Enslavement for Manumission: The Creation of Byzantine 'Private Subjects'

The article challenges current perspectives on slavery as 'unfreedom' and proposes to examine the enslaved within a socio-political dynamics of power relations. An analysis of four Byzantine documents from the eleventh century and the place they accorded to slaves and manumitted slaves rev...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Slavery & abolition 2023-10, Vol.44 (4), p.638-657
Main Author: Rotman, Youval
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Byzantine civilization
Byzantine slavery
conversion
manumission
private subjects
Slavery
social dependency
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Summary:The article challenges current perspectives on slavery as 'unfreedom' and proposes to examine the enslaved within a socio-political dynamics of power relations. An analysis of four Byzantine documents from the eleventh century and the place they accorded to slaves and manumitted slaves reveals the way enslavement and manumission served together as a means to acquire socioeconomic independence and private authority by turning the enslaved persons into private subjects: men and women exclusively subordinated to the authority of their owners. Private authority was based on a total subordination towards the enslaver and challenged the public imperial authority over people. An analysis of the place accorded to slaves and manumitted slaves in the private domain as seen from juridical and economic documents from the central Middle Ages from different regions of the Byzantine Empire shows slaves as social capital and slavery as a means to gain socioeconomic independence as part of the power game in a medieval society.
ISSN:0144-039X
1743-9523
DOI:10.1080/0144039X.2023.2264114