Becoming Venetian: Conversion and Transformation in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean

Abstract

For both (primarily local) Jews and (primarily immigrant) Muslims, becoming Catholic in seventeenth-century Venice entailed a prolonged process of social transformation and insertion into new relations of patronage and surrogate kinship. This article traces these converts' long trajectories after baptism and their ongoing relationship with a charitable institution, the Pia Casa dei Catecumeni (Holy House of the Catechumens). It shows how the Pia Casa was instrumental in shaping distinct forms of charity and surveillance that brought together Venetian élites' corporate spiritual and civic claims while also furthering their individual and family interests by weaving dense networks of patronage. Ultimately, the article considers how conversion operated as a project of metropolitan subject making in the context of Venetian–Ottoman imperial competition.

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