Imaginary Jews and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Imaginary Jews and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome analyzes forced conversionary preaching to the Jews of Rome. Based on abundant but previously unused sources in Roman archives, this project proposes that Jews were a category of great concern to the innovators of early modern Catholicism in Rome, and that therefore they are necessary to our understanding of it. Conversionary preaching in particular provided an opportunity for understanding and celebrating the distinctive features of early modern Catholicism. More broadly, this project also proposes a new approach to understanding early modern Catholicism, by considering how it was shaped, even at its very heart, by a group external to it; Jews are one case of many. Early modern Rome was a unique and compelling laboratory for observing the impact of Jews on early modern Catholicism. Rome boasted the oldest continuous Jewish settlement in Europe, one which predated Christianity, and which grew rapidly in the sixteenth century. But as the Caput Mundi, Rome also generated most of the rhetoric and conceptions about Jews ("imaginary Jews") that had informed centuries of Catholic theology. Thus in Rome, unlike anywhere else in Europe, real Jews and imaginary Jews were equally robust, equally impossible to ignore, and had equal claims to antiquity. At conversionary sermons, they converged: Before a real Jewish congregation, preachers offered their theological critiques of Judaism as they imagined it, and made an argument for choosing Catholicism. Conversionary preaching also captures a moment when post-Reformation Catholic doctrine and priorities had to be articulated aloud and "sold" to a public. From the outset, as the archival record confirms, conversionary preaching was always a public spectacle, attended not only by Jews and new converts, but also by elite clerics, ordinary citizens, pilgrims, and foreign visitors. Conversionary preaching in Rome began shortly after the close of the Council of Trent and lasted beyond the early modern period. Throughout this period, a wide and varied group heard these sermons. The rhetorical strategies of conversionary preachers show the incorporation of early modern Catholicism's new values alongside the continuation of older arguments. While missionaries argued for Catholicism in distant lands, and before populations to whom it was unfamiliar, conversionary preachers made their case before the Church's oldest antagonists, and within the very heart of the body of Catholicism.This project thus considers the paradox inherent in conversionary preaching: that conversion was never its only goal, nor Jews its only target. From the first, conversionary preaching addressed a multilayered, diverse audience, and therefore served multilayered, diverse functions; it mattered both for Jewish-Christian relations and also for early modern Catholicism. This study, and the monograph that will result from it, therefore makes substantial contributions to the historiography of both fields. Yet in a city full of foreign dignitaries, new converts, Protestant travellers, international merchants, and others, Jews were hardly Rome's only religious minority. Just as conversionary sermons were pitched to appeal across faiths, it is important to remember that other religious groups could also influence early modern Catholicism, either in ways similar to Judaism, such as external validation, or in others yet to be explored. In this way we are reminded that early modern Catholicism did not develop in isolation but was influenced by other religions even at its heart, in Rome. The project Imaginary Jews and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome will also develop a network of scholars studying the impact of religious minorities at the heart of early modern Catholicism, through workshops, panels, and the publication of an edited collection.