Primary Sources On This Website

Primary Sources Elsewhere

  • The Digest of Justinian. Translated by Alan Watson. 4 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.
  • Jansen, Katherine, Joanna Drell, and Frances Andrews. Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. See especially doc. 112 (Will of Docibilis I of Gaeta, p.501-515).
  • Kaldellis, Anthony, and Ioannis Polemis. Saints of Ninth- and Tenth-Century Greece. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 54. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.
  • “Life of Philotheos of Athos.” In Holy Men of Mount Athos, edited by Alice-Mary Talbot and Richard Greenfield. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
  • The Life of Saint Basil the Younger: Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Moscow Version. Edited and translated by Denis Sullivan, Alice-Mary Talbot, and Stamatina McGrath. Dumbarton Oaks Studies 45. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.
  • Lopez, Robert, and Irving Raymond, eds. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. See especially doc. 156 (A Byzantine Complaint Against Venice, p.314-317).
  • Patton, Pamela, and Alessia Rossi. “Modernizing Medieval Iconography-Or, What Wouldn’t We Do for a Cup of Coffee,” Index of Medieval Art, discussing various interpretations of the icon of St. George with a captive or “coffee boy.”
  • Prokopios. Procopius: History of the Wars, Books VII and VIII. Translated by H.B. Dewing. London: William Heinemann, 1928. See especially p. 79-81.
  • Russell, Norman. Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam: Documents Relating to Gregory Palamas. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022. (includes two texts describing his experience of captivity)

Selected Bibliography

  • Amitai, Reuven, and Christoph Cluse, eds. Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000-1500 CE). Turnhout: Brepols, 2017.
  • Arbel, Benjamin. “Slave Trade and Slave Labor in Frankish Cyprus (1191-1571).” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 24 (1993): 149-190.
  • BanajiJairus. Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity: Gold, Labour, and Aristocratic Dominance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • Bartusis, M.C. Land and Privilege in Byzantium: The Institution of the Pronoia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  • Bonfils, Giovanni de. Gli schiavi degli ebrei nella legislazione del IV secolo: Storia di un divieto. Bari: Cacucci, 1993. [In Italian]
  • Brand, Charles M. “Two Byzantine Treatises on Taxation.” Traditio 25 (1969): 35-60.
  • Decker, Michael. Tilling the Hateful Earth: Agricultural Production and Trade in the Late Antique East. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  • Dincer, Aysu. “Enslaving Christians: Greek Slaves in Late Medieval Cyprus.” Mediterranean Historical Review 31, no. 1 (2016): 1-19.
  • Evans, Daniel. “The Slave Coast of Europe.” Slavery and Abolition 6 (1985): 41-58.
  • Evans Grubbs, Judith. “Child Enslavement in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 155-184. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Fancy, Hussein. “Captivity, Ransom, and Manumission, 500-1420.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 53-75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Fynn-Paul, Jeff. “The Greater Mediterranean Slave Trade.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 27-52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Glancy, Jennifer. Slavery in Early Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  • Glancy, Jennifer. “Slavery in Acts of Thomas.” Journal of Early Christian History 2 (2012): 3-21.
  • Grant, Alasdair. Greek Captives and Mediterranean Slavery, 1260–1460. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024.
  • Grubbs, Judith Evans. “Church, State, and Children: Christian and Imperial Attitudes toward Infant Exposure in Late Antiquity.” In The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, edited by Andrew Cain and Noel Lenski, 119-131. Brookfield: Taylor and Francis, 2009.
  • HarperKyle. Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425: An Economic, Social, and Institutional Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • Kahane, Henry and Renée Kahane. “Notes on the Linguistic History of Sclavus.” In Studi in onore di Ettore Lo Gatto e Giovanni Maver, 345-360. Florence: Sansoni, 1962.
  • Kaplan, Michel. Les hommes et la terre à Byzance du Viau Xiesiècle. Paris: Paris Publications de la Sorbonne, 1992. [In French]
  • Kolias-Dermitzaki, Athina. “Some Remarks on the Fate of Prisoners of War in Byzantium (Ninth-Tenth Centuries).” In La liberazione dei “captivi” tra cristianità e islam: Oltre la crociata e il ĝihād: Tolleranza e servizio umanitario: Atti del Congresso Interdisciplinare di Studi Storici (Roma, 16-19 settembre 1998), edited by G. Cipollone, 583–620. Vatican City: Archivo Segreto Vaticano, 2000. 
  • Köpstein, Helga. “Sklaven in der Peira.” In Fontes Minores IX, edited by L. Burgmann, 1-33. Frankfurt: Löwenklau, 1993. [In German]
  • Lemerle, Paul. The Agrarian History of Byzantium: From the Seventh to the Twelfth Century – Sources and Problems. Galway: Galway University Press, 1979. 
  • Lenski, Noel. “Slavery in the Byzantine Empire.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 453-481. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Lutrell, Anthony. “Slavery at Rhodes: 1306-1440.” In Latin Greece, the Hospitallers and the Crusades, 1291-1400, 81-100. London: Variorum Reprints, 1982.
  • Marmon, Shaun. “Intersections of Gender, Sex, and Slavery: Female Sexual Slavery.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 185-213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • McKee, Sally. “Inherited Status and Slavery in Renaissance Italy and Venetian Crete.” Past & Present 182 (2004): 31-53.
  • Melichar, Petra. “God, Slave and a Nun: A Case from Late Medieval Cyprus.” Byzantion 79 (2009): 280-291.
  • Melluso, Marco. La schiavitù nell’età giustinianea: Disciplina giuridica e rilevanza sociale. Paris: Presses Universitaires Franc-Comtoises, 2000. [In Italian]
  • Ramelli, Illaria. Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery: The Role of Philosophical Asceticism from Ancient Judaism to Late Antiquity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
  • Ringrose, K.M. The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.
  • Roşu, Felicia, ed. Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900-1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection between Christianity and Islam. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
  • Rotman, Youval. Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
  • Rotman, Youval. “Slavery in the Byzantine Empire.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.
  • Sarris, Peter. Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • Stuard, Susan M. “To Town to Serve: Urban Domestic Slavery in Medieval Ragusa,” in Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, edited by Barbara Hanawalt, 39-55. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.
  • Tougher, Shaun. The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society. London: Routledge, 2008.
  • Wet, Chris de. Preaching Bondage: John Chrysostom and the Discourse of Slavery in Early Christianity. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015.
  • Wright, Diana Gilliland. “Vade, Sta, Ambula: Freeing Slaves in Fourteenth-Century Crete.” Medieval Encounters 7 (2001): 197-237.

Contributors

Hannah Barker, Colten Cook, Matthew S. Gordon, Alasdair Grant, Zachary Kime, Rena Lauer, Noel Lenski