On Thursday, February 20th, 2025, Dr. Hannah Barker gave a talk, “Slavery and Leprosy: Legal Medicine in Late Medieval Genoa.” Dr. Barker, an associate professor of History at Arizona State University, researches legal and economic connections in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, especially the medieval slave trade and medical practices. She received her PhD at Columbia University.
She underscored that the legal framework of fifteenth-century Genoa neglected slaves’ health and agency. Her case study focused on the sale of Margarita, an early fifteenth-century Tartar enslaved woman from Caffa, who supposedly contracted leprosy. Dr. Barker detailed the legal and medical circumstances of Margarita’s sale in an effort to understand the silence of her voice in the records.
Before the case of Margarita, Dr. Barker elaborated on the legal documentation of late medieval Genoa as it relates to slavery and medical themes using notarial records. Notarial records provide numerous clauses that relate to a slave’s health before, during, and after sale. These included warranties of “good health,” stipulations of 1-month waiting periods, doctor examinations, and clauses that detail diseases and their effects on sales. Some slaves were sold “as is,” or sold with “redhibitory” conditions, such as falling sickness and leprosy. Doctors could provide opinions on or cures for slaves’ sicknesses, but such services rested on the buyer.
Dr. Barker returned to Margarita’s case in which her buyer, Domenico, accused her seller, Dexerino, of selling her with leprosy, for which he demanded compensation (600 silver aspers) after her death. The Genoese court ruled in Domenico’s favor, but Dexerino argued that Domenico had ulterior motives because he waited more than decade after Margarita died to bring the lawsuit. Was she sold with leprosy? When did she get sick? Was she still sick when Domenico paid the second installment, and why did he wait until after she died to bring the case?
Domenico’s witnesses, such as his partner, colleague, neighbors, and friends testified that Margarita had symptoms of leprosy. Dr. Barker noted that Genoese ships did not carry doctors, and that notaries themselves were verifiers and witnesses. The parties could not remember who the notary was, and this helped Domenico’s case. At the time, medical practitioners thought that there were curable and incurable leprosies, and, moreover, expensive or cheap cures, such as gold or herbal baths respectively.
Dr. Barker concludes that with this verdict, Margarita had the most to lose and, without medical examinations or selective admission into a leprosarium, Domenico’s case triumphed with notarial records and witnesses, but without her own testimony and any medical evidence. Margarita’s case reveals that slavery and medicine came together in a legal system that valued witnesses, notaries, and doctors, but not necessarily the voice of the slave.
