The numbers were enough for the church council at Meaux in 845 to take notice of the merchants of Charlemagne’s empire moving columns of human property through so many cities of the faithful ‘into the hands of the faithless and our most brutal enemies’. The issue was not just the miserable life the slaves faced; ‘they are swelling the vast numbers of enemies of the kingdom’ the council complained, and ‘increasing the enemy strength’. The council wanted to make sure men were sold inside Christendom, which they said was for the sake of their immortal souls.23
