Unfreedom in the Merovingian Church

Eduard Visintini examines how the Merovingian Church dealt with slaves and other forms of unfreedom in sixth to eighth century Gaul. In four chapters of this study explore how churchmen understood unfreedom, how unfree persons were acquired and bound to ecclesiastical institutions, how their labour permeated most aspects of the economic and social life in the Church, and how control was exercised through physical coercion and religious persuasion. Drawing primarily on narrative texts such as histories and hagiographies, as well as normative materials including legal codes, synodal legislation, and dispositive documents such as testaments, the study reveals how the lived experience of unfreedom in the early medieval Church was formed between legal status, terminology and typologies of labour.