ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses how two women from opposite ends of the social scale – a baronial noblewoman and a runaway slave – banded together in order to navigate a world dominated by male authority figures and, in doing so, defied the owners’ recourse to channels of criminal justice as well as orders for the slave’s return sanctioned by the government of Siena and even Pope Innocent VIII. It unravels the fraught political context in which this case took place and forwards how this case might be interpreted in light of late-medieval attitudes towards slavery and violence against women. The chapter suggests how this remarkable case might reflect changes in the attitude towards slavery in late-medieval Italy and potentially supports the somewhat paradoxical argument that Europe itself witnessed a decrease in the acceptance of slavery at the dawn of the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
