Enslavement for Manumission

The article challenges current perspectives on slavery as 'unfreedom' and proposes to examine the enslaved within a socio-political dynamics of power relations. An analysis of four Byzantine documents from the eleventh century and the place they accorded to slaves and manumitted slaves reveals the way enslavement and manumission served together as a means to acquire socioeconomic independence and private authority by turning the enslaved persons into private subjects: men and women exclusively subordinated to the authority of their owners. Private authority was based on a total subordination towards the enslaver and challenged the public imperial authority over people. An analysis of the place accorded to slaves and manumitted slaves in the private domain as seen from juridical and economic documents from the central Middle Ages from different regions of the Byzantine Empire shows slaves as social capital and slavery as a means to gain socioeconomic independence as part of the power game in a medieval society.KEYWORDS: Byzantine slaveryprivate subjectsmanumissionconversionsocial dependency Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Kecia Ali, Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000–1500 CE), eds. Reuven Amitai and Christoph Cluse (Brepols: Turnhout, 2017). Carl Hammer, A Large-Scale Slave Society of the Early Middle Ages: Slaves and their Families in Early Medieval Bavaria (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2002). Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, trans. J. M. Todd (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Alice Rio, Slavery after Rome, 500–1100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Cameron Sutt, Slavery in Árpád-era Hungary in a Comparative Context: East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 450–1450 (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Les Esclavages en Méditerranée et en Europe continentale: Espaces de traite et dynamiques économiques, eds. Fabienne. Guillén and Salah Trabelsi (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2012).2 International Labour Organization, Walk Free & International Organization for Migration, Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage (2022): https://bit.ly/3uKAlQQ. The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery (2012): https://bit.ly/3FLoIPO. Home Office, Modern Slavery: Statutory Guidance for England and Wales (under s49 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015) and Non-Statutory Guidance for Scotland and Northern Ireland (2022): https://bit.ly/3PhtIPn. U.S. Department of State, 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report: Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons: https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2018/. Revisiting the Law and Governance of Trafficking, Forced Labor and Modern Slavery, eds. Prabha Kotiswaran (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017).3 See for example Rio, Slavery, op. cit. Jelle Bruning, 'Slave Trade Dynamics in Abbasid Egypt: The Papyrological Evidence', Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 63, no. 5–6 (2020): 682–742. Yūsuf Rāġib, Actes de vente d'esclaves et d'animaux d'Egypte médiévale, 2 vols. (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 2002–2006).4 Two characteristic examples of this categorization: Jacques Heers, Esclaves et domestiques au Moyen Age dans le monde méditerranéen (Paris: Fayard, 1981). Craig A. Perry, 'The Daily Life of Slaves and the Global Reach of Slavery in Medieval Egypt, 969–1250 CE' (PhD diss., Emory University, 2014).5 This is thanks to studies such as the following: Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2014). Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Bonnie Martin, 'Slavery's Invisible Engine: Mortgaging Human Property', The Journal of Southern History 76, no. 4 (2010): 817–66. Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006).6 Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, eds. S. Miers and I. Kopytoff (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977).7 Evelyne Patlagean, Un Moyen Âge grec: Byzance, IXe-XVe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2007). Cf. recently Nathan Leidholm, Elite Byzantine Kinship, ca. 950–1204: Blood, Reputation, and the Genos (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2019). See also A. Kazhdan, People and Power in Byzantium (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982), and Leonora Neville, Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950–1100 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).8 See in particular the development of the practice of using enslaved boys to form private militias for the ruler in Islamic societies: David Ayalon, Islam and the Abode of War: Military Slaves and Islamic Adversaries (Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1994). Lutz Berger, 'Mamluks in Abbasid Society', in Migration History of the Medieval Afro-Eurasian Transition Zone, eds. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucien Reinfandt and Yannis Stouraitis (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 413–29. Étienne de la Vaissière, Samarcande et Samarra: Élites d'Asie centrale dans l'Empire Abbaside (Paris: Association pour l'Avancement des Études Iranéennes, 2007). Matthew S. Gordon, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (AH 200-275/815-889 CE) (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001). Idem, 'Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn and the Politics of Deference', in Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts: Essays in honor of Professor Patricia Crone, eds. Aasad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi, Robert G. Hoyland and Adam Silverstein (Leiden: Brill, 2014), ch. 9. Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: A Comparative Study, eds. Toru Miura and John Edward Philips (London: Kegan Paul International, 2000).9 Rachel Zelnick-Abramovitz, Not Wholly Free: The Concept of Manumission and the Status of Manumitted Slaves in the Ancient Greek World (Leiden: Brill, 2005).10 For the Greek terminology see: Zelnick-Abramovitz, Not Wholly Free, 99–126. For the Byzantine term apodouloi, ἀποδοῦλοι, see below.11 Dimiter Angelov, 'Three Kinds of Liberty as Political Ideals in Byzantium, Twelfth to Fifteenth Century', in Proceedings of the 22nd International Congress of Byzantine Studies, Sofia 22–27 August 2011, 3 vols. (Sofia: Bulgarian Heritage Foundation, 2011), 1:311–31. Alexander Kazhdan 'The Concept of Freedom (eleutheria) and Slavery (duleia) in Byzantium', in La notion de liberté au Moyen Age: Islam, Byzance, et Occident, Penn-Paris-Dumbarton Oaks Colloquia, 4 sessions des 12–15 octobre 1982, eds. George Makdisi, Dominique Sourdel, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), 215–26.12 This is not to contradict Orlando Patterson's theory about slavery as social death: for the manumitted enslaved person, manumission did not change the fact that life has changed forever by their enslaver's actions: Orlando Patterson, Slavery and social death: a comparative study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).13 Cartulary of the Greek Monastery of St-Elias and St-Anastasius of Carbone, ed. Gertrud Robinson, 3 vols., Oriens Christianus 44; 53; 62 (Rome, 1928–1930), IV, no. 53.14 Paul Lemerle, Cinqétudes sur le XIe s. byzantin (Paris: CNRS, 1977), 15–63.15 Actes d'Iviron II: du Milieu du XIe siècle à 1204 (Archives de l'Athos), eds. Jacques Lefort, Elene Metreveli (Paris: Académie des inscriptions & belles-lettres, 1990), nos. 44 and 47.16 The four documents are referred to in Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, but are not analyzed together.17 It was exhaustively studied. See: Lemerle, Cinqétudes. Paul Magdalino, 'The Byzantine Aristocratic Oikos', in The Byzantine Aristocracy, IX to XIII Centuries, ed. Michael Angold (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1984), 92–111. Koichi Inoue, 'A Provincial Aristocratic Oikos in Eleventh-Century Byzantium', Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 30, no. 4 (2005): 545–69. Claudia Rapp, 'Zwangsmigration in Byzanz: Kurzer Überblick mit einer Fallstudie aus dem 11 Jahrhundert', in Erzwungene Exile: Umsiedlung und Vertreibung in der Vormoderne, ed. Thomas Ertl (Frankfurt am Main-New York: Campus, 2017), 59–80.18 Following Claudia Rapp's analysis (idem, 'Zwangsmigration in Byzanz').19 In spite of its etymology, this term did not refer exclusively to what historians have termed 'domestic slave': Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 82–93, 183–86. Cf. David Lewis, Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context, c.800-146 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 295–306 (appendix about 'The Meaning of oiketes in Classical Greek').20 Lemerle, Cinqétudes, 23. This fact, which clearly shows slavery as a vital rural labor force in eleventh-century Anatolia was ignored in most of the studies that referred to this document.21 Franz Dölger, 'Text des Traktates aus Cod. Marc. gr. 173', in idem, Beiträge zur Geschichte der byzantinischen Finanzverwaltung, besonders des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Teubner, 1927, repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1964), 113–156 (introduction on pages 3–9). See Ch. M. Brand, 'Two Byzantine Treatises on Taxation', Traditio 25 (1969): 35–60. Dölger dates it between 913 and 1139, while Ostrogorsky dates it between 912 and 970: George Ostrogorsky, Die ländliche Steuergemeinde des Byzantinischen Reiches im X. Jahrhundert (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1969), 4ff. Oikonomides has argued for the beginning of the twelfth century: Nikolaos Oikonomides, Fiscalité et exemption fiscale à Byzance (IXe-XIe s.) (Athens: Ethniko Idruma Ereunōn, 1996), 44–45. Neville, Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, chs. 3–4.22 Jus graecoromanum, vol. 2, eds. Ioannes D. Zepos and Panagiotes Zepos (Athens: Scientia Aalen, 1962), 67–71 (Γεωργικός νόμος, ed. Walter Ashburner). And see also the commentary in Nomos Georgikos: das byzantinische Landwirtschaftsgesetz: Überlegungen zu inhaltlichen und zeitlichen Einordnung: deutsche Übersetzung, ed. Johannes Koder (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2020), 61–62 and 71.23 Dölger 'Text des Traktates aus Cod. Marc. gr. 173', 115–16. For the question of paroikoi who had a fiscal status and cannot be designated as rural manpower see: Youval Rotman, 'Formes de la non-liberté dans la campagne byzantine aux VIIe–XIe siècles', Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome, Moyen Âge 112, no. 2 (2000): 499–510. Economic History of Byzantium, eds. Angeliki Laiou et al. (Washington, D. C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2002), 334 –37. Neither Gemma nor Boïlas mention paroikoi. In fact, the Pakourianoi did possess a land for which they gained income from the pariokoi who were registered there. This is mentioned in Maria/Kalē's testament: see infra, n. 28.24 The Life of St. Philaretos the Merciful written by his Grandson Niketas, ed. Lennart Rydén (Uppsala: Uppsala University Library, 2002).25 Louis Petit, Vie et office de S. Michel Maléïnos (Paris: Picard, 1903), 7–26, ch. 11.26 Chronographiae quae Theophanis Continuati nomine fertur Liber quo Vita Basilii Imperatoris amplectitur, ed. Ihor Ševcenko (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 260–64. Steven Runciman, 'The Widow Danelis', in Études dédiées à la mémoire d'André M. Andréadès, ed. Kyriakos Ch Barbareso (Athens: Pyrsos, 1940), 425–31. Barbara Kontava-Delivoria, 'Qui était Daniélis?' Byzantion 71, no. 1 (2001): 98–109.27 Das Eparchenbuch Leons des Weisen, ed. Johannes Koder (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991). Daphne Penna, 'The Role of Slaves in the Byzantium Economy, 10th-11th Centuries: Legal Aspects', in Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900–1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection between Christianity and Islam, ed. Felicia Roşu (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 63–89. Economic History of Byzantium, 418–22. Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 96–99.28 Actes d'Iviron II, no. 53. Jacque Lefort, 'Radolibos: Population et paysage', Travaux et Mémoires 9 (1985) : 195–234.29 Magdalino, 'The Byzantine Aristocratic Oikos'. Neville, Authority in Byzantine, ch. 3.30 Supra, n. 19.31 Compare two other documents that were authored by powerful Byzantine aristocrats: Paul Gautier, 'La Diataxis de Michel Attaleiate', Revue des Études Byzantines 39 (1981): 5–143. Paul Gautier, 'Le typikon sébaste de Grégoire Pakourianos', Revue des Études Byzantines 42 (1984): 5–145.32 Boïlas mentions the three orphans whom he settled on his estates.33 A few of the studies that focus on the medieval slave trade: Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, AD 300–900 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Charles Verlinden, L'Esclavage dans l'Europe médiévale, 2 vols. (Brugge-Ghent: De Tempel-Rijksuniversiteit, 1977). Bruning, 'Slave Trade'. Ben Raffield, 'The Slave Markets of the Viking World: Comparative Perspectives on an "Invisible Archaeology"', Slavery & Abolition 40, no. 4 (2019): 682–705. Poul Holm, 'The Slave Trade of Dublin, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries', Peritia 5 (1988): 317–45. Mohamed Meouak, 'Esclaves et métaux précieux de l'Afrique subsaharienne vers le maghreb au moyen âge à la lumière des sources arabes', Espacio, Tiempo y Forma Serie III, Historia Medieval 23 (2010) : 113–34. Idem, 'Esclaves noirs et esclaves blancs en al-Andalus umayyade et en Ifrīqiya fātimide', in Couleurs de l'esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée (Moyen Age – XXe siècle), eds. Roger Botte and Alessandro Stella (Paris: Karthala, 2012), 25–53. Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 57–81. Idem, 'The Medieval Slave Trade: Map, Data, Sources', H-Slavery Resources, ed. D. Prior (https://networks.h-net.org/system/files/contributed-files/yrotman2cmedievalhumantrafficking2cmapanddata.pdf, accessed January 11, 2018). Elizabeth Savage, 'Berbers and Blacks: Ibāḍī Slave Traffic in Eighth-Century North Africa', Journal of African History 33, no. 3 (1991): 351–68. Salah Trabelsi, 'Commerce et esclavage dans le Maghreb oriental (VIIe-Xe siècles)', in Couleurs de l'esclavage sur les deux rives de la Méditerranée (Moyen Age – XXe siècle), eds. Roger Botte, Alessandro Stella (Paris: Karthala, 2012), 9–23.34 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, ed. Gyula Moravcsik (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1967), ch. 32. See Actes d'Iviron II, 180 for the origin of the manumitted slaves.35 Ibn Ḥawḳal, Kitāb Ṣūrat al-arḍ, ed. J. H. Kramers and G. Wiet, 2 vols. (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 2001), 1:80–92. Al-Bakrī, Kitāb al masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. A. van Leeuwen and A. Ferré, 2 vols. (Tunis: al-Dār al-ʿarabiyya li-l-kitāb, 1992), 2:833–94. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, eds. J.F.P. Hopkins and Nehemia Levtzion (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000), 22. The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953). Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān, Mission to the Volga, trans. James E. Montgomery (New York: NYU Press, 2017).36 Youval Rotman, 'Migration and Enslavement: The Medieval Model', in Migration History of the Medieval, op. cit., 387–412 (https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004425613/BP000018.xml).37 Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 139–52.38 Codex Theodosianus, ed. Theodor Mommsen (Berlin: Weidmann, 1962), IV.7.1. See also the manumission formulae in Byzantine manuscripts, collected by Fabrizio Fabbrini and Ciro Giannelli: Fabrizio Fabbrini, La manumissio in ecclesia (Milan: Pubblicazioni dell'Istituto di diritto romano e dei diritti dell'Oriente mediterraneo, 1965). Idem, 'Un nuovo documento relativo alla manumissio in ecclesia', Rendiconti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, ser. VIII, no. 16 (1961): 214–15. Ciro Giannelli, 'Alcuni formulari relativi alla 'manumissio in ecclesia' tratti da eucologi italo-greci e slavi', Rivista di cultura classica e medioevale 1, no. 2 (1959): 127–47. Alfredo Calonge Matellanes, 'Algunas observaciones sobre la Manumissio in ecclesia', Revista Española de Derecho Canónico 20, no. 60 (1965): 579–92.39 Ecloga: Das Gesetzbuch Leons III. und Konstantinos V, ed. Ludwig Burgmann (Frankfurt am Main: Lowenklau-Gesellschaft, 1983), § 8.1; Jus graecoromanum (Πρόχειρος νόμος, § 7.28). See also Nathan Leidholm, 'Parents and Children, Servants and Masters: Slaves, Freedmen, and the Family in Byzantium', in The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium, eds. Michael Stewart, David Parnell and Conor Whately (New York: Routledge, 2022), 263–81.40 Cf. Henrik Mouritsen, The Freedman in the Roman World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 3.41 Actes d'Iviron II, 155.42 Indeed, Alexios I Komnenos (r. 1081–1118) intervened in this custom by ensuring that Bulgar captives, who were by this period Christians of free origin would not be enslaved, and that nor would children captured in military attacks: Jus graecoromanum, 1:401–407 ('Novellae et Aureae Bullae imperatorum post Justinianum', coll. 4, nov. 35). Charles M. Brand, 'Slave Women in the Legislation of Alexios I', Byzantinische Forschungen 23 (1996): 19–24. Ludwig Burgmann, 'Lawyers and Legislators: Aspects of Law-making in the Time of Alexios I', in Alexios I Komnenos: Papers on the Second Belfast Byzantine International Colloquium, ed. Margaret Mullett and Dion Smythe (Belfast: Belfast Byzantine Enterprises, 1996), 185–98. Helga Köpstein, 'Zur Novelle des Alexios Komnenos zum Sklavenstatus (1095)', in Actes du XVe Congrès international d'études byzantines (Athens: Association internationale des études byzantines, 1976), 4:160–72. Idem, 'Einige Aspekte des byzantinischen und bulgarischen Sklavenhandels im X. Jahrhundert: Zur Novelle des Joannes Tzimiskes über Actes du Congrès International et (Sofia: de des For the practice see: de I ed. vol. 3 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, et à Byzance (Paris: de la 1996), ch. ed. e di For the see: ed. Paul as as – The des 11. Jahrhunderts aus – Übersetzung, eds. and (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022), and the of slaves who and the of were part of the private of their who for Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, ch. de The Slavery and the of Early (London: Routledge, A few examples for the way to 4, S. Life of St. the ed. Lennart 2 vols. (Uppsala: University of Uppsala Press, See also Vie de de ed. 2 vols. des ch. for slaves who the The the to in a the for slaves see: Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, See for other of dans l'Empire (Paris: Cf. Codex Theodosianus, and and Codex ed. Paul Weidmann, and Cf. S. 'A Law of the of and Proceedings of the American Association (1969): ed. Weidmann, no. and and La de 2000), Idem, di in ecclesia in Bullae no. 1 John Private in the Byzantine Empire (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1982), ch. Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, In the eleventh a slave to be by the A. and Michael vol. 5 (Athens: G. des Actes du de eds. and vol. 1, (Paris: Institut français d'études byzantines, no. and the Law in Byzantium', 63, no. 3 (1988): Grégoire de Lettres, ed. 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, no. Lettres, ed. 3 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, no. de à Revue de français et (1981): zu und in und in und Adolf zum eds. and Geschichte See Das des eds. and (Frankfurt am Main: 1982), a commentary of of on to which the slave free after three as a but the status of a slave the Following For the of see: Imperatoris quae quae ed. E. (Leipzig: Teubner, vol. 1, and and and idem, La For an analysis of dynamics see: Private Cartulary of the Greek IV, no. that to in a is In the period the term designated slaves and in as part of the Slaves not that were manumitted slaves other who were part of the and be the of the Private Compare the question of the from this and the to Mouritsen, The ch. 4, in particular pages Mouritsen, The Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic The Origins of the Islamic (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, and in an Early Islamic Society University Press, en dans la s. 39 (2005): For such a see Jelle Bruning, enslavement in an Journal of the Society, ser. n. a from the century Egypt, written by a who to as slave his to It is who have and while in Compare and of in the Islamic Middle East (New University Press, Supra, n. For this see as as the of Alexios n. zur Franz Zelnick-Abramovitz, Not Wholly and See examples from documents of Byzantine the manumitted slaves are not mentioned by the and are as such by from other Cartulary of the Greek Monastery of IV, no. 53; no. no. on is a in the social of the Byzantine and in the Department of History at University

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