Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vfjqv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T20:43:31.223Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

II.6 - Poor and powerless

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

David A. E. Pelteret
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar
Julia Crick
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
Elisabeth van Houts
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

[Geatflæd] gave freedom for the love of God and for their souls' need, that is, Ecceard smith and Ælfstan and his wife and all their offspring, born and unborn, and Arcil and Cole and Ecgferth, Aldhun's daughter, and all those people whose head she took in return for their food in those evil days.

Durham Liber Vitae, c. xxxx

Slavery is a legal status whereby people are denied freedom by being defined as chattels subject to the ownership of another person or institution. In societies that have permitted slavery usually only criminals have had a lower status. As the human possessions of others, slaves would seem to represent the essence of powerlessness. There were slaves in Anglo-Saxon England from the time of our earliest texts and the institution survived the Anglo-Saxon period, only disappearing from English records in the first half of the twelfth century. From a modern perspective, this was a social change of momentous significance; for the English of the time the disappearance of slavery elicited no comment at all. This gulf in perception should arouse the curiosity of anyone who examines the period from 900 to 1200.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

David, and Rollason, Lynda, eds., The Durham ‘Liber Vitae’: London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A.vii, (3 vols.; London, 2007)
Walmsley, J. F. R., ‘The censarii of Burton Abbey and the Domesday population’, North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies, 8 (1968), 73–80Google Scholar
Diaz, J. C. and Hughes, M. K., ‘Was there a medieval warm period and if so, where and when?’, in Diaz, J. C. and Hughes, M. K., eds., The Medieval Warm Period, Climatic Change, 26 (1994), 109–42Google Scholar
McCormick, Michael, Dutton, Paul Edward and Mayewski, Paul A., ‘Volcanoes and the climate forcing of Carolingian Europe, a.d. 750–950’, Speculum, 82 (2007), 865–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Metcalf, D. M., An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon and Norman Coin Finds, c. 973–1086 (Royal Numismatic Society special publication 32; London, 1998)Google Scholar
Britnell, Richard H., ‘Commercialisation and economic development in England, 1000–1300’, in Richard H. Britnell and Bruce M. S. Campbell, eds., A Commercialising Economy: England 1086– c. 1300, (Manchester, 1995)Google Scholar
Coleman, Julie, ‘Prostitution’, in Lapidge, Michael, Blair, John, Keynes, Simon and Scragg, Donald, eds., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, (Oxford and Malden, MA, 1999)Google Scholar
Karras, Ruth Mazo, ‘Prostitution in medieval Europe’, in Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, eds., Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, (New York and London, 1996)Google Scholar
Briggs, Keith, ‘OE and ME cunte in place-names’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 41 (2009), 26–39Google Scholar
Ekwall, Eilert, Street-Names of the City of London (Oxford, 1954)Google Scholar
Post, J. B., ‘A fifteenth-century customary of the Southwark stews’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 5 (1974–7), 418–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Christina, ‘Changing faces: leprosy in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Karkov, Catherine E. and Howe, Nicholas, eds., Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England (Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies 2; Tempe, AZ, 2006)Google Scholar
Rawcliffe, Carole, ‘The earthly and spiritual topography of suburban hospitals’, in Giles, Kate and Dyer, Christopher, eds., Town and Country in the Middle Ages: Contrasts, Contacts and Interconnections, 1100–1500 (Society for Medieval Archaeology monographs 22; Leeds, 2007)Google Scholar
Burch, Sally L., ‘Leprosy and law in Béroul's Roman de Tristan’, Viator, 38.1 (2007), 141–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×