Conversion, Mobility and the Roman Inquisition in Italy Around 1600

Bibliographic Data

ID4161828
AuthorsKim Siebenhüner (University of Basel, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume200
Issue1
Pages5-35
Publication date2008-08-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePast & Present (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pastj/gtn012
OpenAlexW2331232842
LanguageEN
Citations received8

Early modern Europe was a world on the move, where travellers and merchants, soldiers and pilgrims, men and women met on the roads every day.1 Many left their homes for journeys short or long, and they did so for a variety of reasons — travelling as part of their work or to look for work, or fleeing plague or religious repression. Some had more personal motives: they wished to improve their lot, or to escape the narrowness of village life or an unhappy marriage. In their travels, men and women crossed cultural, religious or confessional borders.2 With the advent of the Reformation, a wholly new problem emerged within Catholic Europe, for now migrants traversed territories belonging to different confessions. Travellers in the Mediterranean region had long encountered the religious worlds of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. A journey from Tripoli in Lebanon to Venice meant leaving Muslim and entering Catholic territory. In Italy, migrants from the Ottoman Empire were confronted with a society unfamiliar with the status of the dhimmi, and if they were taken for renegades or New Christians they even risked persecution by the Roman Inquisition. How did travellers and migrants react when faced with other religious cultures? How did they integrate into a new society? How important were changes of religion in this process? If they converted, how did religious, social and economic considerations determine their religious choice? And how clear-cut was the newly adopted religious identity?

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Christianity · Confessional · Ethnology · Identity (music) · Islam · Judaism · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Religiosity · Religious conversion · Religious identity · Roman Empire · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies

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