Slavery in Medieval Europe - Early Middle Ages

Early Middle Ages

Chaos and invasion made the taking of slaves habitual throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. St. Patrick, himself captured and sold as a slave, protested an attack that enslaved newly baptized Christians in his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. In the Viking era starting c. 793, the Norse raiders often captured and enslaved peoples they encountered. In the Nordic countries the slaves were called Thralls (Old Norse: Þræll).

Germanic laws provided for the enslavement of criminals, as when the Visigothic Code prescribed enslavement for those who could not pay the financial penalty for their crime, and specifically for those who committed certain crimes, . They would become slaves to their victims, often with their property.

In Carolingian Europe 10-20% of the entire population consisted of slaves. Some people sold themselves to powerful landowners in order to receive protection, work and food; one Anglo-Saxon will has a land-owner freeing those slaves who had "given her their heads for food." Anglo-Saxons continued and expanded their slave system, sometimes in league with Norse traders. About 10% of England’s population entered in the Domesday Book in 1086 were slaves. Chattel slavery of English Christians was discontinued after 1066, when William of Normandy conquered England. The slave trade in England was abolished in 1102.

The restoration of order as the early Middle Ages passed was accompanied by the transmutation of this state into serfdom, and after the earlier portions, slaves were seldom of the same country as their owner in Western Europe.