We often don’t think as much about slavery in the Eastern Roman Empire as we do about it in the Western, but the fact is, it existed, though perhaps not to the extent as its western predecessor, at least after the middle and late periods. In the medieval period, enslaving Christians was forbidden and as many of the Slavic countries converted to Christianity, this impinged upon the source for slaves. Before this occurrence, many Slavs were brought down the Dnieper by Norse-Russian traders. According to Youval Rotman in his Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, the Greek word “δοῦλος” (doulos) was synonymous with “σκλάβος” (sklavos), from the root word for Slav. Slavs were often the unfortunate ones sold in the slave markets of Constantinople.
He headed towards the Mese, wending this way and that, making a slow progress through the throngs that crowded around the stalls. Some had coin; many did not but loitered anyway to look at the fine things that were brought from afar. A line of slaves stood in the hot sun, their wrists shackled before them. Their sun-burnt skin and clothes trimmed in red thread marked them as Slavs. They were unused to the heat and baking sun of Constantinople and their faces bore a sheen of sweat.
The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown
Though castration as at various times outlawed, it was practiced widely and a castrated male slave could command three times the amount of an intact boy. For this reason, parents often had their younger male children castrated, in the hopes they might find places in upper class homes or perhaps even the Great Palace. Often, however, the sad reality was that many of these children ended up as catamati – male prostitutes. However, eunuchs, both slave and free represented a category of positions that often were only open to them, often on governmental and imperial positions.
In the Serpentine Key, Nikolas was just such a eunuch who had been castrated by his parents in the hopes he would end up serving in the Great Palace. He did indeed secure a position as a Keeper of the Doors, but at a great price and his tragic story was only one of many of his social status.
As in most societies, slaves could not have any ownership of their own, nor give evidence in court. However by the ninth century this had begun to change and they began to gain some modicum of property rights. By the end of the medieval period, slavery had largely declined to the point that few actually owned slaves any longer.
Byzantine slavery was largely an urban phenomenon and few rural landholders could afford many slaves. In the Great Palace, those serving within its walls were both hired servants and enslaved persons. Many wealthy people provided for the care of their slaves after their death and for the education of their children. There was also a special church service specifically for the manumission of slaves.
In The Secret Testament the crumbling rural estate that Sophia inherits does come with some slaves as well as hired help. They knew only the farm as their home and would have been hard pressed to begin a life anywhere else. It is this continuum that Ulf recognizes when he lingers over the possibility of selling the farm in Anatolia after Sophia’s death. A steward would have been a high ranking servant but never a slave, considered trusted enough to oversee the running of a farm, especially in the absence of the owner, in this case, Ulf.
The farm seemed to be thriving under Lukyan’s stewardship. It was hard to find an honest steward. He had stood one last time looking out over the land before he had ridden away. Micah was right. He came here not just to look over things, but to feed a tightening band of melancholy. He should have set it aside after all these years, but he could not. It had occurred to him several times to sell the farm, pay the servants and disperse them, giving freedom to the two or three slaves who were still part and parcel with the property. He was scarcely ever there anyway. He knew if he did so, however, he was sending all of them away from their home and everything familiar to them. Also, there would be a finality to it, he could not bear. It would be as if in doing so, he closed the door to everything he and his family had shared there. He languished in indecision.
The Secret Testament by G.S. Brown
Often slavery is equated in the modern mind with people from Africa, but as the Byzantines primarily enslaved those whom they captured in war and these were often people to the north, east and west of them, African slavery is rather unlikely in the scope of their civilization. Slaves mentioned are almost always sourced from the Slavic lands, though some are mentioned in the sources as being captured in war from the Saracens with whom the Byzantine were at war.
In rural areas, there was a system somewhat akin to feudalism, but might also be compared to the system of sharecropping in the rural south. These people leased the land they farmed and so technically were not enslaved, but were likely so connected to the land, that they were never able to leave.
Slavery, like castration and many other things in Byzantine culture, was questioned, especially in a Biblical context, but it never entirely went away. It is also likely that because of the common practice of bound tenancy (basically serfdom) it was considered to be technically not slavery in practice, many would not have considered themselves as slave owners. Just as child labor and many other forms of slavery continued in the western world long after slavery had supposedly been abolished and in face, the practice of white slavery continued well after abolition, Byzantines could look the other way at whatever might not be in practice considered true slavery.