Slavery In Medieval Europe
Slavery in early medieval Europe was relatively uncommon and in Western Europe slavery largely disappeared by the later Middle Ages. It was widespread at the end of antiquity. The etymology of the word slave comes from this period, the word sklabos meaning Slav. Slavery declined in the Middle Ages in most parts of Europe as serfdom slowly rose, but it never completely disappeared. It persisted longer in Southern and Eastern Europe. In Poland slavery was forbidden in the 15th century; it was replaced by the second enserfment. In Lithuania, slavery was formally abolished in 1588.
Throughout this period slaves were traded openly in most cities, including cities as diverse as Marseilles, Dublin, Verdun and Prague, and many were sold to buyers in the Middle East. The town of Caffa in the Crimea was called the capital of the medieval slave trade, but an overland route to Caliphate of Córdoba took pagan and dualist Slavs from Kiev through Lviv and Prague, at that time the borderlands of Christianity, this arduous land route competing with the North-South route by river which led to the Black Sea.
Read more about Slavery In Medieval Europe: Early Middle Ages, Slave Trade, Slavery in The Crusader States, Slavery in Muslim Iberia, Slavery in Moldavia and Wallachia, Slavery in The Ottoman Empire, Slavery in Poland, Slavery in Russia, Slavery in Scandinavia, Slavery in Gaelic Regions, Serfdom Compared
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“I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)