Has any real-world culture actually included a "Life Debt" tradition?
Upvote:6
According to this book, in ancient Rome a saviour was treated as a 'second father'. Unfortunately google books cuts you off when you get to the relevant bit.
The Wikipedia article about Fabius has the following quote:
Fabius rushed to his co-commander's assistance and Hannibal's forces immediately retreated. After the battle, there was some feeling that there would be conflict between Minucius and Fabius; however, the younger soldier marched his men to Fabius' encampment and is reported to have said, "My father gave me life. Today you saved my life. You are my second father. I recognize your superior abilities as a commander."
This is unsourced but lines up with what the book says. However beware the writer's trick of announcing a general rule with 'for example' as if they have hundreds of examples, when really they only have one. Even (especially) professional historians are guilty of this.
Upvote:11
Medieval Gaels of Ireland
In Adomnán of Iona's Life of St. Columba (Book 2, Chapter 39), the author speaks of a man from Derry, Ireland who swore an oath of slavery to a man who saved him from the death penalty. He later ran away and ended up in Scotland, where he met St. Columba.
The man, named Librán of the reed-bed, explains his his back-story thus:
I killed a fellow. After this I was held in chains as a guilty man. But a relative of mine...came to my rescue in the nick of time. He paid what was needed to get me off though I was bound in chains, and he saved me, though guilty, from death. After he had bought my release, I promised to him with a binding oath that I should serve him all the days of my life.
Source: Adomnán of Iona, Life of St. Columba (II, 39), ca. AD 700, trans. Richard Sharpe. London: Penguin Books, 1995.
This indicates that the idea of becoming a slave to a rescuer was not entirely foreign to medieval Gaelic culture in the British Isles.
In response to a comment by Stephan Matthiesen, this is a hagiographic source and it is certainly possible that it contains a "pious fraud". What I do note is that there is nothing miraculous about a life debt, and generally even dishonest hagiographic stories aim for plausibility rather than including cultural elements that a contemporary reader would immediately identify as phony. It is, therefore, likely that the passage above references an authentic Gaelic cultural tradition even if the incident itself is fictional or has been fictionalized for spiritual emphasis.
In response to a comment by Everett Steed, Adomnán does not state whether the crime was closer to present-day murder (homicide committed with malice prepense or in "cold blood") or manslaughter (homicide committed with some level of intentional or reckless behavior not amounting to malice prepense). The amount of the fine is not given, but the author does add that the benefactor was very rich, implying that the fine was sufficiently high for the offender to struggle to pay it on his own. This tells us that the crime was most likely considered a serious one rather than a petty offense.
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