SLAVERY 18

We're home now.  I miss Dubrovnik already!  What a wonderful time we've had - in every way.  The material I've been looking at will now go on to the back-burner for a while, as I prepare for a term's teaching and return to my main project on misbehaving students in the fifteenth century.

St Vlah (St Blaise), patron saing of Dubrovnik, holding the city in his hands

SLAVERY 17 - THE MORAL AND THE LEGAL

The starting point for my interest in slavery arose from trying to think about notions of property and ownership from the perspective of legal anthropology.  In this sense, it has been really fascinating to look at the ways in which people thought about slavery from a secular legal perspective, from a canon (Church) law perspective,  in a moral sense and in an economic sense.  These different frames of reference often overlapped, but they often contradicted and undermined one another.  For instance, various historians (eg. Susan Mosher Stuard) have shown how the apparent decline of slavery in the first half of the fourteenth century was explained by contemporaries in moral terms which provided a useful gloss over their actually much more hard-nosed economic motivations (the Italian market had made slaves too expensive).   Secular law in Dubrovnik banned the export of slaves in 1416 in what looks like a fairly clear statement of legal disapproval of the concept - and yet, there are many cases of slavery after this date, and increasingly draconian punishments for slaves who escaped. Canon law forbade the enslavement of fellow Christians, but it is clear that many of those enslaved were Christians even before their capture.

These clashes and contradictions explain some of the details in the records.  Two slave girls sold in 1398 (Diversa Cancellarie 33, fol 129r) were specifically described as Patarene, a heretical sect - a rather useful way of skirting around the moral problems of enslaving children with clear religious views.  In 1380, a slave trader was sued by three girls who claimed that he had sold them as Paterenes when they were, in fact, Christians - the heretical label was so useful as to be deliberately misappropriated (Diversa Cancellarie 31, fol 81r).  The timing was crucial in this case - the girls needed to demonstrate that they were Christian before they became enslaved.  And this tells us that the Christian men and women of Dubrovnik (and plenty of other European towns) had found a way to interpret canon law literally and rigidly: the law said one could not enslave a Christian, it did not say that someone could not continue to be a slave once converted.  It seems to me a classic example of rigid legalism providing a means of absolute moral obfuscation.

Incidentally, there were converts, and there clearly were owners who chose not to exploit the disjunctions between moral, legal and religious universes in this way.   In 1439, we find a case of a slave converting and joining, with the permission of his master, a monastery as a (sort of!) free man (Diversa Notariae 23, fol. 83v)

SLAVERY 16 - ESCAPE

Sadly, we soon have to leave.  I guess I'd better remind myself that we're lucky to be able to...  In the Middle Ages, the council of Dubrovnik controlled movement both in and out of the city very tightly indeed (and not just that of slaves). Immigration to the city needed to be restricted quite simply because the amount of fresh drinking water was limited.  And controlling movement out of the city was a good way of keeping tabs on the population.   In a sense then, the great motivation for slavery wasn't just cheap labour - it was demographic control.  If you want to control the movement of your labourers, what better way than to enslave them?

But slaves did attempt to flee.  I've spent the day looking at criminal records, and there are a really high number of attempted escapes.  I've also finally forked out the money to take some pictures in the archives, so here is an image of a document from 1470 (Lamenta de criminalia) telling of the flight of a slave called  Mighachgna (fol 153v) who was also accused of stealing from her masters.

How were such slaves apprehended?  City republics like Dubrovik have such a romantic ring to them. Driven by the idea of the common good, the citizens apparently put the interests of the community before the interests of individuals: the motto of the city written above the Rector's Palace is Obliti privatorum publica curate (put public concerns before private ones).

image credit: http://bejar.biz/node/16363

And it was by such a community effort that runaway slaves were to be caught..   The 'common good' and civic togetherness begins to look rather less appealing: this was liberty, wealth and prosperity for the privileged who were 'in', and it was reinforced by collective action against those who were 'out'.

Here's a typical public announcement about a runaway slave on 10th September 1429 (it's the fourth item from the top):

Diversa Cancellariae 46, fol 33r

Citizens are forbidden from giving the runaway Stephanus 'auxilium, consilium vel favorem, nec eum mittere ad alienas partes per terram', or from giving him refuge in their own homes.  And any citizen who disobeyed, was to be heavily punished.  

This is the flip-side then of democratic looking city republics.   Strict and cruel policing, undertaken in the name of the public interest and the common good.

SLAVERY 15 - ADOPTION

One of the most exciting things about archival trips is that you don't know exactly what you'll find. Often there are wonderful surprises which take your research off in surprising directions.  I have been hunting out examples of slavery, but in doing so, came across a large number of cases of adoption - it's a really fascinating topic, as it tells you so much about family structures, inheritance practices, emotional ties and so on.

keen to adopt a kitten....

There's certainly a connection to slavery.  The majority of slaves in medieval Dubrovnik were female, and it's perhaps not surprising that some became pregnant by their masters.  I've found a few adoption cases which suggest that these masters were often keen to adopt their illegitimate offspring (who were technically slaves if the father chose not to act), sometimes because their marriage had not produced any other children, sometimes out of a sense of conscience: the latter is suggested in a contract of July 1397, which obligated the other sons and daughters of the father (described as legitimos natales - born in wedlock) to treat the adopted son as a true brother (Diversa Cancellariae 33, fol 85v).

But this was not the only reason to adopt a child.  Several widows adopted children. Sometimes they were motivated by a need for companionship and a carer - in one case a boy was adopted on condition that he feed and clothe his adoptive mother during her lifetime.  Sometimes, the motivation was inheritance-related: a widow with only a daughter, keen to keep the inheritance within the family, adopted a boy on condition that he marry her daughter (I'm unclear how this is not incestuous - Diversa Cancellariae  33, fol. 130v, 1398)

But some adoptions were still more cynical.  There are several which read pretty much like slavery contracts - the adopted child is obligated to serve his new father and mother in all their wishes, and if he fails to do so, he forfeits his right to be called their child (and to inherit their property) (eg. Diversa Cancellarie 31, fol. 124v, 25^th October 1394).

But it's not all bleak, cynical and self-serving.  On 28th January 1392, one Budo Basetich signed a contract entrusting his daughter Marina to be adopted by Millasius Obroevich  (Diversa Cancellarie 31, fol. 4v).  The adoptive father pledged to bring up the girl morally, to clothe and feed her, and in due course to find an appropriate husband for her and to pay her dowry.  I can't think of a cynical motivation for this (though I don't know why the birth father placed her for adoption -  although there is no record of a payment, perhaps poverty was a factor) - having a girl in the fourteenth century was a financial liability.  Is it too soppy to think that Millasius may have quite simply wanted a child to love?

SLAVERY 16 - CHILDREN

The Rector's Palace, Dubrovnik

Most of my research since I started my DPhil has been on violence and misbehaviour.  With topics such as these, and now slavery, it's inevitable, I guess, that some of the material will be quite upsetting.   As historians, we're always taught the importance of objectivity - we're not supposed to pass moral judgement on what we study, we're supposed to be able to rein in our emotional reactions. But I think that it's actually really important to maintain a little bit of judgementalism, and to allow ourselves to feel in response to the stuff we study.  It's all to easy for our emotions to become numbed, and to forget the sheer human impact and trauma of many historical events.



Anyway, what I found today was thoroughly distressing.  Two young girls named Juiça and Dragna, aged 10 and 11, sold into slavery by their own fathers (Diversa Cancellariae, 33, fol 129r, 1398).  The poverty of a parent who will sell their child is unimaginable really.   Both are described as coming from Bosnia, both were apparently 'Patarenes', a heretical Bosnian sect.  Why would the contract bother to mention their heresy?   Because enslaving fellow Christians was against canon law - so these children had to be defined as 'other', as un-Christian and un-saved.  The contracts state that the new owners have the right to sell the girls on should they wish.  The contracts stipulate that 'eius mandatis hobedire et facere quocumque michi possibilia comisseriit faciendam,' and 'ac de me omne aliud sui velle faceret' (I must obey all his demands, and do whatever he tells me to the best of my ability... and that he may do with me whatever he pleases').  You'll notice the first person here.  The contracts begin 'Ego Juiça', 'Ego Dragna' - 'I Juiça', 'I Dragna'.  These girls are apparently agreeing to, and certifying their own loss of liberty.  The clauses state that they have done this of their own free will, in full knowledge and understanding, un-threatened by the use of force.  It would require an outstandingly blinkered vision to believe that this is true.  And it's an extreme example of the hypocrisy of these contracts: the moral, the religious and the legal have parted ways, but contemporaries did their best to blind themselves to this fact.  Even on their own terms, the contracts are self-denying - written 'on behalf' of the children in order to demonstrate their consent, they fail to mention that under-age persons did not have the legal right to make a contract anyway.


Everything is abhorrent here.  Slavery.  Child labour (and potentially worse).  And the moral obfuscation of pretending the children are complicit in their own tragedy.  And yes, I'm judgemental.

SLAVERY 15: Travel

I've worked my way through to the 1390s now, and the world seems to be opening up in the documents.

Here are a few rather intriguing examples (the whole thing was made more intriguing today by a big splattered blood stain over a couple of the folios - mysterious and disgusting!):

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In 1399, a patrician from Dubrovnik commissioned a slave trader to travel to Damietta in North Africa to buy him a black slave.  The vast majority of slaves before this point were from the hinterlands around Dubrovnik.   By the 1390s, it had become a status-symbol to have a slave who was visibly different - and to 'place an order' for such a person.  The world was opening up - slaves were being brought from further away - and what they represented in terms of status for the owner was beginning to shift.  Distasteful it may be, but this seems to have been about fashions. (Diversa Cancellariae 33, fol 142r)

In 1398, a bishop hired a priest for a one-off payment to work exclusively for him for a period of several years.  The priest was to accompany the bishop on a pilgrimage to Santiago da Compostella in Spain - such a long way, that provisions were made in the contract for what would happen to the payment should the priest give up halfway, should he die, should the bishop die etc.(Diversa Cancellariae 33, fol 28v)

In 1397, one Victor Bathar from Flanders was captured by the Turks, and then offered protection by a patrician from Dubrovnik - the protection was offered on the strict condition that Victor was never, ever, to leave Dubrovnik - he was a captive. (Diversa Cancellariae 33, fol 82r)

SLAVERY 14 - WASHING LINES

One of my favourite things about cities like Dubrovnik and Venice is the lines of washing hanging high above the narrow streets or perilously waving in the breeze above the canals.   It's a nice reminder that these tourist-saturated cities still have domestic lives, and that despite the extreme special-ness of these places, they are still enveloped in the everyday.

The vast majority of slaves in the documents I have looked at are described as 'ancillae'.  These are slave girls.   I'm certainly not the first person to notice that much late  medieval slavery was domestic and female - these were girls bought to get on with the everyday chores which form the bedrock of even the most magnificent city.

Equally it's quite surprising that, although there are examples of slaves used in shipping and more heavy labour, areas which we might expect to have been quite heavily dependent upon slave labour seem to have been contracted in a much more conventional manner.  The magnificent walls of the city, for example, do not seem to have been constructed by slaves, but by paid labourers.  There are contracts with stone-masons (Diversa Notariae 33, fols. 185-6), with surveyors (Diversa Notariae 35, fol 93), and so on.

This isn't to say that there weren't male slaves, but it is nevertheless striking that slavery was largely a female phenomenon (at least in the first part of the period).  I've been looking also at the kinds of contracts whereby people effectively sold themselves (or, often their children) for a set number of years.  Some of these contracts see in practice to be like apprenticeships, with the purchaser of the labour committing himself not just to feed and clothe the  person, but to educate them in a particular trade or skill (eg. goldsmithery or apothecary).  These aren't exactly apprenticeships - they're described still as the sale of labour for however many years - but one can see the appeal for  those struggling with poverty.   And they are all for boys.  There are similar contracts for girls - but, although in most ways absolutely identical in wording, surprise surprise, the contracts for girls involve nothing but domestic chores and doing the will of the 'owner' and whatever he should ask.

SLAVERY 13: PLAGUE

After two days of the most torrential rain I have ever seen (the steep flights of steps down into the city became gushing torrents), the sun came out today.  We took the opportunity to go to the beach at Mlini, a beautiful little village a bus-ride away.  There we found a tiny fifteenth-century chapel nestling by the beach, dedicated to St Rocco, the patron saint of plague victims.

The plague struck the population of the region horrifically during the first outbreak in 1348-9, and continued to kill huge numbers and prevent demographic recovery into the early fifteenth century. Slavery was very widespread in Dubrovnik in the thirteenth century (and most of the evidence I have looked at so far dates from this period).  It then seems to have petered out in the fourteenth century (or at least recedes from the records - hence my long 'wasted' hours in the archives recently), becoming prominent again in the late fourteenth and into the fifteenth centuries.  Most historians agree that these demographic shifts help to explain the fluctuating numbers of slaves.  In the early fourteenth century, the population was booming - labour was so cheap that there was little need for slavery, and, in any case, the overseas demand for slaves made them prohibitively expensive.  But as the population dwindled, labour became scarce, and slaves from further and further afield became a useful way to sustain the wealth and prosperity of the powerful city of Dubrovnik.

In western European historiography, there's a prevailing narrative that the Black Death, by making labour scarce, improved the lot of the surviving labourers - they could demand better working conditions, better pay and so on.  Of course it's not so simple as this, and I have always found the description of 'better living standards' a bizarre way to describe the lives of people who would have lost most members of their families.   And students have often very perceptively pointed out in our tutorials on the subject that, whilst the lot of wealthier peasants may have improved (they could afford to take advantage of the new opportunities), the poorest lacked the resources to purchase land, or better their working conditions - those at the bottom of the social heap largely remained exactly where they were (or sank into even more abject poverty).

The experience of slaves in the fifteenth century provides another useful reminder that not everyone could profit from the new opportunities brought about by mass mortality..  For many, to the grief and trauma of mass death and bereavement, was added the tragedy of enslavement.  Shortage of labour meant, quite simply, that the demand for slaves rose.  Whilst we would hope that a labour shortage would increase the bargaining power of the labourers, if those labourers had nothing to start with, their position was catastrophic.

Another example, I guess, of how events often blithely labelled as 'equalising' can widen the gap between rich and poor.

SLAVERY 12 - CHALLENGES!

The wretched internet connection has been down for the past couple of days... so to the challenges below, I can now add technology.

This is slightly frivolous and probably too honest  – but appropriate since I’ve spent many hours now going through volumes which turned out to be completely irrelevant.

Challenges in the archives:

1/ staying inside – when the sky is blue and the sea is warm (though actually right now it's pouring with rain).

2/ the handwriting – I’ve never found reading medieval script easy, and this will always be a particular challenge for me.  Most of the notarial hands I’m reading at the moment are pretty neat and tidy though.

3/ the gaps.  There are so many things I’d love to know! – what happened to slaves once they were freed? What were conditions like once they were with their new owners? What work exactly did they do? How old were they? What were their lives like before being enslaved? Despite the richness of these archives, there is so much we can never know, or only speculate about.  Yesterday, I found an account of a young girl who was adopted - truly fascinating, but why was she adopted? what happened to her later? how did she feel about it? how did her adoptive father treat her? did she ever see her birth parents again? was she adopted because of the poverty of her parents? We will never know.

4/ the names – it’s difficult at the best of times to trace a given name through the documents, but harder still when the same person can be known by several names: eg. A slave called Obratus of Bosnia, also known as Radosclavus (Diversa Cancellarie, II, fol 102r)

5/ the quantity – there is so much fascinating material!  And I’ve just wasted six hours on completely irrelevant volumes. Ouch!

SLAVERY 11 - the archives

The archives in Dubrovnik are housed in the Sponza Palace.  Most the building seems to have been completed by 1312. The ground floor was used as a customs-house, the first floor was for social occasions, and the second floor was the mint and dates from 1520 according to an inscription.  The famous Renaissance arcade in front was probably also added in 1520, whereas the elaborate windows of the first floor date from the fifteenth century and are recognisably Venetian in style. Caravans to the Balkan interior gathered in front of the building.  The elegant architecture bears visual witness to the interconnectedness of Dubrovnik with much wider trade networks across the Adriatic.

Inside the archives...

The archival collection itself began to be systematically put together from a very early date.  From the thirteenth century, notarial practices became so sophisticated that it was possible to file the documents very carefully.  The keeping of the archives was re-codified as a state activity in the 18th century, at which point they reclassified the collection into 14 series.  In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, much of the material was taken away to Vienna, returning to Dubrovnik in 1920 where it was re-inventoried and in 1952 relocated to the Sponza palace.  The importance of these archives for a sense of political identity was key.

This tells us something beyond how to access the documents we want: it testifies to the symbolic importance of such archives, and the ways in which documents can are not only shaped by the history of a place, but become part of the history of a place.The parchment (or paper) doesn't just communicate what happened - in many ways, it is what happened.

In the documents that I've looked at there is a real sense that these matter as documents, not simply for what they tell us.  The contract of a sale of a slave doesn't just communicate the sale - it stands as a symbol for perpetuity of that person's status.  Even so, there was anxiety that documents might be challenged, and for that reason, particularly after manumissions of slaves, we find a clause stating that any subsequent document which might be produced cannot invalidate the one in hand.  Documents were referred back to in order to respond to challenges and prove ownership, they were registered in different places (loose contracts were officially registered in the notarial register - eg. a sale of 1339 as a loose leaf, then copied carefully into the Debita Notariae 2 fol. 270r), they were lost and then found.

So in the archives,we find not only the record of history, but we are handling history - touching the material things which embodied relationships of such importance.

SLAVERY 10 - Warranties

I use the word 'warranty' not really for its legal implications, but because the nature of some of the contracts I've looked at has made me think of washing machines and mass-produced electrical goods. It's chilling to find another human being guaranteed for a certain length of time, as if they are nothing more than just another product.  And I suppose that it's odd also in the sense that guarantees of good working order for a particular length of time tend to refer to things which have been manufactured, ie, to a subset of commodities more generally: one might have expected slaves to be part of a different subset, and yet, clearly, their training and character was felt to be the responsibility of the trader to some extent.

For example, in 1280, a trader called Serdanus sold Tuerdoe of Bosnia with a money-back guarantee if she should run away within three years (Debita Notariae 1, fol 29r).  The sale was for life, the guarantee for three years - as if after that, the trader could hardly be held responsible for the long-term usefulness of his product. Weirdly, it's the three year limit on the guarantee, rather than the guarantee itself, which I find particularly unsettling - somehow it objectivises the woman more than anything.

The first archives I've worked in, where we're told not to wear bikinis or eat ice-creams.

SLAVERY 9 - FAMILIES

If slavery is about the loss of freedom and the loss of choice, about displacement and dislocation, most tragically, it’s about the loss of family.

Stormy evening...

How did people become slaves in thirteenth-century Dubrovnik?  Generally, people were enslaved through war or raids by slave traders.  But many, from the hinterlands around Dubrovnik, also sold themselves or their families into slavery – one can only imagine the desperation which would lead to such a move.

I’ve collected now quite a number of cases of  mothers selling their sons or daughters, fathers selling their children, siblings selling each other.  But I’ve noticed one really striking thing, and perhaps this is just because I’ve only reviewed a relatively small number of cases so far: it may, of course, simply be a coincidence.  It would seem, though, that when family members sold each other into slavery, most of the time they sold the person not ‘diffinite ad mortem’, but with a clause which limited the labour to seven or ten years.  As I’ve said in a previous post, I’m not sure that the practical implications of a straightforward slavery contract and one of these contracts for a limited time period were so very different – but it’s very striking that families in the direst poverty should have been able still to exercise some kind of agency to limit the horror of what was happening.  It suggests, perhaps, that familial affection could find outlets in the most desperate situations.

In one case of 1282, a slave called Dabraça de Bosna bought her freedom for a terrible price – that of her sister (Diversa Cancellariae I, fol 110v).  As she became free to ‘vada[re] per quoatuor partes mundi, quocumque ei placuerit, libera et franca in perpetuum’ (‘wander through the four corners of the earth, wherever it should please her, free and liberated for ever’), her sister was enslaved to ‘omnia servicia ad eius voluntatem facere’ (‘to serve her owner in all ways according to his wishes’).  But as I read on, I was quite moved to find that the sister was not enslaved exactly as Dabraça had been, but rather that her labour for four years had been purchased.  After the four years were up, her sister was, apparently, free to go.  What is this?  A case of one sibling essentially betraying another?   Or a case of the emotive bond between two siblings pushing one to act to free her sister, and the other to exercise what little agency and choice she had to limit the terms of her sister’s bondage.

SLAVERY 8 - DEFINITIONS


The archives are shut today, so time for some swimming and some reflection...

View towards Dubrovnik from the island of Lokrum

One of the biggest challenges in working on slavery is attempting to arrive at a definition.


The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following definition : 'One who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person, whether by capture, purchase, or birth; a servant completely divested of freedom and personal rights.'


'In 1926, the slavery convention defined slavery as ‘the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised’. In 1930, the definition was expanded to include all those obliged to do forced or compulsory labour, defined as ‘all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily'.

One of the big debates concerning slavery in Dubrovnik, with which I am grappling, lies in the distinction between slavery and indentured labour, and the point at which a transition was made between the two– I hope to have more to say about this in due course. It’s clear that a flooded labour market would reduce the need for slavery and turn it into the more expensive option; and that a form of labour which involved selling one’s services for a set number of years would be far more appealing to owners/ employers, who would therefore be able to shed responsibility for slaves in their old age and could profit with no drawbacks from the most productive years of a person’s life. It had the added advantages of appeasing late medieval consciences, aware that slavery was against the teaching of the Church. It’s an important distinction, and I shall be looking at the legal implications, as well as the ways in which this tied into increasingly problematising moral statements on the subject of slavery. But I don’t want to lose sight of the essential enslavement of these people in either case. And I suspect that this might be an area in which legalism can serve to obfuscate the total abnegation of human rights.

The point was recently brought home particularly forcefully by the shooting in Greece of 28 immigrant strawberry pickers, who had the apparent temerity to demand their wages for the past six months. Whether or not, these people were formally the property of their employers in many ways seems irrelevant when they were refused pay, forced to live in squalid conditions, and obliged, by physical force, to continue working.

Orlando Patterson in his Slavery and Social Death defines slavery as ‘the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonored persons’. He describes the legal qualities of as an idiom rather than an essential characteristic of slavery. I’m not sure that legalism, honour, violence etc can be so easily separated – but there is a very important point here.

Whilst the United Nations now clearly points to the multiple forms of enslavement, we’re all too ready, as a public, to turn a blind eye and allow the kind of obfuscations which continue to provide cheap produce without troubling our consciences.


There is a useful article here.

SLAVERY 7 - FREEDOM

So much for posting every day - I was extremely ill last night, though thankfully now much better...

A view of freedom?

As I've gone through the first volume of the Debita Notariae, I've been looking out particularly for manumission of slaves.  It's been argued that slavery was very often a life-cycle stage - something temporary rather than a permanent state.  And it's certainly true that many slaves were indeed manumitted.  Whether such an impression would have been much comfort as they faced the clause 'diffinite ad mortem' ('valid until death') and what faced them after freedom are more troubling.

Why did people free slaves?  I've come across a variety of reasons.  Sometimes, they were freed on the owner's death because of a clause in a will (eg. fol. 53v.): typically, the owner would have left a variety of bequests to religious and charitable foundations, and the freeing of a slave was similarly supposed to be good for the soul of the testator.  Sometimes, they were freed during the life-time of the owner for the good of the latter's 'soul'.  In a particularly striking case, Nicholas Mauricenus, count of Ragusa, paid Dimitius Pradanovich of Canalus in order a pair of the latter's slaves - a brother and sister.  The count was motivated 'pro bona anima sua' - 'for the good of his soul' (fol 34v).

Such cases suggest that, although legally slavery was fine at this stage (1280s), morally people knew it to be problematic.  Why bother to free slaves unless one knew that there was something morally pretty abhorrent here?  It's an intriguing example of self-delusion when it suited, and the disjunction of legal and moral codes.

But, in most cases, slaves freed themselves by saving up enough to buy their freedom.  I'd love to know more about how they managed to save up the necessary money (and I guess this must have required at least some goodwill on the part of their owners).  In some cases, they borrowed the money: Milosti, a slave, bought her freedom in May 1282 by borrowing the money from one Bogdana - her husband also had to pledge that the money would be returned within a month.

And not all owners were particularly cooperative.  A contract from one Tyse, wife of Nicholas de Roncino, stated that she had freed her slave Drugosti.   But this wasn't out of generosity.   Drugosti had carefully saved up to purchase her freedom and had been allowed to do so only on condition that she provide a replacement: Budicana de Sana was the unhappy replacement.

So any sense that manumission was an act of generosity and progressive thinking seems to be misplaced.

SLAVERY 6 - NUANCES

It's one in the morning, so this will be quite quick!

The view from just outside our flat.

One of my main goals is to examine the terminology of slavery contracts really carefully, and to scrutinise the shift from clear slave-owner relationships to a more complex form of indentured labour which became more prominent in the fourteenth century.  In other words, we seem to see a shift from contracts which describe the outright sale of one person to another 'diffinite ad mortem' ('valid until death'), to contracts which describe the purchase of someone's labour for a fixed number of years (typically around twelve years).  There's loads more to be said about this - how do we distinguish apprenticeships from indentured labour? was the shift really so straightforward? and, most obviously, did labour contracts as opposed to slavery contracts actually make any difference to the worker?

My gut instinct is to say 'no'.   Selling oneself (or one's child, or one's brother - I came across several cases like this today) for twelve years implies to me a pretty horrific form of slavery - the loss of twelve years of one's life, the surrender of all one's rights for that time, and the knowledge that at the end of it, one is, once again destitute (at least most slaves were fed and clothed in their old age).

But today, whilst trawling through looking for cases of slaves who'd been freed (again, another fascinating topic, and, sadly, not one which sheds much positive light on human nature), I noticed one Obrada de Trebotich (fol 100r., Diversa Notariae I).  She managed to buy her freedom from her owners, Stanissa and Rossinus de Bereia, on payment of seven pounds.   Where did she get the money from?   By selling herself for seven years to Marinus Fuschus de Zerepo.  

This brought home to me very forcefully that the distinctions between these different kinds of contract really did matter.  It must have been incredibly challenging for Obrada to manage such a transaction, so it must have meant a lot to her.  Freedom, sad to say, seems to come only in degrees.

SLAVERY 5 - CONSENT

"Dubrovnik IMG 9664" by Bjoertvedt . 
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - 

Another intriguing day in the archives.   I'm looking at records (mainly contracts) from the 1280s at the moment.  Here's a standard contract from 1280 of the sale of a slave:

Die xxiiii October Ragusii. Juannus filius Clapote presentem et consentietem ancillam suam Constanisclavam de Bosna vendidit Michaeli Lucari c per s. dr. gross. quinque et  dimidem. Diffinite ad mortem.   Testis Sersius Clementis Iudex. (fol. 28r, Debita Notaria I).

24th October, Ragusa.   Juannus son of Clapotus, sold his slave Constanisclava from Bosnia, who was present and consenting, to Michael Lucarus for five and a half gold coins. Valid until death.  Witnessed by Sersius Clementis, judge.

Why bother to include the presence and consent of the slave?  And what kind of consent could this possibly be?  In a sense, this is part of the moral obfuscation of slavery in the thirteenth century.  Canon law said that enslaving fellow Christians was wrong, but it didn't straightforwardly exonerate the enslavement of those of other religions either.  Legally, slavery might have been just about acceptable, but the formula 'presentem et consentientem' - the need to claim that the slave was perfectly ok about what was happening to him or her - suggests that morally people knew it to be problematic.  The apparent consent of the slave seems to me like a sop to conscience.

It's something more than this too, for it tells us much about why and how people became enslaved.  Many were certainly captured as a result of war or raids.  But today, I found increasing numbers of cases in which people were selling themselves, or their children, into slavery as a result of extreme poverty.   In such cases, it certainly happened with their consent  - they initiated the transaction - but that doesn't mean that this was a real choice.

On 12th June 1281 for instance, 'Ego quidem Dabrenus filius Zueti Tragurini confiteor quod mea bona voluntate dedi et vendidi me pro servo Elye Blasii de Rasti pro s. dr. grossi quatuor et dimidi diffinite ad mortem, ut dictus Elias de presenta mea velle suum faciat'. (fol. 57r).

I, Dabrenus son of Zueti Tragurinus record that I gave and sold myself, of my own free will, as a slave to Elias Blasius of Rastus for four and a half gold coins, valid until my death, so that the said Elias can do with me as he pleases. 

We tend to define slavery not just as ownership of other people, but the total abnegation of their right to choose.  Whilst the idea of consent in these Dubrovnik cases is often just a formula, it also reminds us that 'choice' and 'consent' aren't straightforward: saying that someone did something of their own free will ignores the circumstances which limit that choice and can sometimes be a convenient way of side-stepping more disturbing realities.

SLAVERY 4 - the originals...

I have spent the last couple of days looking through the 1280 to 1282 book of Debita Notariae – solicitor’s documents from medieval Dubrovnik.

Dubrovnik, image from wikicommons

Why bother when there is an excellent edition of much of this material published by Gregor Cremosnik in 1931? First, quite simply because he didn’t include everything, so there are all kinds of fascinating nuggets to discover by looking through the document itself.

Second, because reading an edited selection doesn’t give you a real sense of the nature of the document itself.  It’s partly just the thrill of holding parchment from the thirteenth century.  But it’s more than that.  It’s seeing how carefully each of these notarial records was transcribed – the script is immaculate, the items carefully lined and justified for clarity: these are the workings of an extremely efficient set of notarial practices – thirteenth-century Dubrovnik was clearly a well-run city.  And, most strikingly, it’s about seeing where the slave trade fitted into the general life of the city. Returning to the original document, we find slave contracts interspersed with records of land and building transactions, marriage contracts, debt recovery procedures.  Even some of the legal formulae are the same.  These people were being treated as commodities like many others.

On folio 34 recto of the first volume of parchment, we find a record of a land transaction undertaken by one Stancius Butiglarius on behalf of his mother.  She was apparently 'present and consenting' [presentem et consentientem] - this seems to be quite a common formula to describe the consent of women in transactions undertaken for them by their husbands, sons or fathers.   The very next case noted in the document is the sale of a slave called Radosti de Bosna to one Pasque de Pecorario.  She seems to have been sold by a pair of traders who crop up several more times in the same volume.  The slave was apparently 'present and consenting' [presentem et consentientem] to this transaction.  This is a standard formula in these sale contracts, and the moral obfuscation it represents is pretty chilling.  But what's so striking here is the way it directly mimics so many other forms of transaction - nothing, not the language, nor the script, nor the placing of the transaction in the manuscript, distinguishes these sales from the material concerns of everyday business.

SLAVERY 3 - ARRIVAL!

I've arrived in Dubrovnik!  I'll be here for three and a half weeks, and I'm hoping and intending to post something each day about what I find in the archives.  I'm here to look at some of the evidence for slavery in medieval Dubrovnik, and I'm particularly interested in the ways in which it was framed legally - how legal terminology and formulae worked, where legal frameworks overlapped with moral and religious ones, where 'legalese' provided useful moral obfuscation, and when legal loopholes were advantageous.

The archives are kept in the Sponza Palace in Dubrovnik.  I have had such an exciting day!  It is the most beautiful building - really quite exquisite.  The archivists are exceptionally friendly and helpful.  The documents are absolutely fascinating...  

Sponza palace, Dubrovnik, image from wikicommons

When I emerged from the archives, my little boy told me that I'd been 'very naughty'.  But I'm thankfully now forgiven, and we're enjoying an epic thunder-storm.