Slavery in medieval Europe


Slavery in medieval Europe was widespread. Europe and North Africa were part of an interconnected trade network across the Mediterranean Sea, and this included slave trading. During the medieval period, wartime captives were commonly forced into slavery. As European kingdoms transitioned to feudal societies, a different legal category of unfree persons – serfdom – began to replace slavery as the main economic and agricultural engine. Throughout medieval Europe, the perspectives and societal roles of enslaved peoples differed greatly, from some being restricted to agricultural labor to others being positioned as trusted political advisors.

Early Middle Ages

Slavery in the Early Middle Ages was initially a continuation of earlier Roman practices from late antiquity, and was continued by an influx of captives in the wake of the social chaos caused by the barbarian invasions of the Western Roman Empire. With the continuation of Roman legal practices of slavery, new laws and practices concerning slavery spread throughout Europe. For example, the Welsh laws of Hywel the Good included provisions dealing with slaves. In the Germanic realms, laws instituted the enslavement of criminals, such as the Visigothic Code's prescribing enslavement for criminals who could not pay financial penalties for their crimes and as an actual punishment for various other crimes. Such criminals would become slaves to their victims, often with their property.
As these peoples Christianized, the church worked more actively to reduce the practice of holding coreligionists in bondage. St. Patrick, who himself was captured and enslaved at one time, protested an attack that enslaved newly baptized Christians in his letter to the soldiers of Coroticus. The restoration of order and the growing power of the church slowly transmuted the late Roman slave system of Diocletian into serfdom.
Another major factor was the rise of Bathilde, queen of the Franks, who had been enslaved before marrying Clovis II. When she became regent, her government outlawed slave-trading of Christians throughout the Merovingian empire. About ten percent of England's population entered in the Domesday Book were slaves, despite chattel slavery of English Christians being nominally discontinued after the 1066 conquest. It is difficult to be certain about slave numbers, however, since the old Roman word for slave continued to be applied to unfree people whose status later was reflected by the term serf.

Slave trade

Slavery was practiced in various forms in Europe during the Middle Ages, alongside imprisonment, serfdom and other forms of bondage. Slaves were used for agricultural and craft work as well as for domestic and military service. For most of that time, the sale of Christian slaves to non-Christians was banned. In the pactum Lotharii of 840 between Venice and the Carolingian Empire, Venice promised not to buy Christian slaves in the Empire, and not to sell Christian slaves to Muslims. The Church prohibited the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands, for example in the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London in 1102, and the Council of Armagh in 1171.
As a result, most Christian slave merchants focused on moving slaves from non-Christian areas to Muslim Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East; and most non-Christian merchants, although not bound by the Church's rules, focused on Muslim markets as well. Arabic silver dirhams, presumably exchanged for slaves, are plentiful in eastern Europe and Southern Sweden, indicating trade routes from Slavic to Muslim territory.

Baltic slave trade

The Baltics appears to have been a center of slave trade, as well as a slave supply source, already during antiquity.
The role of the Baltics in the European slave trade is more documented during the middle ages. In the middle ages, the Baltics became a religious border zone as one of the last remaining Pagan areas in Christian Europe.
This was significant in the context of the slave trade, since both Christians and Muslims banned the enslavement of people of their own religion, but Pagans were viewed a legitimate targets of enslavement for sale to both Christians and Pagans, which made them the most lucrative choice for slave trade.
Up until the Christianization of the Baltics in the 13th century, therefore, the Baltic people were viewed as legitimate targets of slave trade from the surrounding slave traders, such as the vikings from the West and the Rus of the Kievan Rus' slave trade from the East.
Since both Christians and Muslims banned the enslavement of people of their own faith but viewed pagans as legitimate targets for slavery, the pagans of northeastern Europe became highly targeted by the slave traders when the rest of Europe had become Christian by the 12th century. The pagan Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Livonians, and Latgallians raided each other, Ingria and Novgorod during the 12th and 13th centuries, and sold war captives south to the Black Sea slave trade.
The Christian Rus' merchants of the Kievan Rus' slave trade captured pagan Estonians to sell them as slaves; the latter, as pagans, were viewed as legitimate targets.
However, the Baltics were not only a victim of slave raids as a slave supply source by foreign slave traders; they were also an Ancient center of slave trade themselves.
When the Norse Vikings became Christian and ended their piracy in the 11th century, they were succeeded by pagan pirates from the Baltics, who raided the coasts of the Baltic Sea, such as now Christian Sweden and Finland, for slaves.
When the Viking slave trade stopped in the mid 11th century, the old slave trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea and Central Asia via the Russian rivers was upheld by Pagan Baltic slave traders, who sold slaves via Daugava to the Black Sea and East, which was now the only remaining slave trade in Europe after the slave market in Western Europe had died out in the 12th century.
In the 13th century, the Latvian reportedly had found slave trade to be so lucrative that many used it has their main income.
The island of Saaremaa was a base for the Baltic pirates, who were noted for selling women captives to the slave trade.
In 1226, the pagan Baltic pirates from Saaremaa conducted a slave raid toward now Christian Sweden, where they captured many Swedish women and girls with the purpose to sell as slaves.
The Baltic slave trade ended after conquest of the Baltic by the Teutonic order during the 13th century.

Prague slave trade

The slave market of Prague was one route for saqaliba slaves to al-Andalus. Similarly to al-Andalus, the Duchy of Bohemia was a state in a religious border zone, in the case of Bohemia bordering to Pagan Slavic lands to the North, East and South East.
The Arabic Caliphate of Córdoba referred to the forests of Central and Eastern Europe, which came to function as a slave source supply, as the Bilad as-Saqaliba.
Bohemia was in an ideal position to become a supply source for pagan saqaliba slaves to al-Andalus. The slaves were acquired through slave raids toward the pagan Slavic lands north of Prague.
The Prague slave trade adjusted to the al-Andalus market, with females required for sexual slavery and males required for either military slavery or as eunuchs. Male slaves selected to be sold as eunuchs were subjected to castration in Verdun.
Traditionally, the slave traders acquiring the slaves in Prague and transporting them to the slave market of al-Andalus are said to have been dominated by the Jewish Radhanite merchants.
How dominating the Jewish merchants were is unknown, but Jewish slave traders did have an advantage toward their non-Jewish colleagues, because they were able to move across Christian and Muslim lands, which was not always to case for Christian and Muslim merchants, and act as mediators between Christian and Muslim commercial markets.
While Christians were not allowed to enslave Christians and Muslims not allowed to enslave Muslims, Jews were able to sell Christian slaves to Muslim buyers and Muslim slaves to Christian buyers, as well as pagan slaves to both.
In the same fashion, both Christians and Muslims were prohibited from performing castrations, but there was no such ban for Jews, which made it possible for them to meet the demand for eunuchs in the Muslim world.
The slaves were transported to Al-Andalus via France. While the church discouraged the sale of Christian slaves to Muslims, the sale of Pagans to Muslims was not met with such opposition.
White European slaves were viewed as luxury goods in Al-Andalus, where they could be sold for as much as 1,000 dinars, a substantial price.
The slaves were not always destined for the al-Andalus market; similar to Bohemia in Europe, al-Andalus was a religious border state for the Muslim world, and saqaliba slaves were exported from there further to the Muslim world in the Middle East.
The saqaliba slave trade from Prague to al-Andalus via France became defunct in the 11th century, when the pagan Slavs of the north started to gradually adopt Christianity from the late 10th century, which prohibited Christian Bohemia from enslaving them to sell to Muslim al-Andalus.

Italian merchants

By the reign of Pope Zachary, Venice had established a thriving slave trade, enslaving people in Italy, among other places, and selling them to the Moors in North Africa. When the sale of Christians to Muslims was banned, the Venetian slave traders began to sell Slavs and other Eastern European non-Christian slaves in greater numbers via the Balkan slave trade. Caravans of slaves traveled from Eastern Europe, via the Prague slave trade through Alpine passes in Austria, to reach Venice. A record of tolls paid in Raffelstetten, near St. Florian on the Danube, describes such merchants. Some are Slavic themselves, from Bohemia and the Kievan Rus'. They had come from Kiev through Przemyśl, Kraków, Prague, and Bohemia. The same record values female slaves at a tremissa and male slaves, who were more numerous, at a saiga. Eunuchs were especially valuable, and "castration houses" arose in Venice, as well as other prominent slave markets, to meet this demand.
Venice was far from the only slave trading hub in Italy. Southern Italy boasted slaves from distant regions, including Greece, Bulgaria, Armenia, and Slavic regions. During the 9th and 10th centuries, Amalfi was a major exporter of slaves to North Africa. Genoa, along with Venice, dominated the trade in the Eastern Mediterranean beginning in the 12th century, and the Venetian slave traders and the Genoese slave traders dominated the Black Sea slave trade beginning in the 13th century. They sold both Baltic and Slavic slaves, as well as Armenians, Circassians, Georgians, Turks and other ethnic groups of the Black Sea and Caucasus, to the Muslim nations of the Middle East. Genoa primarily managed the slave trade from Crimea to Mamluk Egypt, until the 13th century, when increasing Venetian control over the Eastern Mediterranean allowed Venice to dominate that market. Between 1414 and 1423 alone, at least 10,000 slaves were sold in Venice.