Although Merovingian Francia is not considered a slave society, slaves were, nonetheless, present throughout the entirety of the dynasty and well into the Carolingian period and beyond.Jamie Kreiner, “About the Bishop: The Episcopal Entourage and the Economy of Government in Post-Roman Gaul,” Speculum 86, no. 2 (2011):341Michael McCormick, “New Light on the ‘Dark Ages,’” Past & Present, no. 177 (2002):41 In the 7th century, however, the sale and trade of Christians within Frankish borders was abolished by Queen Balthild, herself a former slave.Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992), p.273

Slavery transforms to serfdom

Slavery was gradually phased out and replaced by serfdom in Francia, a process that begun in the 5th century and continued, but was not completed, during the Merovingian era. In Roman Gaul, the land estates of the Roman country villas in Gaul had been worked by slave laborers called ancillae (sing. ancilla) or servi (sing. servus), who worked the land of the landowner, the dominus.Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 51 When Roman rule in Gaul was replaced by the migrating Germanic tribes in settling in Gaul in the 5th century, the Roman villa estates started to transition to become feudal estates, and the transition of slavery to serfdom was a part of this.Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 51 The slavery system was dependent upon a strong central power and legal enforcement, which was no longer possible in the Post Roman world, where an estate was now forced to be self-sufficient, and rely on cooperation.Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 55 In order to keep their labor force and ensure their cooperation, the landowners started to manumit their slaves and give their former slaves, called coloni or servi casati, their own land, known as mansi, in exchange for working also on the landowner's own land, demesne.Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 51

When the former slaves were given their own land, they could no longer be sold or bought as property, but was liberated and referred to as franci or coloni.Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 53 As free peasants with their own land the former slave laborers were motivated to work better for the landowner; and when they were free to marry and leave their land as inheritance to their children, the labor force of the landowner started to reproduce itself instead of the landowner being responsible for supplying new laborers (via slave purchases).Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 52 The method of freeing the slaves and giving them land in exchange for working duty on the landowners land, was seen as more efficient by the landowners, since the free laborers were motivated to work and did not have to be supervised; and while slavery was not abolished, the new labor method became so popular among the landowners that by the 7th century, the rural slave laborers had been almost completely replaced by free serf peasant laborers, and slavery reduced to urban house slaves.Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 51

However, the transformation from rural slavery to serfdom did not eradicate slavery, only marginalized it. Urban house slaves continued to be popular for centuries after the eradication of rural slavery, and were phased out in favor of free workers much slower, disappearing earlier in the North and slower in the South.Phillips, W. D. (1985). Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade. Storbritannien: Manchester University Press. p. 53

Nature of Merovingian slavery Even though “(a)ny reconstruction of the slave trade during this period is bound to be highly speculative” due to the paucity of extant medieval sources,Alice Rio, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford University Press, 2017), 19. scholars have advanced some general characteristics of Merovingian slavery. For one, a distinction must be made between forced slavery and voluntary slavery. The status of freedom throughout the Middle Ages, including the Merovingian period, was not as defined as it is today; freedom was considered a bargaining chip by which to attain a better quality of life or economic stability.Alice Rio, “Self-Sale and Voluntary Entry into Unfreedom, 300-1100,” Journal of Social History, The Hidden History of Crime, Corruption, and States, 45, no. 3 (2012): 687. Legally this form of slavery was not hereditary whereas imposed or forced slavery, such as through capture, was.Jamie Kreiner, “About the Bishop: The Episcopal Entourage and the Economy of Government in Post-Roman Gaul,” Speculum 86, no. 2 (2011):341 Merovingian slavery is further characterized by a preference for female, domestic slaves.Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 362. This may have been a result of the considerable low status attributed to those who servedLisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 363. and/or the desire for multiple types of labor production, such as domestic and sexual. In fact, wars were often fought to fulfill the demand for slaves in early medieval Europe and sources show “women and their children as the intended victims of war”.John Gillingham, “Women, Children and the Profits of War,” in Gender and Historiography, ed. Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds, and Susan M. Johns, Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford (University of London Press, 2012), 62,67.

Balthild, for example, is captured in England and sold, for a cheap price, to Erchinoald.Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992), p.268-9 Finally, since Merovingian France was not a slave society, slavery was, in many ways, arbitrary. Which is to say, slaves and servants existed at the low end of the social scale, “regardless of where they sat on the spectrum of unfreedom”Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 362. The arbitrariness of Merovingian slavery is all the more apparent in that, unlike other forms of slavery, such as ancient, modern, or Islamic/Mediterranean, it was neither racial, cultural, or religious.Alice Rio, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford University Press, 2017), 3. It was, at least, until Balthild outlawed the sale of Christians. As such, scholars, when considering slavery in early medieval Europe, prefer to ask: “Why were lords so keen to categorize some of their dependents as unfree, but not others? What added advantage did they think it would give them?”Alice Rio, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100, Slavery After Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford University Press, 2017), 12. In other words, why were some considered slaves and others servants, when both shared a similar condition of servitude? More precisely, why such a distinction when dominants considered either condition of servitude equally debased?.Lisa Kaaren Bailey, “Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints,” Journal of Religious History 43, no. 3 (2019): 362. Thus, a top-down approach to the study of slavery, in this specific context, is beneficial in order to understand what characterized someone as an enslaved person or free person.

Slave queens Five Frankish queens of the Merovingian dynasty have been identified as former slaves, though there may be more: Ingund, Fredegund, Bilichild, Nanthild, and Balthild.Jo Ann McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, eds., Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992), p.264E. T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), p. 116 Of these women, Fredegund and Balthild are the best remembered; the first for her villainous attributes and the second for her saintly ones.Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex : Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1998)E.T. Dailey, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite, (Brill, 2015), chapter 6 and 7 Regardless of their historical reputation and legacy, all of these women rose dramatically through the ranks of Merovingian society, from the lowest echelon to the highest; likely examples of unparalleled social climbing in French history.