What was slavery like in medieval Europe?

Answer 1

1st Answer:

In medieval times England had a modified form of slavery in the form of serfdom.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the serf was distinguished from full slavery in that 'the services due to the master and his power of disposal of the serf were limited by law or custom.' He was attached to a place rather than to a person and could not be removed from the manorial lord's land. If the land passed to a new tenant, the serf passed to him too.

However some medieval deeds survive which show that slaves were, in some places, disposed of by sale.

It is thought that serfdom came to an end in the fourteenth century with the ravages of the Black Death.

2nd Answer:

Slavery existed all over Europe from ancient times. Many or most slaves were people who were captured in raids and transported to markets for sale. The trade was so extensive and so profitable that the raiders were sometimes more like armies than like groups of pirates, and they could capture and reduce entire cities. Thousands of people were carried off in this manner, their lives destroyed, and their destinies in the hands of people who surely were unconcerned for their feelings.

Other slaves were people who found guilty of committing crimes, who could not pay debts except by being sold, or who sold themselves into slavery in times of famine just to get food. This must have had an interesting effect on the criminal justice system, because it meant that the victim of a crime might wind up owning the criminal and having considerable latitude on how the criminal was treated.

The Church lobbied against slavery through much of the Middle Ages, and prohibited the sale of Christian slaves to people who were not Christians and the exportation of Christian slaves to lands that were not Christian. Nevertheless slave merchants were often unscrupulous in their dealings, ignoring the Church in favor of profit, and there was little done by way of enforcement of the Church's prohibitions in many places.

Slaves did not have rights in some places, and could be killed at a whim. In other places, they were protected by law, but only minimally. They were at a lower status than serfs, who could not be bought or sold, had important rights protecting them, and were largely free to do as they wished. Slaves were property to use, mostly in whatever manner their owners wished. They had little or no recourse under laws.

The slave trade moved the slaves to distant lands, usually to the south and east. They were most actively traded in Asia, the Byzantine Empire, and Muslim countries. They were used to pull oars in ships, to work mines, and for other hard labor. In a battle between Christians and Muslims, each side knew that the other was supported to some degree by people of their own who were working against their will. Though it happened after the Middle Ages, the Battle of Lepanto is illustrative of this. It was a naval battle in which a Christian coalition defeated an Ottoman fleet. After the battle, 12,000 Christian who pulled oars for the Ottomans were freed. Every Ottoman ship sunk in the battle represented possibly scores of Christians killed for the Christians fighting against them. I have no way of knowing whether the Christian navy exercised any care in the course of the battle for those people, or what that care could have been.

Slaves who were kept near their original homes were better off, because to some extent they had the protection of the Church. Murder was murder and rape was rape, in the eyes of the Church, regardless of whether the victim was slave or free, and this was usually reflected in secular law.

The condemnations of slavery by the Church had effect, though perhaps slowly. In the 9th century, about one person in ten was a slave in England. One of the first acts of William the Conqueror as king, in 1066, was to prohibit enslavement of Christians in England. The slave trade was prohibited altogether by Henry I in 1102.

Slavery was not the same as serfdom. In fact, at the risk of seeming a bit presumptuous, I would say that the characterization of serfdom as a modified form of slavery by the Oxford English Dictionary is a mistake, and I will make note of the fact that the Concise Oxford Dictionary does not have this in the definition. Serfdom is a reciprocal situation in which the serf give something in exchange for something they need. They give up their right to move off the land and a portion of their labors in exchange for a right to stay on the land to work the land and to receive the protection of the landlord. Their right to live on the land cannot be taken away without due cause, and even if the land is sold, their right to be their has to be respected by the new owner.

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Answer 2

Slavery was a very lively business during the Renaissance.