, though he had begotten Onesimus through the gospel, yet sent him back to Philemon, persuading the servant that the yoke of slavery borne in a manner well pleasing to the Lord renders him worthy of the Kingdom of heaven, and exhorting the master not only to forbear his threats against Onesimus, remembering the words of his true Master: “If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive your trespasses,”¹ but also to have kinder feelings towards him—writing thus: “For perhaps he was therefore parted from thee for a season, that thou shouldest have him for ever, no longer as a servant, but more than a servant, a brother beloved.”² Should, however, the master be evil, giving unlawful commands and constraining the slave to transgress the commandment of his true Master our Lord Jesus Christ, then it is necessary to take energetic measures to prevent the name of God being blasphemed by that servant’s doing anything displeasing to God. The measures will consist in preparing that slave to endure the sufferings that will be inflicted upon him if he is “to obey God rather than man,”³ or in the acceptance by those who have received him of the troubles that may come upon them on his account, as it pleases God.⁴

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