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Slavery in Merovingian Francia

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Although Merovingian Francia is not considered a slave society, slaves were, nonetheless, present throughout the entirety of the dynasty and well into the Carolingian period and beyond.[1][2] In the 7th century, however, the sale and trade of Christians within Frankish borders was abolished by Queen Balthild, herself a former slave.[3]

Nature of Merovingian slavery

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Even though “(a)ny reconstruction of the slave trade during this period is bound to be highly speculative” due to the paucity of extant medieval sources,[4] scholars have advanced some general characteristics of Merovingian slavery. For one, a distinction must be made between forced slavery and voluntary slavery. The status of freedom throughout the Middle Ages, including the Merovingian period, was not as defined as it is today; freedom was considered a bargaining chip by which to attain a better quality of life or economic stability.[5] Legally this form of slavery was not hereditary whereas imposed or forced slavery, such as through capture, was.[6] Merovingian slavery is further characterized by a preference for female, domestic slaves.[7] This may have been a result of the considerable low status attributed to those who served[8] and/or the desire for multiple types of labor production, such as domestic and sexual. In fact, wars were often fought to fulfill the demand for slaves in early medieval Europe and sources show “women and their children as the intended victims of war”.[9]

Balthild, for example, is captured in England and sold, for a cheap price, to Erchinoald.[10] Finally, since Merovingian France was not a slave society, slavery was, in many ways, arbitrary. Which is to say, slaves and servants existed at the low end of the social scale, “regardless of where they sat on the spectrum of unfreedom”[11] The arbitrariness of Merovingian slavery is all the more apparent in that, unlike other forms of slavery, such as ancient, modern, or Islamic/Mediterranean, it was neither racial, cultural, or religious.[12] It was, at least, until Balthild outlawed the sale of Christians. As such, scholars, when considering slavery in early medieval Europe, prefer to ask: “Why were lords so keen to categorize some of their dependents as unfree, but not others? What added advantage did they think it would give them?”[13] In other words, why were some considered slaves and others servants, when both shared a similar condition of servitude? More precisely, why such a distinction when dominants considered either condition of servitude equally debased?.[14] Thus, a top-down approach to the study of slavery, in this specific context, is beneficial in order to understand what characterized someone as an enslaved person or free person.

Slave queens

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Five Frankish queens of the Merovingian dynasty have been identified as former slaves, though there may be more: Ingund, Fredegund, Bilichild, Nanthild, and Balthild.[15][16] Of these women, Fredegund and Balthild are the best remembered; the first for her villainous attributes and the second for her saintly ones.[17][18] Regardless of their historical reputation and legacy, all of these women rose dramatically through the ranks of Merovingian society, from the lowest echelon to the highest; likely examples of unparalleled social climbing in French history.

Scholars and medieval contemporaries have theorized as to why kings would select unfree women as their consorts. For contemporary chronicler and bishop Gregory of Tours, this habit signaled a lack of kingly virtue, declaring they “were marrying unworthy wives, and were themselves so worthless as to even marry slaves”.[19] This is to say, slaves occupied such a demeaned position in Merovingian society as to impart their debased condition onto their spouses, especially when those spouses happened to be royal. Such a decision therefore must have been the result of whim or lust.[20] In comparison, scholars believe the behavior of the kings was “not necessarily motivated by lust over reason”.[21] In such, some contend that “their slave status, which kept them dependent on the good will of their husbands, made them the preferred confidantes of kings”.[22][23] Others argue these marriages enabled Merovingian kings to display their power: in favoring a lowborn or unfree wife over one selected from the ranks of high society, the Merovingian kings indicated their distinctiveness.[24] This is to say, “To select a bride without regard for her wealth or lineage was to signal one’s own power and security”.[25] Still others suggest that these marriages demonstrated a form of practicality, useful when the first, legitimate wife proved sterile[26] However, it must be noted that such marriages were exceptional and largely “outnumbered by the more normal alliances with princesses and noblewomen and rarely occurred before the mid-sixth century”[27]

In the case of Balthild, it is possible that her former enslavement prompted her interest in reforming slavery, freeing captives and firming up who could be enslaved.[28] Balthild’s attempts notwithstanding, slavery persisted in the Frankish kingdom, only slaves were now imported from Eastern Europe rather than captured locally.[29] It is perhaps significant that no other slave queen is known, or recorded, to have attempted similar reforms.

Creating "free" progeny

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The ability to choose a slave for a queen was dependent on the right of Merovingian kings to exist, in many ways, above the law. Unlike other members of society, such as the aristocracy, who were subject to the Roman law that “…the offspring of unions of free men and servile women inherited the status of their mother,” the kings were themselves exempt.[30] The children of kings, regardless of the current or previously enslaved condition of the mother, were legitimate and free. In this regard, the kings displayed further singularity “as they were not bound by the same social conventions that controlled the behavior of non-royal, aristocratic communities”[31]

References

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  1. ^ Jamie Kreiner, “About the Bishop: The Episcopal Entourage and the Economy of Government in Post-Roman Gaul,” Speculum 86, no. 2 (2011):341
  2. ^ Michael McCormick, “New Light on the ‘Dark Ages,’” Past & Present, no. 177 (2002):41
  3. ^ Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992),p.273
  4. ^ Alice Rio, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford University Press, 2017), 19.
  5. ^ Alice Rio, “Self-Sale and Voluntary Entry into Unfreedom, 300-1100,” Journal of Social History, The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States, 45, no. 3 (2012): 687.
  6. ^ Jamie Kreiner, “About the Bishop: The Episcopal Entourage and the Economy of Government in Post-Roman Gaul,” Speculum 86, no. 2 (2011):341
  7. ^ Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 362.
  8. ^ Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 363.
  9. ^ John Gillingham, “Women, Children and the Profits of War,” in Gender and Historiography, ed. Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds, and Susan M. Johns, Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford (University of London Press, 2012), 62,67.
  10. ^ Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992),p.268-9
  11. ^ Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 362.
  12. ^ Alice Rio, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford University Press, 2017), 3.
  13. ^ Alice Rio, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford University Press, 2017), 12.
  14. ^ Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 362.
  15. ^ Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992),p.264
  16. ^ E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), p.116
  17. ^ Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex : Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1998)
  18. ^ E.T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), chapter 6 and 7
  19. ^ Gregory of Tours, The Merovingians, trans. Alexander Callander Murray, Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures, X (Canada: Broadview Press, 2006), 58.
  20. ^ E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), p.80
  21. ^ E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), p.100
  22. ^ Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992),p.264
  23. ^ see also: Jo Ann McNamara, “Women and Power through the Family Revisited,” in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary C. Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Cornell University Press, 2003), 24
  24. ^ E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), p.115
  25. ^ E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), p.100
  26. ^ Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers :The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1983),38.
  27. ^ Pauline Stafford, Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1983),38.
  28. ^ Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex : Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1998): 76.
  29. ^ Anna Kłosowska, “The Etymology of Slave,” in Disturbing Times: Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures, ed. Anna Kłosowska, Catherine E. Karkov, and Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures (Punctum Books, 2020), 160
  30. ^ Ian N. Wood, “Deconstructing the Merovingian Family,” in Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts, ed. Richard Corradini, Max Diesenberger, and Helmut Reimitz (Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 165.
  31. ^ Emma Southon, Marriage, Sex and Death: The Family and the Fall of the Roman West, Social Worlds of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 16.
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