Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DoSSE (Domestic Slavery and Sexual Exploitation in the Households of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, from Constantine to c. AD 900 / AH 287)
Berichtszeitraum: 2023-04-01 bis 2024-09-30
DoSSE Project analyses domestic slaveholding practices, and in particular the vulnerability of people enslaved within the home to sexual exploitation, in the late Roman Empire and in its successor societies in Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, from the early fourth century to the early tenth century AD. The Project brings together a diverse team of researchers to engage in a comparative investigation into every available historical source from across the whole of the greater Mediterranean world. The goal is not merely to uncover a wealth of information about an important but understudied aspect of late ancient society, but also to demonstrate how the bodily vulnerability of domestic slaves impacted wider historical developments.
As late Roman society transformed into Latin Christendom, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Caliphate, profound changes occurred to the ways in which people thought about themselves and others, the ways in which they related to one another, and the manner in which they reorganised themselves, household by household, into new societies. Domestic slaves formed an important component, conceptually and in practice, of the household; their presence shaped the household environment and its interpersonal dynamics, thereby directly influencing the social transformations that ended the ancient world. The Project will propose an enriched understanding of the transformation of the late Roman Empire that foregrounds the impact of domestic slaveholding practices in that dynamic process.
Late Antiquity proved to be formative in the development of the three monotheistic faiths that remain with us today, as it witnessed the rise of the Christian Church, the consolidation of rabbinic Judaism, and the emergence of Islam. All three religions developed their ethnical and social teachings within a slaveholding society in which domestic slaves were vulnerable to sexual exploitation as part of a wider system of honour and hierarchy. As slaveholding fades from view in contemporary societies, its imprint on those ethical teachings becomes more difficult to see, yet no more significant. By developing an understanding of this practice as a shared inheritance from the late Roman world, DoSSE Project opens new avenues for dialogue and for critical reflection on the role of tradition and the responsibility of developing an informed understanding of authoritative religious texts.
As late Roman society transformed into Latin Christendom, the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic Caliphate, profound changes occurred to the ways in which people thought about themselves and others, the ways in which they related to one another, and the manner in which they reorganised themselves, household by household, into new societies. Domestic slaves formed an important component, conceptually and in practice, of the household; their presence shaped the household environment and its interpersonal dynamics, thereby directly influencing the social transformations that ended the ancient world. The Project will propose an enriched understanding of the transformation of the late Roman Empire that foregrounds the impact of domestic slaveholding practices in that dynamic process.
Late Antiquity proved to be formative in the development of the three monotheistic faiths that remain with us today, as it witnessed the rise of the Christian Church, the consolidation of rabbinic Judaism, and the emergence of Islam. All three religions developed their ethnical and social teachings within a slaveholding society in which domestic slaves were vulnerable to sexual exploitation as part of a wider system of honour and hierarchy. As slaveholding fades from view in contemporary societies, its imprint on those ethical teachings becomes more difficult to see, yet no more significant. By developing an understanding of this practice as a shared inheritance from the late Roman world, DoSSE Project opens new avenues for dialogue and for critical reflection on the role of tradition and the responsibility of developing an informed understanding of authoritative religious texts.
The DoSSE Project team have engaged in a sweeping survey of the sources for late antique society. Each genre has posed its own challenges. Legal sources offer what looks to be clear and straightforward rules, yet these need to be connected to actual practice. Documentary sources are often incompletely preserved. Narrative texts were written for complex and sometimes obscure motives. Theological works and their idealised vision seem disconnected from lived experience. The Project team has developed integrated methodologies that can both analyse specific forms of text and also put those forms into dialogue with materials written in different places, at different times, for different audiences, or in different languages. In these materials, slaves (and especially people enslaved within the home) are rarely discussed for their own sake, and they appear as objects of discussion rather than as individuals with their own voice. Yet they appear frequently, in unexpected places. The problems created by the sexual exploitation of slaves—from questions about the legitimacy of their offspring, to the potentially disruptive relationships they might form—were a frequent concern for the authors and audiences of late antique texts. It has been the work of the Project thus far to uncover those moments in the sources and put them into dialogue with other materials, and thereby to reconstruct the dynamics and impact of domestic slaveholding practices.
The Project team have discovered the profound extent to which the presence and vulnerability of slaves within the home shaped late antique society and the historical sources that it left behind. Nearly all of the texts produced—some of which have since become authoritative materials in religious traditions—were written by freeborn people who had personal experience with domestic slavery and the sexual exploitation of slaves (directly or indirectly). As such, ideas about domestic slaves and their bodily vulnerability shaped all sorts of beliefs and practices, from the manner in which a household ought to be governed, to that of a kingdom, the Empire, or even the divine realm under the mastery of God. Ideas about marriage and the proper ethical behaviour of spouses was deeply informed by slave ownership and ideas about the sexual use of slaves. Did a husband purchase a wife as he would a slave? Some late antique authors thought so. Childhood was deeply impacted by ideas about slaves as perpetually immature people. Notions of gender were crafted together with questions of status and identity. Fears about the presence of foreign, non-Roman people within the former confines of the Empire changed the ways in which domestic slaves were treated (and vice versa). We have only begun to uncover the depths of these connections and their historical significance, but we already have a wealth of material to share with the wider scholarly community.