Von Menschenfängern und Menschenfischern

Until the 1960s researchers worked on the assumption that Christian ethics had brought about the disappearance of slavery with the downfall of the Roman Empire. Since then sufficient proof has emerged of the continuation of slavery, especially in the Mediterranean region, into the middle ages and early modern age. But the problem remains: are not Christianity and slavery mutually exclusive? For early modern Catholicism this was a question of the relationship between theory and practice in the Papal States, which also forms the basis of this study. The mostly Muslim galley slaves in the Papal fleet and the Roman fraternity of the Gonfalone buying the freedom of Christian slaves under Muslim rule are opposite sides of the same coin. European slavery in the early modern age was thus both a part and an expression of the history of Christian-Muslim conflict - a reciprocal system.