Slavery and Unfreedom in Byzantine Thought on the Household

Slavery and family were deeply linked in Byzantine society. When Byzantine writers and theologians envisioned and contextualized both the realities and the idea of the household, they universally assumed the presence of enslaved people within it. Slavery was foundational in Byzantine conceptions of the family, as was the role of kinship and the family in their thinking about slavery. This study explores how the language, ideals, stereotypes, and literary tropes associated with enslaved people were deeply linked to Byzantine thought about the family and the household as a social unit. Drawing on a wide range of sources and modern theories like intersectionality and social death, this monograph seeks to demonstrate the numerous ways in which the long-term, widespread presence of enslaved people in Byzantine society influenced and even defined medieval Byzantine thought regarding the domestic space and its dynamics.

Nathan Leidholm is Assistant Professor at Bilkent University and earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. Author of Elite Byzantine Kinship, ca. 950–1204 (Arc Humanities, 2019), his research interests include family, slavery, identity, and historical memory in the medieval world.