Magdalena Coline: A Life Beyond Slavery in Mediterranean Europe
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
Magdalena Coline: A Life Beyond Slavery in Mediterranean Europe
By (Author) Daniel Lord Smail
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press
25th February 2026
United States
Classifications
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
European history: medieval period, middle ages
Legal history
Physical Properties
Hardback
240
Width 156mm, Height 235mm
Description
The courtroom drama that denied the legitimacy of slavery in late medieval Europe
In 1387, a young Muslim woman from North Africa was captured on a galley in the Bay of Naples and brought to Marseille as a slave. For more than ten years, she was held in bondage to a shipwright and privateer named Peire Huguet. Daniel Lord Smail tells the extraordinary story of Magdalena Coline, a woman who dared to file suit against the man who called himself her master, and whose passage from servitude to freedom raises tantalizing questions about how the people of her time made sense of slavery as a social category.
In a masterful narrative that takes readers from the waters of the Mediterranean to the court of the Angevin King Louis II, claimant to the throne of Naples, Smail describes how Peire, pressed by Magdalena's supporters, reluctantly granted her a tacit manumission through her marriage to her first husband, whose death two years later placed her in a state of considerable ambiguity. In 1406, following her second marriage to an immigrant shoemaker, a dispute with Peire exploded in the law courts of Marseille, where it played out over two tumultuous years through numerous suits and appeals. In a dramatic turn of events, Magdalena traveled to the royal court in nearby Aix-en-Provence, where she successfully petitioned the king and returned home victorious.
Drawing on court records and an array of other archival sources from the period, Magdalena Coline brings these remarkable legal proceedings vividly to life, shedding new light on the ways slavery was understood and practiced in the late medieval Mediterranean world.
Author Bio
Daniel Lord Smail is Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of History at Harvard University. His books include Legal Plunder: Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe and The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 12641423.
