A Companion to Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome investigates the lives and stories of the many groups and individuals in Rome, between 1500 and approximately 1750, who were not Roman (Latin) Catholic. It shows how early modern Catholic people and institutions in Rome were directly influenced by their interactions with other religious traditions. This collection reveals the significant impact of Protestants, Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Rite Christians; the influence of the many transient groups and individual travelers who passed through the city; the unique contributions of converts to Catholicism, who drew on the religion of their birth; and the importance of intermediaries, fluent in more than one culture and religion.
Contributors include: Olivia Adankpo-Labadie, Robert John Clines, Matthew Coneys Wainwright, Serena Di Nepi, Irene Fosi, Mayu Fujikawa, Sam Kennerley, Emily Michelson, James Nelson Novoa, Cesare Santus, Piet van Boxel, and Justine A. Walden.
Matthew Coneys Wainwright is Research Associate in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University. His work deals with late medieval and early modern pilgrimage culture and the history of the book between manuscript and print.
Emily Michelson is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of St Andrews. She publishes on preaching and interreligious tension, including The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy (Harvard, 2013), and a forthcoming monograph on forced sermons to Jews in Rome.
“Each of the essays of this volume is meticulously researched and provides new insights on the presence of religious minorities in papal Rome. As a whole, they build on previous scholarship, push research in new directions, and offer a nuanced picture of how different religious minorities encountered Rome and Catholicism. Furthermore, each essay concludes with a brief suggestion for new avenues of research. […] The editors and the contributors have given us an excellent starting place to uncover the voices of religious minorities living in the very heart of the Catholic world.”
John M. Hunt, Utah Valley University. In: Journal of Jesuit Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4 (September 2021), pp. 678–681.
Abbreviations
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Emily Michelson and Matthew Coneys Wainwright
1 Papal Ceremonies for the Embassies of Non-Catholic Rulers
Mayu Fujikawa
2 Pope as Arbiter
The Place of Early Modern Rome in the Pan-Mediterranean Ecumenical Visions of Eastern Rite Christians Robert John Clines
3 Non-Catholic Pilgrims and the Hospital of SS. Trinità dei Pellegrini e Convalescenti (1575–1650)
Matthew Coneys Wainwright
4 Between Conversion and Reconquest
The Venerable English College between the Late 16th and 17th Centuries Irene Fosi
5 Ethiopian Christians in Rome, c.1400–c.1700
Sam Kennerley
6 A Faith between Two Worlds
Expressing Ethiopian Devotion and Crossing Cultural Boundaries at Santo Stefano dei Mori in Early Modern Rome Olivia Adankpo-Labadie
7 Being a New Christian in Early Modern Rome
James Nelson Novoa
8 Wandering Lives
Eastern Christian Pilgrims, Alms-Collectors and “Refugees” in Early Modern Rome Cesare Santus
9 Saving Souls, Forgiving Bodies
A New Source and a Working Hypothesis on Slavery, Conversion and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome (16th–19th Centuries) Serena Di Nepi
10 Muslim Slaves in Early Modern Rome
The Development and Visibility of a Labouring Class Justine A. Walden
11 Jews in 16th-Century Italy and the Vicissitudes of the Hebrew Book
Piet van Boxel
All scholars interested in the history or religious culture of Rome c.1500–1700, or in the individual histories of Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Eastern-Rite Christians, Ethiopians, Portuguese New Christians, foreign ambassadors, censorship, conversion or slavery. Keywords: Japanese ambassadors, pilgrims, Judaism, Islam, censorship, slavery, Eastern Rite, Orthodox, Conversion, Portuguese New Christians, English College, Ethiopian Christians, Protestants, Preaching, Roman Catholicism, Papacy.