User:Gilgamesz84/Slavery of the Slavic people

Slavery of the Slavs - a long-term process of mass selling of Slavs as slaves, mainly to Arabs, and also to Greeks, Italians, French, Turks and other nations; led by the Jews, who considered the Slavs to be Canaanites, and to a large extent by the Italians, Germans, Scandinavians and Tatars. The social phenomenon of accepting the special enslavement of the Slavs in Western and Southern Europe in the Middle Ages. Resulting in deonymisation of the ethnonym Slavic in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Germanic and Romance languages. The appellative becoming a colloquial term for a slave, and finally a common word meaning slave.

Slav = slave?
In the early Middle Ages, the Slavs were first called Wends or Wenets (Greek: Ούενέδοι, Ενετοί; Latin: Venetī, Venedi; Proto-German: *wenh₁étos; German: Wenden, which survived until the 20th century). The original form, according to researchers, contained the suffix -et-. It was a name given to the Slavs but not used by them. A name mentioned by ancient scholars: Pliny the Elder, Publius Cornelius Tacitus and Claudius Ptolemy. They described the people living more or less in the territory of present-day Poland. By some researchers considered to be Proto-Slavs. The preserved sources from between the 3rd and 5th century don't mention the Wends. It it believed that their name could have been transferred to the Slavs in the 6th century, in the period of the Slavic arrival. (Ptolemy also mentioned the Slovenes (Σουοβενοι) on the Volga). Between the 5th century BC and the 6th century CE southern European merchants organized expeditions to obtain amber, leather, beaver fur and wax from the Wends land. It was also a goal of geographical research.

6th century sources mention Slavs by name. Jordanes, in Getica (551 AD), which contains a summary of Cassiodorus' Gothic History (526–533), listed three tribes "coming from one line" of the Veneti. The Veneti, the Antes and the Sclaveni. The Veneti occupied the southern shores of the Baltic Sea and the lands on the lower Vistula, the Antes the lands between the Dnieper and the Dniester, and the Sklaveni between the Tisza, Dniester and the Danube. Procopius of Caesarea in the VIII Book of Wars from 554 AD, gives more information about the organization, customs and beliefs of the Antes and Sclavins. He gives latter name in five forms: Skláboi (Σκλάβοι), Sklabēnoí (Σκλαβηνοί), Sklauēnoí (Σκλαυηνοί), Sthlabēnoí (Σθλαβηνοί) and Sklabînoi (Σκλαβῖνοι). The form Sclavi was used by Jonas of Bobbio in the 7th century in the Life of St. Columban. The geographical name Slavic land - Sklauinia (Σκλαυινία) was first used by Theophylact Simocatta at the end of the 6th century to designate the lands north of the Danube.

These names are the Greek form of the ethnonym Slověni in Slavic languages. According to the most popular of several etymologies, the name Slavs, derives from the noun slovo (a word) and means "people speaking understandably" (as opposed to the Germans (Scs. Nemici), meaning "not speaking" understandably). The second popular etymology is rooted in the word slava (glory, fame), explained in various ways. Regardless of the actual meaning of the ethnonym, the Slavic root Slav/Slov acquired the form Sklab (Σκλαβ) in Greek. The letter "b" (β) in Middle Greek was already pronounced "v". The consonant "k" is an epenthesis resulting from the absence of the consonant cluster "sl" in ancient Greek. The first Slavs/Sclaveni encountered by early medieval authors were warriors pressing from the north on the Eastern Roman Empire They were described by Procopius of Caesarea as brave barbarians. In the next five centuries, in addition to the name Wends, various Latin and Greek forms were used in ethnic and geographical meaning, without pejorative overtones. Fredegar mentioned Slavs known also as Wends. The Bavarian Geographer used the term Slavic nations (gentes Sclavorum = Sclavi). Adam of Bremen used the terms Slavi and Sclavania, extensively describing the Polabian Slavs. Helmold in the Chronicle of the Slavs (Chronica Sclavorum) used the expression "all Slavia" (universa Slavia). At the turn of the 10th/11th century, Sclavinia was one of the four equal parts, next to Italy, Germania and Gaul, to form the renewed Roman Empire.

At that time, the abduction of Slavs as slaves had been going on for three hundred years. Conducted mainly by Jewish merchants, usually identified with Radhanites. From the tenth century, along with the gradual conquest of Polabian region, this trade was locally engaged by Germans, and in the Mediterranean Sea - Italians, mainly Venetians. As a result, the ethnonym Slav was deonymized, gradually becoming a synonym for slave. At the end of the Middle Ages it became a common word meaning slave. Consequently, in most Western European languages, the word meaning "slave" is genetically related to the word Slav, e.g. German Sklave, Dutch slaaf, French esclave, Spanish esclavo, Portuguese escravo, Danish slave, Swedish slaaf, Welsh slaf, Breton sklav.

Prof. Charles Verlinden (1907–1996), a Belgian medievalist from the University of Ghent, the author of a number of works on slavery, in his analysis L'origine de Sclavus = esclave, proved that deonymization took place first in Germany, then in Venice, which was a center of trade Slavic slaves, and then in other countries. He provided examples that in different areas at that time, the names of different groups served as synonyms for slaves. The name of the Celtic Brigands became synonymous in French and English with looters and brigandages; the same happened with the Vandals. Prof. Mario Alinei (1926–2018), an Italian linguist, specialist in semantics at Utrecht University and chairman of the UNESCO Atlas Linguarum Europae project, emphasized that “All historical sources undeniably indicate that the Slavic area was the main reservoir of slaves throughout the early Middle Ages, starting probably from the 6th century and peaking around the 10th century. This preference for slaves of Slavic origin was so strong that, as a result, all slaves became Slavs by metonymy".

Mario Alinei argued that the process of deonymization of the name Slav in Latin took place even before the 10th century: "most philologists and historians who have discussed this problem tend to read slave instead of Slav in many earlier sources". The French romanist Auguste Brachet (1845–1898) claimed that the beginning of the association was the arrival and settlement of a large group of Slavic prisoners of war by Charlemagne, and deonymization took place in the 10th century. The Austrian art historian Ernst Diez (1878–1961) saw its origins in the German Sklave, which associated Slavs enslaved by the Germans with slaves as such. The German philologist Gustav Körting (1845–1913) claimed that originally the term referred to Slavic prisoners of war. The word passed from Germany to Italy, where it was appellation and penetrated into the other Romance languages and back into German. However, the German romanist Gottfried Baist (1853–1920) argued with Körting, pointing out that it is impossible that the concept of Sklave - slave was born in Germany, since the Slavs were called by German Wends. Therefore it must have originated in Italy and then made its way to Germany. However, Charles Verlinden argued that the term familias sclavorum in Otto I's first grant to the church in Magdeburg (937 AD) could not have a purely ethnic meaning, but had a legal meaning. This is even more evident in the second grant from the same year and in the third one from 939. The issue was strictly about slaves, and not all Slavs (Wends) in Germany were enslaved. There were also slaves of German origin, named in another document mancipia teutonica. The customs tariff from Koblenz from the end of the 11th century stipulated that Jews paid 4 denarii for each "Slav" purchased. In the Hansisches Urkundenbuch containing the older version, the form is used: Iudei pro unoquoque sclavo emticio debent 4 denarios, and in the version from the early 12th century: de sclavo empticio 4 denarii. This is the first unambiguous use of the term in Germany. Nevertheless, some researchers believe that the Latin term Sclavus in the sense of slave was used in Germany as early as the 10th and 11th centuries, that is, during the intensified trade in Slavic slaves by Jews and the German conquest of territories inhabited by Slavs. After the cessation of the conquests in the mid-12th century, this identification temporarily disappears there, only to return in the 13th century as a result of the intensification of the Slavic slave trade by the Italians.

In the 10th century, the Greek sklábos (σκλάβος) began to replace the existing doûlos (δοῦλος – slave/servant) and andrápodon (ἀνδράποδον – captive). The Italian word schiavo – slave (from Schiavonus) comes from the Florentine dialect. In Venetian it was first sciavo, then it evolved into sciao, and finally form ciao appeared (also in the Lombard dialect). It is a contraction of sc'ia(v)o and means [your] slave! It replaced the old Latin greeting servus!, which dates back to the times of ancient Rome and means [your] slave! It was a salutation which slaves greeted their masters. The form servus! is still being used for hello in Poland and Germany.

The oldest use of the word esclave in Old French is found in the poetry of Benoît de Sainte-Maure of Normandy from 1175. Robert de Boron in Burgundy used the term les Esclos at the time. Sclave entered the Middle English language from French in the 13th century (slaue in the 16th century, slave from the 17th century), displacing Wealh (Welsh, Breton) previously synonymous with slave and Old English þeow and derived from Old Norse þræl. The derived abstract noun slavery is recorded only from the mid-sixteenth century, and the verb enslave (to make a slave) from the mid-seventeenth century.

The deonymization of the name Slav passed from vernacular languages to Latin commonly in the 13th century. Classical Latin does not contain the words sclāvus/slāvus. Slave/servant is defined by the words servŭs, ancillă, vēnālǐs and mancĭpĭŭm. Denoting a slave as an object of trade. The latter word was used in Latin documents from the Early Middle Ages to describe Slavic slaves (e.g. mancipia slavanica) driven by Jews to Arab Spain through the Frankish states. Examples are found in the letter of Archbishop Agobard to Emperor Louis the Pious from AD 826, or in the Magdeburg document from AD 937. Still in the 11th and 12th century, the name Slav had a parallel ethnic meaning. Documents from Lombardy and Venice use the words mancipium and servus for slave in this period. Also German documents mention mancipium and captivus (captive). The Venetian Codice diplomatico Barese from AD 1057 mentions "a certain slave Zita from the line of the Slavs" (unam ancillam Zitam bonam ex genere Sclaborum). Similary the Venetian text from AD 1121 about a woman named Ducatella (Ducatella, que ancilla fuit ex genere Sclavorum).

The oldest Latin-language documents confirming the deonymisation of the name Slavs, which are cited by Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange, in his Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis, come from the 13th century and explain that the Slavs (capital letters) are synonymous with captives or slaves/servants (servi). The English chronicler Matthew Paris in 1252 explained that the Slavs (Sclavi, Esclavi) is the colloquial name of all Christian captives (omnibus Christianis captivis, quos vulgariter Esclavos appellamus; Christianis Sclavis, sic namque vocantur captivi). Card. Jacques de Vitry wrote similarly about Sclavas vel servas. The Saxon Mirror uses these terms in the sense of a slave. In one of the rituals of the Templars exists an expression servants Slavs: Nos namque promittimus esse servi Sclavi dominorum infirmorum. In some documents from the thirteenth century, Slavs and Slavic women are one of the categories of service, e.g. Regestum Albo Domus publicæ Tolosanæ from Navarre enumerates: servi et ancillæ, Sclavi et Sclavæ. In Germany, the expression Slavic servants (Schlavi and Sclavi servientes) was also used. The 1288 treaty of the Republic of Genoa with king Leo III of Armenia used the term sclavis generally as slaves; similarly in other Italian documents of the time. At that time, in the eyes of Westerners, the Slavs occupied a subordinate place among Christians. Their status as "inferior" Christians was so unfavorable that they could be taken into slavery. Charles Verlinden quoted an Italian legal text from 1127, which contains the principle ut nullus nullaque qui queve ex Christiana religione sunt, pro servo et ancilla detineantur, sine légitima culpa, exceptis his qui ex Sclavorum gentegeniti sunt, meaning that "Christians must not be kept as slaves except those of Slavic descent." Thus, by the will of Western European legislators, Sclavi became servi par excellence.

The identification of Slavs with slaves took place in Western European societies, when caravans with Slavic slaves driven by Jews to Al-Andalus ceased to pass through this area due to the capture of Cordoba by the anti-Jewish Almohads in 1148. The Slavs sold by the Italians, became the only slaves in Western European countries, with the exception of Muslim captives in Italy and Spain (usually referred to in documents simply as Saracens or Moors). In the 12th-14th century, the old Latin term servi began to denote groups of local serfs (hence the Old French, and then the English serf) and did not refer to slaves in the strict sense, as individual property. The name Slav became the only term for a slave in the strict sense in the local languages in the late Middle Ages.

In the modern era, as a result of the mass trade in African slaves, the term used previously was transferred to them, by analogy to earlier Slavic slaves. In Portuguese, the word escravo (Slav meaning slave) was first used in 1462, in a document authorizing the trader Diogo Valarinho to send slaves from the recently discovered Cape Verde Islands. Due to the appearance of a new type of slaves, the term "Slav" applied to them became a proper noun. Publications often state that Slavs, for Germans or Anglo-Saxons, were (and and still are) "white negros". In fact, exactly the opposite happened: Blacks became "black Slavs" for Westerners.