Slavery in medieval Europe
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Slavery in medieval Europe was the keeping of people in slavery in Europe during the Middle Ages.
Slavery was widespread at the end of the classical civilization, and the barbarian invasions and breakdown of the Empire vastly increased it. The etymology of the word slave comes this period, the word ‘sklabos’ meaning Slav.
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 medieval slave trade.
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[edit] Early Middle Ages
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 .
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].
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."
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] Routes
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 conquest of North Africa and part of the Iberian peninsula by Muslims, 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's controlled section of the Iberian peninsula (Al-Andalus). Because of religious constraints, the slave trade was monopolised by Iberian Jews who were able to transfer the slaves from pagan Central Europe through Christian Western Europe to Muslim countries in Al-Andalus and Africa. This trade came to an end in the 10th century after the Christianisation of Slavic countries.
[edit] Slavery in Scandinavia
- Main article: thrall
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 from 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.
[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.
