In the last few years research on early medieval slavery has seen an ever-growing emphasis placed... more In the last few years research on early medieval slavery has seen an ever-growing emphasis placed on long-distance slave trading, and on the raiding practices that fed this trade. There has been relatively little link-up between this and an older historiography looking at slavery in terms of labour and social history: the slaves who moved and the slaves who stayed have largely been kept in separate conversations. The increased profitability of slaving, though, should lead us to expect a rise in the internal importance of slavery as well as in slave-raiding and trading to external markets. This is what we find in many of the regions most intimately associated with the trade. There were, however, profound regional differences in the profiles and forms of engagement in slaving activities across Europe. I suggest that Joseph C. Miller’s idea of slaving as a political strategy adopted by marginal players seeking to bypass normal forms of elite competition is helpful in thinking through the logic of these different responses to the opportunities and challenges presented by the slave trade: what motivated and constrained elite choices and possibilities? And what made slaving a more viable political strategy in some regions than in others?
Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 offers a substantially new interpretation of what happened to slaver... more Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 offers a substantially new interpretation of what happened to slavery in Western Europe in the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. The periods at either end of the early middle ages are associated with iconic forms of unfreedom: Roman slavery at one end; at the other, the serfdom of the twelfth century and beyond, together with, in Southern Europe, a revitalised urban chattel slavery dealing chiefly in non-Christians. How and why this major change took place in the intervening period has been a long-standing puzzle. This study picks up the various threads linking this transformation across the centuries, and situates them within the full context of what slavery and unfreedom were being used for in the early middle ages.
This volume adopts a broad comparative perspective, covering different regions of Western Europe over six centuries, to try to answer the following questions: who might become enslaved and why? What did this mean for them, and for their lords? What made people opt for certain ways of exploiting unfree labour over others in different times and places, and is it possible, underneath all this diversity, to identify some coherent trajectories of historical change?
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000019
This article deals with a paradox. Evidence for the pu... more https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000019 This article deals with a paradox. Evidence for the punishment of workers during the early Middle Ages is richer in the earlier period (sixth and seventh centuries), when rural workers are generally thought to have been the least oppressed; by contrast, direct discussion of the subject largely drops out of the record in the Carolingian era (eighth to tenth centuries), despite clear evidence for renewed intensification of economic exploitation by both lay and religious lordships over the same period. Whereas the punishment of slaves had once provided a richly productive metaphor for thinking through issues of moral authority and legitimate leadership, Carolingian moralists and commentators no longer took the punishment of workers as a meaningful model for other, more morally or religiously motivated practices of punishment. Despite interest in punishment in other, non-exploitative contexts, lords’ practices of punishment of their workers were no longer taken as productive of meaning, whether positive or negative. The relationship of lords with their lowest-ranking dependents no longer defined or illustrated their power in the way that it had for the earlier Roman and late antique paterfamilias. One reason for this was the increasing tension perceived between profit-seeking and the correct, justified exercise of punishment: the two were kept at arms’ length by Carolingian writers to a surprising extent.
John Weisweiler (ed.), Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Credit, Money, and Social Obligation (Oxford University Press), 2022
The medieval era plays a crucial role in David Graeber’s Debt, where it represents a return to mi... more The medieval era plays a crucial role in David Graeber’s Debt, where it represents a return to milder, virtual credit after the cash-centered debt spirals of the Axial Age. This makes the European early Middle Ages a clear moment of transition from one end of the spectrum in the logic of debt to the other. Graeber, though, does not engage with it much explicitly. This chapter tries to think through what the period looks like when it is asked the questions put forward by Graeber and finds much there that actually fits his model rather well. Where it fits the surviving evidence least well is when it comes to consequences: The early medieval case shows that virtual, community-based credit could have consequences as harsh as state-driven, cash-based credit processes.
Carolingian hagiographers ascribed to recently-dead saints miracles so banal as to make it hard t... more Carolingian hagiographers ascribed to recently-dead saints miracles so banal as to make it hard to see why they should be held as miracles at all. This article asks what possible reason they might have had to tell them. Rather than denoting any discomfort or hostility towards miracles, I argue that these stories, read in light of Bourdieu's Distinction, look like a way of turning miracles (traditionally the aspect of Christianity with the most universal appeal) into something more difficult to access, more avant-garde, more "distinguished", as religious sensibility increasingly played an integral part in elite cultural competition.
Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman and David Richardson eds, The Cambridge World History of Slavery vol. 2: AD500-AD1420 (Cambridge University Press), 2021
This chapter looks at the varieties and trajectories of unfree status in the Carolingian empire. ... more This chapter looks at the varieties and trajectories of unfree status in the Carolingian empire. Rather than seeing it only as a point of transition from A (Roman slavery) to B (medieval serfdom), it aims to consider the practical logic of unfreedom as a category in the early medieval West, in a variety of different contexts: enslavement (the slave trade, self-sale, penal enslavement), household slavery, on great estates, and in law-making.
This chapter deals with a paradox: in early-medieval Europe, when legal professionals became scar... more This chapter deals with a paradox: in early-medieval Europe, when legal professionals became scarce, there was a proliferation of legal categories denoting shades of freedom and servility. Drawing on material from early medieval Francia, Italy and Ireland, this chapter attempts an explanation. Status, whether free or unfree, was meant to be stable across generations, but most of the time its connection with either work or terms of tenure was fairly tenuous. Status came to the fore in moments of particular tension occasioned by increased lordly demands. It could then become the object of bitter contestation and redefinition. The proliferation of ‘grey-area’ categories that gave themselves an air of antiquity and legality, despite contemporary learned insistence on an absolute distinction between free and unfree, opened up a space of contestation and negotiation between lords and peasants as well as between peasants and other peasants.
This article argues that the Latin epic poem Waltharius is best understood as a political comment... more This article argues that the Latin epic poem Waltharius is best understood as a political commentary on the years following the civil war of 840-843. The poem does not, as has been suggested, mock or undermine lay warriors as heroic figures, but neither does it present their behavior as inherently unproblematic. It should be read instead as a complex meditation on the impossibility of heroism under deficient royal leadership, and as a wistful portrayal of the contradictions and dilemmas affecting the lay elite of the generation who had lived through the battle of Fontenoy. Its criticism of the character of Gunther, and its overall pessimism about kingship, finds echoes in the prose political literature of this time. This article traces some of these echoes, and reads the poem as part of the wider political conversation of the 840s to 870s.
J.M. Bennett and R. Mazo Karras eds., Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, 2013
This article examines the main ways in which early medieval lawmakers concerned themselves with w... more This article examines the main ways in which early medieval lawmakers concerned themselves with women. Law codes put forward ideologically loaded representations of women, and they reflected concerns to ensure both their protection and their control by men. At the same time, they also dealt with highly practical issues and were subject to continual amendment as new and ever more complicated cases were brought before lawmakers. They reveal a conflicted and ambiguous attitude towards women: as highly prized assets and a crucial form of symbolic capital, but also a heavy financial burden, a liability, and a weak point in the safeguarding of family honor. We consider the valuation of women in terms of compensation for homicide, injuries, and insults; the regulation of marriage and of sexual crimes; and property, to which women and men had differential access.
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Sixth …, 2008
Our understanding of ties of loyalty and dependence formed at the level of the Carolingian politi... more Our understanding of ties of loyalty and dependence formed at the level of the Carolingian political elite has been much improved by a great deal of excellent recent research. As mutually beneficial relationships freely entered into, they tend to be sharply distinguished from ties of dependence involving members from the lower echelons of society: the latter ties, on the contrary, are usually seen as the result of coercion, and they were long seen as emblematic of the increasingly oppressive control of local lords. Commendation for these less powerful members of society is thus often seen as tantamount to forfeiting free status. Because oppression, for legitimate reasons, has been so strongly emphasised in historical treatments of this type of relationship, paradoxically little attention has been given to what influence the lower-status party may have had on the proceedings, the extent of their negotiating ability or the range of duties and benefits involved in such agreements. But not all lower-status people made the same deals: the Frankish formularies, an important source of evidence regarding such arrangements, show a complicated situation, indicating that ties formed at this lower level need to be treated with as much nuance as higher-status relationships.
In the last few years research on early medieval slavery has seen an ever-growing emphasis placed... more In the last few years research on early medieval slavery has seen an ever-growing emphasis placed on long-distance slave trading, and on the raiding practices that fed this trade. There has been relatively little link-up between this and an older historiography looking at slavery in terms of labour and social history: the slaves who moved and the slaves who stayed have largely been kept in separate conversations. The increased profitability of slaving, though, should lead us to expect a rise in the internal importance of slavery as well as in slave-raiding and trading to external markets. This is what we find in many of the regions most intimately associated with the trade. There were, however, profound regional differences in the profiles and forms of engagement in slaving activities across Europe. I suggest that Joseph C. Miller’s idea of slaving as a political strategy adopted by marginal players seeking to bypass normal forms of elite competition is helpful in thinking through the logic of these different responses to the opportunities and challenges presented by the slave trade: what motivated and constrained elite choices and possibilities? And what made slaving a more viable political strategy in some regions than in others?
Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 offers a substantially new interpretation of what happened to slaver... more Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 offers a substantially new interpretation of what happened to slavery in Western Europe in the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. The periods at either end of the early middle ages are associated with iconic forms of unfreedom: Roman slavery at one end; at the other, the serfdom of the twelfth century and beyond, together with, in Southern Europe, a revitalised urban chattel slavery dealing chiefly in non-Christians. How and why this major change took place in the intervening period has been a long-standing puzzle. This study picks up the various threads linking this transformation across the centuries, and situates them within the full context of what slavery and unfreedom were being used for in the early middle ages.
This volume adopts a broad comparative perspective, covering different regions of Western Europe over six centuries, to try to answer the following questions: who might become enslaved and why? What did this mean for them, and for their lords? What made people opt for certain ways of exploiting unfree labour over others in different times and places, and is it possible, underneath all this diversity, to identify some coherent trajectories of historical change?
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000019
This article deals with a paradox. Evidence for the pu... more https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859023000019 This article deals with a paradox. Evidence for the punishment of workers during the early Middle Ages is richer in the earlier period (sixth and seventh centuries), when rural workers are generally thought to have been the least oppressed; by contrast, direct discussion of the subject largely drops out of the record in the Carolingian era (eighth to tenth centuries), despite clear evidence for renewed intensification of economic exploitation by both lay and religious lordships over the same period. Whereas the punishment of slaves had once provided a richly productive metaphor for thinking through issues of moral authority and legitimate leadership, Carolingian moralists and commentators no longer took the punishment of workers as a meaningful model for other, more morally or religiously motivated practices of punishment. Despite interest in punishment in other, non-exploitative contexts, lords’ practices of punishment of their workers were no longer taken as productive of meaning, whether positive or negative. The relationship of lords with their lowest-ranking dependents no longer defined or illustrated their power in the way that it had for the earlier Roman and late antique paterfamilias. One reason for this was the increasing tension perceived between profit-seeking and the correct, justified exercise of punishment: the two were kept at arms’ length by Carolingian writers to a surprising extent.
John Weisweiler (ed.), Debt in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East: Credit, Money, and Social Obligation (Oxford University Press), 2022
The medieval era plays a crucial role in David Graeber’s Debt, where it represents a return to mi... more The medieval era plays a crucial role in David Graeber’s Debt, where it represents a return to milder, virtual credit after the cash-centered debt spirals of the Axial Age. This makes the European early Middle Ages a clear moment of transition from one end of the spectrum in the logic of debt to the other. Graeber, though, does not engage with it much explicitly. This chapter tries to think through what the period looks like when it is asked the questions put forward by Graeber and finds much there that actually fits his model rather well. Where it fits the surviving evidence least well is when it comes to consequences: The early medieval case shows that virtual, community-based credit could have consequences as harsh as state-driven, cash-based credit processes.
Carolingian hagiographers ascribed to recently-dead saints miracles so banal as to make it hard t... more Carolingian hagiographers ascribed to recently-dead saints miracles so banal as to make it hard to see why they should be held as miracles at all. This article asks what possible reason they might have had to tell them. Rather than denoting any discomfort or hostility towards miracles, I argue that these stories, read in light of Bourdieu's Distinction, look like a way of turning miracles (traditionally the aspect of Christianity with the most universal appeal) into something more difficult to access, more avant-garde, more "distinguished", as religious sensibility increasingly played an integral part in elite cultural competition.
Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley L. Engerman and David Richardson eds, The Cambridge World History of Slavery vol. 2: AD500-AD1420 (Cambridge University Press), 2021
This chapter looks at the varieties and trajectories of unfree status in the Carolingian empire. ... more This chapter looks at the varieties and trajectories of unfree status in the Carolingian empire. Rather than seeing it only as a point of transition from A (Roman slavery) to B (medieval serfdom), it aims to consider the practical logic of unfreedom as a category in the early medieval West, in a variety of different contexts: enslavement (the slave trade, self-sale, penal enslavement), household slavery, on great estates, and in law-making.
This chapter deals with a paradox: in early-medieval Europe, when legal professionals became scar... more This chapter deals with a paradox: in early-medieval Europe, when legal professionals became scarce, there was a proliferation of legal categories denoting shades of freedom and servility. Drawing on material from early medieval Francia, Italy and Ireland, this chapter attempts an explanation. Status, whether free or unfree, was meant to be stable across generations, but most of the time its connection with either work or terms of tenure was fairly tenuous. Status came to the fore in moments of particular tension occasioned by increased lordly demands. It could then become the object of bitter contestation and redefinition. The proliferation of ‘grey-area’ categories that gave themselves an air of antiquity and legality, despite contemporary learned insistence on an absolute distinction between free and unfree, opened up a space of contestation and negotiation between lords and peasants as well as between peasants and other peasants.
This article argues that the Latin epic poem Waltharius is best understood as a political comment... more This article argues that the Latin epic poem Waltharius is best understood as a political commentary on the years following the civil war of 840-843. The poem does not, as has been suggested, mock or undermine lay warriors as heroic figures, but neither does it present their behavior as inherently unproblematic. It should be read instead as a complex meditation on the impossibility of heroism under deficient royal leadership, and as a wistful portrayal of the contradictions and dilemmas affecting the lay elite of the generation who had lived through the battle of Fontenoy. Its criticism of the character of Gunther, and its overall pessimism about kingship, finds echoes in the prose political literature of this time. This article traces some of these echoes, and reads the poem as part of the wider political conversation of the 840s to 870s.
J.M. Bennett and R. Mazo Karras eds., Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, 2013
This article examines the main ways in which early medieval lawmakers concerned themselves with w... more This article examines the main ways in which early medieval lawmakers concerned themselves with women. Law codes put forward ideologically loaded representations of women, and they reflected concerns to ensure both their protection and their control by men. At the same time, they also dealt with highly practical issues and were subject to continual amendment as new and ever more complicated cases were brought before lawmakers. They reveal a conflicted and ambiguous attitude towards women: as highly prized assets and a crucial form of symbolic capital, but also a heavy financial burden, a liability, and a weak point in the safeguarding of family honor. We consider the valuation of women in terms of compensation for homicide, injuries, and insults; the regulation of marriage and of sexual crimes; and property, to which women and men had differential access.
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Sixth …, 2008
Our understanding of ties of loyalty and dependence formed at the level of the Carolingian politi... more Our understanding of ties of loyalty and dependence formed at the level of the Carolingian political elite has been much improved by a great deal of excellent recent research. As mutually beneficial relationships freely entered into, they tend to be sharply distinguished from ties of dependence involving members from the lower echelons of society: the latter ties, on the contrary, are usually seen as the result of coercion, and they were long seen as emblematic of the increasingly oppressive control of local lords. Commendation for these less powerful members of society is thus often seen as tantamount to forfeiting free status. Because oppression, for legitimate reasons, has been so strongly emphasised in historical treatments of this type of relationship, paradoxically little attention has been given to what influence the lower-status party may have had on the proceedings, the extent of their negotiating ability or the range of duties and benefits involved in such agreements. But not all lower-status people made the same deals: the Frankish formularies, an important source of evidence regarding such arrangements, show a complicated situation, indicating that ties formed at this lower level need to be treated with as much nuance as higher-status relationships.
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Books by Alice Rio
This volume adopts a broad comparative perspective, covering different regions of Western Europe over six centuries, to try to answer the following questions: who might become enslaved and why? What did this mean for them, and for their lords? What made people opt for certain ways of exploiting unfree labour over others in different times and places, and is it possible, underneath all this diversity, to identify some coherent trajectories of historical change?
Papers by Alice Rio
This article deals with a paradox. Evidence for the punishment of workers during the early Middle Ages is richer in the earlier period (sixth and seventh centuries), when rural workers are generally thought to have been the least oppressed; by contrast, direct discussion of the subject largely drops out of the record in the Carolingian era (eighth to tenth centuries), despite clear evidence for renewed intensification of economic exploitation by both lay and religious lordships over the same period. Whereas the punishment of slaves had once provided a richly productive metaphor for thinking through issues of moral authority and legitimate leadership, Carolingian moralists and commentators no longer took the punishment of workers as a meaningful model for other, more morally or religiously motivated practices of punishment. Despite interest in punishment in other, non-exploitative contexts, lords’ practices of punishment of their workers were no longer taken as productive of meaning, whether positive or negative. The relationship of lords with their lowest-ranking dependents no longer defined or illustrated their power in the way that it had for the earlier Roman and late antique paterfamilias. One reason for this was the increasing tension perceived between profit-seeking and the correct, justified exercise of punishment: the two were kept at arms’ length by Carolingian writers to a surprising extent.
Electronic Resources by Alice Rio
This volume adopts a broad comparative perspective, covering different regions of Western Europe over six centuries, to try to answer the following questions: who might become enslaved and why? What did this mean for them, and for their lords? What made people opt for certain ways of exploiting unfree labour over others in different times and places, and is it possible, underneath all this diversity, to identify some coherent trajectories of historical change?
This article deals with a paradox. Evidence for the punishment of workers during the early Middle Ages is richer in the earlier period (sixth and seventh centuries), when rural workers are generally thought to have been the least oppressed; by contrast, direct discussion of the subject largely drops out of the record in the Carolingian era (eighth to tenth centuries), despite clear evidence for renewed intensification of economic exploitation by both lay and religious lordships over the same period. Whereas the punishment of slaves had once provided a richly productive metaphor for thinking through issues of moral authority and legitimate leadership, Carolingian moralists and commentators no longer took the punishment of workers as a meaningful model for other, more morally or religiously motivated practices of punishment. Despite interest in punishment in other, non-exploitative contexts, lords’ practices of punishment of their workers were no longer taken as productive of meaning, whether positive or negative. The relationship of lords with their lowest-ranking dependents no longer defined or illustrated their power in the way that it had for the earlier Roman and late antique paterfamilias. One reason for this was the increasing tension perceived between profit-seeking and the correct, justified exercise of punishment: the two were kept at arms’ length by Carolingian writers to a surprising extent.