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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on currency and measures
- List of abbreviations
- Map: Sicily in the early fourteenth century
- 1 The kingdom at risk
- 2 The international scene: war without and within
- 3 A divided society I: the urban–demesnal world
- 4 A divided society II: the rural–baronial world
- 5 The religious scene: piety and its problems
- 6 In the margins: slaves, pirates, and women
- Conclusion
- Table 1 Judices of Palermo
- Table 2 Juriste and xurterii of Palermo
- Table 3 Judices of Agrigento, Catania, Messina, Polizzi
- Table 4 Feudal dues
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - In the margins: slaves, pirates, and women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on currency and measures
- List of abbreviations
- Map: Sicily in the early fourteenth century
- 1 The kingdom at risk
- 2 The international scene: war without and within
- 3 A divided society I: the urban–demesnal world
- 4 A divided society II: the rural–baronial world
- 5 The religious scene: piety and its problems
- 6 In the margins: slaves, pirates, and women
- Conclusion
- Table 1 Judices of Palermo
- Table 2 Juriste and xurterii of Palermo
- Table 3 Judices of Agrigento, Catania, Messina, Polizzi
- Table 4 Feudal dues
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At a distance from the main developments of politics, the economy, and spiritual life, though still intimately connected to each, lay a number of important, if marginalized, groups and activities. Documentation for them is both scattered and scanty, and our narrative sources – so copious for battles and intrigues – are all but silent regarding their more mundane activities; yet enough survives to allow us an occasional glimpse of their actions and stratagems. They seem at first a strange trio: slaves, pirates, and women. But they shared a number of characteristics apart from their marginalized fates. Of the three, slaves numbered the fewest; it is unlikely that the total slave population – that is, the slaves who lived and toiled in Sicily, as opposed to those who appeared briefly on local auction blocks en route to miseries elsewhere – numbered more than a few thousand, far less than it had been only a century before. But they were important beyond their number and affected developments in government policy, regional commerce, and family dynamics, for they stood at the nexus of the kingdom's international and spiritual crises. Their history in the early fourteenth century illustrates powerfully the variety and strength of the forces that were at work in altering the fabric of Sicilian society.
Slaves spent their lives well away from history's spotlight, but at least they can be identified as a discrete group.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Decline and Fall of Medieval SicilyPolitics, Religion, and Economy in the Reign of Frederick III, 1296–1337, pp. 247 - 302Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995