“Infidels” at Home Jesuits and Muslim Slaves in Seventeenth-Century Naples and Spain

journal of jesuit studies 1 (2014) 192-211 brill.com/jjs “Infidels” at Home Jesuits and Muslim Slaves in Seventeenth-Century Naples and Spain Emanuele Colombo Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies, DePaul University [email protected] Abstract Drawing from published and unpublished Jesuit sources—treatises, handbooks, reports, and letters—this article explores the Jesuit apostolate to Muslim slaves in Naples and in different cities of Spain during the seventeenth century. Under the blanket of missionary rhetoric, a Jesuit viewpoint not otherwise available is found in these sources, which highlight their missionary methods and strategies and clarify the special status of the apostolate to Muslim slaves in the Jesuit mind. While Europe was the setting of missions to Muslim slaves, and the missions were considered a variation of the so-called popular missions, they were often charged with a deeper symbolic value. Because the missionaries’ interlocutors were “infidels,” so different in their culture and in their habits, Jesuits used forms of accommodation extremely similar to those they used in the missions overseas. Converting Muslim slaves in Naples or in Spain was conceived by Jesuits as an alternative and effective way to go on a mission “even among Turks,” as the Jesuit Formula of the Institute stated, despite never leaving European king- doms for Ottoman lands. Located between the missions overseas, where Jesuits converted the “infidels” in distant lands, and the missions in Europe, where they attempted to save the souls of baptized people who lacked religious education, were “other Indies,” where Jesuits could encounter, convert, and baptize the “infidels” at home. Keywords Jesuit – Muslims – slaves – accommodation – “Other Indies” – popular missions – conversion – Baldassare Loyola – Naples – Spain * The author holds a Ph.D. in Church History from the Università degli Studi di Padova in Padua. He is the author of Convertire i musulmani: L’esperienza di un gesuita spagnolo del Seicento (Bruno Mondadori, 2007) and Un gesuita inquieto: Carlo Antonio Casnedi (1643–1725) e il suo tempo (Rubbettino, 2006). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/22141332-00102003Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:20:08PM via free access <UN> “infidels” At Home 193 This article is situated at the confluence of three different streams of research that have been growing in the last few years. The first shows the relevance of the phenomenon of slavery in Mediterranean Europe up to the eighteenth century.1 The second highlights the surprisingly high number of Muslims, not only slaves, present in Europe in the early modern period; they have often been overlooked by historians because of their particular status as an “invisible” minority or as “familiar strangers.”2 The third considers the cul- tural and social impact of conversion both in Europe and overseas.3 In the spe- cific case of Islam, complementing scholarship on Christian converts to Islam, or the “Christians of Allah,” research on the “Muslims of Christ,” or Muslims who converted to Christianity is increasing.4 Contributing to this vast and complex literature, this article explores the Jesuit apostolate to Muslim slaves in Naples and in different cities of Spain during the seventeenth century. The sources for this essay are mainly published and unpublished treatises, handbooks, reports, and letters. These documents raise the question of reliability and demand careful, critical analysis, as the boundaries between the genres of history, internal propaganda, and spiritual edification are often tenuous. However, under the blanket of missionary rhetoric, a Jesuit viewpoint not otherwise available is found in these sources, which 1 An excellent historiographic overview is Salvatore Bono, “La schiavitù nel mediterraneo moderno: Storia di una storia,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 65 (2002): 1–16. For Italy and Naples, see Bono, Schiavi musulmani nell’Italia moderna: Galeotti, vu’cumprà, domestici (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1999); for Spain, see Alessandro Stella, Histoires d’esclaves dans la péninsule Ibérique (Paris: EHESS, 2000). 2 Jocelyne Dackhlia and Bernard Vincent, eds., Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, vol. 1: Une intégration invisible (Paris: Albin Michel, 2011); Dackhlia and Wolfgang Kaiser eds., Les musulmans dans l’histoire de l’Europe, vol. 2: Passages et contacts en Méditerranée (Paris: Albin Michel, 2013); Lucette Valensi, Ces étrangers familiers: Musulmans en Europe (XVIe –XVIIIe siècles) (Paris: Payot, 2012). 3 Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011); Eric Dursteler, Renegade Women: Gender, Identity, and Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011); “Conversion in the Early Modern World,” special issue, Journal of Early Modern History 17 (2013); Giuseppe Marcocci, Aliocha Maldavski, Ilaria Pavan, and Wietse de Boer, eds., Space and Conversion: a Global Approach (16th–20th centuries) (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 4 On the “renegades,” see Bartolomé and Lucille Bennassar, Les Chrétiens d’Allah: L’histoire extraordinaire des renégats, XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Perrins, 1989). On Muslims who converted to Christianity see Beatriz Alonso Acero, Sultanes de Berbería en tierras de la cristian- dad: Exilio musulmán, conversión y asimilación en la monarquía hispánica (siglos XVI y XVII) (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2006); Isabelle Poutrin, Convertir les musulmans: Espagne, 1491–1609 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2012). journal of jesuit studies 1 (2014) 192-211 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 02:20:08PM via free access <UN> 194 Colombo highlight Jesuit missionary methods and strategies and clarify the special status that the apostolate to Muslim slaves held in the Jesuit mind. While Europe was the setting of missions to Muslim slaves, and the missions were considered a variation of the so-called popular missions, they were often charged with a deeper symbolic value. Because the missionaries’ interlocutors were “infidels,” so different in their culture and in their habits, Jesuits used forms of accommodation much like those they used in the missions overseas. In short, we face here a hybrid model of mission, directed toward an “other Indies” located halfway between the overseas missions and the popular missions in Europe. The article begins with a brief overview that provides the context of the Jesuit apostolate to Muslim slaves. Following that is an analysis of the social status of converted slaves, both as regarded by officials of the early modern Catholic Church, and as seen more particularly from the standpoint of the Jesuits’ missionary strategies. Jesuits and Muslim Slaves in Naples and Spain During the seventeenth century, Naples was one of the most important Italian ports and a pivot point for the commerce of slaves. Although it is always diffi- cult to estimate precise numbers, many studies have determined that, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was in Naples a stable presence of at least 10,000 Muslim slaves, mostly captives of war and piracy who came from the Maghreb.5 Some of them were the property of the Kingdom of Naples and worked on galleys. Others, mainly women and children, were owned by private families and worked as domestic servants. The slaves were not the only Muslims in the city: Naples hosted a large and well-organized Muslim community that enjoyed a fair amount of autonomy and was always ready to defend its rights and claims. In the city, Muslims often were employed as moneylenders; they established a mosque in the Fondaco of the Moors near the port, where Muslim religious authorities would lead prayer services that were often attended by curious Christians.6 Starting in the mid-sixteenth century, diocesan priests and various religious orders strengthened the apostolate to Muslim slaves in a campaign that saw collaboration between ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Naples soon 5 See Giuliana Boccadamo, Napoli e l’Islam: Storie di musulmani, schiavi e rinnegati in età moderna (Naples: D’Auria, 2010). 6 Boccadamo, Napoli e l’Islam, 13–15. Mosques and cemeteries for Muslims existed in the same period in many cities of Italy. See Bono, Schiavi musulmani, 241–252. journal of jesuitDownloaded studies from Brill.com09/25/20211 (2014) 192-211 02:20:08PM via free access <UN> “infidels” At Home 195 became the Italian city with the highest number of Muslim slave converts to Christianity.7 As Peter Mazur has recently observed, “for the rulers of Naples, both clerical and lay, the conversion and assimilation into society of a Muslim slave was a victory full of symbolism that embodied the highest values of the Catholic Church and the Spanish monarchy.”8 The Jesuits, who had been present in the city since 1552, were not indifferent to this apostolate and, toward the end of the 1580s, began converting slaves privately owned by Neapolitan families as well as slaves on the galleys.9 However, it was in the seventeenth century that the Society of Jesus launched a more serious apostolate to Muslim slaves in Naples. In 1601, the two Jesuits Girolamo d’Alessandro and Giacomo Antonio Giannoni, after meeting Muslim slaves while they were preaching in the city, created a lay confraternity, the Congregation of the Epiphany, to “take [them] away from hell.”10 At first, mem- bers of the confraternity visited the slaves in their masters’

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