Conference Report

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016): 149-151

Over the past few years, the Inter-national Medieval Congress (IMC), held at Leeds University each July, 
has grown immensely.  Those of us inter-
ested in regions outside of Western Europe 
have found an ever-increasing range of 
sessions and scholars, coming from the 
rest of the world, and delving into subjects 
of Islamic and other non-western fields.  
The trend is positive, of course, allowing 
as it does opportunities for useful dialogue 
and cross-fertilization. It reflects a steady 
broadening of the range of scholarship 
being done on medieval topics.

T h e  p a s t  f e w  y e a r s  h a v e  s e e n , 
specifically, a rapid and profound increase 
in scholarship surrounding questions of 
slavery in the medieval world.  At the 2015 
IMC, the number of papers treating slavery 
directly seemed to have reached a peak 
but, as usual in such a large conference, 
some conflicted directly with each other.  
Four of us, all scholars of medieval slavery, 
thought to organize an over-arching series 
of panels the following year.

The response to the call for papers was 
unprecedented: the effort resulted in the 
organization of ten panels on the study 
of slavery in the medieval world. The 
sessions took up the greater part of three 
days, with audiences of between thirty 
and sixty.  One of the benefits of having 
so many people working on questions 
of slavery in the same place was that 
discussions were highly productive with 
many informed questions and comments 
in all the sessions.  

The first day began with a panel on 
domestic slavery across time. It featured 
papers examining the metaphoric use 
of God as slaveholder in the sermons 
o f  A u g u s t i n e  o f  H i p p o  ( C a s s a n d r a 
C a s i a s ,  E m o r y ) ;  a d v i c e  o n  r e l a t i o n s 
between freeborn and enslaved youths 
in John Chrysostom (John Martens, St. 
Thomas); the appearance of slaves in 
the hagiographic writings of Hrotsvit of 
Gandersheim (Sarah Bogue, Emory); and 
questions of paternity of children born 
to slave women in late medieval Florence 

Sessions on Slavery 

The International Medieval Congress  
(Leeds, 4-7 July 2016)

Thomas MacMaster

Morehouse College
(thomas.macmaster@morehouse.edu)



150  •  thoMaS MacMaSteR

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016)

(Lynn Laufenberg, Sweet Briar).
T h e  s e c o n d  p a n e l  l o o k e d  a t 

Scandinavian slave-trading. The first 
speaker (Matthew Delvaux, Boston College) 
argued that slavery and the slave trade 
were of greater significance than is usually 
thought in the Carolingian construction of 
power ,and that external Viking attack as 
well as internal social instability subverted 
Carolingian control of these institutions. 
The second paper (Daniel Melleno, Denver) 
discussed the role of the Viking slave trade 
in cross-cultural contact across northern 
Europe. The third (Michael Kræmmer, 
Museum Sydøstdanmark) turned to post-
Viking Scandinavia and examined literary 
sources for slave-taking during the Baltic 
crusades.

The final panel of the day looked at 
m a n u m i s s i o n  w i t h  p a p e r s  o n  A n g l o -
Saxon processes of manumission at a 
crossroads (David A. E. Pelteret); the 
freeing of captives, slaves, and prisoners 
in the Crusade-era Levant (Aysu Dinçer, 
University of Warwick); and what it meant 
to be a slave in the Kingdom of Mallorca 
in the Thirteenth Century, (Larry J. Simon, 
Department of History, Western Michigan 
University).  It was an impressive first day. 
The discussions inspired by the papers 
made clear that the field of medieval 
slavery studies has begun to collapse many 
long-held notions, including the idea that 
slavery was of only anecdotal importance 
in post-Roman Christian Europe.

A persistent view, even among scholars, 
is that slavery in the pre-modern world 
had a particular association with Islam.  
The second day of sessions (Wednesday) 
offered papers looking at slavery in the 
Medieval Islamic World. The question 
remains open as to whether the papers 
succeeded in challenging such a view.  

Certainly, though, the papers moved the 
topic substantially forward. The first paper 
extended Michael McCormick’s arguments 
on the early medieval slave trade by 
examining Arabic sources that compliment 
his thesis (Matthew S. Gordon, Miami 
University); the second paper looked at 
the religious imperative behind the act of 
manumission in Islamic law (Cristina de la 
Puente, Departamento de Estudios Judíos e 
Islámicos, Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas 
del Mediterráneo (CSIC).

The papers of the second session looked 
at questions regarding the role of slaves 
in medieval Islamicate households. The 
first paper considered accounts of slaves 
(especially elite ghilmān) to determine 
the well-being of even the most privileged 
of slaves, using violence and peril to life, 
limb, and physical soundness as a standard 
of measurement (Deborah Tor, University 
of Notre Dame). The next paper also looked 
at elite slaves by focussing on Rasūlid and 
Najāḥid Yemen and the roles of eunuchs 
and others and their conflicts with high-
status women (Magdalena Kloss, Austrian 
Academy of Sciences).

The third session of the day extended 
several of these themes. The first paper 
p r o v i d e d  a  l o o k  a t  d o m e s t i c  s l a v e r y 
in thirteenth and fourteenth-century 
Damascus by analysing names contained 
in reading certificates (samāʿāt) to show 
that the majority were themselves the 
first generation of slaves and that the rate 
of manumission was high (Jan Hagedorn, 
University of St. Andrews).  A second paper 
took on the famously itinerant household 
of Ibn Battuta as a case-study in how 
the lives of slaves might be viewed more 
broadly (Marina Tolmacheva, Washington 
State University).

The final session, perhaps the most 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016)

 Sessions on Slavery: International Medieval Congress  •  151

f o c u s e d ,  l o o k e d  a t  c o n c u b i n a g e  a n d 
slavery. The first paper re-examined 
a s s u m p t i o n s  r e g a r d i n g  t h e  m u s i c a l 
performances of enslaved women (Karen 
Moukheiber, Orient Institut Beirut), the 
s e c o n d  l o o k e d  t h r o u g h  t h e  p r i s m  o f 
medieval erotic literature (Pernilla Myrne, 
Göteborgs Universitet), and the final paper 
examined issues of gender, ethnicity, 
and slavery in the study of music in the 
medieval Muslim regions (Lisa Nielson, 
Case Western Reserve University). 

Panels on the final day (Thursday) 
c o n t a i n e d  q u i t e  i n t e r e s t i n g  p a p e r s 
that challenged long-held assumptions 
r e g a r d i n g  m e d i e v a l  s l a v e r y .   A  fi r s t 
paper looked at length at Hungarian 
historiography on slavery under the 
Árpád kings (Cameron Sutt, Austin Peay 
State University).  This was followed by a 
newly developed but extremely innovative 
discussion of the ethnonym “Slav” and the 
manner in which it replaced Latin terms 
inherited from antiquity in West European 
languages (Marek Jankowiak, University 
of Oxford).  The paper that followed 
discussed the medieval Russian slave trade 
and (Russian) exploitation of neighbouring 
regions (Jukka Korpela, University of 
Eastern Finland).  This was followed by a 
paper that challenged the ‘Whig model’ 
of the history of slavery and questioned 
whether reading medieval Europe as being 
free of slavery was mistaking exceptional 
c a s e s  f o r  t h e  n o r m a t i v e  ( T h o m a s  J . 

MacMaster, Morehouse College).  
The final panel concerned the changing 

role of the unfree in the post-Roman 
west.  A first paper considered the life 
of Eligius of Noyon and its depictions of 
the movement of the unfree (Courtney 
L u c k h a r d t ,  U n i v e r s i t y  o f  S o u t h e r n 
Mississippi).  The paper that followed 
revisited arguments made by economists 
since the 1970s on the decisions underlying 
the use of unfree rather than free labour; 
t h e  s u g g e s t i o n  w a s  m a d e  t h a t  w h i l e 
economic factors were significant, more 
weight should be given to the variables 
that acted to render individuals unfree 
(Judith Spicksley, University of York). The 
final paper focussed on Bavaria in the 
high medieval period, arguing that a large 
slave population remained present there 
throughout the medieval period (Samuel 
S. Sutherland, Department of History, Ohio 
State University).

The strong sense is that the study 
of slavery in the medieval world – long 
viewed either as of secondary importance 
or as largely settled – has taken on new life.  
Many of the presenters suggested that, in 
their own particular sub-specialties, the 
evidence base has barely been scratched 
and analysis only begun. The origins of 
this new ferment in the field of slavery 
studies is not as evident but it is obvious 
that interest is growing and scholarship 
expanding.