As the Romans lost territory, their people were constantly vulnerable. By the 14th century “a thriving slave trade had emerged in the Aegean that ensnared thousands of Romans who were captured by the Turkish conquerors of Anatolia as well as by the Turkish & Catalan raiders who preyed on the coasts.”
Every time an enemy of the Romans launched a campaign against them it was “a new opportunity to round up dozens, hundreds, or thousands of helpless people from fields, villages, and sacked cities, and sell them at the nearest slave emporium run by Italians. Venetian Crete was a major clearinghouse” to sell the slaves. The Slavs and Romans did not typically enslave each other in their wars, otherwise the situation could have been even worse.
For the Turkish emirates it was a big business. They were not the primary consumers, they were the harvesters of the slaves as they raided and conquered Roman lands. The captives were either ransomed back to other Romans or sold off to Italians, who most frequently shipped them to Mamluk Egypt (the best customer) and even Western Europe. Amazingly, they were so plentiful that “the average price of a slave was about 15 hyperpyra, around that of a mule.” Demetrios Kydones observed that “You would not find an Italian on sale in Ephesos but we are slaves everywhere.”
The Black Death made things even worse, as the deaths it caused meant there were widespread labor shortages. Across the Mediterranean world demand for slaves went up to meet labor shortfalls as fieldworkers fell dead from the vicious disease. Prices then went up, encouraging warriors to take more captives. It also made it more expensive for Romans to ransom their captured relatives and friends.
WESTERN VIEWS ON THE ENSLAVEMENT OF “GREEKS” (BYZANTINES/ROMANS)
The “Greeks, who were masters of the world, and now are made slaves, resold throughout the world, priced like beasts”…Niccolo of Poggibonsi(14th century) cruelly mocked the enslavement of the medieval Romans and believed it was ok to sell them like animals for simply daring to refute papal primacy.
Poggibonsi justified their actions: “The Greeks hate us Latins more than they hate the Saracens, and through this great hatred they are separated from the Roman church. As we make the pope, the vicar of God, to be the head of the Roman Church for Christians, likewise the Greeks make a vicar for themselves. In the place of the pope, they make the patriarch of Constantinople, and he makes the Bishops…Every Sunday the pope communicates with all those who obey him; but the pope treats them [the Greeks] in this way, that he allows others to take them and then sell them as slaves. And many times, I saw merchants who had a great line, and they led them thus to sell at the market, as they do beasts; and when a merchants wants to sell this sad merchandise, he has them cried by the auctioneer, and whoever offers the most money, to him they are sold. O Greeks, who were masters of the world, and now are made slaves, resold throughout the world, priced like beasts.” They literally were priced like beasts, as I mentioned above, they were at times sold for no more than the price of a mule! This passage is just one person, but it also accurately captured a wider view held in the world of Latin Christendom.
“An anonymous English pilgrim in the 1340’s observed that because the priests of Cyprus did not accept papal primacy, ‘their punishment, when captured, is life servitude, nor does the Church of Rome, although it is a work of charity to ransom slaves, lift a hand for their liberation.’” For the Papacy of this era, a schismatic “Greek” was not worth the gift of emancipation or ransom.
Sources:
The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium by Anthony Kaldellis (For the first section of this article)
That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500 by Hannah Barker (For the second section on Western views)
shadowsofconstantinople.com 