Slavery as an Impediment

The condition of a slave prevents him from rightly fulfilling the duties of marriage. For a slave has not free control of his person, and therefore cannot properly transfer that control to another. Still, if a person knows that the other party is a slave, and marries him none the less, the marriage is valid.

And indeed, since, as St. Paul says (Gal. 3:2, 28),“In Christ Jesus … there is neither bond nor free,” a slave has as much right to marry as a freeman.

A husband who sells himself into slavery does not, by this fact, break his marriage. For nothing that happens after a true and valid marriage is contracted can dissolve it.

Various human customs and civil laws prevail about the children of a father who is a slave. It seems most reasonable tosay that, on the score of freedom or bondage, the children inherit the condition of the mother. {-This discussion is now irrelevant.-}