Ebook Slavery in Germanic Society During the Middle Ages

We draw our information concerning slavery mainly from two sources: from his tory and from the laws of the nations with which we are dealing. History gives a few leading hints of the origin and development of slavery, but that it never proceeds to dis cuss or explain the nature of Slavery is because it is naturally less concerned with definitions than with events. For more exhaustive knowledge we turn to the laws. These, if not always explicit, attempt to lay down rules for conduct from which it is possible to draw definite conclusions concerning almost every relation of life. Slavery, besides being a feature of society, is above all a juridical relation, and belongs almost exclusively under the head of civil law. If, however, the slave figures conspicuously in the paragraphs of the criminal code, this is due to his peculiar double relation as thing and as man.