The admission of former slaves into churches and monasteries: reaching behind the sources

Flechner, Roy; Fontaine, Janel M.

doi:10.1111/emed.12501

Early Medieval Europe

2021

DOI: 10.1111/emed.12501

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The admission of former slaves into churches and monasteries: reaching behind the sources

Roy Flechner

Janel M. Fontaine

Abstract: Religious institutions in early medieval Europe were both recipients of former slaves and instigators of manumissions. By drawing on recent work concerning the admission of former slaves into churches and monasteries, the present paper identifies dominant strands in the historiography from Marc Bloch to the present, which are then re‐evaluated in light of a close examination of core sources. The paper argues that while the contention that such institutions were the primary beneficiaries of manumissions can ind… Show more

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“…Consequently, freedmen and their descendants increasingly remained under the patronate of the church – they could never leave ‘because their patron never dies’ – and they were incorporated in various ways into the ‘temple’. Roy Flechner and Janel Fontaine also examine the practice of manumission during this period in their assessment of the acceptance of former enslaved people into churches and monasteries. They suggest that legal provisions made it difficult for former enslaved people to become clerics or monks in the usual sense; rather, they were regarded as dependents.…”

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Review of periodical literature for 2021

MacCarron

2022

The Economic History Review

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Prominent themes addressed in the papers from the past year concern the inter-related nature of the medieval European economy, craftwork as an indicator of socio-economic change, economy and environment, and the Church's role in contemporary economic practices. In three analyses of funerary culture from across Europe, the inter-connected nature of European communities is apparent. Emma Brownlee, in her examination of data from 237 cemeteries across Western Europe, provides a comprehensive assessment of cultural change in different regions of Europe. Although the mid-sixth century appears to be a turning point in the use of grave goods in western Europe, she notes that the latest evidence for well-furnished burial comes from the Lower Rhine, where the practice continued into the eighth century. In contrast, England appears to have been the earliest region to witness a decrease in grave goods, and the practice seems to have entirely fallen into abeyance by the end of the eighth century, despite a brief re-emergence of femalefurnished burial in the seventh century. Brownlee argues that the best explanation for this change is 'diffusion', with an emphasis on group agency in adopting cultural practices. In an analogy with linguistic diffusion, she argues that changing funerary behaviours may have been a subconscious process that was barely noticed by the participants. She notes that diffusion implies significant connectivity, as is indicated by the large quantities of imported goods in rural cemeteries and supported elsewhere in the archaeological record.Patrick Gleeson and Rowan McLaughlin are similarly concerned with changing burial practices in their analysis of the evidence for cremation from first-millennium Ireland. Their approach is based on improved methods for radiocarbon dating bone, which have shown that cremation continued into the early medieval period and may have peaked during the seventh and eighth centuries. They argue that their study places the Irish evidence more in line with European practices despite a tendency in scholarship on Ireland and early medieval Europe to dismiss the longlasting appeal of cremation. Their analysis indicates a greater diversity in burial practices after conversion to Christianity than has been realized, and they suggest rejecting a simple binary opposition between 'pagan' and 'Christian' burial practices. The third article on funerary culture comes from Charlotte Rimstad et al. and recounts an intriguing re-discovery of Viking-age human bones within the National Museum of Denmark's collection. The Bjerringhøj burial, dated to AD 970-1 by dendrochronological analysis, was discovered in the nineteenth century and the bones of the individual buried there were lost soon afterwards. Only very rich burials from this period of the Viking Age contained grave goods, and Bjerringhøj had an iron axe with silver inlay and a collection of exceptional and well-preserved textiles that are the largest textile assemblage from Danish Viking era graves. The bones were recently re-discovere...

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2022

The Economic History Review

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‘Slaves’ and ‘Slave Owners’ or ‘Enslaved People’ and ‘Enslavers’?

Burns

2023

Trans. R. Hist. Soc.

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Studies of slavery increasingly refer to ‘enslaved people’ rather than ‘slaves’, and, to a lesser extent, to ‘enslavers’ rather than ‘slave owners’. This trend began with scholarship in the United States on plantation slavery but has spread to other academic publications. Yet ‘slave’ continues to be widely used, indicating not everyone is aware of the change or agrees with it. Despite this, few historians have justified their terminology. After surveying the extent of the preference for ‘enslaved person’, I discuss arguments for and against it. Supporters of using ‘enslaved person’ argue that this term emphasises that a person was forced into slavery – but this emphasis means it is less able to accommodate early medieval cases where people sold themselves into slavery. The accompanying preference for ‘enslaver’ over ‘master’ obscures dynamics of ownership and manumission. In addition, ‘enslaved people’ and ‘enslaver’ do not necessarily bring us away from the perspective of slaveholders to the perspective of slaves. Nor are they essential for readers to appreciate the humanity of slaves. Overall, historians should use this issue as an opportunity to reflect on the extent to which scholarship of transatlantic slavery should set the terms of debate for slavery studies in general.

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The admission of former slaves into churches and monasteries: reaching behind the sources

Cited by 2 publications

References 3 publications

Review of periodical literature for 2021

Review of periodical literature for 2021

‘Slaves’ and ‘Slave Owners’ or ‘Enslaved People’ and ‘Enslavers’?

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