Enslaved Women and the Church in the Late Medieval Mediterranean

Given the prodigious writings of churchmen on sexual sins and all things related to sex, it may come as a surprise that the medieval church was quite reticent about sex with the enslaved. If the church’s prohibition against all sex outside of marriage covered carnal relations with the enslaved, why did church authorities not enforce their own laws? This talk discusses how legal scholars skirted the issue of sex acts with the enslaved and addresses where church law and secular law aligned and diverged in respect to the testimony of slaves. It argues that while canon law and secular laws in Europe did not explicitly recognize the right of Christian male owners to have sex with their enslaved women, it was not only culturally permissible and socially accepted in the Christian societies of the Mediterranean but also integrated into men’s ownership rights. Since church law denied slaves legal personhood, episcopal officials were able to avoid publicly prosecuting owners for sex outside of marriage. This approach avoided alienating the merchant capitalists and elites who made up the largest group of slave owners and whose wealth provided resources for church building projects and supported the mendicant orders in Mediterranean port cities. It also allowed church authorities to avoid drawing attention to members of the church elite who owned enslaved people and would be implicated in the very practices the church refrained from prosecuting.