All of the major faiths, Christians, Moslems, and Jews took part in the slave trade of the Middle Ages. It was not until the 13th century did the Church forbid Christians to trade in Christian slaves. Thousands of captured Slavs and Moslems worked their lives as slaves in Europe’s monasteries.
Jews and Slavery:
The Church objected when Jews had slaves. They feared the possibility that slaves might convert to Judaism (tempting to the slave when he remembered that Jews were religiously obligated to set fellow Jews free). Earlier, as far back as 339AD, the Church had forbidden Jews to convert Christians to Judaism for this reason. The penalty to do so was death. The Church in the Middle Ages at first decreed that Jews could not keep Christian slaves for more than three months, then after that period was up, the Christian had to be sold to a Christian. When the Church enforced these laws, the effect was to drive the Jews out of farming so that they could get their land. Deprived of their land and the labor to work the land, former Jewish landowners became merchants.
Jewish Merchants were allowed to come and go freely on the Christian and Moslem territories. Under favorable conditions during the rule of Charlemagne (742- 814AD) the Frankish king, Jews became principal representatives of international trade, dealing in furs, oriental goods and slaves.
When the Visigoths drove the Romans out of Spain in the 4th century AD, these barbarians oppressed the Jews harshly; so much so that the Jews in the 7th century plotted to overthrow them. The Visigoths discovered the conspiracy and sentenced the whole Jewish population in Spain to slavery. They were scattered all over the country and their masters were forbidden to ever set them free. Children seven and over were taken from their parents and given to Christians. Not until the Moslems conquered the last of the Visigothic kings in 711AD were the Jews restored to freedom. Under the rule of the Moslems they also obtained religious liberty; something they did not have under Christian rule.
Slavery in North and Central Italy:
Domestic slavery, which had almost disappeared in Northern and Central Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries, had made a return because of two main reasons: the steep rise in Italian trade with the East, and the Black Death. In the 11th century, the Italians had opened trade with every port on the Mediterranean Sea and controlled all major trade on the Black Sea (the Genoese ports). Caravans from the Far East came to these ports to do trade with Europe. Traders from Europe bought silks, carpets, furs, spices and timber, and sold wines, figs, linen and woolens. But the most profitable commodity of all, for both sides, was slaves.
The Black Death
The Black Death moved into Europe from the East (believed to have started from China) and devastated the population. There were two forms:
Bubonic plague– caused by bacterium transmitted by fleas from infected rats. Symptoms are characterized by fever, prostration and delirium.
Pneumonic plague– inflammation or infection of the lungs caused by bacteria or viruses.
Half of the population of the city of Florence died of the plague, and the toll was higher in many other places in Italy. In the years that the epidemic lasted, from 1347 through 1350AD, it probably killed off at least 1/3 to ½ of Europe’s population, with the poor as the greatest number of victims.
The towns, short of laborers and craftsmen, were desperate for slaves. Whatever labor that survived was used to farm the land. So once again, after the plague subsided in Europe, the slave trade was revived. The leaders of Florence decreed that any number of foreign slaves could be brought in, as long as they were “infidels”(which were the Moslems in the eyes of Christians). Soon after the decree was passed, the streets of Florence and other Tuscan cities were filled with strange faces of the newly enslaved- Tartars, Russians, Greeks, Moors and Ethiopians- to name a few. Soon every household, no matter how modest, had a slave. Even the priests and nuns owned slaves in Italy. These slaves were used almost exclusively to do the work of domestics, artisans and craftsmen.
Slavery on the Black Sea Ports:
In the mid to late 1300’s, Caffa, a port on the Northern Black sea and run by Genoese merchants, became a great slave market to traders of every nation and color. In its slave markets were sold blond Circassians, yellow Tartars, red-haired Caucasians, and black Ethiopians. The majority of the slaves sold were children, which were either stolen from the Crimea by Tartar raiders, or kidnapped from ports or towns by Genoese pirates. But many of these children were sold into slavery by their parents who were starved for bread.
The Genoese and the Church:
The city of Genoa made huge profits from their ports on the Black Sea by dealing in slaves that were non-Christian and Christian, and the Church complained. In 1317AD, Pope John XXII denounced the Genoese because he believed that they were increasing the strength of the “Infidel” Moslems by shipping those slaves. But at the same time the Papacy was browbeating Genoa, they began using the threat of mass enslavement to get the enemies of the Church under control, and the Church did not care if the enemies were Christians or not. In 1303AD, Pope Boniface VIII ordered the enslavement of the powerful Colonna family and its followers. The Colonnas’ were a rich merchant family who did not want to be under the Catholic rule, which really meant that they did not want to share their earned wealth with the Church. In 1309AD, Pope Clement V pronounced this same sentence on three major cities, Venice, Bologna and Florence. These three powerful merchant and trade city-states were in direct competition with Genoa, but Genoa split their wealth with the Church, whereas these city-states did not.
The Venetians main slave port on the Black Sea was Tana and it was in direct competition for market share with the Genoese port of Caffa. Traders came from Russia, Armenia, Dalmatia, and Germany. The slaves from both Tana and Caffa were brought back to the Italian ports to be unloaded and auctioned off to slave brokers, who then sent their human cargo to their clients. The Genoese also dealt in the slave trade all over the Western Mediterranean, and especially in Barcelona and Majorca. The majority of these slaves were often re-exported to other countries in Europe (where young girls were in high demand as concubines and housemaids), and Northern Africa (where young males were in high demand to fill the army ranks).
Treatment of Slaves in Medieval Italy:
There was a dress code for slaves in Medieval Italy; drab, plain and usually course gray woolen clothes were the average slave uniform. This was a marked difference from the Roman times when a slave could wear styles that their masters wore. As in other societies, the slaves of Italy were horribly treated, and the slaves every once in a while took action. They often poisoned their masters. This occurred so often that in 1410AD, a Venetian law was approved for the use of torture in examining a slave suspected of plotting to kill his master (this law was also approved later to find out if the female slave was into witchcraft or potion making).
The domestic slaves in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries AD were not of the mild and meek type. They fought each other constantly, stole everything they could from their masters, refused to take orders, talked back rudely, and ran away. The penalties for running away were harsh. Laws in every Italian city stated that the fugitive slave was a thief. Why? Because he was property and in running away he had “stolen” himself from his master. Torture was the usual penalty. There were also harsh punishments for helping a slave. If you helped a slave for more than three days, you were hanged, but if you helped him for less than three days, you were tortured only. If the slave fled into a church, he inevitably was given back to his master, unless the owner was a Jew, then the slave was helped by the Church to keep his freedom.
Freedom was given to slaves often. The most common method of obtaining freedom by the slave was the master’s deathbed granting of freedom. This type of granted freedom in some Italian cities made the slave equal to free born men, but this new freedom rarely got the former slave the equal treatment that the law stated. Usually the ex-slave had no marketable skill and no money. Free artisans kept former slaves out of their guilds (unions), and most of the skilled artisans refused to train slaves because the slave might go to another city and give away or sale the artisan’s skills secrets. So more often than not, these ex-slaves regressed to other means to stay alive. Women became prostitutes and most of the men became beggars and vagrants. Both became homeless, ragged, hungry and hopeless on the city streets. By the end of the 15th century AD, most of Italy was full of ex-slaves turned beggars and thieves to stay alive.
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