Sinespe libertatis: Slavery in Hungary under the House of Árpád*

I. Introduction

Most histories of Hungary, like those of other states, give scant attention to the existence of slavery during the Middle Ages.  The position of serfdom in "feudal society" is often discussed.  Even the lives of those taken as slaves to the Ottoman Empire is a common topic.  But for discussions of chattel slavery among the Hungarians, one must look to more specialized literature.  Nonetheless, the existence of discussions of slavery is particularly missed in descriptions of Hungarian society under the House of Árpád, as this period is a uniquely important component of Hungarian self-image.  Indeed, slavery was a major factor in the Hungarian economy for several centuries, later than in most states West of Hungary, and was regulated by a large body of law.  Moreover, these slaves were not just foreign prisoners of war.  Many were probably native Hungarians, whose ancestors may have entered the Danubian basin with the seven tribes.

The idea of the early Hungarians as a nation of slaveholders certainly would not have been popular in the period before the Second World War, still under the influence of the Romantic, népnemzeti ideal of the early Hungarians as noble knights of the steppe, riding to battle under the banner of Árpád or St. Ladislas.  Hungarian writers of the pre-war period preferred the description of their ancestors furnished by the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI the Wise, who wrote that the Hungarians were "rich in men and free, neglecting other splendour and riches, they only strive to behave bravely with their enemies." [1]  This school of thought cited early writers who saw the Hungarians as "unconquerable in spirit, independent, not a slavish people, holding their heads high, freedom-living, their own masters." [2]  Such a freedom-loving, mobile, nomadic people would be unlikely to carry abject slaves with them, and certainly could not include slaves among themselves.  Consequently, in the large multi-volume histories produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there are only a few scattered references to slaves. [3]  The one work devoted exclusively to the discussion of slavery in mediaeval Hungary was a short presentation before the Hungarian Academy of Science delivered in December, 1900 by the Cistercian abbot and historian Remig Békefi, whose primary purpose was to demonstrate the beneficial influence of the Roman Catholic Church in ending mediaeval slavery. [4]  Remnants of the patriotic, nostalgic outlook can be found even today, as in the writings of one emigré historian who warns that "one is to bear in mind, of course, that until the end of the eleventh century, the Magyar element had formed one classless group." [5]  This would seem to indicate that all ethnic Hungarians (however that may have been defined) lived in some state of primitive equality until well into the reign of King Coloman the Lawgiver.

After the Communist takeover of Hungary, Hungarian historians were pressured to adopt the  Marxist philosophy of history supported by the Soviet government.  This system pictured history as a progression from one politico-economic stage to another, minimizing the length of transitional periods and discounting the possibility of elements of one stage appearing in an era characterized by another stage.  The Magyars were supposed to have progressed from a classless state of "military democracy" through the period of slavery and then into the Christian, early feudal stage. [6]  This categorical interpretation of history could not accept the existence of slaves in the mediaeval period, when the more ancient master-slave relationship was supposed to have transformed into the more progressive lord-serf relationship. [7]  Indeed, one Communist era translator of an earlier history of Hungarian peasantry even goes to far as to include a note explaining that when the author very specifically describes chattel slavery in mediaeval Hungary, what he really must mean is a variety of feudal dependence, not slavery in the Marxist sense. [8]  Thus we read that "[e]n Hongrie, comme dans tous les autres pays européens, le caractère principal de cette société du début du moyen-âge était féodal." [9]  Indeed, in Soviet-style Marxist historiography, a society that showed some features characteristic of a given stage of development, such as feudalism, was assumed to support all the institutions associated with that stage.  The previously quoted article makes this quite clear,  describing the feudal system of early mediaeval Hungary, "d'après la definition marxiste," as the stage of social evolution "qui ... a succédé à une société fondée sur l'esclavage mais qui, dans les conditions propres à l'Europe centrale et orientale, s'est instauré sans qu'un esclavage générale ait pu se développer." [10]  This seems even to throw doubt upon the widespread existence of slavery in Central Europe in a period before feudalism.  Remnants of this Marxist interpretation can be found even in the very late Communist period in the writings of respected historians, such as László Makkai, who wrote that "[w]hen slavery disappeared, those 'liberated' became the equivalent of the western serf stratum.  Hungarian society under István began to resemble western feudal society." [11]  Dr. Makkai, therefore, places the disappearance of slavery, and the concurrent onset of "feudalism" during the reign of St. Stephen, Hungary's first Christian king.  Nonetheless, some articles in scholarly journals after the Hungarian thaw of the mid-1960s did mention slavery, including an earlier article of Dr. Makkai himself. [12]

A further problem in discussing the history of slavery in mediaeval Hungary is the definition of who is a slave and the consequent differentiation of slaves from serfs.  For the purpose of this paper, a very strict, legalistic definition will be adopted.  One possible view, that adopted by the American branch of the Roman Catholic Church, defines a slave as one who has "become a res non persona, a human chattel without rights or privileges." [13]  Even in Roman law, however, a slave is seen as a unique legal hybrid of both person and thing.  A better definition is given in a reference work commonly used by American lawyers:

"Slave. A person who is wholly subject to the will of another; one who has no freedom of action by whose person and services are wholly under the control of another.  One who is under the power of a master, and who belongs to him; so that the master may sell and dispose of his person, of his industry, and of his labor, without his being able to do anything, have anything, or acquire anything, but what must belong to his master." [14]

Such slaves belong outright to their master from birth to death and any children they may have are also the property of the same master; they do not own anything independently, but are merely tools for their master; and their master could punish or sell them as he pleased. [15]

In one way, the study of slavery in mediaeval Hungary may be somewhat easier than the study of slavery in the West during the Middle Ages.  Although many Western sources of the pre-Carolingian period clearly refer to slaves when the terms servus, ancilla, and mancipium are used, [16] as the conditions of slaves and free peasants came more to resemble each other, the word servus came to be used for all peasants. [17]  In contrast, in Hungary, the word servus appears to refer to freely alienable chattel slaves throughout the decreta of the Arpadian kings, while such terms as vulgaris, miles, and serviens refer to various degrees of free (liber) or semi-free (demi-liber) status.  László Makkai, in an article from 1970, was very insistent upon this distinction between the Western and Central European uses of the term servus,

Nous avons parlé d'esclaves.  Ils sont désignés dans les documents latins des XIe-XIIIe siècles en Bohême, en Hongrie et en Pologne par le term «servus» (parfois «mancipium» ou «ancilla»), en Russie ils se nommaient «tchéliad», plus tard «holop».  Il ne faut pas les identifier avec les serfs occidentaux de la même époque, ceux-là n'étant pas des esclaves.  Le «servus» d'Europe orientale fut originairement un agriculteur travaillant avec l'araire et les boeufs de son maître.  Quoiqu'il eût été plus tard casé et investi de la propriété de ses moyens de travail, il restait toujours astreint au «servitium servile», c'est-à-dire obligé de remplire toute sorte de services exigés. [18]

Of course, the legal historian Charles d'Eszlary did write that the mediaeval Hungarian servi "faisaient partie de la fortune de leur seignuer et etaient liés aux terres," [19] but he appears elsewhere in the text to mean not that the slaves could not be sold apart from the land, in the manner of a serf, but rather that they were not allowed to leave the property of their master.

This brings us to the definition of what Georges Duby has called "the tenacious residue of slavery:" serfdom.  [20]  Once again, a typical American legal definition holds that serfs "were bound to labor and perform onerous duties at the will of their lords.  They differed from slaves only in that they were bound to their native soil, instead of being the absolute property of a master." [21]  In other words, the slave was movable property, whereas the serf was a fixture pertaining to the land.  In reality, however, in lands where both serfdom and slavery existed, serfs were considered free, or at least semi-free and serfdom was a goal of slaves.  Indeed, in countries where slaves taken in war were plentiful, it was not uncommon for serf families to own a slave. [22]  Moreover, there are records of farmers having the corvée labour that they owed to their lord as one of the typical serf duties performed by their own mancipia. [23]  The link of the serf and the land that he held in tenancy was also an improvement on slave status, dating from a constitution of Constantine I in 332. [24]  This law not only  prohibited the Roman colonus from leaving the land, it also made it impossible for his land lord to sell the land out from under him.  In contrast, a slave could be sold apart from the land he worked and even apart from the other members of his family.

II. Slavery in Mediaeval Europe

Hungarian historians have not been alone in neglecting the importance of chattel slavery in the Middle Ages.  As the first historian to devote a major work to mediaeval European slavery, Charles Verlinden, wrote, "[l]e mot 'esclave' lui-même, employé à propos du moyen âge, semble aux yeux d'aucuns une sorte d'héresie." [25]  Although not a part of the popular concept of mediaeval society, chattel slavery was a common method of labour utilization in the early Middle Ages throughout Europe.  Agriculture in the later Roman Empire required huge numbers of slaves throughout the territory governed by Rome and relied upon a constant influx of slaves provided both by conquest and by purchase from peoples outside the Empire.  Although Roman law held that the natural state of man was freedom, chattel slavery as a form of property ownership was held to be central to the jus gentium governing relations between the peoples of the Empire.  The Roman concept of slavery is summed up nicely in the dictum that "slaves are in the power of their masters; for we find that among all nations slaveowners have the power of life and death over their slaves, and whatever a slave earns belongs to his master." [26]  This Roman definition of slavery was influential throughout the Middle Ages.   While Christianity did ameliorate the position of the slave somewhat by stressing the equality of all men before God, the Church upheld the Roman principle that the slave was wholly the property of his master in this world.  Indeed, enslavement was seen in the pre-Carolingian era as a useful tool in converting the masses to Christianity. [27]

Northern France became the cradle of the feudal system, with ties of dependence based on land.  There, in the Paris Basin, the institution of the seigneurially dependent mansus first appeared in the seventh century. [28]  It was thus in this region that chattel slaves first lost their function as agricultural labourers, being assimilated entirely to the new serf class.  By the end of the Carolingian period, slaves had become an insignificant factor in the agricultural economy. [29]  Even the word mancipium disappeared from the records of the Dauphiné in 957, and the word servus in 1117. [30]

By the turn of the millenium, chattel slaves had also become rare in the German-speaking heartland of the Western Empire.  Earlier, in the Carolingian era, chattel slavery had been an important factor in the agricultural economy of East Francia.  On a typical estate in 821 in Lauterbach, Bavaria, 47% of the inhabitants were slaves owned by the free smith who was the primary tenant. [31]  During the ninth century, however, the term mansus, and its German equivalent hoda, become common in the written record, indicating the spread of a land tenure system based on a seigneurially dependent peasantry. [32]  Slavery, however, remained important in the German lands of the tenth century both because the Ottonian conquests brought a flood of cheap labour in the form of enslaved Slavic captives, but also because the same conquests brought large areas of forested land within Imperial control that had to be cleared for agriculture, a task often performed by slave labour. [33]  By the end of the century, the area conquered by Otto the Great was cleared and settled, and lands worked by slaves were gradually converted to tenancies of various gradations of serfs. [34]  Thus, "in the second half of the tenth century there were very few slaves, and those that existed did almost no heavy labor here but were used as personal servants and chambermaids." [35]
 
Those slaves resulting from the Ottonian conquests not needed within the Empire were exported mostly via Prague and Venice to various parts of Europe, resulting in the replacement of the Latin terms servus and mancipium by a derivative of the word "Slav" in the non-Slavic languages of Europe. [36]  Indeed, tenth-century Prague is described by the Spanish Jew Ibrahim ibn Ia'koub as the primary entrepôt for the sale of slaves, often Christians, from the German lands to Jewish traders who then sold them as far away as the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate. [37]  Czechs, however, also enslaved each other, and it was not until 1039 that a law was enacted to punish Jewish merchants who sold Czech slaves outside of Bohemia. [38]  Within Bohemia, however, it appears that serfdom was adopted very early and completely, so that official records very rarely mention either chattel slaves or free peasants. [39]
 
Britain, separated both physically and politically from the continent, maintained a thriving trade in slaves through the end of the Old English period, although the number of slaves had probably begun to decline even before William of Normandy's conquest.  Slaves still comprised almost one tenth of England's population as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, [40] but the Normans imported with them an agricultural system that depended upon keeping laborers on their alloted tenancies through the institution of serfdom.  The new Norman lords reduced the size of their demesne lands, which had been worked by slave labour, and settled slaves on dependent tenancies as serfs.  In an effort to keep peasant labour within the borders of his kingdom, William I even the sale of slaves abroad. [41]
 
Scandinavia in the tenth century had been home to the Magyars' rivals as heathen invaders of Christian Europe, the Vikings.  Even after conversion to Christianity, Scandinavia remained a land of small farmers clustered around coastal trading communities.  Indeed, the long distance Viking raiding and slave trading that began in the eighth century continued well into the eleventh. [42]  Within the Scandinavian communities, the principle of individual private property was very slow to take hold.  Until the later Middle Ages, most Scandinavian settlements were populated by free peasants organized into clan units, all important property being held by the clans. [43]  The Scandinavians thus had neither the complex system of property ownership necessary to create dependent tenancies nor a money economy in which a landwoner could hire wage labourers to work his land, leaving slavery as the only way to convert wealth into labour.
 
Poland, having accepted Christianity only a few decades before Hungary, and, like its Southern neighbor, adopting only slowly the cultural and economic norms of Western Europe, seems also to have maintained slavery as an important economic institution into at least the twelfth century.  At the turn of the twelfth century, there were many Christian slaves owned by Jews in Poland, the more fortunate of whom were purchased and set free by Judith, wife of Duke Ladislas I Herman. [44]  As in Hungary, a slowly developing system of private property and easy availability of slaves along the eastern frontier may have contributed to the continued vitality of rural chattel slavery.  Numerous families of slaves are noted in the legatine bull for the monastery of Tyniec of 1125 and the bull for the archdiocese of Gniezno of 1136. [45]  By the end of the twelfth century, some scholars hold that "outright slavery" had largely disappeared from Poland. [46]  Nonetheless, the trade of slaves through Poland continued, as demonstrated by customs duties levied on slaves in the schedule of tolls compiled in 1226 by Bishop Lawrence of Wroclaw. [47]
 
To the East of Hungary and Poland, slavery lasted centuries longer as a major factor in the economy.  The Pontic Steppe had long been a major center of the slave trade, and "from the eighth to the twelfth century, there was a well-developed slaving network, the ultimate termini of which were in the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world." [48]  The slave trade was a major component of the Lithuanian economy at least until the Lithuanian dux Jogailo accepted Christianity as the price for becoming king of Poland in the late fourteenth century.  The Lithuanian's partners in trade included Poles, Rus', and even long-distance Muslim negociants.  Thus for instance, Vitebsk became a center of the slave trade when it came under pagan Lithuanian rule in the 1280s. [49]  The society of pagan Lithuania of the early fourteenth century was divided into a free peasantry, a noble aristocracy, and a large group of slaves who worked the nobles' lands. [50]
 
The Russians were major suppliers of slaves both to the Byzantine Empire and to Central Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. [51]  In the Primary Chronicle's description of Sviatoslav's foundation of Pereiaslavets, the Prince lists the products of Rus' as "furs, wax, honey and slaves." [52]  Slavery was central to the first Russian law code, that of Jaroslav the Wise in the middle of the eleventh century, [53] and it remained a major factor in the Russian economy until serfdom belatedly became widespread in Russia in the seventeenth century.  Until the late onset of serfdom, slaves were estimated to constitute ten percent of the population of late mediaeval and early modern Russia. [54]
 
Europe's southern fringe also retained slavery into the later Middle Ages.  Unlike the rest of mediaeval Europe, Italy had a thriving urban culture accompanied by an economy based as much upon trade and craftsmanship as upon agriculture.  Thus, although slaves were not important as agricultural labourers, they remained a vital part of the Italian economy because of their importance as labourers in the small scale industries of the mediaeval Italian cities. [55]  Moreover, the continuing importance of slaves in the long-distance trade of the Eastern Mediterranean made slave labour relatively plentiful and cheap in the Italian market, so that even in the fourteenth century most households of respectable means owned at least one slave, usually working as a domestic servant or assistant in the master's workshop, and often as a concubine as well. [56]
 
To the west, the Christian kingdoms of Northern Spain were locked in a continual struggle with the Muslim states of the peninsula and were thus influenced by the Muslim prohibition on enslaving one's correligionists.  With the local discouragement of Spaniards holding Christian slaves, slavery declined in Northern Spain, becoming economically insignificant by the eleventh century. [57]  On the front line of the Reconquista, however, slavery continued as an important tool in controlling local populations and exploiting newly conquered lands.  In central Spain, non-Christian slaves remained important in the thirteenth and even fourteenth centuries.  While they never formed the majority of the rural workforce, they were used "in domestic and artisanal roles, or for particularly unpleasant and hard labour." [58]  They were important enough to be regulated Alfonso the Wise's thirteenth century legal code, the Siete Partidas.  Moreover, the question of whether Christians were enslaved in thirteenth-century Spain is a complex one.  While Pope Innocent III protested that Jewish and Christian owners were discouraging their Saracen slaves from converting lest the slave should thereby gain his freedom, the Siete Partidas include among the justly enslaved not only captives of war and children of slaves, but also those who voluntarily sold themselves into slavery, suppliers of the enemy, and even the children of priests. [59]  In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with the growth of the Aragonese trading empire in the Mediterranean, the lords of Spain's eastern shore set up sugar plantations similar to those of the Levant and imported slaves from Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to toil in them. [60]  By 1400, therefore, Catalonia still held an estimated 4,375 slaves. [61]  With the conquest of the Americas, Spain and Portugal simply expanded this latifundial system using aboriginal and imported African slaves on large plantations throughout their colonies.
 
Of course, in putting an end date on slavery in any given location, it is necessary once again to point out that slavery was never formally abolished in any part of Europe during the Middle Ages. Even in France and Britain, there are occasional references to slaves in the households of great men into the sixteenth century.  As William D. Phillips notes:

The transformation was never total, and we will see that Europeans held slaves long after 1100, but the vast majority of slaves who remained were not agricultural workers.  Rather, they were domestics and artisans or the assistants of artisans.  Consequently, the medieval West was not a slave society. [62]

This, of course, does not include the indentured servants and penal slaves who were at the command of a master for a specific duration, institutions which lasted into the nineteenth century in some areas.

III. Sources for the Study of Slavery in Mediaeval Hungary

 The most important sources for the study of Hungarian slavery must be the written laws issued by the kings of the Árpád dynasty and the synods of the Church in Hungary.  There are, of course, limits to the usefulness of written law as the reflection of a society, particularly a society so distantly removed from our own.  Firstly, the extant written laws are only a portion of the legal system in force in the period under examination.  As late as the nineteenth century, previously unknown manuscripts of the early Hungarian decreta were discovered and it is likely that many written laws did not survive the intervening centuries.   Even more important is the nature of mediaeval legal systems.  As in all mediaeval states, in Hungary "custom and customary law reigned supreme well beyond the Middle Ages virtually to 1848." [63]  Indeed, the written decreta may have served just as something of a general guideline for local judges and officials.   Occasionally, charters, wills, and other written records show the operation of such customary law and, when available, will be taken into account. [64]  Moreover, the royal and ecclesiastical laws were often a written documentation of custom with the addition of some innovations based on foreign models.  In the words of Gábor Hamza, "[sie] brachten zweifelsohne den Universalismus des ius mit den Traditionen der consuetudo auf organische Weise miteinander in Einklang." [65]
 
Another problem with using the decreta to reconstruct the social conditions of mediaeval Hungary is the origin of many of these provisions in the Canon Law or in the laws of states to the West of Hungary.  Consequently, many legal provisions may have been adopted not in response to  conditions in the Kingdom of Hungary, but rather as part of a set of decrees adopted from a foreign model.  Indeed, it has been suggested that "the general process of adopting models borrowed from more advanced, settled neighbors and adapting them to the traditions and conditions of Hungarian society can be observed and was the principal feature of the legal development of the first three centuries of the kingdom of Hungary." [66]  This process of adaptation, however, does indicate that at least those laws that were altered from their foreign model, as well as laws that do not appear to have a direct precedent abroad, must reflect the Hungarian situation.

Finally, there is the question of whether references in the decreta to servi or ancillae actually refer to chattel slaves or whether they refer to some less total form of servitude or dependence.  Some scholars prefer to translate these terms with a neutral term such as bondman, fearing that the use of any more precise term might be misleading. [67]  Others recognize the ambiguity inherent in the term servus, but treat individual legal provisions as referring to slaves, servants, or serfs, whichever is more in keeping with the author's thesis. [68]  The internal evidence of the decretum, however, often make it possible to distinguish when the term servus is being used to refer to chattel slaves and when it refers to a lesser form of servitude and this paper will attempt to distinguish those uses.  The lack of this sort of internal evidence is the major drawback in the use of transactional documents such as wills, charters, and even deeds of manumission.  Such a document will often refer to an individual as a servus, but there is rarely enough collateral evidence to determine what status is meant by that term.  Consequently, while these documents will be cited, especially for the later period in which the  promulgation of written law becomes rarer, it must always be kept in mind that the person named in the document may not have held the same status as the servi regulated by the decreta.

In dealing with printed editions of the mediaeval laws, one must always remember that many of the books of royal law have survived in multiple manuscripts, often not agreeing on the text of every decretum.  The difference is greatest in the laws of St. Stephen, found both in the fifteenth century Ilosvay Codex and in the Admont Codex discovered in 1846.  For the most part, contemporary editions of the laws will be cited, that include several provisions only extant in the Admont Codex, but one or two decreta will be considered that do not appear in the earlier manuscript yet are in the eighteenth century edition of the Corpus Juris Hungarici, based solely on the Ilosvay Codex.

IV. Slavery among the Pre-Christian Hungarians

The society of the migrating Hungarians before the conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late ninth century was divided into two broad categories: free men and slaves. [69]  The great indicium of the free man in this pre-Conquest period was his membership in a clan.  The slave, in contrast, did not belong to any clan or tribe and, therefore, was not a member of society as a whole.  He might be long to a clan, to a family, or to an individual.  By and large, slaves were prisoners of war or their descendants -- plentiful in the constant state of war of the early Hungarians.  Thus, as one scholar has written, "les esclaves, ancêtres des basses classes qui se formèrent plus tard, avaient joué depuis toujours un rôle important, dans la vie économique des clans hongrois." [70]  The fact that the Hungarians possessed a large number of slaves in the period just before the Conquest is confirmed by the accounts of the Arabic writers Ibn Rustah and Gardizi. [71]
 
Not every scholar agrees with this two class structure, or with the idea that Hungarians had had slaves since their appearance in the historical record.  György Györffy maintains that the Magyars acquired slavery as part of "a typically Turkic form of organization" when they became part of the Khazar Empire, in the eighth or ninth century.  In his view:

"The differentiations of classes within the Onogur-Bulgarian and Turkic societies were similar to those in Germanic societies of the age of the Great Migrations: the ruling layer ensured its power over the commonality and slaves through the help of a permanent warrior group.  During the 9th century, Magyar-Hungarian society, which then brok free of Turkish-Khazar dependence reached the same stage: the heads of the clans, called bõ (from Turkic bäg), employed mounted warriors, the warriors called jobbágy to control the commons called ín, and the captive slaves, called ûheg." [72]

It is perceptive of Dr. Györffy that he uses the term "captive" to describe the slaves and not, as some other writers do, "foreign," as the idea of a Hungarian nation almost certainly did not exist before the blood oath to Árpád on the eve of the Conquest, at the earliest.  He does, however, seem to exclude the idea of Hungarian slaves when he speaks of a "heterogeneous military middle layer above the more or less homogeneous clan society," [73] but one must recall that the slaves did not belong to a clan and, therefore, were by definition not a part of any nascent Hungarian ethnicity.  It is also apparent that the pre-Conquest Hungarians had already become known as slave traders, for Ibn Rusteh writes that "[w]hen the Hungarians reach Kerch they enter into bargains with the Byzantines coming to meet them.  The Hungarians sell them slaves and buy Byzantin brocade, woolen carpets and other Byzantine goods." [74]
 
After the occupation of the Danubian basin, many of the indigenous inhabitants, Avars, Slavs, and others, were enslaved.  Charles d'Eszlary sees three different groups: those who joined in the Conquest and became free men, enjoying both property rights and political rights (presumably through a clan or tribe); those who did not resist and were allowed to keep their property, although they had no political rights; and those recalcitrant resisters who were vanquished and enslaved. [75]  In addition to these newly conquered slaves were the slaves that the conquerors brought with them, which may have included those who, by culture and language, were Hungarian, as well as those Slavs and others who were slaves in the Danubian Basin prior to the Conquest. [76]  Indeed, a gravesite from the Conquest period in Halimba, north of Lake Balaton shows that what Györffy calls "commonality" was not uniform, but included slaves, whose graves were completely unornamented, with the bodies buried in a crouching position. [77]  Moreover, it is impossible to tell whether the slaves were indigenes or conquerors, as Avar-Slavic burials cannot be distinguished from Magyar-Hungarian burials.  At least one Hungarian historian, Ignác Acsády, was quite certain that among the conquering Magyars were slaves of their own ethnicity, but even he could not make the leap from mentioning Magyars who had been enslaved because of their crimes to the obvious conclusion that those slaves would breed new generations of Magyar slaves. [78]
 
With the Conquest of the Carpathian basin begins the period of raids on both the western and southern neighbours of the Hungarians.  The term for the raids in Hungarian -- kalandozások -- has a meaning closer to adventures in English; it is related to an adjective meaning venturesome and a verb meaning to wander.  The raids, however, were a bloody business, striking terror in Catholics and Orthodox, and had as one of their main aims the procurement of slaves. [79]  The need for a constant supply of slaves can be seen both in the need for a permanent labour force to work the sparsely-populated land so recently gained and in the still strong international demand for slaves.  Tenth century Prague, very near to the Hungarians' western border, was described as one of the great markets of the slave trade. [80]  This view of the raids as slave-raids is not popular, however.  It is often held that the aim of the raids was "to take loot." [81]  The respected historian György Györffy minimizes the slave-taking aspect of the raids, maintaining that:

"It was only in the first decades that they took captives and then only from territories nearby, because escorting and feeding them meant more trouble than profit.  From the 920s the practice was to take captives, serfs and noblemen alike, to the foot of the walls of a castle in their own country where their compatriots could ransom them with precious metal." [82]

He does cite several examples of such ransoming of captives, including the Italian opponents of the Lombard king Berengar in 921, Greeks at the raid on Constantinople in 931, and even the grandmother of the East Frankish chancellor. [83]  All of these examples, however, concern captives who likely come from wealthy backgrounds.  It strains reason to imagine that poor serfs and free peasants could be ransomed as is maintained above.  Indeed, Györffy does appear to admit the possibility of slaving raids later when he points out that, although the great princes were mostly interested in establishing an annual tax or tribute from raided territories, "[s]ome extra campaigns were launched mainly through the initiative of the chiefs, the bõs and the warriors called jobbágy who needed to make up for the loss of animals and servants in the Etelköz and to acquire articles of trading value." [84]  This use of the term servant may reflect a choice of the translator, or it may indicate a reluctance to use the term slave, but forms of servitude other than slavery were probably not in existence in the period before the Battle of Lechfeld.  The Hungarian chieftains of the ninth and tenth centuries were not yet even masters of the commonality, but rather had to "induce them to give 'voluntary' service." [85]  By the end of the tenth century, some sort of regular semi-free status may have existed, but it was hardly what a westerner would recognize as serfdom.  Györffy, once again, describes the members of the house of Árpád as "extending their control to the home-territories of the native clans even in the 10th century" and leaving the clan chieftains with "serf-holdings," but the relationship he describes seems to be marked by nothing other that a regular tribute, certainly no idea of a tie to the land in tenure (to use the term loosely), or even of labour by the "serf" on lands held directly by the chieftain. [86]  At the same time, we can establish the existence of many slaves living in Hungary in the late tenth century, as Bishop Piligrim of Passau, in a letter of 974 to Pope Benedict VII, wrote that his priests had encountered a great many slaves in Hungary, who had come as prisoners, the majority being Christians from all parts of Christendom. [87]  The importance of this letter should be noted, as it clearly refers to slaves, not any sort of semi-free persons, and the continuity of the use of the term servi in the letter with its use in the early decreta of the Christian kings has been taken by Hungarian legal scholars as an indication of its meaning in the mediaeval laws.

V. Slavery during the Reign of St. Stephen (997-1038)

The coronation of  dux Vajk as King Stephen of Hungary at the turn of the second Christian millenium has always been taken as a pivotal event in Hungarian history.  For the historians of the Romantic era, it signalled the end of the heroic, semi-mythical period of the kalandozások and the beginning of Hungary as a civilised European country.  For the historians of the Communist school, it signalled the transition from the ancient slave-holding society to the early feudal period of fiefs and vassals, lords and serfs.  In fact, slavery, like most Hungarian institutions not directly connected with paganism, remained intact under St. Stephen.  The primary effect of his conversion was a regularization of slave status through the medium of written law and some slight ameliorization of the status of Christian slaves.

By the time of St. Stephen we have very strong evidence that the slave class included people who were Hungarian in the narrowest sense.  One village of the defeated pretender to the throne, Koppány, that was granted by the victorious King Stephen to the abbey of Veszprém included thirty heads of clan, of whom sixteen were described as horsemen (equites) and fourteen as ploughmen (aratores). [88]  The horsemen appear to be semi-free, "very close to freemen in status," [89] while the ploughmen were definitely slaves, although of the variety described in Roman law as casati, being provided with a house, land, and draught animals for their own upkeep and for raising crops for their master. [90]  The most important fact regarding this village is that, of the horsemen, six have Hungarian names, while three have Slavic names, and of the ploughmen, eight have Hungarian names, while four have Slavic names. [91]  This is certainly not dispositive evidence that the ploughmen with Hungarian names were in fact Hungarian by language or descent.  As Hungarians were the upper social stratum, the lower classes may have adopted Hungarian names, just as most Conquest period Hungarian names are of Turkic origin.  Nonetheless, the presence of Hungarian names among the slaves, combined with the presence of Slavic names among the semi-free, does seem to indicate that no class was ethnically homogeneous.

Although the situation of the slaves in the previous paragraph, having the use of land and draught animals, might seem to indicate a semi-free status rather than true slavery, there is evidence to indicate that ploughmen, or szántók were indeed slaves without property.  The ploughmen in the  Veszprémvölgy charter were registered in family units, the semi-free horsemen in farm units; the word család, used for the ploughman family units differs from the words nem and nemzet, used for free families, and indicates that they were sold as such, without accompanying lands or goods; whereas the  horsemen were measured in units of füst, meaning a self-contained farm, including house and land. [92]  This term füst, moreover, is translated into Greek in the charter as kapnos, used in the Byzantine Empire to signify one who paid the kapnikon, a tax on independent farmers and townspeople, and a proud symbol of their non-slave status. [93]  Therefore, the semi-free horsemen were most likely considered inseparable from the land they inhabited, whereas the slave ploughmen could be sold with or without their land.
 
The new, western-oriented polity of King Stephen did, however, usher in a variety of semi-free ranks.  In the eleventh century, d'Eszlary perceives four semi-free levels.  The highest semi-free rank, the milites or jobbagiones castri inhabited the territory immediately surrounding the royal and comital castles, and owed only military service directly to the King and they held their property in direct tenure, or donum, from the King. [94]  The donum may be contrasted with the descensus, held by the freeman (liber) as tribal property.  Originally, neither donum nor descensus were freely alienable, but King Stephen decreed that "everyone during his lifetime shall have mastery over his own property and over grants of the king, except for that which belongs to a bishopric or a county, and upon his death his sons shall succeed to a similar mastery." [95]  Even in the case of a donee's treason, the donee would lose his rights in the land, but his sons, if innocent, might inherit them. [96]  Of course, the rights of a holder of allodial descensus might be limited by other members of his clan or tribe.
 
Another group of semi-free were the castrenses or civiles, who were similar to milites, but their service was not of a military nature, and their property was completely inalienable. [97]  The udvornici resided on royal property or property held in tenure from a great lord, provided agricultural goods, and owned their own draft animals. [98]  Finally, the vulgares, coloni, and hospites most closely resembled western serfs, paying a share of their crop as rent and performing a limited amount of labour on the lord's own personal properties. [99]
 
King Stephen's new officers, the comites or ispáns held about one-third of the land area of  the Kingdom of Hungary.  While the majority of their lands were farmed by some variety of semi-free tenant, each comes also maintained a praedium or personal holding, farmed for him by slaves, often called praedial slaves. [100]  As these praedial slaves were eventually liberated, they merged with the semi-free classes to form the peasant jobbágy class of the later middle ages.
 
The most important direct evidence we have for the status of slaves in early eleventh-century Hungary is the decreta or laws of St. Stephen.  These decreta were grouped into two books and survive in the twelfth century Admont Codex, discovered in Styria in 1846, and the Ilosvay Codex of the fifteenth century. [101]  There were probably more decreta of St. Stephen than are currently extant, since King Coloman's decretum Col. Reg. Dec. Lib.I, c.34 refers to a law of King Stephen that is not among those that have survived. [102]

Of the fifty-six chapters in King Stephen's two books of decreta, eighteen touch upon slavery.  These show the influence of Roman law, primarily in the regulation of the slave as property, and the influence of the Church in mitigating the traditional punishments for slaves, which often prescribed death for even the most minor offence.  Nonetheless,  the laws of St. Stephen do "deal with the problems typical to Hungarian society, problems that had to be solved at the beginning of the 11th century; the laws were tailored to the economic and social conditions of Hungary; indeed behind them the old common law can be detected, either in its provisions being adapted to the new laws or in it being rejected." [103]
 
This interplay of foreign influence and Hungarian exigency is very evident in the oft-quoted first chapter of Book Two of St. Stephen's laws.  It requires every ten villages to build a church and provide for it a horse, a mare, six oxen, two cows, and thirty small animals (minutis bestiis), as well as two manses and the same number of mancipia, while the King would provide vestments and altar cloths and the Bishop would provide priests and books. [104]  This provision presents two problems, however.  First, the term mancipium is generally used in the West to signify the most abject sort of chattel slave.  Unlike the term servus, it was very rarely used in later centuries to designate serfs or other semi-free peasants.  Consequently, it might be taken to demonstrate the centrality of slavery to the Hungarian economy and the necessity for slaves to support any landholder.  In the phrase "duobus mansis totidemque mancipiis dotent," [105] however, it is closely juxtaposed with the term mansus, which is far more often used to describe the plot held by a dependant tenant that a plot of land tended by a resident slave (servus casatus).  Moreover, the term mancipium was seldom used at all in Hungary.  The only other instance of its use in the laws of the Árpád dynasty is in a law of King Coloman, in which the editors of the Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungarici have translated it specifically as "slave" -- they usually employ the more general term "bondsman" -- probably because that provision refers to the mancipia of Jewish masters, who were not usually landholders in the mediaeval period. [106]
 
The second problem with interpreting this provision as demonstrating the importance of slavery in St. Stephen's Hungary is its similarity to earlier foreign legislation.  It clearly appears to be based on Carolingian laws requiring the establishment of parish churches. [107]  Thus the endowment of mancipia could be taken as not reflecting conditions in Hungary, but rather in the German lands centuries earlier.  The decreta of St. Stephen, however, are very selective in which foreign precedents are adopted and do not hesitate to adapt them to local conditions.  Consequently, one may be confident that the goods enumerated in S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.1 were vital to the maintenance of a small property in early eleventh century Hungary.
 
Several of the laws deal with the slave explicitly as an object, a piece of property.  Thus chapter seven of Book I, in dealing with the use by royal deputies of the King's property lists slaves among a list of types of property. [108]  Chapter fourteen, dealing with the murder of one master's slave by the slave of another master, also appears to treat the slave as a mere object.  The murderer's master must pay for the slain slave by replacing him with the murdering slave (reddatur servus pro servo) or, the murderer could be redeemed, presumably with the price of the slain slave. [109]   A later decretum amends this provision to order that if the master of the guilty slave cannot pay the price of the victim, he must sell a slave within forty days -- it is not clear whether it is the murderer who must be sold -- and the two slaveholders are to divide the proceeds. [110]  Similarly, if a freeman were to kill someone else's slave, he must either replace the slave with a new one or pay the slain slave's master the value of the slave. [111]  While it might seem, however, that merely paying the price of the lost slave is an indication of the slaves status at law as a mere object, monetary compensation as a punishment for murder, does not necessarily indicate that the slave was not thought of as human.  The system of blood money was common to many tribal societies and was not unknown among the Hungarians.    Indeed, the very next law in the Corpus Juris Hungarici, but not included in the Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungarici, decrees that if a slave kills a free man at the behest of his master, the master must pay damages equal to the value of 110 calves. [112]  Moreover, the fact that the Church considered the slave a person like any other is indicated by the requirement of S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.14 that a redeemed slave perform the penance required of a murderer by Canon Law. [113]  On the other hand, it is of the utmost significance that a freeman is punished only if he kills the slave of another master (Si vero liber alicuius occideret servum). [114]  Presumably, there was no punishment for a master who killed his own slave, as the slave was his property entirely and could be disposed of as he wished. [115]
 
Several St. Stephen's decreta, in fact, clearly indicate the slave's status as a person.  Whereas, under Roman law, a slave's crimes were the responsibility of his master, [116] under Hungarian law a slave often had to pay for his crime himself, either financially or corporally.  The clearest example of this principle is the group of decreta relating to theft.  Under chapter six of the second book of laws, the slave who commits a first theft must return whatever was stolen and pay to the victim the price of five calves; if he does not have enough property to make this payment, his nose is to be torn or cut off (nasum abscindatur). [117]  A slave without a nose who commits a theft, i.e. a second theft, must make a similar repayment, including the price of five calves, or else his ears will be torn off. [118]  Finally, for a third such offence, the slave will be executed. [119]  While this may seem gruesome to a modern reader, this is actually an instance of the merciful nature that earned St. Stephen the cognomina pius, justus and pacificus rex; the same crime was punished with death after the first offense both by the Lex Romana Burgundionum and by the laws of St. Stephen's contemporary Boleslaw Chrobry of Poland. [120]  These punishments differ only in one step from those governing thieves from among the class of freemen.  The freeman (liber) who commits a first theft must repay what he has stolen, or else he will be enslaved (si autem non, venundetur). [121]  Thereafter, his punishment is the same as that of a slave; it is even stated in that manner, not repeating the individual punishments. [122]  Thus slavery can be interpreted as a punishment in itself, but it also is a loss of legal status for the declassé felon, similar to the punishment of outlawry in early English law.  The punishment for married women who steal indicates their status intermediate between that of their free husbands and that of a slave.  The first two times a married woman steals, she is to be "redeemed" by her husband, presumably by payment of the value of the good she stole. [123]  Upon a third theft, she is to be sold as a slave. [124]  Clearly this shows that the married woman did not legally own any property of her own, but that her lot was not that of a slave.  The fact that the punishment for the first two offenses is identical also brings into question the need for three levels of punishment.  The question of how she is to be redeemed (redimatur), [125] however, is the most interesting aspect of this law. [126]  It is phrased exactly like the law governing the murder of one slave by another.  One might, therefore, ask whether the price to be paid was that of the victim, in which case the murder of a slave is identical to the conversion of any other sort of property, or whether the price to be paid was that of the felon, in which case a bride was to be bought just like a slave.
 
Several of the laws of St. Stephen appear to have as a purpose the protection of the distinction between slave and free.  Two such decreta are what a modern lawyer would call evidentiary laws.  The first declares that "any servile person" (aliqua servilis persona) may not "be accepted in accusation or testimony against their masters or mistresses in any criminal." [127]  This was not unique to Hungarian law, appearing in the Roman law in the Lex Romana Visigothorum and the Codex Justinianus. [128]  A later provision grants the exception that, if the servus is in charge of a royal residence or castle, the testimony of a slave shall be accepted among the comites (counts, ispánok), also in the case of a servant killing his lord or a soldier his comes. [129]  A more obvious example of a law meant to keep slave separate from free is the decretum concerning a free man who takes the slavewoman of another as his wife.  In such a case, the husband is to become a slave forever. [130]  This was not a unique punishment, appearing also in the laws of the Salian Franks, [131] although some mediaeval laws, such as those of the Lombards, would allow such a marriage if the freeman purchased his wife's freedom. [132]  The Hungarian statute, however, specifically states that the purpose of the provision is to instill "fear and caution" in the freeman (terrorem, & cautionem imposuimus). [133]  Even more graphically, the law pertaining to the freeman who fornicates with the slavewoman of another master states as its aim that freemen should keep their liberty uncontaminated (ut liberi suam custodiant libertatem incontaminatam). [134]  The punishments for such a relationship are also telling, in that it appears to be a crime of miscegenation against the state, and a property crime as regards the ancilla's master.  The first time the freeman commits fornication he is to be whipped, the second time his hair is to be shorn, which is less painful but leaves a more long-lasting mark of shame; for the third offence, the freeman himself is to become a slave "pariter cum ancilla," or may redeem himself. [135]  If the slavewoman becomes pregnant and dies in childbirth, the freeman must reimburse her owner with another ancilla. [136]  Once again, however, the punishments of slave and freeman are not drastically different.  If a slave of one master fornicates with the ancilla of another, he too is to be whipped and shorn of hair, and if she dies in childbirth, the slave must be sold and half the proceeds given to the slavewoman's owner. [137]  This is another example of the relative leniency of St. Stephen's decreta, as the Frankish law would have the slave castrated if he could not personally pay forty denarii to the girl's master. [138]
 
While there is evidence from the Regestrum of Várad that weddings between slave and free were not recognized as late as the thirteenth century, [139] there is evidence of slaves taking freeborn wives as late as the reign of Béla IV (1235-70). [140]  Moreover, there is evidence that the issue of such marriages  was not always considered a slave as the laws of St. Stephen would seem to require.  A document from 1256 relates the case of a slave married to a free woman. [141]  Their child was held to be half slave and half free.  Therefore, the parents were required to pay to the father's master on half of the price that the infant would have brought as a slave.  Upon payment, the son became free and his descendants would also be free. [142]
 
Two decreta of St. Stephen show the King attempting to develop centralized protection for property rights and legal status.  The first decrees that if the master of a fugitive slave sends a deputy (legatus) to retrieve the slave and the deputy is beaten or whipped, then the one who beats the deputy must pay ten steers. [143]  Similarly, those who procured liberty for another man's slave had to pay twelve steers, ten to the king and only two to the slave's master. [144]  Thus local leaders would no longer be petty monarchs interfering with property guaranteed by the King's government.  More importantly, the twenty-second decretum prohibits counts and soldiers of the King from reducing free persons to slavery, once again requiring the miscreant to pay twelve steers, this time ten to the King and two to the local count. [145]  The existence of such a provision would seem to imply that before the latter part of St. Stephen's reign, the King's officers might simply enslave free men within the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary.
 
Finally, chapter eighteen of Book I shows the strong influence of the Church.  It commands that, if a slaveowner, inspired by mercy (misericordia ductus), grants freedom to his slaves before witnesses, they shall not be led back into slavery.  If, however, he promises to liberate slaves in his will, but dies intestate, his widow and sons may, if they wish, render "agape" [146] for the redemption of the deceased's soul (pro animae redemptione sui mariti), and serve retroactively as witnesses to the emancipation. [147]  Thus the Church encourages manumission as an act of charity beneficial to the soul, but does not condemn the holding of slaves.  The formality of the rite required to manumit a slave also demonstrates the difficulty in this period of moving from slave status to free.

VI. Slavery during the Reign of St. Ladislas (1077-95)
 
St. Ladislas, ruling in the late eleventh century, was the second great lawgiver of Hungarian history.  The last pagan and tribal revolts having been quashed, the purpose of the majority of St. Ladislas's laws is the entrenchment of individual private property and the Christian religion.  Thus while the bulk of St. Ladislas's decreta are of a penal nature, many are administrative, concening fiscal and ecclesiastical policy.  Beginning with the laws of St. Ladislas, however, Hungarian law begins to rely less heavily on foreign models and can be taken to reflect contemporary conditions. [148]  These decreta are grouped into three books, the dating of which is controversial.  The traditional  numeration of the books of decreta of St. Ladislas does not conform to the chronological order now accepted by historians.  The most current theory is that the first set of decreta chronologically are contained in Book II, the earliest chapters of which were passed in 1077, shortly after Ladislas gained the throne; the second was the result of a synod that took place around 1085 and are contained in Book III; and the third contains the pronouncements of the synod of Szabolcs of 1092. [149]
 
Book I, containing the pronouncements of the Synod of Szabolcs and therefore concerned primarily with the Church, is probably the least important in terms of the history of slavery.  Of its forty-two chapters, only five even mention slaves. The first portion of Book I deals with the personal sexual morality of priests and deacons.  In the late eleventh century, the Church was just beginning to enforce priestly chastity, even in those regions that had long been a part of Christendom.  Consequently, the laws of St. Ladislas ended bigamy among clerics [150] but allowed priests legally married to one woman to retain their wives at the suffrance of the Holy See. [151]  One way that some priests may have intended to keep their vow de jure, while avoiding the deprivations of chastity, was to keep a female house-slave.  The second decree of the Synod of Szabolcs ended such concubinage, requiring the priest to sell the ancilla and give the revenue to the bishop. [152]
 
Several decreta of Book I were clearly intended to protect Christian slaves from corrupting influences in the only recently converted Hungary of the eleventh century.  The tenth chapter is merely an enactment of a law that had first appeared in the Theodosian Code of 387 A.D. and had been accepted by several western councils of the Frankish era. [153]  It commanded that were a Jew to take a Christian wife, or keep a Christian slave, they should be taken away from him and returned to liberty, and the price paid for them would be taken for the episcopal treasury. [154]  The reason for such a provision in a newly Christianised country is clear: the Jewish master could easily convert the superficially Christian slave.  Of course, this provision is limited to Christian slaves held by Jews "in their home" (apud se). [155]  This decretum might not cover a serf, or a servus casatus supplied with a separate house.  A later section continues this concern with the influence of a master over the religious life of a slave.  If a lord were to keep his slaves, or poor villagers, from observing the Lord's day, or feast days, or fasts, or if he should impede them from burying their dead in a Christian manner, he must do twelve days penance on bread and water, just the same as if he did not observe Sunday or the feasts himself. [156]  Another chapter says that if a slave is freed, for the benefit of his master's soul, into the service of the church -- a form of limited emancipation -- then he should be under the direction of the priest of the church alone. [157]  It appears that this was a sort of limited emancipation, but in the long run, slaves of the Church were to retain their unfree status much longer than slaves of secular masters, since Church property could not be alienated.  The longest and most important administraive decretum of the Synod of Szabolcs dealing with slaves is a chapter concerning the mechanism for paying the tithe to the bishop.  A slave living in his master's house was not required to pay the tithe -- his share being a component of his master's just like that of a minor child of the master. [158]  The slave living in his own house, presumably provided by his master, would have to pay the tithe like any other householder "from all they have" (de omnibus, que habent). [159]  This, however, may indicate a serf, since the servus must have his own property from which to pay the tithe.  Of course, it was not unknown for a slave to have a peculium to provide for his own needs, [160] although ownership rested ultimately in his master, but here the personal freedom of the person is indicated by the punishment for nonpayment of the tithe -- sale of the person, while his children remain free. [161]
 
Book II is the shortest of King Ladislas's law books, containing only eighteen chapters, but it's provisions are primarily criminal and four pertain to slaves.  Several of these decreta are amendments to King Stephen's laws on theft.  Chapter one of the second book of laws does not specifically mention servi, yet it is one of the most persuasive pieces of evidence that during the reign of St. Ladislas there were ethnically Hungarian chattel slaves.  It concerns theft by the relatives of noblemen (proximi quorumlibet principum). [162]  While most references to slaves can be dismissed as referring either to captives taken in foreign wars or to indigenous Slavs or Vlachs, the members of a noble family would surely include Magyars, no matter how the ethnicity might be defined.  Moreover, should the thieving nobleman escape his surety (fidejussor), he was to be sold abroad (in aliam regionem venundetur). [163]  Any sale abroad can only mean personal slavery, since he was not being sold with land of any sort, nor were some sort of limited services being sold.  Therefore, such an individual could only be taken as a chattel slave of Hungarian ethnicity.
 
The second decretum in the collection reiterates that a slave caught stealing must repay the price or have his nose cut off.  If, however, he has fled to a church, to the Curia Regis, or to the foot of a bishop, then he shall merely turn over whatever he has stolen; but if he is caught doing this a second time, he is to be hanged. [164]  Any thief, free or slave, who was caught in the act, was to be hanged. [165]  In another example of the master not being required to take responsibility for the actions of his slave, it is specified that the owner of the thief must suffer the loss of the value of his slave, but the victim of the theft must suffer the loss of the value of the goods stolen. [166]  The thieving slave is thus treated as a felonious person, not as property, since the thief must be punished even though it is admitted that both property-owners will suffer a financial loss. [167]   Once again, the thief can escape the harshest punishment by fleeing to a church. [168]  In the case of a thief caught in the act, though, he will be taken from the church and blinded, whether slave or free.  Of course, if the goods stolen were only worth a goose or hen -- a relatively small amount -- then the thief would only have one eye put out. [169]
 
Slavery was also used as a punishment for the freeborn.  The children of a freeman blinded for thievery would be sold into slavery unless they were under ten years old. [170]  Being sold into slavery was also used as punishment for commoner who was caught stealing and denounced by his own kindred; even worse, such a criminal was to be sold abroad. [171]  Once again, since a slave caught in similar circumstances could not be reduced any further in social status, he was to have his nose cut off. [172]  A similar fate of being sold into slavery awaited the judge who did not order the proper punishment, but if the judge could convincingly defend himself, it was his accuser who would be sold into slavery. [173]  Later, in the third law book of St. Ladislas, slavery is also used as a punishment for female thieves, a thieving maiden being sentenced to eternal servitude, whereas a married woman would also lose her nose and a widow would lose an eye. [174]  The soldier who invaded the house of a nobleman was punished with the uniquely shameful fate of being taken to the market, bound, whipped, shorn of hair, and then sold. [175]  Slavery was also the punishment for border guards (ewrii, õrök) who allow the unregulated foreign sale of horses in contravention of S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.16. [176]  The officers of such irresonsible border guards were to "perish with all they possess." [177]  Although the latter could refer to livestock, it is much more likely to refer to the officer's slaves.  Finally, in what seems a more practical than merciful piece of legislation, King Ladislas decreed that a fugitive slave who steals should not be hanged, nor have his tongue torn out, as had apparently been the custom, but rather just blinded. [178]  That way, after he was returned, his master could determine if the slave had stolen anything from him.
 
The third law book of St. Ladislas contains nine decreta mentioning slavery and one other that mentions a class of persons that must include slaves.  Several of the provisions of the third set of decreta amended earlier provisions concerning theft, others concern the flight of fugitives; the purpose of both was to strengthen the system of property ownership, as well as to take into account asylum provided by the Church.  Perhaps the strangest of the amendments to the Hungarian law of theft was a chapter that seems to ordain a far less serious punishment for slaves who steal than for freemen.  In the case of a freeman who has stolen something worth ten denarii or over, the punishment is death; for less than that amount, he loses an eye and is punished otherwise in accordance with the decreta of St. Stephen. [179]  The punishment for a slave changes at a lower threshhold -- only six denarii -- but the difference is only between the loss of one eye and of both eyes. [180]  On first consideration, one might think the reason for this lighter penalty was to spare the  master the loss of a slave, but a blind slave was probably little better than a dead one, and the master was further required to repay double the value of whatever the slave had stolen. [181]
 
The first chapter to deal with the protection of the Church commanded that a free man who stole, then fled to the church to seek asylum was to become the slave of that church. [182]  The person who advised him to flee to the church was also punished with loss of his portion of the stolen goods, the obvious assumption being that one who aids a thief must be a co-conspirator. [183]  Moreover, if the priest of that parish were to free the thief, the priest would take his place as a slave of the Church, while the thief would be sold abroad, and were he to return to Hungary, he would then be blinded. [184]  A slave who, after stealing, fled to the church was to be returned to his master -- possibly so that his master could punish him -- while the man who advised him to go to seek sanctuary was required to pay two pensae to the church. [185]  While seeking asylum at a church might not guarantee that the slave would not be punished, it could guarantee that he would not simply be presumed guilty, as he probably would otherwise.  The seventeenth chapter of Book III requires that any thief who flees to a church and declares his innocence, be he slave or free, must be tried by ordeal (judicio probentur). [186]  Considering the punishment for those who advise seeking sanctuary and the slight benefit that it afforded, it seems clear that the King regarded the incentive for slaves, and thieves in general, to flee as a problem.  This may reflect an ongoing inability of masters to keep slaves on their lands, further  demonstrated by the laws concerned with fugitives.
 
In order for masters to protect their own ownership of slaves, it was decreed that no one should be prevented from looking for a fugitive slave. [187]  The ubiquity of both fugitive slaves and stray animals necessitated the creation of the office of "collector of stray things, who is commonly called jokszedõ " (Rerum fugitivarum collector, quem vulgariter joccedeth dicunt). [188]  The strays collected by this officer included not only cattle, but also "fugitive men, that is the jok" (fugitivorum hominum, ioch scilicet). [189]  While the term servus or mancipium is never used of these fugitive people, it is hard to imagine what other status such men could have who are described as jok (goods).  Moreover, a later part of the decretum indicates that the jokszedõ was often himself a slave; thus slaves were used by the King and comites to enforce the system of slaveholding. [190]  Closely related to the problem of fugitive slaves was that of lords who either received fugitives into their service or detained the servants of other lords.  Receiving a fugitive slave or maidservant was punished with a fine that was proportional not to the value of the slave, but rather to the rank of the offender. [191]  Therefore, it seems to be viewed as a crime against public order, requiring the fine to function as an actual deterrence, rather than a mere property crime against the slave's proper master, requiring restitution of some sort.  The chapter on the detention of another's servants refers not to an ongoing practice, but rather to cives, ewnek (ínek), or servi who were entered as serving one lord in the Descriptio of Judge Sarkas, compiled around 1056, but who by the reign of St. Ladislas (1077-95) were serving a different lord. [192]  Such a change of lords was suspect as the intervening years had seen the last of the pagan uprisings, as well as invasions of Oghuz and Pechenegs, but there was no fine imposed, unless the new lord refused to turn the men over to the King and could not successfully defend his lordship or title to the men. [193]  The use of term ín, unique in the royal laws, is also interesting as it seems to differentiate poor and dependant, but personally free, peasants that a westerner might recognize as serfs from the personally servile servi.

VII. Slavery in the Reign of King Coloman the Lawgiver (1095-1116)

King Coloman's reign, at the turn of the twelfth century saw the passage of an extremely important set of laws, fully one hundred eighty-one of which are extant, collected into three books:  the Decretum Colomani Regis, containing the majority of the King's secular legislation; the collection of canon laws called the Synod of Esztergom (Synodus Strigoniensis); and a short body of statutes concerning the Jews.  This extraordinary body of legislation governs everything from marriage [194] to vampires, [195] from church endowment [196] to criminal procedure. [197]  The continuing importance of slavery as an institution may be one reason why, out of the laws which have survived, fully twenty-three -- over ten percent -- pertain to slavery.  Several of these laws expand upon St. Ladislas's prohibition on Jews owning Christian slaves.  It is specified, for instance, that not only may a Jew not keep a Christian in servitude, neither may he buy or sell one, apparently preventing Jews from practicing any sort of slave brokerage. [198]  In the capitula solely concerning the Jews, it is further emphasized that a Jew may not buy, sell, or keep a Christian slave of any nation or language (cujuscunque lingue, vel nationis), although the punishment is merely to lose both the slave and the money paid. [199]  The sixty-second pronouncement of the Synod of Esztergom extends this categorical prohibition to include not only ownership or sale of slaves, but even hiring the Christian slaves of others (neque proprios, neque venales, neque mercenarios). [200]  It was allowed that a Jew might keep pagan slaves, but only as field slaves on agricultural land, and he must not keep property of any sort at an episcopal see. [201]  Just as earlier under St. Ladislas, these provisions show the increasing influence of the Church under King Coloman, who was himself a bishop and relied upon the support of the papacy in his relations with foreign rulers.  Thus, several of the Synod's acts prescribe punishments for those who do not observe the feasts and fasts of the Christian year, the punishment for slaves being seven lashes. [202]
 
Several other canons from the reign of King Coloman clarify the somewhat thorny relationship of the Church as landholder with the institutions of slavery and serfdom.  Thus it was decreed that clergymen must keep their own personal property distinct from the property of the Church and could not use church slaves on their property. [203]  This prohibition on private inurement was a relatively simple matter compared with the question of ordination of slaves and bondmen.  The twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth capitula of the collection each refer to servi, but the former clearly means "serf", while the latter does mean "slave."  The difference in translation is necessary, because capitulum twenty-eight forbade the ordination of servi, unless they had been freed beforehand, a common requirement of the Church, which did not want to see its clerics under the total domination of secular masters. [204]  Capitulum twenty-seven, on the other hand, refers to clerks who are servi, i.e. serfs, of the Church, whose sons would become freemen of the Church. [205]  In addition, anyone who, contrary to these laws, did ordain a slave, or even just taught him to read, would have to buy the slave's liberty from his master and pay him additional fifty pensae. [206]  Two other provisions dealing with servi ecclesiarum are generally taken to refer to the serfs of a church, rather than slaves, since they govern the proportion of his crop that the servus ecclesiarum must pay to the church as his lord [207] and the amount he would pay in lieu of the tithe. [208]  While this is indeed the most likely interpretation, it is not unknown in slaveholding societies, such as the later Roman Empire, for slaves to have a peculium -- a certain amount of property for the slave's own use, though legally belonging to the master.  The master might even allow the slave to buy his freedom with money from the peculium.
 
Another important area of ecclesiastical law is the regulation of marriage, and slavery plays an important rôle in the Hungarian Church's statutes concerning marriage and sexual relations from the reign of King Coloman.  If a woman were to flee her husband, the first two times she flees she would be returned to him; the third time, if she were noble, she would have to do penance, and not be able to remarry (presumably the marriage would be ended), but if she is just a commoner (de plebe), she would be sold into slavery without hope of freedom (sine spe libertatis). [209]  In the similar case of an adulterous wife, the punishment for the wife is the same, and it is explicitly stated that the husband may remarry, so it appears that loss of freedom by one spouse would dissolve the bonds of marriage. [210]  If the husband cannot prove a charge of adultery, however, he is to be punished with penance or eternal slavery, according to his status, and the wife could remarry; of course, the same applies to adulterous husbands and accusing wives. [211]
 
Slavery is also a possible punishment for two different sorts of rape or abduction.  If the abductee is a girl of the nobility, [212] the abductor must do penance and pay a compositio, a sort of compensatory damages. [213]  If the abductor cannot pay, he is to be shorn of hair and sold into slavery. [214]  A similar punishment is prescribed for the abductor of the betrothed of another man, and it is further added that even if he can pay the compositio, he may never marry, while if he cannot, he is to be sold "without hope of freedom" (sine spe libertatis). [215]

While the inability to take a wife was seen as a punishment, some men were apparently so desparate to end their marriages that they would voluntarily become slaves.  In order to protect the sanctity of marriage, however, the Synod decreed that the wife of such a slave could follow him while preserving her own liberty (uxor cum salva libertate sequatur), or if she would rather, she could accept the dissolution of the marriage. [216]  Moreover, once the husband was a slave, he must remain so forever -- if he ever were to be freed, he would have to be sold again -- and the wife would be free to marry as if she had never been married before. [217]
 
Of King Coloman's secular decreta concerning slaves, the majority have to do with fugitives.  First, the person who keeps a fugitive without permission of the King was liable to pay a fine of fifty-five pensas. [218]  The King might grant a stray slave to a new master, however, at which time the slave must have half his head shaven, or the new master must pay a fine of ten pensas. [219]  The person who apprehends a fugitive slave, on the other hand, is to be paid one pensa by the slave's master. [220]  Finally, the jokszedõ sold a fugitive slave, both he and the buyer had to pay ten pensas, presumably to the royal treasury. [221]  The introduction of specific laws regarding fugitive slaves may indicate a drastic decrease in the slave trade.  If slaves became harder to replace, it would become imperative for the master to retain the slaves he had, and for the state to aid in keeping the land productive.  A related provision may be chapter nineteen, which commands that former coloni who are ejected, but have no lands to go to, revert to their lands. [222]  This did not apply, of course, to lands granted to the Church, which had to remain inviolable.
 
Finally, King Coloman issued a decretum that must put to rest the question of whether Hungarians ever enslaved each other.  The seventy-seventh chapter of the first book of laws is a sort of export restriction.  It states specifically that no slave of Hungarian race (in genere Ungarorum), nor one born in Hungary (in Ungaria nata) even if of foreign parentage, may be sold. [223]  This may be seen as a measure inspired by the Church to ensure that Christian slaves are not sold abroad, where they might convert, similar to the provisions against Jews owning Christians.  Here, however, it is not all Christian slaves who are prohibited from being sold abroad, as in similar laws in other European countries of the period, [224] but rather a discrete national group.  In this decretum, slaves whose language is other than Hungarian and those brought to Hungary from foreign countries are specifically excluded. [225]  The same decretum prohibits the sale abroad of cattle, and mandates forfeiture of two thirds of any transgressor's property. [226]  Clearly this law can only be referring to chattel slaves, not serfs or any other sort of bondsman, since in being sold abroad they will be sold independent of any land or title.  This decretum as a whole may indicate that while slaves were still perceived as chattels, a slave of Hungarian origin was seen to be in some way part of the nation, and therefore uniquely valuable.  Moreover, the apparent identification of language with nationality is remarkable for the mediaeval period.  The law was apparently not always upheld, however, as there appear to have been instances as late as the early thirteenth century when poor Hungarian peasants sold there children as slaves to the Saracens. [227]

VIII. Slavery after Coloman the Lawgiver

The reign of King Coloman marks the last time that slavery plays an important rôle in mediaeval Hungarian law.  We do know that slavery continued to exist.  Once again in 1186, during the reign of Béla III, there is the example of a certain Lord Hoda, who freed some slaves upon his death "because he wished to assure salvation for his soul." [228]  Indeed, Fr. Békefi cites several similar emancipation documents freeing slaves for the salvation of the soul (lelki üdvösség) continuing until nearly the end of the thirteenth century. [229]  There are also instances of slaves -- recognized because they were counted by the head unlike serfs who were counted by mansus -- listed in charters as late as 1269. [230]  That Hungary was also the location for the international trade in slaves is also demonstrated by thirteenth century references to Muslim slave traders coming to Hungary to purchase slaves. [231]  Nonetheless, in 1279, slavery makes its last appearance in Hungarian law in a set of laws issued by Ladislas IV in response to papal demands that the Cumans be integrated into Hungarian society and converted to Christianity.  [232]  Chapter five of that decretum commands that Christians taken captive in Hungary (captivos, quos in regno et terris nostris Christianos) must be set free, but that foreign captives captured abroad (captivos suos in extraneis regnis captivatos) may be retained by their masters. [233]  This demonstrates that the Cumans were capturing and enslaving Christian Hungarians -- probably during the frequent fighting between  the Cumans and their Hungarian neighbors -- as well as enslaving foreigners taken in wars beyond the borders of Hungary. Such foreign born slaves were captured in wars as late as the 1290s. [234]  Furthermore, the ownership of slaves by Cuman overlords is sanctioned in the eighth capitulum, that requires slaves who have fled to Magyar nobles to be returned to their original Cuman master. [235]
 
These rare mentions in the laws and other documents of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, may have been house slaves, who never fully disappeared during the Middle Ages, even in the west. [236]  What did happen in France by the Carolingian era, [237] in Germany and England by the eleventh century, [238] and in Hungary probably during the course of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, is that slaves ceased to be a "force of production" [239] and became a rarely seen luxury item in wealthy households.  Because of the economic and administrative benefits of allowing the slave to feed and clothe himself, lords increasingly freed their slaves, while  retaining ownership of the land they inhabited, thereby extracting in rents an amount similar to what the new semi-free man had produced when he was a slave.  Eventually, the freed slaves merged with the hospites, and the other free peasants to form the rural jobbágy class.  Certainly by the reign of Charles I, the first Angevin king, jobagio had come to mean a "personally free peasant in seignieurial dependence." [240]  Part of this breakdown in legal distinctions was caused by the periods of anarchy, both after the Tatar invasion and at the end of the thirteenth century. [241]  Only with the Anjou dynasty, however, can it be said with certainty that the distinction in rural areas between former slaves and the free peasantry had finally vanished. [242]

IX. Conclusion: The End of Slavery as a Major Factor in the Hungarian Economy

As outlined above, the institution of chattel slavery was a major feature of the Kingdom of Hungary from its foundation through the early twelfth century.  Then, over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it gradually decreased in importance until, under the Angevin kings, the sources no longer speak of a legal difference between slave and free.  What could have been the reason that landholders would gradually give up ownership of what must have been a very valuable capital good?  Among those who have studied the end of mediaeval slavery, the most common theories put forth are those enumerated by Marc Bloch: the influence of Christianity through the medium of the Church; changing patterns of land usage; and a reduction in the supply of slaves. [243]  More recent critics of the older schools of economic history have also put forth the Marxist-inspired theory that the end of mediaeval slavery was the result of class struggle. [244]
 
To most of the earlier historians to consider the end of slavery, the reason appeared to be the onset of Christianity.  Most referred to the passage from St. Paul's letter to the Galatians: "For all you who have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free-man; there is neither male nor female.  For you are all one in Christ Jesus." [245]  Of course, the paper concerning slavery Hungary, that of the Cistercian Remig Békefi, had as its main theme the efforts of the mediaeval Church on behalf of the slaves. [246]  A bit more objective was Dr. Acsády's assessment that "[t]he Church, over the course of centuries, struggled for more humane conditions for the slaves, but without result." [247]  Indeed, the Church, was a major slaveholder, and in much of Europe it was one of the last owners of large amounts of chattel slaves, since church property could not be alienated. [248]  Consequently, the text from the Epistle to the Galatians was interpreted not as a prescription, but rather as a statement about natural law -- that man was originally without division until the Fall. [249]  Consequently, the Church was in turn ineffectual and complicit in the continuation of slavery.  The Marxist historian Ross Sampson, however, does see an unintentional rôle for the Church in the end of slavery -- in enforcing the sanctity of marriage, the Church intervened between master and slave, and did so as well in enforcing the sabbath and holidays. [250]  Moreover, the Church did view manumission as an act of charity, though it did not allow priests to manumit slaves, which would be alienating ecclesiastical property.  As the system of slavery broke down, this may have hastened the entry of some slaves into the new jobbágy class, formed by a merger of former slaves and landless retainers with déclassé castle servientes, who had earlier been termed jobbágyok.
 
As to the possibility that slaves were freed as a result of their own struggle as an oppressed class, that does not seem likely.  Although slave uprisings may have occurred elsewhere, they did not occur in Hungary.  There may, however, have been ways that the slaves made slave-ownership less attractive.  Shusharin sees class struggle in slaves who became bandit, who went fugitive, and who joined the pagan uprisings that rocked eleventh century Hungary. [251]  Ross Samson suggests that struggle against the slave economy might have taken the more prosaic form of "feigned incompetence, general recalcitrance, subterfuges, and sabotages." [252]  Slaves near the southern borders of Hungary, wishing to strike a blow at their masters, may even have joined the Bogomil heresy in Bosnia and Slavonia. [253]  It is not likely that such actions were a major cause for the decline of slavery in Hungary.  After all, slavery had flourished for centuries and the lot of the slaves had not improved.  Nonetheless, such activity would have raised the cost of maintaining slaves and might have encouraged nobles to look to serfdom as a lower-cost alternative.

Thus it is the economic issues, encapsulated in Professor Bloch's considerations of land use and reduction in supply of slaves, that were probably most important in the disappearance of slavery.  Indeed the entire legal and economic system of Hungary changed radically over it's first few centuries.  As the editors of the Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae wrote

"Over the hundred years separating the first laws of the kingdom from the decreta of the early twelfth century, Hungarian society changed from a kinship-based tributary system to one of royal, ecclesiastical, and secular landed estates and servile peasants." [254]

Thus, when land was held by the head of a clan, and was not really divisible into dependant units, populating his land with slaves would allow the lord to retain the fruits of any labour, and he would only bring in freemen if he could not afford enough slaves to exploit the land fully. [255]  Under King Stephen, "[s]izeable portions of clan possessions had been incorporated into the royal domain." [256]  "By the early twelfth century landed magnates seem to have brought large numbers of 'formerly free peasants' into seigneurial dependence." [257]  The first half of the thirteenth century, however, brought several changes in the agricultural economy of Hungary, perhaps the most important of which was the increase in importance of crop raising relative to animal husbandry, resulting in the division of large parts of seigneurial demesnes into rent-paying peasant holdings. [258]  Whereas slaves were perfect for tending  herds of cattle on a large, open, seigneurial demesne, the most efficient use of a lord's land for crop farming would be to divide it into dependent manses populated by serf families.  The control of the lord over the serf's person and the dependent land would be reduced, but income in the form of marketable crops could be increased due to more efficient use of smaller plots while the lord would also avoid the cost of maintaining a family of slaves.  The extension of seignieurial rights over free tenants in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, also reduced the former liberi to a much more easily controlled status, something like that of the serf in Western Europe, including not only payment of rent in kind, but also a certain amount of eneu (enõ) or robot, i.e. obligatory labour on the lord's demesne. [259]  Thus, as a  result of the amelioration of some slaves' status to a variety of servus casatus and the concurrent reduction of many free peasants to perpetual dependence, the two groups began to merge into a "personally free, but seignieurially dependent" class of jobbágyok. [260]  This process was only accelerated by the chaos of the Mongol invasion of 1241, that not only erased many legal distinctions among the surviving peasants, but also necessitated that landholders repopulate their lands with peasant hospites lured from the West.  Of course some Western Marxist writers find a paradox in the idea that a serf might work so much harder that both he and his lord are better off that a slave and his master, but that slavery still to a millenium to disappear. [261]  The benefit to both parties is, of course, the nature of an increase in economic efficiency, but as to why it took slavery so long to disappear, we must look to the institutions that had to be created so that a lord could take advantage of his wealth.
 
Finally, mention must be made of the rôle of slaves as emblems of wealth.  In the earliest periods of Hungarian history, wealth was not generally measured in monetary terms, as the Hungarians practiced a barter rather than a currency-based economy.  This was true even after the introduction of coinage, which remained rare and often served as simply one more emblem of wealth rather than as a medium of exchange.  Neither could land function as a demonstration of personal wealth, since land was held by the tribe or clan and often represented no more than traditional grazing areas.  Consequently, until the widespread use of coinage and the private ownership of land, the main indicators of personal wealth and importance must have been livestock and slaves, both of which suited the semi-nomadic lifestyle of the early Magyars. [262]  After the introduction of alienability, and therefore valuation, of land under St. Stephen and the eventual disappearance of the descensus as a form of property ownership, this function of slaveholding must have faded away to be replaced by land ownership as the primary means of demonstrating one's wealth.
 
If, as seems likely, the reason for the demise of slavery is to be sought in the greater economic efficiency of serfdom over slavery, as well as a slight encouragement of manumission by the Church, the question arises: why did slavery last as long as it did?  Moreover, why did slavery last longer in Hungary than in Western Europe?  Why did it not end during the reign of Stephen, when he introduced not only Christianity, but a system of comites and royal castles modelled on that of Germany?  Very likely part of the reason lies in the primitive nature of the Hungarian systems of land tenure.  Until well into the twelfth century, many powerful men held most of their lands as descensus, a descendant of the clan ownership of land practiced by the Hungarians of the tenth century.  Whereas land held as a donum of the King could be parcelled out to tenants, who would work their plots as well as the lord's praedium, land held as descensus was essentially all praedium, without the administrative  formalities of the mediaeval system of land tenure.  The issue before a lord in such an unsophisticated system was how to store the wealth and invest the capital that he had.  In the west, land could be acquired and peasants bound legally to it.  In a system that made less provision for the ordered ownership of land, the best method for a lord to keep control of productive forces was to own the labour itself.  Thus it is not surprising that slavery lasted in Hungary until approximately the period after the Tatar destruction, when all returning lords had to demonstrate their ownership of lands with written charters.  It is also, however, likely that slavery had ceased to play a major rôle in the Hungarian economy during the previous century, as the power of the Arpadian administration was felt throughout the country.  Indeed, it must have become obvious to landholders that the praedium was the least productive part of their estates.  Consequently, the amount of Hungarian land held as praedium dropped between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries from 45-50% to around 30%. [263]

Finally, perhaps the most systematic way to look at the benefits of slave ownership is to think about how wealth is stored and used productively by the ruling class of a society.  If the society is a true money-based economy, the most efficient way to store one's wealth is as money: it can be loaned out to produce income and is perfectly liquid, so it can be used to purchase land, labour, or goods at will.  If, as in most mediaeval economies, money is not in great supply and is not used for most transactions, wealth is probably best stored as land: the land can be parcelled out and leased in return for goods and services, while the tenants will take over the maintenance of it.  If, however, as in earlier Árpád dynasty Hungary, land was held by the clan, and there was not a well-developped system of land tenure, then wealth was probably best stored as labour in the form of slaves: it would require maintenance, but it was physically mobile and could produce income during its lifetime.  Consequently, once Hungary had developed the institutional framework for a land-based economy, it was only natural for lords to try to convert their slaves into more productive and lower-maintenance tenants.

Thus, for all of their early history, the Hungarian nobility owned slaves.  These slaves were not just foreigners captured in glorious wars of conquest or daring raids, many were born in Hungary and probably knew no language other than Hungarian.  Although the Church encouraged their manumission as an act of charity, the institution of slavery itself was never challenged.  The Church could hardly do so as a major slave-owner itself.  Nor could the slaves themselves afford any sort of protest that would actually come to the attention of their masters.  Eventually, slavery did fade away in Hungary, as in the rest of Europe, not because it was sinful or brutal, but because it was unnecessary and unprofitable.

1.  Quoted in István Fodor, ed., Saecula Hungariae:  -1000 (Budapest: Széchenyi Art Centre, 1985).

2.  Ibid.

3.  See e.g. Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfû, Magyar Történet, vol. I (Budapest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1939) 216-18, 318-20.

4.  Remig Békefi, A rabszolgaság Magyarországon az Árpádok alatt (Budapest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1901).

5.  Z.J. Kosztolnyik, From Coloman the Learned to Béla III (1095-1196) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 265, n. 266.

6. V.P. Shusharin, preface to Ignác Acsády, Istoriya vengerskogo krepostnogo krest'yanstva, trans. E.N. Eleonskaya (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Inostrannoi Literatury, 1959), 8.

7. Although it does not specifically pertain to Hungary, classic example of this tendency to fit the material of Eastern European history into a Western European mold may be found at M. Andreev and D. Angelov, Istoriya bolgarskogo gosudarstva i prava (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Inostrannoi Literatury, 1962), 51, where it is explained that Bulgarian society in the seventh century included only aristocratic landholders and semi-free peasants, a dualism characteristic of all early feudal political systems.

8. Ignác Acsády, Istoriya vengerskogo krepostnogo krest'yanstva, trans. E.N. Eleonskaya (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Inostrannoi Literatury, 1959), 24.

9.Emma Lederer, "La structure de la société hongroise du début du moyen-âge," Studia Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 45 (1960): 3.

10. Ibid.

11.  László Makkai in Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák, Tibor Frank eds., A History of Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 18.

12.  See László Makkai, "Les caractères originaux de l'histoire économique et sociale de l'Europe orientale pendant le Moyen Âge," Act Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 16 (1970): 261-87; and Jenõ Szûcs, "Megosztott parasztság -- egységesülo jobbágyság," Százodok 115 (1981): 3-65, 263-319.

13. The New Catholic Encyclopedia (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1967), 281.

14. Black's Law Dictionary, 6th ed. (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1990), 1388 [emphasis added].

15. Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy, trans. Howard B. Clarke (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974),  32.

16. Ibid., 31-32.

17. Marc Bloch, Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages, trans. William R. Beer (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1975), 19-21.

18. Makkai, "Les caractères originaux," 276.

19. Charles d'Eszlary, Histoire des Institutions Publiques Hongroises (Paris: Librairie Marcel Rivière, 1959), 170.

20. Duby, op. cit., 175.

21. Black's Law Dictionary, 1366.

22. Duby, op. cit.,  32.

23. Ibid.

24. John Kells Ingram, A History of Slavery and Serfdom (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1895), 78.

25. Charles Verlinden, L'Esclavage dans l'Europe médiévale (Bruges: Rijksuniversiteit te Gent, 1955), 7.

26. Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern 1492-1800 (London: Verso, 1997), 35 [quoting the code of Justinian].

27. Ibid., 38.

28. Josef Fleckenstein, Early Medieval Germany, trans. Bernard S. Smith (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1978), 34.

29. Ibid., 36.

30. Duby, op. cit., 183.

31. Timothy Reuter, Germany in the Early Middle Ages: 800-1056 (New York: Longman, 1991), 97.

32. Ibid., 99.

33. Duby, op. cit., 71-72.

34. Reuter, op. cit., 231.

35. Heinrich Fichtenau, Living in the Tenth Century, trans. Patrick J. Geary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 372.

36. Verlinden, op. cit., 219.

37. Ibid., 220.

38. Ibid., 221.

39. Jean W. Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages 1000-1500 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 93.

40. Blackburn, op. cit., 39.

41. Ibid., 39.  Compare this with the nearly conetmporary Hungarian laws of St. Ladislas, which not only recognized the validity of sale abroad, but prescribed it as punishment for several offences.  Infra, p. 28 et seq.

42. Ibid., 43.

43. Ibid., 44.

44. Verlinden, op. cit., 221.

45. Piotr Górecki, Economy, Society, and Lordship in Medieval Poland 1100-1250 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992), 67-74.

46. Sedlar, op. cit., 96

47. Górecki, op. cit., 58-59. [Jews were also subject to the same toll as they were often classified as slaves. Their official status as slaves of the monarch protected them from local laws in some mediaeval polities.]

48. William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 63.

49. S.C. Rowell, Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-Central Europe 1295-1345 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 21.

50. Ibid., 73.

51. Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750-1200 (London: Longman, 1996), 119.

52. Ibid., 145.

53. See  Medieval Russian Laws, trans. George Vernadsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947).

54. Blackburn, op. cit., 55.

55. Phillips, op. cit., 97.

56. Ibid., 98-99.

57. Blackburn, op. cit., 38-39.

58. Ibid., 50.

59. Ibid., 50-51.

60. Ibid., 52.

61. Ibid.

62. Phillips, op. cit., 43.

63. Peter I. Hidas, preface to Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae 1000-1526: Laws of the Mediaeval Kingdom of Hungary 1000-1526, eds. J. Bak, Gy. Bónis, J.R. Sweeney (Bakersfield: Charles Schlacks,  Jr., Publisher, 1989), xi.

64. Andor Csizmadia, Kálmán Kovács, and László Asztalos, Istoriya vengerskogo gosudarstva i prava, trans. G.E. Bogomolova, V.M. Zaikin, and B.Y. Zhelnitski (Moscow: Yuridicheskaya Literatura, 1986), 42-43.

65. Gábor Hamza, "Die Gesetzgebung Stephans des Heiligen und Europa," Ungarn-Jahrbuch 22 (Munich: Verlag Ungarisches Institut, 1996): 32.

66. J. Bak, Gy. Bónis, J.R. Sweeney, Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae 1000-1526: Laws of the Mediaeval Kingdom of Hungary 1000-1526 (Bakersfield: Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher, 1989), xxxviii. [hereafter DRMH]

67. Ibid., 142.

68. Békefi, op. cit., 6.

69. d'Eszlary, op. cit., 62.

70. Ibid., 62-63.

71. Ibid., 169.

72. György Györffy, King St. Stephen of Hungary, trans. Peter Doherty (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 9.

73. Ibid., 10-11.

74. Quoted in Fodor, op. cit.

75. d'Eszlary, op. cit., 63.

76. Ignác Acsády, A magyar jobbágyság története, 2nd ed. (Budapest: Faust Imre Kiadása, 1944) 14-15.

77. Györffy, op. cit., 24-25.

78. "Így a magyar nép két, egymástól jogilag szigorúan elválasztott rétegbõl, a szabadokból és a rabszolgákból állt s ez utóbbiak között voltak magyarok is, olyanok, akik szabadságukat büntetésbõl elvesztették." Acsády,op. cit., 30.

79. Sugar et al., op. cit., 10.

80. Bloch, op. cit.,  27.

81. Györffy, op. cit., 29.

82. Ibid.

83. Ibid., 29-30.

84. Ibid., 31 [emphasis added].

85. Sugar et al., op. cit., 10.

86. Györffy, op. cit., 85-86.

87. Corpus Juris Hungarici (Buda: Typis Regiae Universitatis, 1779), 129, n. D.

88. Györffy, op. cit., 86.

89.  Ibid.

90. Ibid., 159.

91. Ibid., 86.

92. Ibid., 160.

93. Ibid., 159-60.

94. d'Eszlary, op. cit., 165-66.

95. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.2, DRMH 9.  This seems to be an expansion and clarification of the divisibility and assignability of land granted in S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.6, DRMH 3.

96. Ibid.

97. Ibid., 167

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid., 168

100. Sugar et al., op. cit., 18.

101. All references to the laws of Hungary that appear in this paper will be based on J. Bak, Gy. Bónis, J.R. Sweeney, eds. Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae 1000-1526: Laws of the Mediaeval Kingdom of Hungary 1000-1526 (Bakersfield: Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher, 1989) [hereafter DRMH], which does take into account the Admont Codex, but certain English language quotations may reflect the original found in the Corpus Juris Hungarici (Buda: Typis Regiae Universitatis, 1779) [hereafter CJH].

102. Györffy, op. cit., 136.

103. Ibid., 135.

104. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.1, DRMH 9.

105. Ibid.

106. Cap.Col.Reg. de Jud., c.1, DRMH 68.

107. DRMH 82, n.2.

108. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.7, DRMH 3.

109. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.14, DRMH 4.  This provision also seems to indict the master for not keeping control of the slave.  In contrast, the Frankish law would have the two masters divide the services of the murdering slave.  Katherine Fischer Drew, The Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 97, 222.

110. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.3, DRMH 9.

111. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.14, DRMH 4.

112. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.37.

113. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.14, DRMH 4.

114. Ibid.

115. Fr. Békefi states that while there was no secular law against killing one's own slave, the Canon Law forbade the arbitrary killing (önkényes megölés) of a slave.  Nonetheless, he cites only a source on French and German law, and Canon Law did not begin to be universal until well into the eleventh century.  Békefi, op. cit., 19.

116. Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 16.

117. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.6, DRMH 9

118. Ibid.

119. Ibid.

120. Hamza, op. cit., 32.

121. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.7, DRMH 10.

122. Ibid.

123. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.31, DRMH 7.

124. Ibid.

125. Ibid.

126. Supra, p.19.

127. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.20, DRMH 5.

128. Hamza, op. cit., 30.

129. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.II, c.18, DRMH 11.  Although not in the Admont Codex, this provision is included in the Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungarici.  The editors feel that it probably is a part of either the preceding or following decreta, dealing respectively with armed battery and conspiracy against the King.  Given the treasonous nature of a bondsman murdering his lord, it is probably part of chapter 19.

130. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.29, DRMH 7.

131. Drew, Laws of the Salian Franks, 87.

132. Drew, Lombard Laws, 33.

133. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.29, DRMH 7.

134. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.28, DRMH 7.

135. Ibid.

136. Ibid.

137. Ibid.

138. Drew, Laws of the Salian Franks, 87.

139. Békefi, op. cit. 20.

140. Ibid.

141. Ibid., 21.

142. Ibid.

143. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.25, DRMH 6.

144. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.21, DRMH 5-6.

145. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.22, DRMH 6.

146. This agape is not the abstract quality of agape mentioned in the New Testament, nor is it the eucharistic meal of the early Church, rather it is apparently a commemorative feast to consecrate either the manumission or the death of the husband.  DRMH 82, n.29.

147. S.Steph.Dec.Lib.I, c.18, DRMH 5.

148. DRMH xlii.

149. Kosztolnyik, op. cit., 1-2.

150. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.1, DRMH 56.

151. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.3, DRMH 56.

152. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.2, DRMH 56.

153. Bloch, op. cit., 12.

154. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.10, DRMH 57.

155. Ibid.

156. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.25, DRMH 59.

157. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.30, DRMH 59.

158. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.40, DRMH 61.

159. Ibid.

160. Fr. Békefi notes the instance of a slave being sold with his family and "all his possessions" (összes birtokával).  Békefi, op. cit., 36.

161. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.I, c.40, DRMH 61.

162. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.1, DRMH 12-13.

163. Ibid.

164. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.2, DRMH 13.

165. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.12, DRMH 15.

166. Ibid.

167. Ibid.  Of course, only a few decreta earlier, the slave is being treated once again as one item in a list of the various sorts of property a murderer might own.  S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.8, DRMH 14.

168. Ibid.

169. Ibid.

170. Ibid.

171. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.9, DRMH 14.

172. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.10, DRMH 14.

173. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.6, DRMH 13-14.

174. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, cc. 6, 7, DRMH 19-20.

175. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.11, DRMH 14.  This law demonstrates the difficulty of translating the word servus. In two consecutive sentences, the editors of the DRMH translate it as "bondman" and "slave." Apparently, the earlier sentence, referring to servus inhabitants of Hungary who accompany a nobleman on the invasion of another nobleman's house were taken to be some sort of dependant other than a chattel slave, while the foreign servus who does the same thing was taken to be a slave.

176. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.17, DRMH 15-16.

177. Ibid.

178. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.II, c.14, DRMH 15.

179. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.8, DRMH 20.

180. Ibid.

181. Ibid.

182. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.4, DRMH 19.

183. Ibid.

184. Ibid.

185. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.5, DRMH 19.

186. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.8, DRMH 20.

187. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.29, DRMH 23.

188. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.13, DRMH 21.

189. Ibid.

190. Ibid.  The word servus is translated here as "freeman," but that is very likely an editorial mistake.

191. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.21, DRMH 22.

192. S.Lad.Dec.Lib.III, c.2, DRMH 18.

193. Ibid.

194. Syn.Strig., c.54, DRMH 65.

195. Dec.Col.Reg., c.57, DRMH 30.

196. Dec.Col.Reg., c.47, DRMH 29.

197. Dec.Col.Reg., c.23, DRMH 27.

198. Dec.Col.Reg., c.74, DRMH 31.

199. Cap.Col.Reg. de Iud., c.1, DRMH 68.

200. Syn.Strig., c.62, DRMH 66.

201. Dec.Col.Reg., c.75, DRMH 31.

202. Syn.Strig., c.87, DRMH 67.  The word servus is translated here as "bondman," but seems much more likely to mean slave, since it is put in a dichotomous contrast with those who are free (si liber est).

203. Syn.Strig., c.15, DRMH 63.

204. Syn.Strig., c.28, DRMH 64.

205. Syn.Strig., c.27, DRMH 63.

206. Syn.Strig., c.69, DRMH 66.

207. Syn.Strig., c.67, DRMH 66.

208. Syn.Strig., c.90, DRMH 67.

209. Syn.Strig., c.50, DRMH 65.

210. Syn.Strig., c.51, DRMH 65.

211. Ibid.  The English translation in the DRMH says that, in the case of a husband being unable to prove adultery, it is the wife who is punished, but this appears to be a typographical error.

212. Syn.Strig., c.52 actually says "[s]i quis puellam rapuerit vel violaverit, si nobilis est, canonice cum compositione subjaceat."  The phrase "si nobilis est" does not indicate gender and could refer either to the quis or to the puella.  It is interpreted in the DRMH as referring to the offender, but then no punishment would be prescribed for a non-noble rapist.  I interpret the phrase as referring to the abductee, thus providing no punishment for the rape of a non-noble maiden.

213. Syn.Strig., c.52, DRMH 65.  A compositio was a payment in compensation for a crime other than murder.  Katherine Fisher Drew, The Lombard Laws (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973)  8.

214. Ibid.  The text says that this is in accordance with the laws of St. Ladislas, but this either refers to a law that has not survived, or it may mistakenly refer to the decretum of St. Stephen concerning fornication with another's slave.  See supra pp. 22-23.

215. Syn.Strig., c.53, DRMH 65.

216. Syn.Strig., c.79, DRMH 67.

217. Syn.Strig., c.54, DRMH 65.  The word used in the text is debitor, but it is often translated as slave in agreement with c.79.  DRMH 130, n.48.

218. Dec.Col.Reg., c.42, DRMH 29.

219. Dec.Col.Reg., c.41, DRMH 29.  The wording of this text is actually quite confusing, and the requirement of having half of one's head shaven could apply to the slave, the new master, or even the King! The shaving of the slave seems the most likely solution.

220. Dec.Col.Reg., c.43, DRMH 29.

221. Dec.Col.Reg., c.44, DRMH 29.

222. Dec.Col.Reg., c.19, DRMH 27.

223. Dec.Col.Reg., c.77, DRMH 32.

224. Roy C. Cave and Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Mediaeval Economic History (New York: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1936), 277.

225. Ibid.

226. Ibid.

227. Békefi, op. cit., 35.

228. Kosztolnyik, op. cit., 283.

229. Békefi, op. cit., 8.

230. Ibid., 17.

231. Verlinden, op. cit., 221.

232. There is some question as to the authenticity of this decretum, as it is not mentioned in mediaeval sources and is only extant in an eighteenth century transcription.  DRMH 133.

233. 10 Augusti 1279, c.5, DRMH 71.

234. Békefi, op. cit., 31.

235. 10 Augusti 1279, c.8, DRMH 72.  The term servus is translated as "servant" by the DRMH because they are to be returned "with all their goods" and a slave would not actually own anything.  It could easily be, however, that the goods mentioned belong to the Cuman master and were stolen by the slave when he fled. As the Cumans had only entered Hungary a few decades before and still practiced a nomadic lifestyle, slavery would be the most likely form of servitude, especially considering 10 Augusti 1279, c.5.

236. Bloch, op. cit., 19.

237. Duby, op. cit., 168.

238. Reuter, op. cit., 231;Cave and Coulson, op. cit., 277.

239. Bloch, op. cit., 30.

240. DRMH 136.

241. Sugar et al., op. cit., 33.

242. d'Eszlary, op. cit., 174.

243. Pelteret, op. cit., 251.

244. E.g. Samson, op. cit.

245. Gal 3:27-28.

246. Békefi, op. cit., passim.

247. Acsády, op. cit., 15.

248. Pelteret, op. cit., 255.

249. Bloch, op. cit., 11.

250. Samson, op. cit., 112-13.

251. V.P. Shusharin, preface to Ignác Acsády, Istoriya vengerskogo krepostnogo krest'yanstva, trans. E.N. Eleonskaya (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Inostrannoi Literatury, 1959) 6.

252. Samson, op. cit. 106.

253. Ibid., at 7.

254. DRMH xxxix.

255. Acsády, op. cit., 16.

256. DRMH xlv.

257. DRMH xlvii.

258. DRMH l.

259. Acsády, op. cit., 18-20.

260. Ibid.

261. Ross Samson, "The End of Early Medieval Slavery," in Allen J. Frantzen and Douglas Moffat, eds. The Work of Work: Servitude, Slavery, and Labor in Medieval England (Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1994), 102.

262. While in Europe there are few examples of slaves being valued not only for their labour but also as emblems of wealth, this was a primary function of slaves among the Indians of the Pacific Northwest of the United States.  Tom McFeat, ed. Indians of the North Pacific Coast (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967), 134-35.  Moreover, although slaves were not the most common unit of wealth among the Romans, the man without even one slave was certainly considered a pauper worthy of mockery.  see Carmen XXIV of Gaius Valerius Catullus Carmina (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958) 18.

263. Makkai, "Les caractères originaux," 277.

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* Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University, November 1998.  Read and accepted by the faculty of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies in partial fulfillment of the M.A. degree.  Chairman, Gustav Bayerle, Ph.D. Thesis Committee: Ignác Romsics, Ph.D.; Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, Ph.D.

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