Labor Link 5

Slavery in Anglo-Saxon England

In AElfric's Colloquy the ploughman says that his life is "indeed great drudgery because he is not free." Slavery has been a topic that has not been very thoroughly examined in Anglo-Saxon studies.

If you look at a translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Book 4, Chapter 23, you will find the story of Imma. Imma was taken prisoner after a battle between two kings, Ethelred and Egfrid, Bede tells us, but he could not be bound by his captors because his brother Tunna, a priest, thinking Imma had died, constantly said masses which miraculously broke Imma's bonds.

There are two sets of questions here for you to think about. The first concern slavery, the second concern secret writing.

About Slavery:

1. Slavery is a large topic in the Anglo-Saxon period, but there is not as much writing about it as we might expect or hope for. You should refer, first, to Dorothy Whitelock's excellent and extended discussion of slavery in the Beginnings of English Society, pages 108-14, to get a general orientation to the discussion.
2. What kind of slave would Imma have been, seen in Whitelock's categories? That is, why kinds of economic, as well as military, reasons factored into his becoming a slave?
3. In addition to considering the causes of Imma's slave status, you should make a comparison between this episode in Bede and another, that in Book 2, Chapter 1, in which Bede describes how Gregory the Great (the pope to whom Bede refers to often), saw slaves being sold at a market in Rome. The point of Bede's story is that the English got their name because Gregory recognized the fairness of these slaves.
4. What other points does Bede's story make about slavery itself? Does Bede take the institution for granted? Why might he have done so--that is, why might he have taken an attitude so different from that we would take?

About Writing

1. Reread the episode of Imma and make a note not only of how the episode refers to writing and the creation of images, but how it invites us to contemplate the interpretation of these images as well.
2. You will meet the word "rune" in this discussion, a term for secret writing. There is a good general introduction to runes by R. I. Page; for a brief discussion, see Frantzen, Desire for Origins, Chapter 6, on reading and writing in Beowulf. But you will have to learn something about runes themselves before you can understand why references to runes are important here--that is, that runes existed before the Latin alphabet.

The best places to go for introductions to ideas like this are standard literary histories of the Old English periods, such as that by Greenfield-Calder and another by Wrenn. You can learn a lot about runes in a short time from either souce, and with that information you can turn back to the Imma episode in Bede and reconsider the place of writing in the text.

The book by Seth Lerer, Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon England. (University of Nebraska Press), contains an extended discussion of this material.

If you read Lerer's discussion, you will want to consider how do the ideas of writing discussed by Lerer and Frantzen differ from writing as we think of it?

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