Practices of Unfreedom in Northern France c. 888 – c. 1120
Practices of Unfreedom in Northern France, c. 888 – c. 1120 (PUNF) was a research project which aimed to fundamentally re-frame the social history of the thousands of unfree persons living in France during the central middle ages. The PUNF project was conducted over 24 months (Sept 2023 – Aug 2025) at the Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médievale (CESCM) a vibrant, interdisciplinary centre for medieval studies based in Poitiers, France, and jointly-run by the French Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique and the Université de Poitiers. The research was under the supervision of the late Prof. Martin Aurell and was funded by a Marie Skłdowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Drawing upon a wide range of documentary sources from four ecclesiastical provinces in Northern France (Tours, Rouen, Sens and Reims), its core objective was the creation of a database template for the practices and interactions between unfree dependents and their lords in the period AD 888 to AD 1121. The database was designed using the Heurist database system and the raw data-set and a description of the template architecture is archived at the HAL-SHS repository. The database will continue to be updated as the project’s results are analysed and published.
The first results of the PUNF project have been published as part of the collective volume Households as Coercive Labour Regimes, edited by Stephan Conermann, Ulbe Bosma and Gijs Kessler. Further publication are planned on the topics of gifts of unfree peoples, archives of unfreedom and unfreedom in the county of Flanders.
Niall Ó Súilleabháin - Medieval Historian 