Manumission is the act and result of manumitting : granting freedom to a person who was subject to slavery . The term comes from the Latin manumissio .
A slave is an individual who is dominated by another (his master ): that is, he has no freedom . The slave, therefore, is the property of the master, who takes advantage of the subject's labor power.
Manumission, in this framework, is the process that enables the liberation of the slave . Thus, thanks to manumission, the slave can become a freedman .
Various reasons allowed manumission in Ancient Rome. Sometimes, the slave achieved independence through extraordinary merit or some service rendered. In other cases, the master granted manumission by his own decision and conscience.
After manumission, a former slave could rise in Roman society. In any case, the usual thing was that he only managed to integrate into the plebs and even continued working for his owner, who had become his employer.
With the so-called civil manumission , the new freedman acquired the status of citizen of Rome . With praetorian manumission , on the other hand, the former slave did not reach that condition and was also obliged to bequeath all of his assets to his previous master upon death.
This responds to the two ways that existed in the ancient Roman Empire of exercising manumission: the solemn and the non-solemn, which are also known as the civil and praetorian , respectively. Although in both cases the former slave regained his freedom, only in the first did he receive the respect of a Roman citizen, while the second was considered a Latin citizen .
If we delve into these two forms, we can find a subclassification. Within civil manumission we have the following possibilities:
* by census ( per censum ) : any slave who was registered in a census carried out by a magistrate on behalf of his owner automatically obtained freedom from the moment said census came into force;
* by trial ( per vindicta ) : initially it was a royal act that involved the pronunciation of an affirmation of solemn force in the presence of the magistrate, which was known as vindicatio in iure . This act was reaffirmed by the official called lictor , who was in charge of escorting the curule magistrates and guaranteeing public order similar to the functions of the current police. In short, the owner expressed to the magistrate his desire for the slave to become free;
* in the church ( in sacrosanta ecclesia ) : it took place if the bishop offered himself as a witness to the act by the slave's owner of granting him manumission;
* by will ( per testamentum ) : the owner transcribed his belongings in his will and the slave obtained his freedom when the former died.
With respect to praetorian manumission, it was subdivided into:
* between friends ( inter amicos ) : five witnesses were necessary for the owner's statement;
* by letter ( per epistolam ) : the owner sent a letter to his slave to return his freedom;
* at the table ( per mensam ) : the owner invited his slave to eat with him.
Manumission, in short, was a way to end slavery . Thanks to it, those who were slaves ceased to be slaves and began to enjoy an individual freedom that until then did not exist for them, because before they were nothing more than the property of their owner.
With respect to the etymology of the word manumission , we can say that its origin is Latin, and that it is made up of the following two lexical components: the noun manus (which we can translate as "hand") and the verb mittere ("to throw, send »). The original Latin verb also defined as “to give a slave his freedom” was manumittere .