Re: Slavery in the european 15th century?

[Christian Folini]

Hello,

On Sun, May 09, 2004 at 11:43:29PM +0200, Hakan Hugosson wrote:
> So my question is to what extent were slaves kept in the european 15th 
> century? I guess the regional differences are enormous, and one needs 
> some definition of slavery (working for no pay against one's will?), but 
> I have very little insight into the history of slavery so any and all 
> information is, as usual, welcome. Prisoners of war used as slaves, etc.?

During the dark ages slaves seem to have been quite common. They 
disappeared during the early middle ages and were replaced by
the class of socalled bond-slaves.

As far as i can tell bond-slavery was very popular throughout Europe.
While bond-slaves and slaves have a lot in common, there are important
differences. The term slave as we understand it today is linked with
the Roman or the American type of slavery which depends on the total
exposure of the slave to the free will of his owner.

The bond-slave on the other hand possesses certain rights and
can not easily be traded. He is _bound_ to the land. You buy a
farm and you get the bond-slaves belonging to the farm. A bond-slave
could have personal belongings. In the monasteries i have been working
on, i found a most interesting bond-slave called Martin von Stein.
The monastery handed over fife farms to him as feud. He became an
ordinary citizen of the city nearby and i am quite sure he paid a
wonderful statue to the monastery - nowadays the statue is shown in
the Museum van der Bergh in Antwerpen; a true masterpiece.
All the time he would belong to the monastery as bond-slave
and he had it written down in a diploma (~ qui de corpore pertinebat).

So bond-slaves are not a freely tradeable good. They are bound in 
a certain sense and thus not the type of slaves we think of nowadays.

The other type of slave was know to the middle ages too. However,
in Western Europe i was limited to the mediterrean countries.
The church has been very strict on the matter that a Christian can
not be held as slave. Therefore mediterranean slaves were mostly
musilm slaves, prisoners of war. Maybe the mediterranean naval warfare
as a source of new musilm slaves was more important than the church -
while little warfare with islamic regions was carried out from Northern
countries and thus hardly any slaves made it to Germany or Northern
France.

Female slaves were used in the houses a lot. The book Gerry mentiones
is 
Doris Origo, The Merchant of Prato: Francesco Di Marco Datini, ~1957.
Countless reeditions. A marvellous book really worth reading.

Franceso was married and had a couple of other children from
house slaves. Usually these children would be given away, but
as his wife did not become pregnant she allowd the little girl
to be raised inside the house. She finally was more or
less adopted by Francesco's wife. Their letters are full
of cute details on new clothes for the child etc.
Finally Francesco managed to marry the daughter of a slave
to a high-born citizen in the presence of a cardinal...

As mentioned in other messages, male slaves have been very 
popular on galleys. The reason is ovious. This persisted
throughout the modern times. Many so-called galley slaves have 
been European felons, pardoned to serve on a galley for 10 years
or 20 - few of them came back eventually. But they would
rather be prisoners than slaves.
 
There have been free men rowing on galleys as well. If i
remeber it right, there is a changing balance between slaves
and free men on the galleys. If enough slaves were on the
market, free men would not be needed, if slaves were scarce,
free men recieved good payment for rowing.

Greetings,

Christian

-- 
Bei dem Hadloub bin ich wegen Verquickung von Wahrheit und Dichtung
in unerwartete Verkrempelung geraten und muss mit Geduld darüber 
hinwegduseln.
--- Gottfried Keller, 1876