Download PDF | (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450-1450, 31) Cameron Sutt - Slavery in Árpád-era Hungary in a Comparative Context-Brill Academic Publishers (2015).
253 Pages
Acknowledgements
While writing these acknowledgements, I remembered the old Missouri preacher’s illustration of the turtle on the fencepost. No one seeing a turtle on a fencepost would think the turtle got up there on its own; somebody placed it there. I feel a lot like that turtle. I owe so much to so many.
First I would like to thank Nora Berend, my supervisor at St Catherine's College, Cambridge, for her guidance as I struggled through the research that produced my dissertation and the core of this work. I am sure that keeping me on track was no easy task, and I am grateful for her direction, encouragement, and friendship. I was fortunate to have studied under Shona Kelly-Wray at the University of Missouri—Kansas City.
She was a friend and mentor who is greatly missed. She introduced me to social history, and without her direction, I would surely have left the academy. I was fortunate to spend a year at Szeged University as a Fulbright scholar, and the faculty at the Department of Medieval and Early Modern Hungarian History provided me with an intellectual home. In particular, I am thankful for the guidance of Ferenc Makk and the late Gyula Kristé who patiently put up with my developing Hungarian language skills, and who pointed me towards sources and topics for future research.
Balazs Nagy at Central European University and Eétvés Lorand University has been an immeasurable help by locating even the most obscure of articles for me and by pointing me to new materials as they became available. Jozsef Laszlovszky was kind enough to introduce me to the archeological literature of the praedium. Despite the best efforts of all these people, I alone am responsible for the conclusions of this book.
I wish to thank the archivists and staff at the Hungarian National Archives who went out of their way to help me. I am grateful to Iveta Adams for her herculean efforts to make something legible out of my original, rather clunky text. 1 am appreciative for Marcella Mulder at Brill for her patience and help.
Finally, lam so thankful for my wonderful family. Without them none of this has any real meaning.
Introduction
In this work I hope to compare the use and position of dependent labourers in Carolingian Europe with those of Arpad-era Hungary. I argue that this comparative work is justified, and even necessary, in order to shed light on both of the societies in question. Quite simply, I hope that in juxtaposing the two periods, the contrasts and comparisons will allow us to gain a greater understanding of the nature of dependent labour, particularly those termed servi, ancillae, or mancipia in each of the areas as we look at how these labourers lived, functioned, and were viewed in their respective societies. To that end, each chapter discusses the Carolingian and Hungarian evidence separately, concluding with comparative discussions.
The comparison can also be justified by the similarity in source materials for each period, which can prove informative from a methodological standpoint. The way in which we deal with the sources from one period can inform how we approach similar sources in the other. Perhaps more importantly, the periods often intersected in Hungarian historiography. As we will see, from quite early on Hungarian scholars were looking to Carolingian examples to explain early Arpadian society.
Carolingian scholarship is more familiar in the Anglophone world while Hungarian scholarship is virtually unknown outside Hungary. In a similar manner, much of the discussion on definitions of slavery, while prominent in Western European scholarship, has received little attention in Hungarian scholarship. In the interest of bridging these gaps, I will explore definitions of slavery to a degree that many Carolingian experts may consider unwarranted. At the same time, my discussion on the Hungarian historiography of slavery and early Arpadian society will probably seem excessive to Hungarian scholars.
Slavery and Continuity in the West
Classicists have long held that landlords stopped using gangs of slaves to till their land even before the disintegration of the Roman Empire, but medievalists argued for a time that slavery either endured or was reinstituted in Late Antiquity. Adriaan Verhulst posited that slaves worked at least the demesne lands of Merovingian estates. These demesnes were not so large as to make slave labour inefficient, so tenancies did not replace slave production as slaves formed a ready means to deal with the manpower needs of these estates.!
The landowner during this period used slaves who lived in his own house to work the demesne directly. The records termed these landless slaves mancipia, and they were nothing more than another piece of property, or a tool at the lord’s full disposal.* Even the rusticus could exercise rights over his mancipia.3 Other forms of labour did exist. One example is paid labour in the form of prebendaries. These labourers worked on the lord’s demesne in exchange for a direct payment in food, but most labour came from slaves.*
The supposed use of slavery in the Merovingian period leads to questions of continuity, and some have maintained a direct link with the Roman past.> Pierre Bonnassie proposed a rather complicated chronology that had slavery disappearing in Late Antiquity and reviving in the early Middle Ages. In simplified form, Bonnassie’s chronology began with the end of the Roman Empire, which was accompanied by a sharp decline in the use of slave labour between the third and the fifth centuries. Next, the advent of the Germanic peoples with their own slave societies brought a renewal of forced labour by the sixth century.
As the wars of invasion and conquest petered out, so did the number of available slaves, which once again brought the decline of slavery in the eighth century. The end of the same century saw the wars of Charlemagne, which flooded the markets with slaves, and lords largely restored slavery on their lands in the ninth century. Finally, the ‘feudal revolution’ of the tenth and eleventh centuries brought the end of agricultural slavery in France for good.
More recently, scholars have come to doubt the expansive use of slaves even in the Merovingian era. Marie-Jeanne Tits-Dieuaide maintained that only a few estates in the period can be thought of as being worked by slaves, called mancipia in the sources, and these generally appear to have been small.’ Chris Wickham has gone even further and questioned whether even these mancipia should be considered slaves because, even though they are labelled mancipia, the evidence indicates that they were unfree tenants rather than slaves.§ Wickham argues that Tits-Dieuaide sees these mancipia as slaves simply because that is what she expected them to be, and he argues that the evidence of directly cultivated demesnes in the Merovingian sources is actually quite scanty.
Documents may refer to such words as dominicus, dominicatus, and the like, but Wickham holds that there is no evidence that these demesnes were anything but tenures. The dominicus was simply a property under the direct control of the lord, not a statement about how it was cultivated.?
The evidence for agricultural slave use in the Carolingian period is similarly ambiguous. While Adriaan Verhulst’s earlier works describe southern Belgium as frequently utilizing forced labour, he tends to see slavery as disappearing west of the Rhine rather quickly.!° Verhulst believes that slave labour was replaced by tenant labourers during the eighth century in the western regions of the Carolingian realm."' Between the Rhine and the Elbe, however, Verhulst argues that lords used slave labour considerably longer.
There society resembled that of the Merovingian period—estates whose demesnes were worked by landless mancipia. These slaves formed the majority of the population. Looking at legal evidence by itself creates the picture of mancipia and servi, who are clearly servile. The legal historian Hermann Nehlsen was convinced by the Germanic law codes that servi in Carolingian Europe were indeed slaves. In fact, Nehlsen went so far as to say that servi and mancipia in the Lex Baiuvariorum were every bit as much slaves as those who carried these appellations in classical Antiquity.! Masters could give them as gifts, and they could sell them just as any other object.
Lords could inherit them or transfer them to another in payment of a debt." Just as slaves in any other period, servi were forbidden to marry freewomen according to the Lex Baiuvariorum. The law calls such unions ‘fornication’, and the guilty could even be punished with death.§ Arguments based upon law codes are not terribly convincing for most. Hans-Werner Goetz noted that the evidence from the Germanic laws is particularly ambiguous. It is true that servi could not marry liberae, and that lords could punish them with severe corporal punishments that no freeman had to endure. In the Lex Ribuariorum, servi are treated as slaves and not people in the sense that they are not responsible for damages they may cause—their lord is.!6
However, the laws also treat them as people by protecting them from theft and by punishing them for theft rather than having their lords make restitution. Also, and most compelling, both the Lex Alamannorum and the Lex Baiuvariorum discuss servi who had fixed dues and services, thus seeming to be more like tenants or serfs and not slaves.!” Looking at the capitularies, a similar ambiguity arises. Again, servi were not responsible for damages they caused, and their position was hereditary.
They also were barred from pursuing the priesthood.'® On the other hand, by the eighth century at least, servi had the right to marry, which Goetz held as an indication that they could not be slaves. Royal servi had the right to legal recourse while certain other servi could even hold fiefs and public offices.!9 Goetz maintained that according to the capitularies, the servi were more like coloni and were merely on the non-noble side of the binary noble/non-noble paradigm.?° Alice Rio has argued convincingly that Frankish formularies show us the trends in legal practice, and that they indicate that law codes served merely as ‘the upper limit of what could be expected from a person by whom one had been wronged.”! Rio concluded that it is inaccurate to think in terms of a binary legal status because the formulae indicate a far more nuanced situation.?? Likewise, Chris Wickham has argued that even in eastern regions, mancipia should more accurately be considered unfree tenants, in other words, those who had particularly harsh requirements imposed upon them, but still were not slaves.?%
All of these arguments indicate that a single definition of servus applicable throughout all the regions of the Carolingian world remains elusive. Indeed, Adriaan Verhulst argued as much in a paper at the conference at Flaran three years prior to Goetz’s article. Verhulst pointed to differences in the meaning of the terms mancipium and servus in the regions east and west of the Rhine though even east of the Rhine variations occurred.** The extensive ambiguity found in Carolingian records as to the meaning of the terms in question indicates that Verhulst is correct in looking for regional variations within the expansive Carolingian realms.
Archaeology has recently shed some light on the acquisition of slaves in early medieval Europe. The evidence for slavery primarily consists of the presence of iron shackles at sites. In Roman and late-Roman Gallic sites, almost one third of iron hoards contained slave shackles, and many of these were settlement sites.25 In the immediate post-Roman period, shackle finds drop to almost naught.2° During the Carolingian era, moreover, the iron shackles once more increase, but the location of these finds is very different from that in the Roman period. The Carolingian slave shackles all appear in fortified centres along the frontiers of the Carolingian Empire, a fact that Joachim Henning rightly sees as significant.?’ That these shackles do not appear in settlements, but rather in trading posts, probably indicates that slaves were being acquired in quantity from among those beyond the empire’s borders and not from among the rural peasant populations.?® The lack of shackle finds in Carolingian settlements does not necessarily indicate the absence of slave labour since slaves did not generally work while shackled.?9
The increasing reluctance to see agricultural slavery in early medieval Western Europe as a widespread phenomenon renders unnecessary a lengthy discussion of the historiography of the end of slavery in Europe, so a brief summary will suffice here. Historians have attributed the decline of slavery in Western Europe variously to three different general causes. The first was the church. Early writers argued that with the rise of Christianity, masters freed their slaves out of charity. Marc Bloch rejected such a direct role for the church, arguing that any impact the church’s teachings had was upon the slaves more than the masters, awakening in them the idea that they were human rather than mere chattel.3°
Marxists tended to deny that the church’s teaching had any role in alleviating the slaves’ situation. In fact, Pierre Dockés maintained that Christianity actually reinforced the social realities by preaching that slaves should remain in their condition and be subservient to their masters, creating a resignation on the part of the slaves.?! Pierre Bonnassie, on the other hand, maintained that it was no small thing for slaves to attend church where ‘they learned to regard themselves as Christians, that is as men and women’.?? Perhaps even more importantly, according to Bonnassie, slaves attended church with the poor freemen and so came to regard themselves as their equals, joining them in the ‘solidarity of the wretched’3? Ross Samson argued that pronouncements by the church respecting the ordination of slaves and legitimating servile marriages had the effect of taking control from the hands of slave owners, which ultimately resulted in their liberation.4+
Marxists tended to posit a second possible cause as the most significant one for ending medieval slavery. Dockés maintained that great, armed uprisings such as the Bacaudae were instrumental in ending the slave system of early medieval Europe, but he conceded that in general the struggle was a long one consisting mainly of acts of sabotage and purposeful inefficiency.> The main resistance, according others, came in the form of the flight of slaves from their owners.36
The third, and most influential, theory describing the end of slavery focuses on the activities of the slave owners themselves. Marc Bloch argued that economic necessity forced the landowners to convert their property from direct cultivation to that based upon tenancies as a result of general economic decline. Bloch maintained that both the amount of money in circulation and the amount of trade decreased. Added to these difficulties was the fact that Charlemagne’s wars of conquest had ended, decreasing the supply of slaves.
What slaves were available had become expensive. Finally, Bloch regarded slavery as an especially inefficient form of coerced labour and one which lords were all too willing to replace.3” Masters responded to these new conditions by settling their slaves upon small plots allowing them to reap the rewards of their own labour. The slaves quickly began to direct most of their own time and productive effort. They had their own home, and could even prosper if they were particularly able.3® As we will see, Bloch’s ideas have had the most impact upon later Hungarian historiography regarding the end of slavery. Bonnassie argued that the free, small allod-holders were also putting pressure on the great estates whose production lagged far behind that of the small peasants.?9
The great estates responded by decentralizing and breaking up their estates into small holdings (manses) that they allowed former slaves to work.*° According to Bonnassie, this settling of slaves onto plots contributed the most to the end of slavery. However, whereas Bloch thought economic recession caused the lords to disburse their slaves onto small, independent plots, Bonnassie attributed these settlements to economic growth. Though most view agricultural expansion as key to the settling of the unfree upon manses, not all agree with Bonnassie’s assessment of the inefficiency of the great, classical estates. In fact, several scholars argue that it was the work of these estates that led to the economic expansion which in turn allowed the settlement of slaves onto the manses.
Serviin Hungary
Early Hungarian historiography on dependent labour was greatly influenced by the earliest legal sources, which, like Carolingian legislation, depicted servi as clearly servile. We will discuss this legislation in a subsequent chapter. Partly as a result of this reliance upon legal sources, historians tended to view all servi as slaves.
The Cistercian monk Remig Békefi was among the first to deal with the issue of slavery and its decline in the medieval kingdom of Hungary. At the turn of the twentieth century, Békefi pointed to the numerous instances in the documents in which landlords freely disposed of the servi living on their lands, and he concluded that the servus in Hungary under the Arpads was essentially a slave. The servus and his female counterpart, the ancilla, were items of property just like the plough or the ox. Lords bought them, sold them, inherited them, and freed them.*” Békefi referred to the early laws of the kingdom that recorded how people could be sold into slavery for their crimes, and how they could be freed.
From these laws, Békefi argued that slaves frequently obtained their status as punishment for the crimes, but he maintained that most slaves were born into their status (‘nemzés kovetkeztében szaporodtak’).44 Eight years later Maria Gaspar, taking up Békefi’s line of argument, held that the Hungarian workforce in the first third of the thirteenth century consisted of only the free and the bound where she equated ‘bound’ with ‘slave.45 She emphasized the complete legal alienation that slaves in Hungary experienced—they were property to be bought and sold, and the lord had complete control over the productive force of the slave.*
In fact, according to Gaspar, slaves were the most important agricultural tool that a lord could have, which, she argued, explained how their price could vary so much while the price of land remained fairly stable. The quality of the tool (in other words the ability of the slave to perform work) determined its cost.” In addition, Gaspar maintained that the right of the lord to move his slaves at will, combined with the scarcity of money, created a condition in which lords frequently used slaves in lieu of money for their transactions. Thus, land, dowry, marriage gifts, and the like were all paid for with servi and ancillae.*®
After Gaspar, scholars focused on other segments of Hungarian society under the Arpads, and slavery became an ancillary topic. The prolific Balint Homan looked at Hungarian society at the time of the foundation of the state, and he divided it into seven levels, the bottom of which consisted of the slaves.*9 The servi were rather simple to define—they were slaves.5° According to Héman, servi came from the ranks of the war captives, though he allowed that some were purchased.°! Their origins aside, Héman wrote that these slaves had the assignment of looking after their lord’s curtis and taking care of his animals and land.5?
In what came to be an ever more acrid discussion on the pages of Térténelmi Szemle, Laszl6 Erdélyi and Karolyi Taganyi debated the extent of slavery in early Arpadian society. Taganyi argued that not only were servislaves, but those serving on royal estates, the udvornici and the cives, were also slaves. While others who were under the king could rise to a position above that of a slave, Taganyi held that the wdvornici remained the king’s slaves assigned to perform all manner of tasks in the royal court and were therefore his general-purpose slaves (mindenes rabszolgak).>3 Taganyi went on to explain that those living on the royal county land (called cives by the sources) were not partially free either, but were rather slaves.°+ For his part, Erdélyi insisted that royal dependants formed part of the partially free category that Homan advocated.
However, he disagreed with both Héman and Taganyi regarding the status of the servus. Both Héman and Taganyi considered all servi to be slaves. To Erdélyi, a slave was one whose ‘home, upkeep, type of work, and time depended on the will of the lord’.5> The lord also had control not just over their time and work, but their children and family as well.5° Erdélyi noticed that not all servi fitted into this category. In the case of Pannonhalma Abbey, an institution with which he was particularly familiar, the servi who were in effect slaves were distinguished from others with the term veri servi, and these veri servi were mostly vintners.
Erdélyi believed, then, that not all servi born on the lands of Pannonhalma were slaves, but only those recently purchased.
The view that the udvornici were slaves has long since been rejected as we will see in the next chapter, but the connection of the servus to the slave has endured. Part of this endurance is due to the monopoly of Marxist thought beginning the middle of the twentieth century. For historians such as Gyérgy Székely and Emma Lederer, the issue of slavery was of prime importance because of its place in the Marxist continuum of history. In direct contrast to ‘the bourgeois historians’, the Marxists viewed the existence of slavery as incompatible with feudalism because of the framework of Marx’s historical sequence of production. Therefore, slavery was something from the Magyars’ early history that they quickly left behind with the foundation of the ‘feudal state’ begun by Stephen 1 in the first part of the eleventh century.5® Lederer also maintained that while slavery had to exist in a pre-feudal society, in Central and Eastern Europe it was not a general phenomenon.°? A university textbook of 1953 declares that ‘by the time of feudalism “slaves” could not have played a significant role in production’.° Slavery existed at the beginning of the state, but it quickly disappeared.®!
Perhaps the most important work of Emma Lederer came from her investigation of the development of land-ownership in early medieval Hungary. Lederer was particularly interested in how the nomadic Magyar leaders came to be owners of land and of human resources, and she concluded that this transformation occurred along three parallel lines—one each on royal and ecclesiastical lands, and another on private, secular lands. The development of royal and ecclesiastical lands proceeded rather rapidly along the path to feudalism, but the private lands developed much more slowly. Private lands, therefore, maintained a more ‘primitive’ nature for a much longer time.®* One significant aspect to this more ‘primitive’ nature was the prolonged use of slavery for production by private landlords.
Erdélyi believed, then, that not all servi born on the lands of Pannonhalma were slaves, but only those recently purchased.
The view that the udvornici were slaves has long since been rejected as we will see in the next chapter, but the connection of the servus to the slave has endured. Part of this endurance is due to the monopoly of Marxist thought beginning the middle of the twentieth century. For historians such as Gyérgy Székely and Emma Lederer, the issue of slavery was of prime importance because of its place in the Marxist continuum of history. In direct contrast to ‘the bourgeois historians’, the Marxists viewed the existence of slavery as incompatible with feudalism because of the framework of Marx’s historical sequence of production.
Therefore, slavery was something from the Magyars’ early history that they quickly left behind with the foundation of the ‘feudal state’ begun by Stephen 1 in the first part of the eleventh century.5® Lederer also maintained that while slavery had to exist in a pre-feudal society, in Central and Eastern Europe it was not a general phenomenon.°? A university textbook of 1953 declares that ‘by the time of feudalism “slaves” could not have played a significant role in production’.° Slavery existed at the beginning of the state, but it quickly disappeared.®!
Perhaps the most important work of Emma Lederer came from her investigation of the development of land-ownership in early medieval Hungary. Lederer was particularly interested in how the nomadic Magyar leaders came to be owners of land and of human resources, and she concluded that this transformation occurred along three parallel lines—one each on royal and ecclesiastical lands, and another on private, secular lands. The development of royal and ecclesiastical lands proceeded rather rapidly along the path to feudalism, but the private lands developed much more slowly. Private lands, therefore, maintained a more ‘primitive’ nature for a much longer time.®* One significant aspect to this more ‘primitive’ nature was the prolonged use of slavery for production by private landlords.
or had recently risen out of slavery.”| He maintained that that figure may even be low since those listed by generic terms were most likely slaves and those recorded by occupation could also include a significant number of slaves.’? An important caveat to Szabd’s work is that he automatically equated words with functions, so that if the charters described inhabitants with words that classically meant ‘slave’ (mancipium, servus, vernulus, etc.), then he assumed they were slaves. In large part 1 intend to investigate if that assumption is correct, and I hope the comparison with the Carolingian data will help in this quest. If Szabo is correct, then praedia in Arpad-era Hungary could have consisted of an astounding 91 per cent slaves.
The work of Ilona Bolla later strengthened Szabo’s conclusions. Bolla dealt with the development of concepts of liberty under the Arpads, and her work has been very effective in shaping modern Hungarian historiography.” Just as Lederer before her, Ilona Bolla argued that there were sharp distinctions between the status of dependants on royal and ecclesiastical lands and the status of those on the lands of secular lords. Bolla held that the meaning of the term servus when referring to those on royal and ecclesiastical lands changed over the course of time, so that when it was used, it no longer meant ‘slave’ as it had in the laws of Stephen.” At the same time, the term retained its original meaning for those dependants living on the domains of the lay lord. These servi were indeed slaves according to Bolla.’> As the end of the thirteenth century approached, the term servus began to disappear completely from the sources.
Bolla’s work on the development of the concept of /ibertas in the Arpad era meant that she had a significant influence upon explanations of the end of slavery in Hungary. Of course, the discussion does not begin with her. Rather, the discussion of the end of slavery in medieval Hungary began with the first brief monograph on the subject—that of Remig Békefi mentioned earlier. Békefi explained the disappearance of slavery in terms of the Christian faith he held so seriously. Békefi claimed that as Christianity became rooted in the new kingdom, the teachings of the church took hold. In particular, Békefi argued that the teachings of the church that even slaves could participate in the sacraments meant that the newly baptized lords saw the equality of their slaves, and, taking testators at their word, he pointed to manumission charters liberating servi ‘for the salvation of their soul’ as indications of the influence of Christianity on the abolition of slavery in the Hungarian kingdom.” Also, quoting I Thessalonians 4:1 (‘work with your own hands as we commanded you’), Békefi argued that the church ‘disabused people’ (dbrdnditotta ki az embereket) from the idea that work was only for slaves. It was, then, the church’s teachings that prepared the way for society to give up its dependence on slave labour.””
Maria Gaspar modified Békefi’s argument by adding pecuniary motives to the purely spiritual, noting that landlords had begun to accept payment from their slaves for their manumission.’§ Balint Héman attributed to Stephen I the manumitting of the udvornici from slavery to their partially free status, claiming that the king freed them to work on royal lands to provide for the needs of the court. These former slaves, Héman went on to say, were mostly ploughmen and herdsmen, but many obtained positions such as royal stablemen, cooks, and the like.79
While acknowledging the role of the manumission of slaves, Laszlé Erdélyi stressed the acquisition of plots of land by servi as the primary means by which slaves became freedmen (szabados). Once the slave received his own land and a permanent home, he was transformed into a serf.8° Eventually, custom and even written law protected the serf from being evicted from this land, but the key was his instalment upon it.®! Erdelyi’s argument, though rejected by some contemporaries, came to have a significant influence upon later Hungarian historiography.8? These plots came to be equated with a type of ‘independent estate’ (6ndllé gazdasdq), and many became convinced that since the servi were on plots, they épso facto could no longer be considered slaves.
Gyérgy Bonis in particular stressed the importance of the independent housing of slaves as quickly bringing an end to their slavery. In fact, Bonis categorically stated that ‘any servus who had agricultural tools is not a slave, but a serf!’83 Marc Bloch’s writings on the Carolingian servi casati had a profound influence on Istvan Szabd, who argued that the domiciled servus (hdzas-foldes) contributed to the demise of the farm-estates (praedia, discussed in the next chapter), which contributed to the end of slave labour in Hungary.** The issue was far from decided. The servi on Hungarian farms seemed so slave-like that Szabo, and later Ilona Bolla, thought that most servi continued to be considered slaves.®® Péter Vaczy, likewise, was not so sure that giving ‘independent estates’ to servi meant that they were no longer slaves.®6
Emma Lederer saw the acquisition of ploughs as the key for the amelioration of the slaves’ plight. Lederer argued that lords initially only gave the servi the plots, plough and oxen ad usum, but with time the servi claimed the oxen and the plough as their own. Thus, the slave had become the serf, albeit a serf owing heavy labour services.” Lederer pointed to the numerous examples of servi being connected with ploughs in charters from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as her primary proof that the servi had acquired those implements, and she viewed all such examples as indications of former slaves who had risen above their slavery through their gradual appropriation of the tools and draft animals necessary to perform heavy field labour.8
Whereas earlier historiography saw the role of the church and manumission as fundamental to the elimination of slave labour in Hungary, Lederer maintained that economic and social factors affected the relationship between the slaves and their lords. We shall see though that the connection of the servus with the plough did not necessarily, or even probably, indicate that the servus owned it—it was merely an indication of the role of the servus and the need on the part of the lord to maintain the proper number of servus families in order for the plough to be properly operated.
While Lederer assigned no role to the church in the decline of slavery, Bonis argued that it played a significant, if indirect, role in such a great social transformation. Bénis pointed out that while the laws of Stephen do present the picture of servi being slaves, they also indicate that the church had a part in the removal of their slave status. The laws stated that, if a servus is killed by a freeman or another's servus, the killer or the killer’s lord must pay the owner of the servus compensation for the loss of his worker.8° Thus, the servus is nothing more than a tool, the loss of which must be compensated for.9° Bonis argued, however, that in the eyes of the church, the servus was a human being because the church prescribed a penance for anyone who killed a servus.*! The church proclaimed that the servus was a person, at least spiritually.
Istvan Szabé saw slavery’s demise as part of the demise of the self-sufficient economic unit centred around the praedium.°? Though Szabo attributed several factors to the decline of the praedium, including flight of the servile and the commingling of people of various strata, he held that the settling of servi onto plots was the most significant.9? In discussing the status of domiciled servi (hdzas-foldes), Szabé was rather ambiguous. On the one hand, these domiciled servi, while more free than the landless servi living in the lord’s curia, still had many of the characteristics of slaves. While they were able to produce for themselves from their plots, and were also able to marry and establish a family, they certainly were not serfs. The land they were on was not theirs, it was their lord’s, and he could remove them from it at any time according to his will.°* The lord could, and did, sell the servus right off the land to another lord whenever it was in his best interest to do so, and the same was true regarding the draught animals and ploughs these domiciled servi had. Lords only gave these tools to the servus ad usum, and the servus had no legal claim to them. Though it is difficult to understand why a lord would want to take the tools away from his servi, documents indicate that this did occur.9° At the same time, Szab6 is careful to explain that despite all these handicaps, these domiciled servi were still better off than the slaves of the classical era. They were not quite serfs who had customary rights over their land, but they were on the road to such rights. They were in a transitional phase that was to go on for several more generations.°6
The exact nature of this transition was difficult to discern, and Emma Lederer and Ilona Bolla both maintained that the lords changed the social structure on their properties extremely slowly. Both argued that on royal and ecclesiastical lands, servus quickly came to mean something akin to ‘serf’ while servus meant ‘slave’ on private lands for a considerably longer period of time. In fact, Bolla even claimed that servus only meant ‘slave’ on these private, secular lands, and when another status was intended, scribes used a completely different term (libertinus).9’ She categorically declared that the domiciled servi were slaves. Lords considered them every bit as much movable property as a plough or a horse.98 These domiciled servi could develop their own somewhat independent plot, but, more often than not, the lords gave them so little land that they could ameliorate their own condition with only the greatest of difficulty. Only a few of the luckiest were able to truly benefit financially from their small plots. In fact, the lords still had to provide for even these domiciled servi during famines and lean times.? Just as Szabo had noted, these independent servi, even though housed on a plot of land, were still very dependent on the will of the lord. The lord could, and did, expel them from their plot if he needed to sell it, or he might just sell the servus to another lord and away from the plot. Instead of considering the domiciled servi as having an independent estate, Bolla argued that they should be thought of as only being allowed to have their own marital union.!°° Thus, in contrast to most before her, Bolla was convinced that even the domiciled servi were in every sense chattel slaves.
At the same time, Bolla’s thoughts on how the servi raised their status was very much in line with that declared by Lederer before, and it was somewhat at odds with her view of the domiciled servus as a slave. Just like Lederer, Bolla argued, though very briefly, that the servus obtained a higher status though the acquisition of the plough.!©! She maintained that initially lords gave their servi ploughs ad usum, but through time the servi appropriated the ploughs as their own. With the plough came further independence, and servi rose out of slavery.!©? Bolla’s view that the servus on a plot remained a slave stands at odds with her position that the acquisition of a plough by the same servus meant he was not a slave. If they were slaves even on the plots, then the acquisition of a plough per se could not have elevated them above the slave status.
Slavery—Definitions
One of the issues concerning Arpad-era slavery that is not addressed in much of the Hungarian discussion on the subject is what is meant by the term itself. Most Hungarian scholars seem to have relied upon instinctive and popular definitions which almost always are based on popular notions of nineteenthcentury American slavery, or perhaps on slavery on the ancient Roman /atifundium. In order to remove the discussion from such popular images, I wish to examine the literature seeking to define the institution of slavery and the slave.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Herman Nieboer published a seminal study on the characteristics of slavery and the conditions under which it existed. Nieboer argued that common definitions of his time describing slaves as merely those not free, or in ‘lower condition as compared with freemen’, were too vague to be of real use.1°3 At the same time, Nieboer embraced the common idea that the primary characteristic of the slave was one being the property of another, but he added that slavery went beyond the ‘mere physical possession’ of another human being. True slavery implied complete possession of the slave, including his or her will, and the possession of the will demonstrated itself in the ability of the master to command the slave to perform labour for him. Nieboer’s graphic example to illustrate the distinction is that of the cannibal who possesses the other person’s body in order to consume it, but does not necessarily possess the will of his meal05 Nieboer argued two other qualifications to his definition. The first was that the slave could not be family of the master. Nieboer acknowledged that in some societies husbands and fathers could have complete legal control over their wives or children, but the familial connection prevented the relationship from being one based upon slavery.!°° The second qualification was that the status of the slave had to be recognized by the society of the slave holder (Nieboer equated this social recognition with legal recognition of the relationship).!0”
Nearly seventy years later, the ancient historian Moses Finley agreed with Nieboer in that he considered the most important characteristic of the slave to be his position as the property of another.’ In opposition to Nieboer, however, Finley argued that the labour obtained from the slave was an inadequate indication of his slave status because ‘all forms of labour place the man who labours in the power of another’, and slavery was merely one form of dependent labour among many.!9 The truly defining characteristic of the slave, according to Finley, remains essentially unchanged from classical Roman law—the slave lived under the dominium of his master. In other words, his owner exerted complete power over him, and Finley argued that this condition resulted directly from the slave's legal status as property.!° Thus, corporal punishment was the norm, and in Antiquity it was reserved exclusively for the slave."! The owner had other rights over the slave’s body as well. Sexual gratification of his or her master formed a natural part of the role of the slave, a fact clearly illustrated by Seneca, whom Finley quotes: ‘Unchastity (émpudicitia) is a crime in the freeborn, a necessity for a slave, a duty (officium) for the freedman.!?
Social scientists, on the other hand, were less concerned with such juridical concepts as property and were more interested in the social constructs within which slavery existed. Perhaps the most influential of recent decades have been Orlando Patterson and Claude Meillassoux. Meillassoux described slavery from his study of African cultures of the Sahel and the Sudan while Patterson attempted a definition of slavery through a comparative study of slave systems worldwide and throughout history."3 (The spheres of influence of each appear limited along linguistic boundaries—Meillassoux among francophones, and Patterson among anglophones.)
Both Meillassoux and Patterson emphasized the removal of the slave from all ties of kinship through a process of violence. Meillassoux argued that slavery was never arrived at through internal societal or economic processes, but rather was always the result of the violent and brutal act of abduction."* Once removed from their home, slaves became aliens and foreigners who could no longer participate in kinship. A slave may be allowed to reproduce, but never could he ‘reproduce socially’."5 Meillassoux described the situation as one in which the slave lived in a sense of ‘kinlessness’ where the slave was the very ‘antithesis of kin’"6 This removal of slaves from the properties of kin meant that slaves could not participate in the privileges and authority they might have as elders, and thus they were removed from all provisions of ascendency. As a result, slaves were aliens, removed from the society in which they belonged. As Meillassoux termed it, slaves were ‘desocialised’” As a result of this status as aliens, slaves experienced permanent degradation and reification, and they carried the shameful mark of their condition. They had, in effect, experienced a ‘social death’ from which they could never rise.!!8
Orlando Patterson came to a similar conclusion by defining slavery as ‘the permanent, violent domination of natally alienated and generally dishonoured persons’!!9 He too found the origins of slavery in violence with the result that the slave was granted life in exchange for his servility. The commutation of death was not permanent, but rather ‘the execution was suspended only as long as the slave acquiesced in his powerlessness’.!2° The second aspect of Patterson’s definition—that of ‘natal alienation’—also echoes Meillassoux’s. In other words, the slave is one separated from all his genealogical line, both of his ancestors and of his descendants. The slave may leave descendants, but they can never be legitimate, and the master can remove at will any illegitimate family the slave may have.!#! Finally, Patterson considered the state of permanent and utter dishonour as characterizing a slave’s existence. This dishonour stemmed from his complete alienation from kin and society.!2”
In some ways the differences between historians like Finley and sociologists like Patterson have been exaggerated because the basic framework of the two definitions is not as dissimilar as it might appear. For example, Patterson acknowledges that slavery has a dimension of property to it, but he downplays its importance.!”3 In addition, many of the concepts that Patterson describes in detail are often found in Finley’s discussion. As we have seen, Patterson argued that dishonour was a prominent characteristic of the slave. However, Finley too found dishonour to be a significant part of the concept of human property. Corporal punishments and sexual assaults were all demonstrations of the dishonour that slaves were subject to as property. Other manifestations of society’s disdain for slaves are evident in the fact that owners called adult male slaves ‘boy’ in both ancient Greece and ancient Rome.!*4 To Patterson, a slave was natally alienated, and Finley argued that the removal of the slave from his kin facilitated the owner’s ability to treat him or her as an article of possession.!?5 Patterson wrote of slaves existing in a state of ‘liminality’;!2° in other words, they lived within society yet outside of it; they were not complete outcasts from society for they moved among it, but they were also not part of society. The liminal nature of slaves is most clearly seen in those cultures that had both slavery and a rigid caste system, such as the Margi of Nigeria, the Somali, and the Koreans. In each of these societies, slaves, though not accepted as belonging to the society in question, were at the same time distinct from the outcaste group of the respective society. Thus, while sexual relationships were completely forbidden between ordinary persons and outcasts, slave owners were not forbidden similar relations with their slave women.!27 In fact, slaves were frequently the only group that could freely pass between accepted castes and outcasts. Also, outcasts could never join society while slaves could be manumitted and become ‘free’ members of society.!28 Along somewhat similar lines, Finley described the ‘ambiguity’ of the slave’s position. This ambiguity stemmed from the fact that a slave was property, but also clearly human. The slave was outside society because he was viewed as property, but at times society could include him because he was human. For example, slaves could be treated as human and could serve as soldiers, but at the same time the whole household of slaves were punished with death if one of them murdered their master, as occurred in the instance of the murder of Pedanius Secundus recorded by Tacitus. Vast riots occurred against the ‘injustice’ of the execution of the whole of Pedanius’ household slaves showing popular acceptance of the human nature of the slaves in question, though the fulfilment of the sentence showed the nature of Pedanius’ slaves as outside the human realm.!29 In sum, the difference between Patterson and Finley is one of emphasis and an unanswerable question of origin. Finley saw the characteristics of slavery (dishonour and marginality) as resulting from the slave’s position as property whereas Patterson saw the aspect of property as stemming from the dishonour of the status of slave.
Medievalists have increasingly argued that historians should hesitate before assigning hard categorizations of status in the period. As Ruth Mazo Karras has argued, rather than viewing slavery as a spectrum of dependency, as did Finley, it should be viewed as ‘a graph with multiple axes’ because the conditions of slaves varied considerably in terms of social or economic relations.!°° Alice Rio has argued along similar lines in her work on Frankish formularies regarding the servile. The sharp distinction between free and unfree found in the legal texts has no basis in reality. Rather, according to Rio, ‘freedom and unfreedom were stages on asliding scale rather than a clear-cut tired system’.!*! Others have been reluctant to use the term ‘slave’ for dependent labourers in Carolingian Europe, similarly arguing that it imposed a binary distinction between slave and free when in fact status was much more nuanced.!82 Perhaps these positions are not that different from Moses Finley’s statements about the relations of masters and slaves in Antiquity where he described the layers, if you will, between slavery and freedom as a metaphorical, discontinuous spectrum.!83
Joseph C. Miller has argued that too often historians have used the ‘mass, industrialized, and ultimately racialized American form’ of slavery with its opposition to ‘liberty’ to explain slavery.'$* As a result, Miller argues, historians fail to see slavery in terms of the broader processes to which it pertains, and they all too frequently fail to contextualize the practices surrounding the society in question, thus creating an ‘abstracted, transcendent’ institution.!%5 Similarly, Youval Rotman argued that discussions on Roman and Byzantine slavery depended too much on opposing the position of ‘slave’ to fictive concepts of freedom.!6 Rotman maintained that dependants must be examined with regard to their civil status, seen primarily through their relationship to the public authorities, and with regard to their social connections, particularly with their masters and perhaps other institutions such as the church.!9”
Historians certainly must be careful with strict categorizations, but if we refuse to apply them at all, we deny ourselves tools for any sort of broader analysis. What remains are isolated periods and phenomena with no connection to a wider historical discussion. The result is a sort of antiquarian interest in what ends up being little more than artefacts of social history. In fact, slavery lends itself particularly well to the sort of comparative discussion that can bring depth to our understanding of society. As John Edward Philips has argued, the near-universality of slavery as part of the human condition, combined with the multitude of social and cultural variations it displays, indicates that slavery itself is the result of the cognitive process of labelling. It is the cognitive process in which people label others or themselves as slave. As such the exact conditions under which the slave exists varies with the social and historical context, but the label remains and is legitimate.!9° Philips reasons that the very fact that cultures with ‘very different idealized cognitive models of slavery’ have quite easily transferred slaves among themselves demonstrates that ‘slave’ is a ‘cross-cultural category’.89
Another issue is the lack of sources, which is a particular problem for the first half of the Arpad period. The late arrival of literacy to the Hungarians combined with historical accident has greatly affected the documentary sources available to the Hungarian medievalist. When Queen Mary fled Buda after the defeat to the Turks at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526, the royal archives were loaded onto a barge in the Danube to move them to up river. The unfortunate barge sank near Esztergom, taking the great majority of the royal archives with it.!4° We must add to this disaster the fact that the ensuing Turkish occupation of the southern and central parts of the kingdom destroyed most of the family and county archives from those regions.'*! The sources are relatively few in number and frequently laconic in nature, so we cannot hope for explicit statements informing us directly of the cultural attitudes towards the servile in in Arpadian Hungary just as in Carolingian Europe. Therefore, while my discussion is informed by theory, I will of necessity have to content myself with data and conclusions that might upset some as being excessively ‘institutional’. Of course, slavery is one form of forced labour among many or, as Moses Finley put it, ‘slavery is a species of dependent labour and not the genus’.!4? One of the goals of this work is to determine if the dependants mentioned in the sources should be called ‘slaves’ or some other type of dependants. In the medieval context this essentially means differentiating between the slave and the serf. Briefly, the indications that are typically used to distinguish between a slave and a serf centre around the areas of the honour (or lack thereof) society ascribed to them, their rights to property, their relationship to the land, their familial rights, and finally their labour obligations. Stanley Engerman emphasized the dishonour of a slave by noting that the slave existed in a status of an outsider which was qualitatively different from that of the serf. So, while serfs were considered ‘lower-class, often rather despicable elements of society...they were not always considered complete outsiders’!*% As for the property rights of slaves, Wendy Davies presented the typical view that the ‘archetypical slave’ was, in part, a ‘person who can own no property’!44 Engerman also characterized serfs as typically having some accepted rights to the land on which they lived. They were not usually sold apart from it, whereas slaves generally had no land of their own and were often sold without any connection to the land on which they lived.!* Added to this, Engerman argued that serfs, unlike slaves, were seldom transferred by their lords over significant geographic distances.!46 Slaves also had fewer family rights than serfs, if any. The families of serfs had legal sanction and were protected. Slaves, on the other hand, did not enjoy such protection and their unions could be broken up at the will of their lord. As far as labour obligations are concerned, serfs owed some combination of labour and dues, while slaves had no restriction on the work they had to perform. Slaves and their labour, in other words, were ‘totally controlled by someone else’.!4”
Beginning with the issue of honour, let us look at each of these characteristics in turn and weigh their importance in differentiating the slave from the serf. It is true that while both the serf and the slave lived in states of dishonour, the slave existed in a realm of social marginality the stain of which far exceeded that of the serf. However, the nature of the sources faced by many medievalists makes such distinctions impossible. Ruth Mazo Karras is correct that we should recognize as slaves only those whom contemporaries themselves viewed as slaves, distinct from other groups of dependent labourers.!4% Such a distinction is made much easier when one has contemporary literary evidence as in the case of Scandinavia or Anglo-Saxon Britain, but elsewhere the sources available make the views a society held on the nature of slave status impossible to determine.
The next characteristic commonly thought of as part of a definition of the slaves was that they could own no property. This proposition is vastly complicated by the institution of peculium. The peculium was the personal property allowed a slave by his master, and it could take any number of forms, from land to horses to wagons. All forms of slavery—even the most harsh, and both domestic and agricultural—allowed the slave his peculium, and any assumption that slaves were necessarily destitute fails to take peculium into account. In theory, the peculium was actually the property of the slave holder, not the slave himself, but in most instance slaves could dispose of their peculium as they saw fit.'49 Slaves practised a form of usufruct over their peculium, and masters often left the peculium of their slaves alone because to do otherwise would cause an unnecessary agitation on the slave’s part.° The significant difference between property ownership as enjoyed by freemen and that of slaves over their peculium was that slaves’ control over their peculium did not extend to the right of inheritance. Upon the death of a slave, his peculium always reverted to the master.5! Allowing slaves their peculium served slave holders in one significant way: peculium in the form of plots, animals, work tools, and access to local markets meant that masters lowered their own expenses in caring for their slaves, and in some cases slave holders used peculium to increase the contentment, and therefore the motivation, of their slaves.!52
The practice of peculium was common throughout the ancient Near East, with slaves during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods even borrowing and lending money while those of the Late Assyrian period often owned slaves of their own./>3 In the ancient Near East, ancient Rome, and the American South, the peculium of urban slaves frequently consisted of an artisanal shop from which they kept a part of the income while paying either the balance or a fixed sum to their owner.!54 Even rural slaves in the Roman world had their peculium in the form of their own plots, tools, and animals. Varro, in his Res rusticae, encouraged owners of latifundia to allow their slaves peculium so that ‘they may be more diligent’%> He also encouraged peculium for slave foremen, explaining that ‘by this means they are made more steady and more attached to the place. From elsewhere in Varro’s work, it is clear that he was thinking not just of small objects or minor equipment, but rather of possessions as large as grazing animals.!5” Similar thinking allowed slaves in the British and French Caribbean plantations to have their own plots or provision grounds. The produce of slave labour in these islands frequently competed with that of freemen in the local markets. Such was the independence of slave activity on their provision grounds in nineteenth-century Saint Domingue that the local Intendant called them ‘une petite Guinée’!5° Nineteenth-century slaves in South Carolina sold goods they produced themselves in their free time on the open market, which could afford them better living conditions.!°9 Slaves of the Western Cherokee Nation were legally allowed property until 1833, and slaves of the Creek Nation had such legal rights until 1840.16° In addition, custom frequently allowed peculium where the law did not, as in the case of French Louisiana in the early eighteenth century.!*! The slaves of the Seminoles had an almost unlimited right to peculium and were even allowed to carry firearms.!62 Just prior to the American Civil War, the peculium of slaves in areas of Georgia as well as South Carolina often reached considerable size, and they owned large items such as cattle, thoroughbred horses, and wagons. The pride and economic accomplishments of these slaves demonstrated itself in their refusal to sell some of their ‘fine horses’ to their owners.!63 Even slaves working on the dreaded sugar plantations of Louisiana could acquire gardens with chicken coops and hogs while raising and selling personal crops for cash.!64 The access that slaves had to land and its more or less independent use in comparison to that of serfs must also be seen in light of the practice of peculium. Indeed, land frequently formed part of a slave’s peculium, and they could exert a great degree of independent action over it.!
Slaves in New Kingdom Egypt owned land, and there is evidence for similar land-ownership found in grants recorded in northern Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian Empire.!®° As mentioned above, slaves in ancient Rome could have fields as part of their peculium. Land also formed part of the peculium of slaves in eleventh-century England.!® Slave families in the United States in the 1840s and 1850s typically had one to two acres of land under their control.!® In the British West Indies, even on the small island of Barbados slaves supplemented their rations with their own garden plots, and on Jamaica, slaves could have provision grounds which were quite extensive, leading some historians to refer to them as ‘protopeasants’!69 It is claimed that this practice in the West Indies had its origins in Brazil as it was long known on plantations there.!”° Spanish masters in Guatemala gave their slaves significant autonomy, allowing them their own estates for which the slaves had the responsibility of upkeep even to the point of contracting extra labour when needed.!7 We see similar practices in subSaharan Africa. Slaves of the Sokoto Caliphate would receive plots totalling up to two acres, and in the Kano emirate of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was considered the obligation of the slave owner to give his slaves farm plots.!”? The same was true of contemporary Ethiopia.!”3 Finally, the Arab plantation owners of the Swahili coast in the 1870s, and more recently on the island of Lamu, allowed their slaves to live on their own plots with substantial independence.!”
As with other forms of peculium, the significant difference between the slave’s proprietary rights over his plot and those of the serf was that the slave's rights to his property were ultimately up to the will of his owner, and even the rights that the slave did possess terminated upon his death. By contrast, while a lord may have legal ownership of the land that a serf held, the serf experienced the right to pass on the plot upon which he lived, usually with only the condition of the payment of a fee. The serf’s connection to the land, though decried by the philosophes, gave him a certain protection against his arbitrary sale away from that land. This was a protection that the slave did not enjoy. The one possible exception to the existence of a strict connection between the serf and his plot might be in modern Russia, where lords could sell their serfs either with or without the land on which they lived. It must be remembered, though, that the practice of selling serfs without land in Russia was extremely rare.!”
Of all the criteria commonly used to distinguish between slavery and serfdom which were listed above perhaps the least useful is that of evaluating the marriage rights which slaves or serfs had. It is true that in most slave systems, particularly in the West, a very real legal distinction existed between the matrimony of the freeman and the partnerships of the slave. These forms of matrimony are generally known by the Roman legal terminology attached to them—that between freemen was termed connubium and that between slaves, contubernium.!’6 In fact, in Roman law, contubernium was essentially a recognition of the permanent sexual union existing between slaves or between slaves and freemen.!”” Contubernium relationships depended upon the good will of the slave owner. In other words, the master determined if his slaves would have a partner and he chose the partner for them.
Occasionally masters such as Pliny the Younger encouraged their slaves to marry out of good will towards them, but more often choices were made depending upon the master’s economic needs.!”8 The greatest problem with using the right to a legitimate marriage as a determinant of slavery versus serfdom is that it is not that uncommon for societies with slavery to have allowed their slaves such legal marriages. Slave owners in ancient Mesopotamia frequently provided spouses for their slaves, and in the ancient Hittite kingdom slave marriages were not only legally recognized, but spouses even had to divide equally all property held between them in the event of divorce.!”9 As we will see, the right of slaves to marry in the eyes of the medieval church went through a transformation, so that in the early Middle Ages slaves’ rights to marriage were severely restricted, but by the High Middle Ages they had much more freedom to enjoy legitimate marriages. In modern times several societies also allowed slaves legitimate marriages. Slaves in early modern Russia had the right to contract a legitimate marriage, as did those in the Dutch Antilles of the eighteenth century.18°
Finally, we come to the differences in labour obligations owed by serfs and slaves. As we have seen with Nieboer, the ability of a slave owner to demand complete control of his slave’s labour (and, in Nieboer’s thinking, his will) has long been pointed to as a characteristic of the slave, and the contrast with the limited dues owed by a serf provides a meaningful instrument to define slavery. There are two seeming exceptions which, upon further investigations, do not hinder us from using labour obligations as a criterion for distinguishing slavery from serfdom. The first is the task-work system which was common in the nineteenth-century Carolinas. In the task-work system, masters assigned slaves tasks such as preparing and ploughing certain fields, and after completing these tasks, the slaves could pass their time as they wished. However, the not insignificant difference between the task-work system and that of the serf was that nowhere were these tasks formally agreed upon in such a manner that the slave performing them would have any form of redress if more were demanded of him. In other words, here again, the work of the slave depended solely upon the will of his owner, and the tasks could change or be increased based solely upon the will of the master.!*!
Stanley Engerman has argued that a second exception was that the urban slaves such as Frederick Douglass (and presumably those in similar circumstances in the ancient Middle East and the Roman world) resembled serfs in that they lived apart from their master, arranged their own contracts for their work, and made payments in cash to their master!8? Once again, the similarities are more superficial than real because in these instances the arrangements of payment were set up by the master and based solely upon his own will. The slave had no say and no basis for complaint if he or she did not like the arrangement placed upon him by his master. Additionally, at least in Frederick Douglass’ case, he had to hand over every last cent he earned as a caulker in Baltimore to his master, a fact which particularly galled Douglass.!®3 We must also not forget that in each of these situations, the dishonour attached to the slave would have been a much greater stain than that associated with the serf.
To sum up, slaves suffered from a profound stain of dishonour. Whether the dishonour stemmed from their position as property as suggested by Finley, or their position as property stemmed from their dishonour as suggested by Patterson, is irrelevant to our goal of recognizing them as slaves. Rather, the fact is that slaves were viewed as property. Concomitant with this reification is the separation of the slave from his or her own kin which shows itself at least partially in the inability of slaves to enjoy any of the privileges of elderhood and excludes them from receiving and bequeathing patrimony. As property, slaves are indeed completely subject to the will of their master. This subjection demonstrated itself in several ways, the two most common manifestations being the sexual exploitation of the slave and the use of the slave to perform labour.
Establishing a definition that allows the differentiation of the slave from the serf is my main task, and here it must be kept in mind that the nature of the source material renders criteria involving dishonour not particularly useful. Most of the source material for Arpad-era Hungary consists of laws and charters that do not address issues of the dishonour of servi directly. Therefore, though I consider them the most fundamental, issues of dishonour are conspicuously absent. I propose the following criteria for defining a slave in the period in question:
1. The slave was property and as such could be bought, sold, and traded in whatever manner his or her owner desired.
2. The slave was separated from kin. Slaves may have children, but cannot establish the broader relationship of kin. Separation from kin shows itself primarily in the inability of the slave to participate in rights of patrimony. The slave may enjoy certain limited rights to property, and this property may be sizeable and may even consist of land in some form, but all of the slave's property was merely part of his peculium. A prime characteristic of peculium is the inability of the slave to transfer it to succeeding generations.
3. The labour of the slave depended solely upon the will of his master. Slaves may be required to perform all sorts of tasks, both heavy and light, but their master alone determines both the nature and the amount of work demanded of them.
4. Slave marriages were not secure in all societies. This criterion must be qualified because, as we have seen, some societies allowed the legal protection of the union between slaves. Serfs, by contrast, always had such legal protection. Thus, while the presence of protected marriages does not necessarily indicate serfs, the forcible break up of unions does indicate slaves.
With these four criteria it is easier to determine whether those dependants appearing in the source material available for early medieval Europe were slaves or another form of dependent labourers.
Armed with a definition of a slave that is both accurate and appropriate for the nature of the source material available for both the Carolingian era and the later Arpad era will perhaps aid in addressing the subject of slavery during these periods. The questions concerning the origins and nature of slavery are still debated without much consensus, it seems. It is to these questions that we now turn.
Conclusions
Discussions of slavery in medieval Europe must begin with a definition of the institution that is based upon the sources available and takes account of the limitation of those sources. The definition must also permit a differentiation between slavery and other forms of coerced labour, namely serfdom. A primary characteristic of slavery is the stain of dishonour suffered by the slaves; however, for early medieval Europe and the early medieval period in Hungary, such dishonour is difficult to distinguish from that experienced by other forms of dependants. Thus, we must look to other properties to determine the status of slaves. The slave was considered an item of property differing from other items only in that slaves existed in the ambiguous situation of also being human. Slaves were bought and sold and generally treated as an object. Also, the slave, unlike the serf, was not allowed official and protected rights of kinship. Kinlessness can be seen in several ways. The kinless may procreate, but not belong to the intergenerational institution that is kin.
He is prohibited from the right of patrimony. The slave has access to property, and this property can include even land. However, all property ownership by slaves must be seen in light of the institution of peculium. All ownership of peculiwm is subject to the will of the slave holder. In fact, the legal ownership of a slave's peculium does not lie with the slave, but rather with the slave holder himself. In light of the peculium, then, we can distinguish a slave from a serf in that the serf was able to pass on items of property, including plots of land, to his or her descendants whereas the slave had no such right. A final significant difference between the two dependent categories was the nature of the work obligations that each owed. The serf had defined obligations to be performed for his lord, but the slave had no such limitations placed upon his labour. The slave’s work was dependent solely upon the will of his lord.
The question of the presence of slavery in the early medieval period, both in Western Europe and in Hungary, has provided some debate, but there is a different chronology to the two. Some hold that the larger estates of the Merovingian period were frequently worked by slaves, but this is not universally accepted. The existence of slavery in the Carolingian period is similarly in doubt. Some, particularly Marxists, have argued that slavery continued even throughout the Frankish period upon the small estates of independent peasants. However, a consensus has begun to emerge that slavery in the western regions of the Carolingian world declined fairly early while those areas east of the Rhine retained the use of slave labour for much longer. Similarly, in the Hungarian historiography the nature of dependent labour has at times centred on the presence of slavery. Though early discussion often focused on which groups in the sources could be termed ‘slaves’, later opinion focused on the domains of secular lords as the areas of agricultural exploitation through slave labour.
The means by which slavery ended in Europe is disputed, though here again a consensus has been forming. The minority thinking is that slavery continued on smaller properties until the ‘feudal revolution’ around the year 1000. Marc Bloch’s theories on the settling of slaves onto individual plots as the primary means by which slaves rose out of their condition has become generally accepted. However, there is disagreement over whether the settling of slaves onto plots resulted from economic recession or growth. Also, some scholars point to the resistance of slaves (especially through flight) as being significant. Similarly, regarding the demise of slavery in Hungary, historians now generally accept that settlement was a prime factor though in Hungary other elements such as the ‘movement of peoples’ in the thirteenth century are also thought to have contributed to the process.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق