The worst sin.

What if slavery was for Christianity ( Catholics and Protestants) one of the worst sins,and was from XIII-XIV century (for some cultural and religious change) a real taboo on slavery (unacceptable as incest or cannibalism)?
Which changes would have been in the history of America and Africa?
 
No Christianity

I suspect that, if slavery was a major sin, that Christianity wouldn't have taken hold--too important to too many people.
 
If Jesus or the apostles Paul or Peter issued a command to abolish slavery within the Roman Empire, the economy would've likely collapsed, and you'd see dire circumstances anywhere the Roman Empire touched, plus any immediate bordering lands.
 
I suspect that, if slavery was a major sin, that Christianity wouldn't have taken hold--too important to too many people.

People would have used the power of selective reading and "creative" interpretations to justify slavery. Or just prevented the books that harshly condemned slavery inclusion in the Bible, casting them out with the rest of the texts that didn't make the cut.
 
You'd probably need a really early change onto Christianity to make it a major sin : maybe Jesus or other major figures are sold in slavery instead of martyrdom? And I mean a really radical change : you had your lot of enslaved saints IOTL.

Maybe some Marcionism triumphant ITTL could help?

Eventually, a religion doesn't often goes against its time, for what matter questions of morality : if there's voices in secular society against slavery, then you'd have an echo among Christian structures.

You may, then, rather need a societal change to make slavery seen as definitely un-christian, the Churches (dialectically) enforcing further societal change.

That'd implies a society undergoing a very large crisis : maybe an even more anarchic feudal revolution and social turmoil, where milites doesn't hesitate to enslave clerics from time to time?
 
We said hat a council in late middle age-early renaissance have declared slavery absolutely prohibited for a Christian ("be anathema"!),and that Lutherus and Calvinus
said the same.
 

jahenders

Banned
I could imagine some church council or Papal edict proclaiming that it was absolutely anathema for a Christian to own slaves. However, the timing would be key -- it would have to be late enough that the church was powerful enough (relative to secular authorities) to make such an edict, but early enough that you didn't have vast fortunes coming directly from slavery (so probably before the slave trade really got going).

In any case, though such an edict could be made, the impact might be less than hoped -- you might well have things that look a LOT like slavery, but by a different name "perpetual indentured servitude," "serfdom,", etc.
 
All of the standard Judeo-Christian "don'ts" during Christianity's formative period were pretty consistent with those of the secular societies around them. Don't kill, don't steal, etc. Slavery was an accepted practice, both economically and socially in all developed societies at the time so its hard to imagine Christianity surviving to have any effect on the Americas or Africa if it had adopted a firm and unwavering stance against slavery in its first 400-500 years.

Possibly, if a sect of Christianity arose outside of the core Hellenistic Roman Empire and supplanted Rome and Byzantium an "abolitionist" Christianity might develop and gain traction in the 1000-1500 period.
 
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