Jews and Carolingians — Cooperation, Publicity, Slave Trade and Administrative Resource

Abstract

The prohibitions on the possession of Christian slaves, adopted at the beginning of the 5th century, squeezed Jews out of the industrial sphere of activity, i.e. from agriculture and handicrafts, to trade and financial and economic services, previously not very revered in the Jewish environment. Since the trade of that period was predominantly the slave trade, Jews became the main slave traders of the early Middle Ages. The texts of sources of the 5th-7th centuries indicate that during this period of time Jewish merchants were not public and hid under Greek pseudonyms — Anthony, Vasily, Priscus. The Saxon Wars of Charlemagne, which began in 770, became manna from heaven for Jews - they gained access to the almost unlimited demographic resource of the pagans, whose sale in slavery was not limited to the Catholic Church. By gifts of Asian luxury items at the beginning of the 9th century Jews were able to significantly strengthen their position in the French court. In 825, Jews received official bulls from Louis the Pious on permission to sell foreign slaves (mancipia peregrina) to countries located “below our empire” (infra imperium nostrum). Here, for the first time, we see elements of publicity — the judgments contain the names of Rabbi Donatus and Samuel (most likely from Paris), David and Joseph from Lyon and Abram from Saragossa. From the letters of Bishop Agobard of Lyons for the period 826-828 follows that these permissions were not purely declarative — in the event of conflicts between Jewish slave traders and the local administration, a “Master of Jewish Affairs” (Iudęorum magister) arrived and settled the situation. In conclusion, we comment on the economy of the Elba-Cordoba slave trade route and give a brief overview of the Jewish slave trade of the 9—11th centuries.