730

Reviews

CHABLES VEBLINDEN, L'Esclavage dans I'Europe mddtivale, v.Pe'ninsvlelbe'rique France. (Rijksuni-

versiteit to Gent, Werken, uitgegeven door de Faculteit van de Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, cxix.)
Bruges, Belgium: "Die Tempel," 1955. Paper. Pp. 930.
THIS is the first volume of a monumental work on slavery in the Middle Ages.
Professor Verlinden has divided his subject geographically. This volume covers
the Iberian peninsula, the Balearic Islands, and France. The second will deal
with Italy, the Byzantine Empire, and the Christian outposts in the Near East.
The third and last volume will cover the Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic lands. This
final volume will close with a survey of the institutions relative to slavery throughout Europe.
Professor Verlinden has gone through a vast mass of material and a fair proportion of it is supplied to his readers. Much of the text is a summary of the
sources and frequently the source itself is given in the footnotes. The documents
used most extensively are law codes, lists of tariffs at ports and markets, and
charters and notarial documents. While chronicles, lives of saints, and other
miscellaneous materials supply few references, they are likely to be the most
significant ones.
The most interesting part of Professor Verlinden's work is his discussion of the
sources from which the various regions drew their slaves the lands of origin
and how they were obtained. Here he has a large amount of material and he uses
it skillfully and critically. His treatment of the legal status of slaves and the laws
governing enfranchisement is valuable chiefly because of the care with which
he differentiates between slaves and other unfree or semi-free elements in the
population. The material he uses is well known to all who have read over the
early law codes. The notarial documents supply interesting evidence on the
prices of slaves. Unfortunately Professor Verlinden's sources do little toward
answering the two basic questions how many slaves were there and how were
they used. One set of documents enables him to make a plausible guess at the
number of slaves in Catalonia, but his other statements on the subject seem
based on pure surmise. While the reader gets the impression that most of the
slaves were used in urban occupations rather than in agriculture, the evidence
is slim and Professor Verlinden ventures few conclusions on this subject. In
one case this reviewer suspects that his sense of propriety hampers him. He
points out the overwhelming proportion of women among the slaves sold in
Southern France and quotes in Latin passages from the contracts of sale which
seem to indicate pretty clearly the use they were intended for, but he carefully
draws no conclusion from the evidence.
Professor Verlinden's interest centers, or at least he believes it should center,
in the large questions where did the slaves come from, how were they obtained,
what was their legal status, how many were there, and how were they used. A
reader with a capacity for efficient skipping can obtain his conclusions in an hour
or so. They would hardly make a long article. He excuses the inclusion of an
enormous amount of source material by saying it is necessary to prove his points.
Maybe it is, but this reviewer does not for a moment believe that Professor
Verlinden really had any such motive. He must have realized that he had a mine

Reviews

731

of the purest gold for anyone interested in the vagaries of mankind. While some
of the most fascinating items, such as the existence of an extensive industry in
ninth-century Verdun engaged in manufacturing eunuchs, seem based on rather
slim evidence, the material is full of delightful incidents which are well established
if sometimes obscure in purpose. Perhaps some reader of this review can figure
out why an official of the king of Aragon should buy a female slave with the
understanding that he would marry her after three years, five months and
twenty-six days. Then there was the monarch who presented a fair Saracen,
condemned to slavery for adultery with a Christian, as a gift to his chaplain.
Another girl, who had had the good taste to commit her offense with a royal
official, was given to him with the king's compliments.
In short, every student of the Middle Ages should read Professor Verlinden's
conclusions. If he can resist the sources, he is a dull fellow and no true historian.
SIDNEY PAINTER
The Johns Hopkins University
ROBERT WEBER, O.S.B., Le Psautier romain et Us autres anciens psautiers latins. (Collectanea Biblica
Latina, x.) Rome: Abbaye Saint Jerdme; Vatican City: Libreria Vaticana, 1953. Paper. Pp. xxiii,
410.)
SLOWLY and majestically the restoration of the critical edition of the Vulgate
achieves publication; Biblia Sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam editionem versionem, x :
Liber Psalmorum is dated Rome, 1953. Volume Ten in the accompanying Collectanea Biblica series is a critical edition of the so-called Roman Psalter. It is
edited by Dom Robert Weber of the Roman abbey that has the Vulgate text in
hand, and is printed with the joint imprint of the abbey and the Vactian Press.
I t is a scholar's tool of reference.
The text, set out in clear, well-spaced type in a left-hand column down the
page, is based on sixteen manuscripts from the eighth to the twelfth century,
and on several previously-printed editions of the work, the variant readings of
which are (practically) all indicated in the right-hand column under elaborate
sigla-references. By way of further control and erudition, about a dozen other
ancient psalters, whole or partial, and ranging through Gallican and Mozarabic
sources, are collated in the footnotes in an apparatus criticus of marvelous typographical compactness.
Thus, the whole tradition of the Latin Psalter is laid open, word for word,
covering the entire period prior to printed texts. A painstaking Index verborum
of fifty pages follows the text.
Readers of SPECULUM, who are not Scripture scholars, may be interested in
knowing that the basic manuscripts here compositely edited are the following:
(1) London, British Museum, MS. Cotton Vespas. A 1, Psalter probably written at St
Augustine's, Canterbury, in eighth-century uncial, with Mercian English interlinear
added at the end of the ninth century;
(2) Berlin, Preussische Staatsbibliothek, MS. Hamilton 555, eighth-century majuscule
script;
(3) Montpellier, Faculty de Medicine, MS. Jfi9, a pre-Carolingian minuscule from the
North of France. In the so-called coronation laudes occurs the name of Festrada, wife of
Charlemagne (783-795), and the copy was probably made for her coronation: