ABSTRACT
Human trafficking has become a global humanitarian concern over the last 20 years, yet its coercion and violence have affected victims across the centuries. The purpose of this work is to expand our knowledge of human trafficking activity beyond the modern world by extending its study into the ancient and medieval periods. While the slave trade of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages is perhaps the most obvious form of human trafficking, it is not the only form. Under the rubric of human trafficking, the medieval sex trade must also be included because it involved traffickers, purchasers, clients, middlemen, and both secular and ecclesiastical authorities in a commercial enterprise that relied upon abduction, coercion, violence, deception, and exploitation to procure laborers for the commercial sex industry.
