Nigra Sum Sed Formosa: Black Slaves and Exotica in the Court of a Fourteenth-Century Aragonese Queen

Abstract

African slaves of Europeans are most commonly associated with images of exploitation as brute labor or domestic servants, as marginalized and discriminated against on the basis of their skin color, and perceived of as of inherently lower status. An examination of the role of black slaves in the royal households of the Crown of Aragon in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, however, reveals that African captives were sometimes given a privileged position at court. African slaves were esteemed as ornamental fixtures and, as such, comprised yet another element of the exotica with which members of the aristocratic elite surrounded themselves in order to convey a sense of wealth and power. Although this may represent yet another dimension of the objectification of these slaves, nevertheless, it reflects the fact that, prior to the age of colonization and mass-enslavement, Africans could be valued rather than disdained for their appearance.

Slave voices and experiences in the later medieval Europe

“…Sexualisation and racialisation tended to collide: female slaves from Circassia were deemed particularly beautiful for example, (Barker, 2019a, p. 57). As the Portuguese ramped up slaving in West Africa and the Canary Islands, racial thinking increasingly dominated the ways in which people thought about slavery (Silleras Fernandez, 2007). In Iberia, in particular, skin colour became more closely associated with slave status over the course of the fifteenth century (Blumenthal, 2009, pp.…”

“…'Slavery Convention', Geneva Office of the UN High Commissioner for HumanRights, September 25th, 1926. 9 For inspiring approaches, see alsoScott and Hebrard (2014); ZemonDavis (2011).10 McKee powerfully explains that 'During the same period in which people grappled with the issue of free status in opposition to serfdom and the freedom of cities from external tyranny, a similar struggle was taking place at the bottom of the social ladder, where slave women brought into life the children of their masters', p. 52.11 Fynn-Paul (2009), makes the problematic argument that the growth of monotheistic religions meant that Christian and Islamic blocs were obliged to seek slaves at their peripheries, leading to the institution of new slaving zone. Nevertheless, clearly co-religionists did enslave one another, judging by the numbers of complaints: for example, the cases detailed inDinić (1967), III, 90, 97, 117, 133.12 See alsoMuldoon (2005).13 There is an instructive set of comparisons here with the paradigmatic example of Mamluk slaving practices and the integration of Mamluk slaves.14 I am using this term capaciously.…”