I nomi degli altri: Conversioni a Venezia e nel Friuli Veneto in età moderna (review)

I nomi degli altri by Pietro Ioly Zorattini has greatly enhanced our knowledge of conversions to Catholicism in Venice and in Friuli-Veneto on the part not only of Jews but also of Muslims and non-Catholic Christians. The first four chapters of the book deal with conversion in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam; the attitude of the papacy toward infidels in Italy during the Counter-Reformation with emphasis on the role of the House of Catechumens in preparing infidels for baptism; the conversion of Jews in Venice prior to the establishment of the Venetian House of Catechumens in 1557; and a history of the Venetian House of Catechumens, tracing its locations, governance, and process for admitting potential converts.

Chapter 5—in a sense, the core of the book—analyzes the baptismal records from the House of Catechumens in Venice, presented in forty-four pages of tabulated data. An overall numerical introduction of those admitted to the House and of those baptized is followed by breakdowns by nuclear families; by age; by numbers baptized within certain time periods; by the names of the baptizers in chronological order and by the number of converts they baptized; by the churches in which the baptisms occurred; and by the place of origin (listing both historical and present-day place names) of the baptized Muslims, Jews, and non-Catholic Christians, which is organized by number of converts as well as alphabetically.

Most basically, although there are gaps in the extant registers, it appears that 2635 individuals entered the House of Catechumens, of whom 2351, almost 90%, eventually converted. The remaining 284, slightly over 10%, were not converted for several reasons: Some were discovered to have already been baptized (a second baptism, baptismo iterato, usually undertaken for financial gain, constituted a desecration of the sacrament); others ultimately decided to remain with their families, did not have an authentic vocation, had a criminal record, did not behave properly in the House, or refused because of conscience. Of those who entered, 1630 were Muslims, 975 Jews, 28 non-Catholic Christians, and two Manicheans. Of the baptized, 1598 were male and 753 female (a ratio of 2.12 to 1), while the ratio of men who left without baptism was much higher (3.81 to 1).Although the place of origin of the individual catechumens was not always given in the documents, the majority of the Muslims for whom it was given (72.6 percent) came from the Venetian possessions in the East and consisted mainly of former sailors, soldiers, and unspecified women who had been captured in war or purchased by Venetian merchants and brought to Venice. Others came from the Ottoman Empire, Abyssinia, and a few from India and Tartary. As for the known places of origin of Jews, the largest group (373 out of 747) came from the ghetto of Venice, followed by fifty-two from Padua and forty from Verona, while the others originated primarily from Northern Italy or the Venetian overseas empire. Because Muslims usually arrived at the House as individuals from far away while Jews from the Veneto often came in families, 3 percent of the Muslims converted in nuclear families, but 25.4 percent of the Jews did. As for the few non-Catholic Christians, twenty-five were Protestants (thirteen Anabaptists, eight Calvinists, and four Lutherans), while three were Russian Orthodox.

The remaining chapters deal with learned Jewish converts who cooperated in various ways with the Inquisition, candidates for baptism who were not accepted, Muslims and Jews who came from the Ottoman Empire, converts in Friuli Veneto, and finally, some famous converts around the time of the end of the Venetian Republic and afterward.

Based to a great extent on statistical analysis, this book is very far from constituting a dry, technical volume...