Expulsion and asylum, from meerkats to the Middle Ages

The oldest written documents, including the Old Testament, are filled with stories about persecuted groups, banishment, exile, and forced migration. This chapter traces the use of banishment as a form of sanction from the pre-modern era through the Babylonian, Ancient Greek, and Roman periods, and well into the Middle Ages. It discusses how individuals subjected to banishment were seen as ‘undesirable,’ while ‘unremovability’ in this moment in history was generally not an issue of concern. In most cases, banished individuals could find a place to go to: from sanctuary cities in the Babylonian era, to asylia in ancient Greece, to church asylum in the Middle Ages.