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The presence of North Africans and other Muslims in France may seem a modern phenomenon, the legacy of colonialism. But the situation is more complex, with roots that reach back to the Middle Ages — and a deep impulse for communities to define themselves in opposition to perceived outsiders.

In an article recently published in French Historical Studies, ������Ƶ Associate Professor of History Elizabeth Casteen takes a close look at the intersection of religious identity, gender and human bondage in southern France, known as the Midi.

“‘Just War’ and ‘Conspicuous Sins’: Sex, Slavery, and Community in the Late Medieval Midi” focuses on Languedoc and Provence during the 13th through early 15th centuries. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea, these regions weren’t consistently part of France, although Languedoc came under French rule during the period in question.

“Slavery remained common across Europe during the Middle Ages, although the numbers of enslaved people — particularly those who worked on large agricultural estates — decreased after the Roman period,” Casteen said.

Slavery became increasingly widespread in what is now Spain, France and Italy after the 12th century, especially in port cities. However, in both Islam and Christianity, enslaving co-religionists was forbidden. As a result, both religions drew most of their enslaved populations from outsider groups, with Christians enslaving Muslims and Muslims enslaving Christians.

Casteen’s research looks primarily at Naples, then ruled by a French dynasty, and what is today southern France, particularly the cities of Marseille, Montpellier and Perpignan. Slavery was normalized in those cities, although only a small percentage of the population was in bondage when compared to the Iberian Peninsula and Italian maritime cities such as Genoa and Venice.

“The majority of the enslaved in Mediterranean cities were women, and the majority worked in domestic settings — which means that slavery very often had a sexual component,” she said. “They were enslaveable because they were not Christian.”

In the 12th century, most enslaved people in Christian Western Europe were Muslim. By the 14th century, an expanded trade in slaves brought in people from the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean regions. Some were Tatar, while others were described in sources as Turks. An increasing number — particularly women — were Eastern Christians, who could be enslaved because they were considered “schismatic” for belonging to the Russian or Greek church.

“The logic of late-medieval Mediterranean slavery is essentially the logic of crusading,” Casteen explained. “Both Muslims and Christians saw slavery — because the enslaved often converted — as a way to increase their own numbers at the expense of the other community, and both saw the enslavement of religious ‘enemies’ as a form of revenge.”

After battles, captives became slaves if their families weren’t wealthy enough to ransom them. During the period Casteen studies, Christian Europe offered a legal justification for slavery, calling it the product of a “just war.”

In reality, enslaved people typically weren’t captured in battles but in raids, or purchased in eastern Mediterranean markets and taken to ports such as Naples or Genoa.

Casteen’s article considers the case of a North African woman who was captured in either Algeria or Tunisia by raiders. She was shipped to Naples, where she was then purchased by a craftsman from Marseille. The woman spent 10 years as his slave, after which she was freed (according to her) or ran away (according to him). In a court case, her enslaver’s legal representative argued that the woman was the spoils of a “just war,” even though her owner never fought in a crusade.

Women in bondage

Slaves were a status-marker for aristocrats in Iberia and Italy, but also served in urban homes as domestic servants. Such women were routinely subject to sexual coercion in private homes, typically spending part of their lives as enslaved concubines and then wetnurses after having children.

This sexual exploitation was viewed as an act of revenge since Christian women were enslaved in Muslim households in southern Iberia and the Holy Land. At the same time, Mediterranean cities in the Midi encouraged Christian sex workers to enter houses for reformed prostitutes and required active sex workers to live in licensed brothels on the city’s edge, often near the Jewish quarter. While those efforts had limited success, they were largely aimed at moving sources of moral and religious contagion to the margins, Casteen said.

Starting in the 13th century, redemptive orders sprang up in the same cities. The Order of Merced and the Trinitarian Order existed to ransom Christians from captivity in Muslim lands, and their physical presence and their activities in these cities provided regular reminders of the suffering of Christian slaves, Casteen said.

The medieval Midi wasn’t a slave society in the way of ancient Rome or later European colonies in America, but slavery was a significant cultural force. French and Occitan romances are filled with stories of Muslim women who convert to Christianity after being raped, falling in love with Christian men or, troublingly, both.

“Those narrative tropes only make sense if we pay attention to the enslaved women who were coerced into sexual relationships with Christian men, and if we acknowledge that sexual violence and crusading were both entangled with slavery,” Casteen said. “Slavery did not only implicate the wealthiest and most elite, and enslaved people were vital to the self-definition of the communities in which they lived, even if they were a small minority.”