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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33.2 (2002) 299-301



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Book Review

Speaking of Slavery:
Color, Ethnicity and Human Bondage in Italy


Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity and Human Bondage in Italy. By Steven A. Epstein (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001) 215 pp. $32.50

Epstein adopts a diachronic, and, by his own admission, even a polychronic, approach to the study of the Middle Ages and the issue of slavery in Italy. His study proposes to show "that the language used centuries ago to sustain a relatively unknown system of slavery still has profound [End Page 299] effects on the ways Italians use language and think about race today" (2). In four substantive chapters and a conclusion, Epstein examines the language of medieval slavery, the language of the law concerning slavery, the human behavior surrounding slavery, and the language of the Great Economy in regard to slavery. Each chapter sets up a dialogue between medieval language about slavery and language in more recent times—for example, in the Risorgimento, the anti-slavery movement in Italy, colonial experience, and fascism. Epstein concedes that the Italian contribution to slavery has been insignificant in global terms but that Italy's medieval experience with slavery has colored modern language about color and ethnicity. He ends his study with this sentence, "So [for slaves] from bad luck to sin to force to color—the history and language of slavery in a nutshell" (197).

In chapter one, after reviewing the medieval words employed in Italy for slaves, Epstein turns to an analysis of the names that Christian owners chose for their slaves at baptism. Slaves were overwhelmingly women. Epstein notes that in fourteenth-century Genoa, 80 percent of all documented women slaves were named Caterina, Lucia, Maddalena, Margherita, Maria, and Marta. The author presents the stories or legends that circulated about each of these names that might have rendered them appropriate for slaves. For example, Santa Lucia, though noble-born, had the distinctive quality of stability in the account of her martyrdom, a trait that owners wished to encourage in slaves. The author sees such exemplary stories and ideals behind most choices for slaves' names. Stories also reveal a growing fear of Moors from North Africa and illuminate the connection between slavery and color.

Chapter two explores legal definitions of slavery in Italy and pays special attention to the wills of slave owners who manumitted their slaves, noting, in particular, how emancipation often came with stipulations. In this chapter, Epstein treats color as both a linguistic and an economic barometer of status and price, which, in time, merged into ethnicity (104-105). The chapter ends with a detailed analysis of specific laws in the Genoese code of 1403 that related to the treatment of slaves. Epstein notes that this late medieval code remained true to the old legal principle that "[o]nly the express will of the master freed a slave" (97). Even the belief that Christian marriage somehow implied or granted freedom did not modify ownership, which meant that slave families could be broken apart.

The third substantive chapter deals with day-to-day life for slaves: the work that was expected of them, the treatment of slave pregnancy, cultural resistance from slaves, and other related issues. Epstein combs through notarial charters in search of language that is "personal" rather than formulaic in order to humanize this picture of domestic slaves' daily life. This chapter and the following one on the Great Economy explore the heritage of medieval slavery for the plantation system in the New World, which will be of interest to those who study slave systems in the modern world. Throughout his study, Epstein pays attention to the [End Page 300] practice of slavery on the islands of the Mediterranean and in overseas colonies of Italian city-states.

The fourth chapter is a wide-ranging examination of slavery's cost and of the teachings offered by the great legal minds of the Middle Ages on the place of slavery in the economy. The author notes that "[e]very word used...

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