2.2.2 Institutional Realities: From Slavery to Serfdom in Medieval Europe

2.2.2.1 The Great Transition

For present purposes, we take the presence of slaves during the Roman period as granted and will not immerse ourselves in a broad discussion on that period.

By all accounts, the period in between the end of the Roman Empire and the so-called “Renaissance of the twelfth century” is the most confusing as concerns the institutional importance of slavery. Without a doubt, it was possible to be a slave on European soil at any point, but by the twelfth century, slaves had become an oddity in several parts of Europe. Often, this evolution is called the transition from slavery to serfdom in Europe. The debate on how, why and when this evolution spread throughout Europe is still far from resolved, and its full story is outside the framework of this book. However (and although prone to a strong measure of generalisation), we will briefly discuss the main tenets of the evolutions that were visible throughout the whole of North-western Europe, based primarily on the work of Marc Bloch (1886–1944).⁸¹

Bloch held that, at the end of the Carolingian Era (800–888), the central social unit had become the manor (seigneurie).⁸² This was a kind of estate that was inhabited by the manorial lord’s subjects. The manor itself was divided in two parts: the reserve, which was the part directly held for the purpose of the lord, and the tenements (tenures). These were small peasant holdings where, although the lord retained the highest property right, the holder was entitled to enjoy the fruits of the ground in exchange for certain services to the lord.⁸³ Later on, the glossators would say that the lord had the dominium directum, and the holder the dominium utile.

In Charlemagne’s empire, some peasants were considered to be free, although many of them were already in a tenant-like relationship with their lord. Next to that, there were still many allodia, grounds that were free of seigniorial rule and held directly by a peasant. According to Bloch, these allodia were the first to disappear en masse following the chaos that had begun to erupt at the end of the ninth century amidst the breakup of the Carolingian Empire. Allodia started to fall within the seigniorial system through a combination of contracts and sheer use of force by petty lords.⁸⁴ At the same time, the formerly free peasants started searching for protection. For example, they made use of a contract called commendatio, through which they received protection from a lord in exchange for which they became dependent of him (cum obsequio).⁸⁵ In this way, formerly free peasants were little by little subjected to lordly power.

On the other side of the spectrum, Bloch discussed three factors that led to the disappearance of genuine slaves: religious, military and economic, with most attention having been paid to the last. The economic rationale of Bloch was that the end of the use of Roman slave gangs, working in latifundia (great landed estates), in favour of smaller tenant systems, meant that master’s incentives changed. Masters gradually found it more interesting to extract rents and services, rather than exploiting and having to pay for slaves directly. Eventually, and with some help of Church doctrine, Bloch believed that this led many masters to enfranchise their slaves through manumissions. However, the master still wanted to retain some measure of control over his slave, which meant that he preferred to have a manumissio cum obsequio, meaning that the slave still owed him several services. Soon, this process would receive a hereditary character.⁸⁶

In this way, both slaves and free peasants were subjugated and eventually called serfs.⁸⁷ Bloch has defined this status with three characteristics: mainmorte, a form of succession tax that was usually collected by the lord in the form of a piece of moveable property; formariage, the prohibition to marry outside the manor without permission of the lord; and chevage, a small head-tax.

Admittedly, Bloch’s version of the demise of slavery and the rise of serfdom has been seminal, but it has also been subject to many variations and alterations in the past decades. Historians still disagree widely as to the how, when and why slavery almost fully disappeared in North-Western Europe. More recent accounts also tend to give more scope for regional variations, and see freedom and unfreedom as the extremes of a continuum, with a lot of gray areas in between the two.⁸⁹ Or, to quote the author of a recent book on the transition from slavery to serfdom:

[T]he whole spectrum of possible meanings [to slave or serf] could apply at the same time within the same early medieval society—and indeed within a single lordship, depending on what lord and dependants had been trying to achieve with these labels.⁹⁰

As a result, it would prove impossible to cover the scholarly debate on this transition in full, which is why I will finish by summarizing some of the most important discussions, referring the reader to the footnotes for further commentary.⁹¹

First, the timeframe of the demise of slavery stretches over a period of 600 years. Bloch saw the demise of slavery as starting at the end of the Roman period, and continuing until the ninth and tenth century, when serfdom rose to the fore. Many Marxist historians would disagree, and rather refer to what they call a process of synthesis that happened after the Germanic invasions blended both German and Roman society. This, according to them, resulted in the birth of feudalism at an earlier time.⁹² Others, especially within France, have argued for the idea of a feudal revolution, which holds that there was a feudal transformation of society around the year 1000.

Likewise, there is much debate about how the evolution towards serfdom happened. Bloch, as we have seen, proposed a two-tier model whereby slaves were manumitted before and partially at the time when peasants were losing their independence. There was, essentially, a rupture between slavery and serfdom. One scholar has criticized the characterisation of serfdom by Bloch (chevage, formariage, mainmorte) and believes that processes of imposing ever rising burdens on peasants were continuously present between the fourth and eleventh centuries.⁹⁵ Verriest and Verlinden have proposed a line of continuity, arguing that serfs actually descended directly from slaves.⁹⁶ Meanwhile, Bonnassie has taken a unique view by claiming that slavery completely perished around the year 1000, and that peasants subsequently enjoyed a period of relative freedom, after which serfdom would set in.⁹⁷ Rio, finally, likened early medieval laws about unfreedom to a Swiss knife that “could do many different things without being ideally suited to any of them”. She notes that it was only at the end of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that, through the work of professional lawyers, a process of increasing homogenization in the meaning of unfreedom was set in.⁹⁸

The role of the Church in the decline of slavery is another difficult factor. The church itself did not outlaw the institution of slavery. It did, however, lend its moral blessings to provisions of Roman law that limited the power of the master, added some constraints of its own, and at times also encouraged Christians to manumit their slaves.⁹⁹ Second, the Church imposed several restrictions on the slave trade in Europe.

Finally, Bloch’s framework is most useful for France. The broad strokes of his theory can also be used for England and the Low Countries, but chronology and specifics slightly differ. With respect to the Low Countries, slavery declined earlier and had already mostly disappeared after the seventh century. This is mainly due to the fact that large-scale wars remained absent from this area, and to several socio-economic factors (a quicker spread of labour-saving instruments, the early rise of the manorial system, etc.).¹⁰³ In England, the transition happened a bit later. Slavery had been declining before the Norman Conquest, but this event accelerated the evolution.¹⁰⁴ Although the Domesday Book of 1086 still mentioned that there were about 25,000 slaves in England (a category which was then, rather confusingly, called servus or serf), this category would almost completely disappear in the first decades following the Norman takeover.¹⁰⁵ In its place came a new institution: villeinage.

Much uncertainty thus remains about the exact end of slavery in Europe, but many major institutional or social historians would agree that slavery had become a fringe phenomenon in the territories of England, (most of) France and the Low Countries by the early twelfth century at the latest.

2.2.2.2 1200-1500: Serfdom and Slavery: North-South Divide

As slavery perished in England, France, and the Low Countries, unfreedom did not-yet-. Serfdom, or villeinage in England, came in its place. Let us see what this kind of unfreedom exactly was, in order to be able to clearly distinguish it from slavery. It should not be presumed that slavery disappeared everywhere. The Ghent historian Charles Verlinden (1907–1996), wrote ground-breaking scholarship on the continued presence of slaves in Southern Europe, and it is useful to give this a brief look as well.

England—The Rise and Decline of the Unfree Villeins

Originally, villein was a term used to talk about a simple (free) villager. However, at the time when slavery disappeared, formerly free citizens were increasingly tied to the lord’s manor in England as a levelling process set in and former slaves and free peasants were combined in the composite class of villein.¹⁰⁶ Though several of the Roman law concepts applicable to slaves were used on villeins in early English treatises such as Glanvill and (especially) Bracton, and though these writers also held that villeinage was the only kind of unfreedom English common law knew of, it should be borne in mind that the institution of villeinage ought to be compared rather with the French serf (as in unfree peasant) than with the Roman chattel slave. According to Bloch, the biggest difference between the French serf and the English villein was that the English lords, in the more centralised England, were far more effective at tying their villeins to the land.¹⁰⁷

This slow separation of villeinage from slavery is seen aptly in the differences between the two classic works on early English common law, Glanvill and Bracton.¹⁰⁸ According to Glanvill (written ca. 1187–1189), when a villein was manumitted by his lord, the villein only became free vis-à-vis the lord and his heirs, but remained unfree in his relation to all other persons.¹⁰⁹ This view had changed by the time of Bracton (mainly written between ca. 1220–1230, but brought up to date in the ensuing decades), who adopted the three principal characteristics of the common law of villeinage. First, there was only one kind of villeinage, and all villeins were equally unfree.¹¹⁰ Second, villeinage was relative, meaning that the villein was unfree only in his relation to his lord, yet free in his relation against all other persons.¹¹¹ Finally, a clear distinction was drawn between villein tenure of land and personal villein status (villeinage de sank).¹¹²

How did one become a villein? Although Bracton made reference to how persons, by virtue of the ius gentium, became bonded by capture in war, this ought to be seen as proof of the Romanesque influence to which the writer was prone, rather than a reality at the time of writing.¹¹³ Instead, there were two chief means of becoming a villein: in case of servile birth and that of a voluntary confession of servile status. English law thus acknowledged a transmission of status from parent to child (with the issue of mixed marriages being an especially contentious issue).¹¹⁴ Several cases also point to the fact that confession of villein status was sometimes used as a means to escape prosecution, or to enjoy protection at the price of liberty.¹¹⁵

Villein status was not a pleasant one in common law. Whatever property a villein acquired, could be seized by the lord. Second, though protected by criminal law, the villein could be subjected to corporal discipline by the lord. And, the villein could not run away from his tenement, and could be forcefully retaken by his lord. That is not to say that the villein’s lot was one of subjection to complete arbitrary use of power by the lord as the lack of protection under common law was partially compensated through protection under manorial justice.¹¹⁶

As the villein’s status was less then enviable, it is not surprising to see that a great many cases related to the status of an alleged villein came before the royal courts. Usually, when the lord was faced with a runaway villein, he would try to obtain a writ of neifty (de nativo habendo), which ordered the local sheriff to deliver an alleged villein up to the lord. This would only be executed after a hearing in the county court, during which the villein could claim that he was free. If a villein did so, the proceedings were stopped and transferred to one of the royal courts, either by the claimant lord through the writ pone de nativis or by the alleged villein through the writ de homine replegiando.¹¹⁷ Both parties then had to prove their claim before the royal courts by presenting suit of kin. Simply said, this meant that both parties tried to present at least two male kinsmen who attested to their own villein or free status, after which the court would judge on the status of the alleged villein.¹¹⁸

The law of villeinage showed remarkable continuity throughout the twelfth and thirteenth century, after which the institution would start to decline in the second half of the fourteenth century. Then, many villeins would gain their freedom.¹¹⁹ First, the decreased availability of labour meant that the labour market became more competitive. Mobility sharply increased as peasants took the momentum and left their villages in favour of high wages in agriculture and industry elsewhere. Lords thus had a disincentive to enforce their rights too vigorously, for doing so might drive their peasants away. Second, the manorial system of labour rents became increasingly replaced by a system of money rents. The status of villeinage was no longer as necessary to lords as it had been before, and lords increasingly saw the Ordinance (1349) and Statute of Labourers (1351) as a means to claim their rights.¹²⁰

Villeins, once the majority of the peasant population, would cease to be an identifiable social class by the beginning of the fifteenth century, a time when class distinctions increasingly became dependent on economic conditions rather than the free-unfree dichotomy.¹²¹ As the Middle Ages came to a close then, English common law recognised unfreedom, but only through the increasingly moribund institution of villeinage. Slavery had disappeared earlier on, and though some of its provisions had been inserted into the laws of villeinage, there was no substantive slave law in England.

Serfdom in France and the Low Countries

Slavery had ceased to exist as an institutional reality in North and Central France by the eleventh century. The institution having perished, the only kind of unfreedom left was that of the French serf. Broadly speaking, the French serf can be compared to the English villein, though French servitude has usually been characterised by using Bloch’s three characteristics of chevage, formariage and mainmorte. That in itself is already a gross oversimplification of the real situation in France, there being various characteristics of serfdom. One general distinction was that there were two kinds of servitude, namely servitude rĂ©elle and servitude personelle (also called the distinction between serfs de corps and serfs d’hĂ©ritage). The former was connected to persons possessing a plot of land to which servile dues are connected (a bien servile), and this form of servitude disappeared as soon as the serf left the land or changed residence. The latter was a form of servitude which attached itself to both the person and his progeny.¹²² Both categories were subject to a variety of dues, but there was great local variation in the names (chevage, for example, was called avenage or schaft in some regions) and the application of these marks of servile status.¹²³ The decline of serfdom had set in starting from the thirteenth century, which, given its relevance to the idea of the French freedom principle, we will discuss in more detail in the next chapter.

The situation was broadly the same in the Low Countries. Mass slavery had disappeared early, and the last vestiges of slavery were gone by the beginning of the eleventh century.¹²⁴ Just as elsewhere, this resulted in the rise of serfdom. Again, we should point out that the situation was subject to local variety all over the different counties, duchies, etc. of the Low Countries. In some, manorialism became an important factor, whilst in others, this was much less so. For example, previous studies have compared the importance or unimportance of serfdom between the County of Flanders, the County of Hainaut and the area of Picardy.¹²⁵

When it comes to the County of Flanders, historically one of the most important parts of the Low Countries, we know that primarily in the eleventh century, serfdom was widespread as lords were able to subject peasants to their authority.¹²⁶

Serfdom has generally been defined by scholars in a comparable way as for France-that is formariage, mainmorte and a variety of dues to which the serf was subject-. The difference between servitude personelle and servitude rĂ©elle was also recognized here (with, for example, servitude personelle being dominant in Flanders).¹²⁷ As elsewhere, other characteristics could be subject to local variations.¹²⁸

In comparison with other places in North-western Europe, serfdom declined very early in the Low Countries, as it generally started to perish from the twelfth century onwards. As elsewhere, no provisions regulating slavery can be found.

For France, one qualifier is needed. Verlinden and other historians have been able to trace some proof of continuity in the history of slavery for several regions of Southern France, namely Roussillon, Languedoc and the Provence.¹²⁹ The slaves themselves were primarily Moorish in origin, but a variety of other ethnicities were to be found as well (i.e. Russians, Turks, Greek, Tatars and some black Africans starting from the fifteenth century).¹³⁰ In the Languedoc, slavery only perished in the sixteenth century. It had completely disappeared in Roussillon as well by the beginning of the seventeenth century.¹³¹ The only slaves remaining in France before colonial slaves started to arrive in the second part of the seventeenth century were to be found in the royal galleys in the Provence, a subject to which we will return later. It seems that there were no French ordonnances regulating the status of these slaves at this time, though that might have been unnecessary anyhow. This is so because all these regions were to be situated in the so-called pays de droit Ă©crit, where the Corpis Iuris Civilis abundant in slavery provisions, had received the status of supplementary law by the middle of the thirteenth century.¹³²

Not a Universal Pattern: Slavery in Spain and Portugal

Nonetheless, this situation was not the pattern in all of Europe. In many ways, the areas we discussed could even be considered as outliers. A lot of other regions in Europe did make legal provisions on slavery, as slaves never disappeared from their territory. This, for example, can be demonstrated by the examples of both Spain and Portugal, but holds equally true for Italy or the Byzantine Empire.¹³³

For both Iberian countries, slavery remained a vivid institution during the Middle Ages, both countries likely even having had more slaves in the fifteenth century than they had in the thirteenth.¹³⁴ Due to the Reconquista, both Iberian powers always had a supply of slaves close at hand (Muslims that could be taken captive in a just war.) In addition to that, both countries were heavily engaged in the slave trade and slaving raids against the Northern African coast starting from the fifteenth century.¹³⁵ As a consequence, when the first legal codes were made in these countries, provisions related to slavery were part of them. In Spain, slavery was dealt with by both the Fuero Juzgo (the translation of the Visigothic Liber iudiciorum which was given as a legal code to several towns conquered from the Moors) and Las Siete Partidas, Alfonso X’s thirteenth century attempt to create a unified law for Castile.¹³⁶ Portugal primarily developed its medieval slave law through municipal regulations, although there was more royal interference in this process during the fifteenth century (Ordenações Manuelinas).¹³⁷