'Pleading for help': Gender relations and cross-cultural logic in the early modern mediterranean

Gender and History

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 332-348

  Ortega, Stephen ^a  

^a SIMMONS COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CHRISTIANITY; GENDER RELATIONS; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; ISLAMISM; POWER RELATIONS; RELIGION;

MEDITERRANEAN REGION; MEDITERRANEAN SEA;

EID: 48049114161     PISSN: 09535233     EISSN: 14680424     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.2008.00524.x     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. The Pia Casa dei Catecumeni was an institution that facilitated conversion. For historical background on the Catecumeni, see Brian Pullan, The Jews of Venice and the Inquisition of Venice (London: I. B. Taurus, 1983), pp. 255-74.
2. See also E. Natalie Rothman, 'Becoming Venetian: Conversion and Transformation in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean', Mediterranean Historical Review 21 (2006), pp. 39-75.
3. Archivio di Stato di Venezia (ASV), Avogaria di Comun, Miscellanea Penale, busta 343. While the case is listed in the miscellaneous cases of the Avogaria di Comun, the heading states that it was tried by the Cinque Savi. No final verdict was included.
4. Drniš is a town in Croatia, close to Split and Šibenik. Šibenik is a town north of Split along the Dalmatian coast.
5. ASV, Avogaria di Comun, Miscellanea Penale, busta 343.
6. See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 'Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia', in Victor Lieberman (ed.), Beyond Binary Histories: Re-imagining Eurasia to c.1830(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 289-316.
7. Daniel Goffman, The Ottoman Empire and EarlyModern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 9-12.
8. Cemal Kafadar, 'The Ottomans and Europe', in Thomas Brady, Heiko Oberman and James Tracy (eds), Handbook of European History 1400-1600, Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 589-639.
9. Walter Andrews and Mehmet Kalpakli, The Age of the Beloved in Early Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). For other Mediterranean connections,
10. see Olivia Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
11. Deborah Howard, Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic World on Venetian Architecture, 1100-1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000)
12. Rosamond Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
13. On conversion stories, see Mercedes García-Arenal, Conversions islamiques: Identités religieuses en Islam mediterranéen (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2001)
14. Bartolomé Bennasar and Lucile Bennassar, Les chrétiens d'Allah: L'histoire extraordinaire des renégats (Paris: Perrin, 1989)
15. Pullan, The Jews of Venice; Lucia Rostagno, Mi faccio Turco: Esperienze ed immagini dell'Islam nell'Italia moderna (Rome: Istituto per l'Oriente C. A. Nalino, 1983)
16. Lucetta Scaraffia, Rinnegati: Per una storia dell'identità occidentale (Rome: Laterza, 1993).
17. Julie Hardwick, 'Looking for the Universal in the Local: Morality Tales from the Western End of the Mediterranean', Journal of Women's History 18 (2006), pp. 181-5.
18. Rothman, 'Becoming Venetian', pp. 39-75.
19. Marc Baer, 'Islamic Conversion Narratives of Women: Social Change and Gendered Hierarchy in Early Modern Istanbul', Gender & History 16 (2004), pp. 425-58.
20. Anna Vanzan, 'In Search of Another Identity: Female Muslim-Christian Conversions in the Mediterranean World', Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 7 (1996), pp. 327-33.
21. Anton Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahasi Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 170-71.
22. Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans, p. 189.
23. Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans, p. 186. In terms of receiving funds in Venice
24. see Rothman, 'Becoming Venetian', pp. 50-51.
25. On the issue ofMuslim family members pursuing women who had converted Christianity, see Tijana Krstic, 'Narrating Conversions to Islam: The Dialogue of Texts and Practices in Early Modern Ottoman Balkans' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Michigan, 2004), pp. 290-93.
26. Krstic, 'Narrating Conversions to Islam', pp. 27-9.
27. Krstic, 'Narrating Conversions to Islam', pp. 300-01.
28. Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 11.
29. Haim Gerber, Islam and Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), p. 7.
30. On the Kadi court and its accompanying functions, see Ergene Boǧaç, Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Ca̧nkiri and Kastamonu (1652-1744) (Leiden: Brill, 2003)
31. Wael Hallaq, 'The Qadi's Diwan (sijil) before the Ottomans', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 61 (1998), pp. 415-36, esp. pp. 424-5
32. Ronald Jennings, 'Kadi, Court, and Legal Procedure in Seventeenth-Century Kayseri', Studia Islamica 48 (1978), pp. 133-72.
33. Haim Gerber, Islam and Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), pp. 14, 17.
34. On the issue of the multi-faceted and political nature of Venetian law, see Gaetano Cozzi, 'Authority and Law in Renaissance Venice', in John Rigby Hale (ed.), Renaissance Venice (London: Faber and Faber, 1973), pp. 293-345.
35. A spontaneous confession was a voluntary admission on the part of the person that he or she had been converted, usually forcibly to another religion, and now he or she wanted to be returned to his or her original faith.
36. ASV, Sant'Ufficio, busta 77. See also Vanzan, 'In Search of Another Identity', p. 328.
37. Pullan, The Jews of Venice, pp. 3-14. On cases involving women and the Inquistion
38. see Anne Jacobson Schutte, Aspiring Saints: Pretense of Holiness, Inquistion and Gender in the Republic of Venice, 1618-1750 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
39. Filippo Tamburini, Santi e peccatori: Confessioni e suppliche dai Registri della Penitenzeria dell'Archivio Segreto Vaticano (1451-1586) (Milan: Istituto di Propoganda Libraria, 1995), pp. 61-4. Tamburini notes that, to avoid being accused of apostasy, a convert claimed that he or she had always remained a Christian and had been forced to convert.
40. Maria Borgherini-Scarabellin, 'Il magistrato dei Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia dalla istituzione alla caduta della republica', Miscellenea di storia Veneto-Tridentina, vol. 2 (Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per la Venezia, 1925), pp. 5-141, esp. pp. 14-19.
41. Regarding the Savi's intervention in a dispute between Muslim merchants and a local guild, see ASV, Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, Prime Serie, Risposte, busta 148, foglio 161v.
42. ASV, Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia, Prime Serie, Risposte, busta 141, foglio 145r.
43. Anna Vanzan, 'La pia casa dei Catecumeni in Venezia, Un tenativo di devshirme Christiana?', in Adriana Destro (ed.), Donne e microcosmi culturali (Bologna: Pàtron, 1997), pp. 221-55, esp. pp. 243-4.
44. Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures, p. 25.
45. See ParM. Belin, 'Relations diplomatiques de la République de Venise avec la Turquie', Journal Asiatique (November-December 1876), pp. 381-423
46. see also Hans Theunissen, 'Ottoman-Venetian Diplomatics: The Ahd-names. The Historical Background and the Development of a Category of Political-Commercial Instruments together with an Annotated Edition of a Corpus of Relevant Documents', Electronic Journal of Oriental Studies of Utrecht University, vol. 1 (1998), , file 9.
47. CatherineWendy Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj: Piracy, Banditry, and HolyWar in the Seventeenth-Century Adriatic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 101-2.
48. Basbakanlik Arsivi, Mühimme Defteri, cilt 36, sahifesi 51, sira 362.
49. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Constantinopoli, filza 6, 28 March 1586 50 ASV, Senato Deliberazioni Constantinopoli, registro 7, foglio 33r-36r.
50. See also Vanzan, 'In Search of Another Identity', p. 331.
51. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Constantinopoli, filza 6, 28 March 1586
52. ASV, Senato Deliberazioni Constantinopoli, registro 7, foglio 33r-36r. Dorothea went to the Pia Casa di Catecumeni in Rome as opposed to Venice because of connections that her family had in Rome. Going to Rome also allowed her to gain an audience with the pope to absolve her of the sin of apostasy for previously having converted to Islam. On cases involving this question, see Tamburini, Santi e peccatori, pp. 17-18.
53. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Constantinopoli, filza 6, 28 March 1586
54. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Constantinopoli, registro 7, foglio 33r-36r.
55. Vanzan, 'In Search of Another Identity', pp. 330-31.
56. On this subject see John Peristiany, Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
57. ASV, Avogaria di Commun, Miscellanea Penale, busta 343.
58. Tamburini, Santi e peccatori, p. 49.
59. Jane Schneider, 'Of Vigilance and Virgins: Honour, Shame and Access to Resources in Mediterranean Societies', Ethnology 10 (1971), pp. 1-24, here p. 18.
60. Suraiya Faroqhi, 'Women and Wealth in the Eighteenth Century Anatolian Countryside', in Madeline C. Zilfi (ed.), Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 6-27, here p. 21.
61. Galata sat across the Golden Horn from Constantinople.
62. ASV, I Documenti Turchi, busta 9, fascicolo 1052.
63. On the question of a husband's control over his wife, see Colin Imber, Women, Marriage, and Property: Mahr in the Behecetu'L-feteva of Yenisherli Abdullah', in Zilfi (ed.) Women in the Ottoman Empire, pp. 81-104, esp. pp. 83-4.
64. Imber, 'Women, Marriage, and Property', pp. 87-8.
65. Imber, 'Women, Marriage, and Property', pp. 83, 87.
66. Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), p. 113.
67. There is no evidence in the documentation that this is what happened but, if her family were to sell the people of the town of Sizigar on the idea of a new husband for Fiorenza, they must have told them that her marriage was to a Muslim.
68. ASV, Sant'Ufficio, busta 69.
69. On the Zitelle, see Monica Chojnacka, 'Women, Charity and Community in Early Modern Venice: The Casa delle Zitelle', Renaissance Quarterly 51 (1998), pp. 68-91.
70. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Costantinopoli, registro 18, fogli 38r-47r.
71. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Costantinopoli, registro 18, foglio 40r.
72. A dragoman was an intermediary who acted as an interpreter and a diplomat. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Costantinopoli, registro 18, foglio 43v.
73. Stephen Ortega, 'Ottoman Muslims in the Venetian Republic from 1573 to 1645: Contacts, Connections and Restrictions' (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Manchester, 2002), pp. 65-76.
74. Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage and Power at the End of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 25.
75. Jutta Gisela Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 13.
76. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Costantinopoli, registro 18, foglio 44r.
77. A devshirme was a young Christian who was taken to Istanbul, converted to Islam, and also taught the Turkish language and the culture of the palace. Ultimately, these individuals worked for the state in a variety of different capacities. Some rose to positions as high as the top minister to the sultan.
78. ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Constantinopoli, filza 6, 29 December 1584. For this case
79. see also Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, 'Safiye's Household and Venetian Diplomacy', Turcica 32 (2000), pp. 9-32.
80. Pedani Fabris, 'Safiye's Household', p. 26.
81. Vicko Solitro (ed.), Documenti storici sull'Istria e la Dalmatia, vol. 1 (Venice: Coi tipi della ved. di G. Gattei, 1844), pp. 216-19.
82. Bracewell, The Uskoks of Senj, p. 182.
83. For an overviewof this issue, see RonaldWeissman, 'Reconstructing Renaissance Sociology: The "Chicago School" and the Study of Renaissance Society', inRichard Trexler (ed.), Persons in Groups: Social Behavior as Identity Formation in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1985), pp. 39-46.
84. This is a thesis that was first put forward by Jacob Burckhardt in his classic study of the Renaissance: Die Culture der Renaissance in Italien (Basle: Schwighauser, 1860)
85. tr. S. G. C. Middlemore as The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (London: C. K. Paul, 1878).
86. For a larger discussion on this idea, see Weissman, 'Reconstructing Renaissance Sociology', p. 40.
87. John Martin, Myths of Renaissance Individualism: EarlyModern History Society and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 14.
88. While there is no hard evidence that Lucia was from a powerful family, certain evidence seems to point to the Venetians' willingness to reject Lucia's claim that she was a Christian and believe the family's argument instead. The original Cinque Savi decision to return Lucia not only indicates that the board honoured the family's request, but also that the family knew how to have their needs addressed. Even after Lucia had escaped, the podest 'a of Rovigno turned to one of Lucia's relatives to hear his side of the story.
89. David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 148.
90. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, pp. 141, 143.