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This idea of auctioning off someone's wife seemed (seems) unlikely to me in a medieval European context (since divorce was hard to come by).

What I found was actually weirder:

> In medieval Italy and southern France, it was common for the cedens to stand nude but for his shirt and strike a stone with his posterior ('vituperii lapis') while declaring 'cedo bonis'." The patent purpose of this ceremony was as much to satisfy the anger and frustration of creditors as to publicize the debtor's bankruptcy.

http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/dokumente/b/b071148.pdf

The medieval version of "I Declare Bankruptcy!!!"

Well, those 'previous times' where you just got killed ran concurrent too those slavery times. And if you borrow money from the wrong people today, it can still happen.

They literally had debtor’s prisons when Charles Dickins was still writing!