Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia

Chapter 6. To Become Free

C h a p t e r 6 To Become Free For, as slavery is the vilest thing in this world except sin, and the most despised, so, on the other hand, is freedom the dearest and most valuable of all benefits. —Siete Partidas, thirteenth century There is no joy on earth in my opinion so good as regaining one’s liberty. —Miguel de Cervantes, early seventeenth century Flight Slaves would certainly have agreed that slavery was vile and freedom dear and valuable. Slaves in every period tried to escape from their masters and from slavery, and flight was a common resort. They always had the option to flee, but that attempt to attain freedom could have only two possible successful outcomes: either the fugitives could try to reach their homes or at least a welcoming country, or they could try to remain undetected in the land of their captors. We have no way of knowing how many slaves succeeded in returning to their homelands or living free lives elsewhere. Almost all the evidence we have comes from the stories of unsuccessful fugitives, who may well have constituted the majority. The Roman state maintained a system of registration of slaves and rewarded those who informed on fugitives.1 Fugitive slaves were common enough in the Visigothic kingdom for detailed regulations for dealing with them to be 123 To Become Free embodied in the legal code, with rewards for those who returned fugitives and punishments for those who harbored them. Free people who disguised slaves by cutting their long hair, a mark of slavery in Visigothic times, received harsh treatment, as did those who encouraged them to flee. The laws provided that long-term fugitives could attain free status after thirty years had passed, but no doubt few slaves won freedom on those terms. Under King Leovigild (569–586), a law was promulgated that permitted the Arian clergy to force masters to sell slaves who had fled to a church for sanctuary. A priest would buy such slaves, compensate the master, and resell the slaves to other masters assumed to be more benevolent. Individual clerics and the church itself owned slaves. Often Visigothic clerics pursued their own slaves who fled and sought sanctuary in churches. The church council of Lérida in the mid-sixth century prohibited clergy from seizing and whipping their slaves who tried to attain safety in churches. Monasteries had different rules. Although fugitives often must have sought refuge in the monasteries to escape their lay lords, the abbots would not receive them without their masters’ permission. Fugitive slaves continued to be perceived as a problem for public order as long as the Visigothic kingdom lasted. In 702, just nine years before the end of the kingdom, King Egica (687–702) enacted draconian penalties for failure to apprehend fugitives.2 The Siete Partidas, the thirteenth-century Castilian law code, included laws about the possibility of attaining freedom through a lapse of time. A slave could be considered free if he believed himself to be free and acted as if he were free for ten years if his master was in the country, or twenty years if the master was out of the country; if the master made no claim on him, the slave could be considered free. All this assumed the slave was acting in good faith, but even if he was not, he could be considered free after thirty years.3 One suspects that few slaves actually benefited from these provisions, which echoed those of Roman laws and have a highly theoretical flavor. Laws in later medieval Christian Spain considered flight to be the theft of one’s own person and provided punishments for both the fugitive and those who aided in the escape. In 1376, for example, the proprietor of a Majorcan hostel asked the authorities to apprehend his Tatar slave woman Isabel, who had fled with clothing belonging to the owner, and the free man Jaume Soler, who had helped her flee.4 Late medieval Barcelona had severe measures designed to discourage slaves from fleeing their masters. Slaves caught in flight or preparing to flee were to be dragged and then hanged. Those who planned the flight were to be hanged, and people who aided the chapter 6 124 slaves in their flight were to have their ears cut off.5 It seems improbable that such harsh laws were consistently enforced, and the legislators may well have intended them to frighten and deter potential runaways...