Slavery in medieval Europe

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Slavery in early medieval Europe was relatively common. It was widespread at the end of antiquity. The etymology of the word slave comes from this period, the word sklabos meaning Slav. Slavery declined in the Middle Ages in most parts of Europe as serfdom slowly rose, but it never completely disappeared. It persisted longer in Southern and Eastern Europe.^[1] In Poland slavery was forbidden in the 15th century; it was replaced by the second enserfment. In Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588.^[2]

Throughout this period slaves were traded openly in most cities, including cities as diverse as Marseille, Dublin and Prague, and many were sold to buyers in the Middle East. The town of Caffa in the Crimea was called the capital of the medieval slave trade, but an overland route to Caliphate of Córdoba took pagan and dualist Slavs from Kiev through Lviv and Prague, at that time the borderlands of Christianity, this arduous land route competing with the North-South route by river which led to the Black Sea.

[edit] Early Middle Ages

Costumes of slaves or serfs, from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, collected by H. de Vielcastel, from original documents in the great libraries of Europe.

Chaos and invasion made the taking of slaves habitual throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. St. Patrick, himself captured and sold as a slave, protested an attack that enslaved newly baptized Christians in his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus . In the Viking era starting c. 793, the Norse raiders often captured and enslaved weaker peoples they encountered. In the Nordic countries the slaves were called Thralls (Old Norse: Þræll).^[3]

Germanic laws provided for the enslavement of criminals, as when the Visigothic Code prescribed enslavement both for those who could not pay the financial penalty for their crime [1], and for those who were to be delivered up as slaves to their victims, often with their property [2], [3], [4].

In Carolingian Europe approximately 20% of the entire population consisted of slaves.^[4] Some people gave themselves to powerful landowners in order to receive protection or food; one Anglo-Saxon will has a land-owner freeing those slaves who had "given her their heads for food." Anglo-Saxons continued and expanded their slave system, sometimes in league with Norse traders.^[5] About 10% of England’s population entered in the Domesday Book in 1086 were slaves.^[6] Chattel slavery of English Christians was discontinued after 1066, when William of Normandy conquered England. The slave trade in England was abolished in 1102.^[7]

The restoration of order as the early Middle Ages passed was accompanied by the transmutation of this state into serfdom, and after the earlier portions, slaves were seldom of the same country as their owner in Western Europe.

[edit] Slave trade

Between the 6th and 10th centuries AD, members of pagan Slavonic peoples were taken prisoner by the Khazars, Kypchaks and other steppe peoples and taken to the slave markets in Crimea. In addition, during the wars between the pagan Slavonic states and Christian states of Europe, many prisoners of war from both sides were sold as slaves. After the Muslim conquests of North Africa and most of the Iberian peninsula, the Islamic world became a huge importer of slaves from Eastern Europe. The trade routes were established between slave trade centres in the pagan Slavonic countries (for example Prague and Wolin) and Arab metropoles in the Muslim-controlled regions of the Iberian peninsula (Al-Andalus). Because of religious constraints, the slave trade was monopolised by Iberian Jews (known as Radhanites) who were able to transfer the slaves from pagan Central Europe through Christian Western Europe to Muslim countries in Al-Andalus and Africa. However, the converted Christian ruler Mojmír I of the Great Moravian Empire taxed the slave caravans that passed through his lands, providing an important source of revenue, if indirectly. This trade came to an end in the 10th century after the Christianisation of Slavic countries.

Slavery in medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it—or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London in 1102, and the Council of Armagh in 1171.^[8] William the Conqueror, too, banned export of English slaves. The medieval slave trade was mainly to the East: Byzantine Empire and the Muslim World were the destinations, pagan Central and Eastern Europe an important source.^[9][10][11] The Persian traveller Ibn Rustah described how Swedish Vikings, the Varangians or Rus, terrorized and enslaved the Slavs.^[12] So many Slavs were enslaved for so many centuries that the very name 'slave' derived from their name, not only in English, but in other European languages and in Arabic.^[10][13]

The Mongol invasions and conquests in the 13th century made the situation worse. The Mongols enslaved skilled individuals, women and children and marched them to Karakorum or Sarai, whence they were sold throughout Eurasia. Many of these slaves were shipped to the slave market in Novgorod.^[14][15][16]

Genoese and Venetians merchants in Crimea were involved in the slave trade with the Golden Horde. Between 1414 and 1423, at least 10,000 eastern European slaves were sold in Venice.^[17] Genoese organized the slave trade from the Crimea to Mamluk Egypt. In 1441, Haci I Giray declared independence from the Golden Horde and established the Crimean Khanate. For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. In a process called the "harvesting of the steppe", they enslaved many Slavic peasants.^[18]

[edit] Slavery in law

[edit] Secular law

Slavery was heavily regulated in Roman law, which was reorganized in the Byzantine Empire by Justinian I as the Corpus Iuris Civilis. Although the Corpus was lost to the West for centuries, it was rediscovered in the 11th and 12th centuries, and led to the foundation of law schools in Italy and France. According to the Corpus, the natural state of humanity is freedom, but the "law of nations" may supersede natural law and reduce certain people to slavery. The basic definition of slave in Romano-Byzantine law was:

• anyone whose mother was a slave
• anyone who has been captured in battle
• anyone who has sold himself to pay a debt

It was, however, possible to become a freedman or a full citizen; the Corpus, like Roman law, had extensive and complicated rules for manumission of slaves.

[edit] Canon law

Medieval canon lawyers recognized that slavery was contrary to the spirit of Christianity, and by the 11th century when almost all of Europe had been Christianized, the laws of slavery in civil law codes were now antiquated and unenforceable. There were a number of areas where Christians lived with non-Christians, such as Al-Andalus and Sicily, the crusader states, and in the still-pagan areas of northeastern Europe; therefore, canon law permitted Christians to keep non-Christian slaves, as long as these slaves were treated humanely and were freed if they chose to convert to Christianity. In fact, there was an explicit legal justification for the enslavement of Muslims, found in the Decretum Gratiani and later expanded upon by the 14th century jurist Oldradus de Ponte: the Bible states that Hagar, the slave girl of Abraham, was beaten and cast out by Abraham's wife Sarah. A popular medieval legend held that Muslims were the descendents of Hagar, while Christians descended from the legitimate marriage of Abraham and Sarah. By extension it was therefore permitted for Christians to enslave Muslims.

The Decretum, like the Corpus, defined a slave as anyone whose mother was a slave. Otherwise, the canons were concerned with slavery only in ecclesiastical contexts: slaves were not permitted to marry or to be ordained as clergy.

[edit] Slavery in Scandinavia

In Scandinavia, a thrall was cheaper than cattle, a question of supply and demand. A child born by a thrall woman (a thir) was a thrall by birth, whereas a child born by a free woman was a free person even if the father was a thrall. It is perhaps paradoxical to note that all thralls had substantial protection under the law in Viking era Scandinavia, more than serfs would have for nearly a millennium in the rest of Europe. The most dishonourable way of becoming a thrall was by debt, and it was the first kind of thralldom to be forbidden. Thralldom was finally abolished in 1350. However, by then thralls were rare, with most thralls having been given serf status, as this was more economically profitable and less morally objectionable.

[edit] Slavery in Russia

In Kievan Rus and Muscovy, the slaves were usually classified as kholops. A kholop's master had unlimited power over his life: he could kill him, sell him, or use him as payment upon a debt. The master, however, was responsible before the law for his kholop's actions. A person could become a kholop as a result of capture, selling oneself, being sold for debts or committed crimes, or marriage to a kholop. Until the late 10th century, the kholops represented a majority among the servants who worked lordly lands. Slavery remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter the Great converted the household slaves into house serfs. Russian agricultural slaves were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679.^[19]

In 1382 the Golden Horde under Khan Tokhtamysh sacked Moscow, burning the city and carrying off thousands of inhabitants as slaves. For years the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan routinely made raids on Russian principalities for slaves and to plunder towns. Russian chronicles record about 40 raids of Kazan Khans on the Russian territories in the first half of the 16th century.^[20] In 1521, the combined forces of Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray and his Kazan allies attacked Moscow and captured thousands of slaves.^[21] About 30 major Tatar raids were recorded into Muscovite territories between 1558-1596.^[22] In 1571, the Crimean Tatars attacked and sacked Moscow, burning everything but the Kremlin and taking thousands of captives as slaves.^[23] In Crimea, about 75% of the population consisted of slaves.^[24]

[edit] Slavery in Muslim Iberia

The medieval Iberian Peninsula was the scene of almost constant warfare between Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In raid against Lisbon in 1189, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.^[25]

[edit] Slavery in the Crusader states

In the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, founded in 1099, at most 120 000 Franks ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians.^[26] Following the initial invasion and conquest, sometimes accompanied by massacres or expulsions of Jews and Muslims, a peaceable co-existence between followers of the three religions prevailed. ^[27] The Crusader states inherited many slaves. To this may have been added some Muslims taken as captives of war. The Kingdom's largest city, Acre, had a large slave market, however the vast majority of Muslims and Jews remained free. The laws of Jerusalem declared that former Muslim slaves, if genuine converts to Christianity, must be freed.^[28] In 1120, the Council of Nablus forbade sexual relations between crusaders and their female slaves: if a man raped his own slave, he would be castrated, but if he raped someone else's slave, he would be castrated and exiled from the kingdom.

No Christian, whether Western or Eastern, was permitted by law to be sold into slavery, but this fate was as common for Muslim prisoners of war as it was for Christian prisoners taken by the Muslims.

The 13th-century Assizes of Jerusalem dealt more with fugitive slaves and the punishments ascribed to them, the prohibition of slaves testifying in court, and manumission of slaves, which could be accomplished, for example, through a will, or by conversion to Christianity. Conversion was apparently used as an excuse to escape slavery by Muslims who would then continue to practise Islam; crusader lords often refused to allow them to convert, and Pope Gregory IX, contrary to both the laws of Jerusalem and the canon laws that he himself was partially responsible for compiling, allowed for Muslim slaves to remain enslaved even if they had converted.

[edit] Slavery in Ottoman Empire

Slavery was an important part of Ottoman society. The Byzantine-Ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe brought large numbers of Christian slaves into the Ottoman Empire.^[29] In the middle of the 14th century, Murad I built his own personal slave army called the Kapıkulu. The new force was based on the sultan's right to a fifth of the war booty, which he interpreted to include captives taken in battle. The captive slaves were converted to Islam and trained in the sultan's personal service. In the devşirme (translated "blood tax" or "child collection"), young Christian boys from the Balkans were taken away from their homes and families, converted to Islam and enlisted into special soldier classes of the Ottoman army. These soldier classes were named Janissaries, the most famous branch of the Kapıkulu. The Janissaries eventually became a decisive factor in the Ottoman military conquests in Europe.^[30] Most of the military commanders of the Ottoman forces, imperial administrators and de facto rulers of the Ottoman Empire, such as Pargalı İbrahim Pasha and Sokollu Mehmet Paşa, were recruited in this way.^[31][32] By 1609 the Sultan's Kapıkulu forces increased to about 100,000.^[33]

[edit] Serfdom compared

The institution of serfdom in medieval Europe was separate and distinct from chattel slavery; serfs were tied to the land and obliged to work the land for their lord, but they were not chattel property. Serfs could not be bought or sold, and usually could not be removed from their land, absent criminal or civil violations.

[edit] See also

• Arab slave trade
• Christianity and slavery
• History of slavery
• Islam and slavery
• Slavery in ancient Greece
• Slavery in ancient Rome
• Slavery in antiquity
• The Bible and slavery

[edit] References

1. ^ Slavery: History
2. ^ Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to History
3. ^ Slavery and Thralldom: The Unfree in Viking Scandinavia
4. ^ The slave trade: myths and preconceptions
5. ^ Slave Trading in Anglo-Saxon and Viking England
6. ^ Domesday Book Slave
7. ^ British History Freedom – Timeline – 12th Century
8. ^ Slavery, serfdom, and indenture through the Middle Ages
9. ^ Historical survey > The international slave trade
10. ^ ^{a b} Arabs and Slave Trade
11. ^ Battuta's Trip: Anatolia (Turkey) 1330 - 1331
12. ^ Slavery in Medieval Europe
13. ^ definition of slaved
14. ^ William of Rubruck's Account of the Mongols
15. ^ Life in 13th Century Novgorod -- Women and Class Structure
16. ^ The Effects of the Mongol Empire on Russia
17. ^ How To Reboot Reality — Chapter 2, Labor
18. ^ Soldier Khan
19. ^ Historical survey > Ways of ending slavery
20. ^ The Full Collection of the Russian Annals, vol.13, SPb, 1904
21. ^ The Tatar Khanate of Crimea
22. ^ Supply of Slaves
23. ^ Moscow - Historical background
24. ^ Historical survey > Slave societies
25. ^ Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic Frontier
26. ^ Benjamin Z. Kedar, "The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant", in The Crusades: The Essential Readings, ed. Thomas F. Madden, Blackwell, 2002, pg. 244. Originally published in Muslims Under Latin Rule, 1100-1300, ed. James M. Powell, Princeton University Press, 1990. Kedar quotes his numbers from Joshua Prawer, Histoire du royaume latin de Jérusalem, tr. G. Nahon, Paris, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 498, 568-72.
27. ^ Christopher Tyerman, God's War, A new History of the Crusades p226-228. quote = "Just as non-muslim communities survived uinder Islam, so non-Christians lived unfree but largely unmolested in Frankish outremer. After the early massacres, displacements and expulsions of Muslims and Jews from conquered cities, coexistence, rather than integration or persecution prevailed... At Acre, where the two faiths shared a converted mosque as well as a suburban shrine, Muslim visitors were treated fairly and efficiently. Mosques still operated openly in Tyre and elsewhere."
28. ^ Christopher Tyerman, God's War, A new History of the Crusades p230.
29. ^ Ottoman Dhimmitude
30. ^ Janissary
31. ^ Lewis. Race and Slavery in the Middle East
32. ^ The Turks: History and Culture
33. ^ In the Service of the State and Military Class