Culture

The Laws of Slavery

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Slavery in the eighth century was not a “peculiar institution.”1.A term generally attributed to the antebellum southern politician John C. Calhoun, who owned slaves himself. Slavery was embedded into every aspect of early medieval society. All strata of society bought, sold, and used slaves. Slavery had been inherited from the ancient world, and continued for more than a millennium after Charlemagne’s death. The only hint of concern or opposition to the practice of treating people as property came from the church, and that opposition was heavily conditional, as we shall see.

The topic of slavery is a large one, and over the next couple of posts I will touch on some of its most salient and visible aspects. In this first installment let’s look at what the law said about slavery.2.This post has been delayed due to the amount of content I’ve found (and my own laziness), so I decided to break it up into more manageable chunks.

Defining who was and was not a slave is surprisingly difficult, as Frankish law recognized degrees of slavery. There are two words that denote full slavery, servi and mancipia, which meant a person owned by another person.3.Much of my understanding of the legal landscape comes from Drew, The Laws of the Salian Franks. I will reference specific passages where warranted. The slave was treated differently than everyone else under the law, and in most ways, but not all, was considered physical property. Slaves could be punished, sold, or otherwise used as their owner desired. There were no laws against the misuse or abuse of slaves.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 A term generally attributed to the antebellum southern politician John C. Calhoun, who owned slaves himself.
↑2 This post has been delayed due to the amount of content I’ve found (and my own laziness), so I decided to break it up into more manageable chunks.
↑3 Much of my understanding of the legal landscape comes from Drew, The Laws of the Salian Franks. I will reference specific passages where warranted.

Charlemagne in the news

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While Charlemange’s influence in European history is outsize, his modern-day media presence is muted, shall we say. Perhaps one of his more notable appearances is a monthly column in The Economist weekly news magazine. The authors don’t have a byline, instead using pithy words and names that reference the subject of the column. “Banyan” looks at pan-Asian issues, while “Bartleby” is the business correspondent.

The European column is written by “Charlemagne”. A recent story looked at the relationship between Austria and Russia (too neutral, in Charlemagne’s eyes). The reason for the epithet lies in Charles’ long-held title as “the father of Europe”, and of course there is some truth to that. He was the first to see the European continent as a single entity that should be bound together by religion, trade, and law, at least to the extent he was able to conceive of these things. Certainly Rome never looked at the continent to the north of Italy as a distinct domain, with legitimate interests. For the emperors, there was Rome, and there was everything else.

But sometimes the real Charlemagne is worth a mention. The May 4 issue includes a piece in the Culture section that asks, “Might Charlemagne’s capital, long placed in Germany, have actually been in Italy?”

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The lonely life of a medieval leper

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I would not wish leprosy on anyone. It is an insidious disease, taking anywhere from months to many years to manifest itself.1.World Health Organization – Leprosy. You, too, can become an expert on anything with the help of the internet. Once it takes hold nerve damage causes victims lose sensation in their skin. An inability to feel pain results in untreated injuries, which eventually leads to significant damage as infections take hold and destroy tissue. As fingers and toes are lost other symptoms include degraded eyesight and terrible skin lesions. The victim’s appearance gradually becomes grotesque.

While today a highly effective multi-drug therapy cures leprosy, for most of human history there was no treatment. In the absence of a treatment and the horrific effects of the disease, the medieval church and state enforced a strict policy of exclusion. A leper’s life was one of stigma and ostracism.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 World Health Organization – Leprosy. You, too, can become an expert on anything with the help of the internet.

Disease-ridden peasants?

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A recent paper deserves our attention for the light it sheds on the day-to-day realities of early medieval diet, disease, and mortality. Spoiler: it wasn’t a great time to be alive.

The journal Genome Biology published “Pathogen genomics study of an early medieval community in Germany reveals extensive co-infections” in December of 2022. The team of sixteen authors performed DNA analysis on the bones and teeth of individuals buried between 650 and 800 (the dating is rough) in a German town now called Lauchheim (part of Frankish Allemania). Their findings illustrate a population ravaged by disease and hardship.

Of the seventy remains investigated, twenty-two had active infections (31% of the population!), of four different viral and bacteriological diseases. Seven individuals had two infections, and one unfortunate young man had three different diseases going on. Just what were these diseases, how prevalent were they, and what were the immediate and long-term effects?

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Betrayal in the family

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Now let’s crack open a tale of deformity, hatred between brothers, scheming wives and priests, broken promises, and family betrayal. The place is not Mar-a-Lago, but Francia in 769. Pepin the Short, the first true Carolingian king, is dead, felled by a fever after eight years waging a war of scorched earth against Aquitaine.1.Covered extensively, starting here. Before Pepin’s death in 768 both Charles and his brother Carloman, “by your father’s order, joined in lawful marriage” two good Frankish women.2.King, Caroline code, Letter 2, 770, p271. Charles first pulled the trigger, so to speak, and sometime in 7693.No one really knows, but the consensus is prior to 770. his wife Himiltrude gave birth to a healthy son, whom Charles named Pippin, for his father.4.Yes, I know I spell them differently. But it’s the same name.

Naming his first-born son after his father showed that Charles intended this boy to inherit the kingly title in some form or another. Carloman’s wife Gerberga, not to be outdone, gave birth to a son in 770.5.King, Petau Annals, 770, p.149. What name did they bestow? I’m sure you can guess – the conflict between Charles and Carloman had started before their father had cooled in his crypt. Carloman will get his own post soon, but suffice it to say that after a visit from his mother in 772 Carloman died, and his wife and children (including Pippin) fled to Lombardy.6.As noted before, I think this family is much darker than do conventional historians.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Covered extensively, starting here.
↑2 King, Caroline code, Letter 2, 770, p271.
↑3 No one really knows, but the consensus is prior to 770.
↑4 Yes, I know I spell them differently. But it’s the same name.
↑5 King, Petau Annals, 770, p.149.
↑6 As noted before, I think this family is much darker than do conventional historians.