Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement 9789048552139

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Movement and Mobility in the Early Modern World : An Introduction
Moving Bodies
1. Linguistic Encounter : Fynes Moryson and the Uses of Language
2. Wading Through the Mire : Mobility on the Grand Tour (1585–1750)
3. Travelling for Health : Medicine and Rural Mobility in Early Modern Spain
Crossing Borders
4. Mobility and Danger on the Borders of the Papal States (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)
5. News on the Road : The Mobility of Handwritten Newsletters in Early Modern Europe
6. Quarantine, Mobility, and Trade : Commercial Lazzarettos in the Early Modern Adriatic
Global Networks
7. Devotion in Transit : Agnus Dei, Jesuit Missionaries, and Global Salvation in the Sixteenth Century
8. Getting to the Holy Land : Franciscan Journeys and Mediterranean Mobility
9. From Mount Lebanon to the Little Mount in Madras : Mobility and Catholic-Armenian Alms-Collecting Networks During the Eighteenth Century
Index

Citation preview

Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World

Connected Histories in the Early Modern World Connected Histories in the Early Modern World contributes to our growing understanding of the connectedness of the world during a period in history when an unprecedented number of people—Africans, Asians, Americans, and Europeans—made transoceanic or other long distance journeys. Inspired by Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s innovative approach to early modern historical scholarship, it explores topics that highlight the cultural impact of the movement of people, animals, and objects at a global scale. The series editors welcome proposals for monographs and collections of essays in English from literary critics, art historians, and cultural historians that address the changes and cross-fertilizations of cultural practices of specific societies. General topics may concern, among other possibilities: cultural confluences, objects in motion, appropriations of material cultures, cross-cultural exoticization, transcultural identities, religious practices, translations and mistranslations, cultural impacts of trade, discourses of dislocation, globalism in literary/visual arts, and cultural histories of lesser studied regions (such as the Philippines, Macau, African societies). Series editors Christina Lee, Princeton University Julia Schleck, University of Nebraska, Lincoln Advisory Board Serge Gruzinski, CNRS, Paris Michael Laffan, Princeton University Ricardo Padron, University of Virginia Elizabeth Rodini, American Academy in Rome Kaya Sahin, Indiana University, Bloomington

Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World The Practice and Experience of Movement

Edited by Paul Nelles and Rosa Salzberg

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 404916. Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 923 9 e-isbn 978 90 4855 213 9 doi 10.5117/9789463729239 nur 685 © The authors / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Movement and Mobility in the Early Modern World: An Introduction Paul Nelles and Rosa Salzberg

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Moving Bodies 1. Linguistic Encounter: Fynes Moryson and the Uses of Language John Gallagher

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2. Wading Through the Mire: Mobility on the Grand Tour (1585–1750) 63 Gerrit Verhoeven

3. Travelling for Health: Medicine and Rural Mobility in Early Modern Spain Carolin Schmitz

87

Crossing Borders 4. Mobility and Danger on the Borders of the Papal States (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)

113

5. News on the Road: The Mobility of Handwritten Newsletters in Early Modern Europe

133

6. Quarantine, Mobility, and Trade: Commercial Lazzarettos in the Early Modern Adriatic

157

Irene Fosi

Paola Molino

Darka Bilić

Global Networks 7. Devotion in Transit: Agnus Dei, Jesuit Missionaries, and Global Salvation in the Sixteenth Century Paul Nelles

185

8. Getting to the Holy Land: Franciscan Journeys and Mediterranean Mobility

215

9. From Mount Lebanon to the Little Mount in Madras: Mobility and Catholic-Armenian Alms-Collecting Networks During the Eighteenth Century

237

Felicita Tramontana

Sebouh David Aslanian

Index 277



Movement and Mobility in the Early Modern World: An Introduction Paul Nelles and Rosa Salzberg

Abstract The Introduction offers an orientation to mobility themes emerging from the social sciences and considers how they can generate new understandings of the early modern world. It calls for integrating the study of different forms of mobility – embodied, local, global – and highlights the need to pay attention to the ‘quotidian mechanics’ of movement at all scales. It is structured around three themes: moving bodies; crossing borders; and networks, distance, and circulation. Keywords: circulation; trade; travel writing; global history; communication; transport

From around 1450, Europe became more mobile and more connected – both internally and to the wider world – than ever before. The enhancement of transport and communication systems (road and river networks, the printing press, postal services); the growth of cities; the spread of “Renaissance” culture; the global expansion of trade, Christianity, and empires; and the ever-increasing movement of people and goods stimulated encounters and exchanges, conversions and conflicts.1 At the same time, the growth and acceleration of mobility spurred the development of policies and infrastructures that aimed to regulate and channel movement. In the words of Martin and Bleichmar, “the early modern period was uniquely liminal in so far as it opened up new horizons of movement and possibility, while 1 For useful overviews of these developments, see Moch, Moving Europeans; Canny, Europeans on the Move; Lucassen and Lucassen, “Mobility Transition;” Ehmer, “Quantifying Mobility;” Scott, “Travel and Communications;” Behringer, “Communications Revolutions.”

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_intro

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simultaneously prompting the desire to establish boundaries, to demarcate and dominate.”2 The intersection and creative tension between these crosscurrents fundamentally shaped the lives, itineraries, and experiences of mobile individuals. They also left lasting traces on many other aspects of early modern life: on settled communities, on urban and rural landscapes, and on patterns of cultural formation. Our own age of hyper-mobility and instant connection – but also of pandemic lockdowns and escalating climate and refugee crises – is making us more sensitive to these complex and ambivalent dynamics in the past. Yet it is crucial to be aware not just of continuities between our day and the past but also of fundamental differences in the actual practice and experience of movement. As such, more attention can be given to what we might call the “quotidian mechanics” of early modern mobility: the material and physical experiences together with the systems, technologies, and practices that facilitated and impeded movement, whether on a local or a global scale. As Stephen Greenblatt has emphasized, mobility must first be studied in a highly literal sense, and these practical aspects need to be seen as “indispensable keys to understanding the fate of cultures.”3 In other words, to better understand the impact of mobility and what it meant to people at the time, we need to know more about what movement felt like and how mobility worked (or did not), in a very concrete sense. Work carried out under the rubric of the “new mobilities paradigm” in a spate of recent social science research – particularly in sociology and human geography – offers useful models for approaching the study of early modern mobility. 4 This body of scholarship insists on an understanding of movement as an integral part of human societies: as the norm rather than the exception. It draws our attention to practices of mobility and to their impact, and to the spaces that mobility creates: spaces of movement but also of waiting or stillness (airports or car interiors, for example, in our own day; ferry stations, ships, or inns in the early modern period). While this approach is becoming central to scholarship in the humanities, only recently has research begun to apply a mobilities framework to pre-modern societies.5 2 Bleichmar and Martin, “Introduction: Objects in Motion,” 618. 3 Greenblatt, “Mobility Studies Manifesto,” 250. 4 For an introduction, see Urry, Mobilities; Adey et al., Routledge Handbook of Mobilities. 5 On contributions made by arts and humanities scholars to the development of the mobilities paradigm, see Merriman and Pearce, eds., “Mobility and the Humanities.” See also the newly created Centre for Mobility & Humanities at the University of Padua (https://www.mobilityandhumanities.it/). Scholars of ancient and medieval Europe have engaged more extensively with the concept of mobility. See, for example, Moatti and Kaiser, eds., Gens de passage; Laurence and

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Scholars of early modern mobilities of course cannot make use of many of the tools and methodologies of those researching the contemporary world, such as interviewing migrants or digitally tracking people as they move around cities.6 At the same time, we are able to work with a range of sources much more extensive than the “residues of movement” (wheel ruts, inscriptions, and so on) from which scholars of antiquity have nonetheless been able to skilfully unearth patterns of mobility in the more distant past.7 The increased scale and variety of early modern mobility generated a vast field of evidence, some of it well-used (such as travel diaries and guidebooks) but much only just beginning to be mined for this purpose: Inquisition trials and account books, architectural and visual sources, letters, plays, and novels, and material culture. Scholars are also starting to explore the possibilities for using digital tools to map the mobilities of people and things, as well as the infrastructure that supported this movement, in illuminating new ways.8 Investigation of this source material is producing an increasingly rich and multi-perspectival view of early modern mobility. Even so, certain corners remain difficult to access. The individual experiences of forced migrants such as slaves, refugees, or convicts, for example, have left few traces in the historical record. Similarly, locating the sensory and emotional responses to movement requires careful methodological handling. This book contributes to a growing body of scholarship that challenges dominant notions of the “fixed” nature of pre-modern peoples and societies haplessly locked in place, in which mobility is habitually considered an exception.9 The volume draws together recent work by a group of international scholars using a range of sources and approaches to examine the practical, material, and social aspects of moving around Europe and the wider world in the early modern centuries. Stimulated by a mobilities approach, the chapters in this volume provide new ways of thinking about the early modern period by putting the concept of mobility – the movement Newsome, eds., Rome, Ostia, Pompeii; Preiser-Kapeller, Reinfandt and Stouraitis, eds., Migration Histories. 6 For an overview of such methodologies, see Urry, Mobilities, chap. 2. 7 Newsome, “Making Movement Meaningful;” Leary, “Past Mobilities.” 8 Interesting examples include the Mapping the Republic of Letters Project (http://republicofletters.stanford.edu); the Fifteenth-Century Book Trade project (http://15cbooktrade.ox.ac.uk); the Hidden Cities apps which reconstruct micro-itineraries of urban mobility in the early modern period (https://www.hiddencities.eu/); the Viae Regiae map of English and Welsh roads (https:// viaeregiae.org/); and the Viabundus pre-modern street map (https://www.landesgeschichte. uni-goettingen.de/handelsstrassen/index.php). 9 For an overview, see Sheller and Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm.”

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of people and things through space and across distance – at the centre of the frame of enquiry.

Connected mobilities While the chapters in this volume adopt a variety of disciplinary perspectives, geographical scales, and thematic orientation, collectively they highlight the fundamental importance of mobility to the inter-connected economic, social, political, and cultural life of the early modern world. They suggest that adopting a more mobile perspective can provide fresh viewpoints, shifting attention away from the major centres or paradigmatic individuals that have been the traditional focus of scholarship. The chapters illuminate the connected paths of people and things in motion, the spaces they passed through, and the kinds of encounters and exchanges that mobility engendered. This introduction surveys some of the emerging trends in the study of early modern mobility in order to set the stage for the chapters that follow. It also points towards areas that deserve further attention. One of our central tasks is to delineate the varying scales and plural modalities of pre-modern mobility. At the same time, we wish to draw attention to the ways in which differing scales of mobility – embodied movement, regional itinerancy, or global transit, for example – were enmeshed. If, as has recently been suggested, there has been a tendency to fetishize mobility in contemporary scholarship, at the same time many of the individuated practices, documents, objects, and social processes implicated in early modern mobility – the mechanics of mobility writ small – have remained on the sidelines of historical inquiry.10 In the current state of scholarship there is an overwhelming tendency to equate mobility with either straightforward geographic dislocation and migration (movement from A to B) or, somewhat more subtly, with forms of cross-cultural encounter (mobility as representation or negotiated identity). Both trajectories of inquiry habitually carry an implicit assumption that larger distances somehow involve “greater” mobility, though without fully articulating by what measure such determinations might be made. While points of departure and arrival are coming into sharper focus in contemporary studies, the entire “meshwork” of what lies in between – the

10 Conrad, What is Global History?; Ghobrial, “Moving Stories,” 246.

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interwoven pathways, routes, and networks along which things and people actually moved – remain rather fuzzy.11 Even if new forms of global mobility are one of the distinctive features of the early modern world, these too need to be studied locally, “in place,” even when that place was itself in motion (a coach or ship) or a site of movement or transit (a road, a city gate, a customs house). Though no doubt “everything is mobile” on some scale, as some students of mobility have argued, it is also true that mobility is enacted within confined places and across bounded spaces.12 Physical movement is but a single component of mobility. The notion of “constellations of mobility” explored by Tim Cresswell is helpful in thinking about the inter-connected nature of mobility in the early modern world. For Cresswell, constellations of mobility are “historically and geographically specific formations” of physical movement, representations of movement, and “ways of practising movement that make sense together.”13 Of course, these three aspects of mobility – the fact of physical movement, the cultural mediations of movement that give it meaning, and the experienced and embodied practice of movement – are analytical distinctions only. The task of the historian is not only to disentangle these elements but also to discern how they work together. The imagined port scene depicted in Alessandro Salucci’s 1654 painting touches on many of these themes (see Fig. 0.1). The ships and lighthouse in the background speak of maritime journeys and long-distance connections. The painting is dominated by a disused city gate, offering a promise of controlled movement, in the form of a crumbling Roman arch. We can imagine that a pair of well-dressed figures at the harbour’s edge may well be investors awaiting the arrival of foreign cargo. The pack mule and what is possibly a post-horse depicted in the foreground speak to the small-scale, regional movement of goods and information, as do the porters, pedlars, and boatmen who punctuate the scene. The painting provides a study in the contrasting forces of stasis and motion, and the varying scales of movement that contributed to the making of early modern mobility. In the pages that follow, we suggest that an exploration of some of the everyday, repeated elements of mobility encountered in embodied movement 11 For meshwork, see Ingold, Lines. 12 Merriman, Mobility, Space and Culture, 5. See also recent work on the value of combining global and microhistorical approaches: De Vito and Gerritsen, eds., Micro-Spatial Histories; Bertrand and Calafat, eds., “Micro-analyse et histoire globale;” Ghobrial, “Global History and Microhistory.” 13 Cresswell, “Towards a Politics of Mobility,” 17–19; idem, On the Move.

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Figure 0.1 Alessandro Salucci, A Seaport with Figures, ca. 1656. Oil on canvas. 84.8 x 130.4 cm. Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 404916.

and localized forms of mobility allows some of the distinctive features of mobility across distance to be placed in perspective. This introduction begins at the micro-level of the body, its gestures and movements, before expanding outwards to consider small-scale urban and regional itineraries. Finally, we turn to consider some of the global trajectories that more and more people and things followed in the early modern period.

Moving bodies The Italian acrobat Arcangelo Tuccaro was typical of the entertainers of his day. Like many performers and artists, Tuccaro’s career was highly itinerant, as he made his way from Italy to the courts of Vienna and Paris in search of employment. Tucarro is emblematic of two different forms of embodied movement: what we might think of as “movement in place” and “movement through space.” He was certainly no typical acrobat, and not only in the good fortune of his eventual court appointment as saltarin du Roi, or “Tumbler to the King.” In high Renaissance style, Tuccaro was an acrobat-philosopher who expounded the elements of his art according to geometric principles. In a book of dialogues published in 1599, Tuccaro espoused a veritable cosmology of embodied movement – dancers, he suggested in one passage,

Movement and Mobilit y in the Early Modern World

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Figure 0.2 Arcangelo Tuccaro, Trois dialogues de l’exercise de sauter, et voltiger en l’air, f. 109r. Paris: Claude de Monstroeil, 1599. Hand-coloured woodcut print depicting the standing backflip. Photo: BnF / Gallica.

imitate the movement of heavenly bodies across the sky. Yet what is most notable about Tuccaro’s handbook are his detailed descriptions of bodily movement. In more than ten pages devoted to the standing backflip, for example, Tuccaro minutely describes the relative positioning of feet, knees, arms, hands, shoulders, neck, and head at each stage of motion. In the woodcut illustration from the volume shown here, the upper circle traces the range of motion of the feet, the lower circle that of the hands, while a vertical line traced through legs, torso and arms indicates the linear axis the acrobat’s body is to maintain while in motion (Fig. 0.2).14 Tuccaro was not alone in his close observation and description of movement in place. Scholars have documented the gradual implementation of regimes of bodily control across many spheres of early modern social activity. Tuccaro’s dialogues on tumbling can stand for a panoply of manuals and treatises on gesture, manners, dance, horsemanship, fencing, sport, and other arts that sought to map and control the motions of the human 14 Tuccaro, Trois dialogues, 36v, 106v–112v.

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body. They shared a singular aim: to sensitize the individual to the range of gesture and movement in themselves and others and to provide mastery of their physical environment.15 The recovery of bodily movement in the past is fraught with difficulty, as has been recognized by several scholars. Work in these fields thus has much to contribute to a new understanding of experienced, embodied mobility more generally in the early modern world.16 The instructions in one dance manual are typical of the emphasis on controlled movement: “keep the body straight from the chest to the eyes, always looking straight ahead, without bending either the waist, or the knees inwards, so that a firm and straight body always accompanies these movements, without swaying from side to side as some people do, whether from affectation or bad habits.”17 As Michel Foucault has famously shown, analogous regimes of controlled movement were reproduced in hospitals, prisons, and military barracks, largely by following the same moral logic.18 Pre-modern embodied movement was bound in layers of moral signification, as a rich literature on gesture has shown.19 Gesture was one of the most universally practised and observed forms of bodily movement. Alongside the more narrow, modern notion of gesture as the movement of the hands – “gesticulation” – the early modern syntax of gesture included things like facial expression and comportment. The perception and performance of gesture was a form of everyday knowledge. Medical and moral science taught that gesture varied from person to person and from one place to another. What was required was constant scrutiny by self and others to achieve the appropriate range of movement. The unifying principle was that of modesty, defined in one manual as “the virtue which keeps manners, movements and all our activity above insufficiency but below excess.”20 While vigorous, assured movement may have been suitable for the courtier or acrobat, it was not befitting the monk or widow. The ideal of controlled movement passed by many names: decorum, civility, or Castiglione’s famous sprezzatura or 15 Van Orden, Music, Discipline, and Arms, 82, 92. 16 Nevile, “Decorum and Desire;” Nevile, ed., Dance, Spectacle; Arcangeli, Davide o Salomè?; Schmidt, “‘Sauter et voltiger en l’air’.” 17 Roodenburg, “Dancing in the Dutch Republic,” 353. 18 Foucault, Discipline and Punish. 19 Bremmer and Roodenburg, eds. Cultural History of Gesture; Schmitt, La Raison des gestes; idem, “Ethics of Gesture;” Magli, “The Face and the Soul;” Vigarello, “Upward Training of the Body;” Knox, “Gesture and Comportment;” Niccoli, “Gesti e posture.” See also John Gallagher’s chapter in this volume. 20 Schmitt, “Ethics of Gesture,” 139.

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“nonchalance” – the studied practice of seemingly effortless, “natural” movement. Whatever it was called, the general idea was the same. Moral character and social standing were communicated through control of the external movements of hand, face, and body. Early modern people were well aware that gesture varied from one place to another. Travellers frequently commented on the range and variety of gesture. One English traveller, Thomas Overbury, even poked fun at the studied cosmopolitanism of what he called the “affective” traveller: “his attire speaks French or Italian, and his gait cries, Behold me.” Another Englishman abroad, Fynes Moryson, disguised himself as an Italian when spying on the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine in Rome. Yet Moryson was aware that “strange gestures” would betray him as surely as his clothes or his accent.21 The traveller’s task, therefore, was to decipher the local semiotics of gesture. Walking was the most common form of early modern urban and regional mobility, of “movement through space.” While Moryson, for example, frequently made his way by coach, wagon, or rented post-horse during his continental travels, he also routinely covered significant distances on foot when towns were relatively close together or the scenery pleasant, or simply to save money.22 While most people in this period likely walked without thinking too much about it, walking could be a highly performative activity. Like other forms of gesture, things like pace and gait conveyed character and social status.23 As Filippo De Vivo notes in his nuanced study of walking in early modern Venice, walking “was imbued with special yet ambivalent significance, as it both tied the city together and set people apart.” De Vivo’s study of Venice is of especial methodological importance for its attention to how a universal bodily practice of movement was conditioned by the particularities of local topographic, economic, and social realities.24 Other work has emphasized the role of walking in connecting the inter-dependent logistical, social, architectural, and symbolic systems that structured urban space.25 Just as modern cities are oriented around the automobile, early modern cities were shaped by the flow of foot traffic. Pedestrian movement determined the distribution of architectural space and the organization of 21 In Leary, “Past Mobilities,” 9; Moryson, Itinerary, 304. On Moryson, see John Gallagher’s chapter in this volume. 22 Morrison, Itinerary, e.g. 201, 308, 365. 23 O’Sullivan, Walking in Roman Culture; De Vivo, “Walking in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” 24 De Vivo, “Walking in Sixteenth-Century Venice.” 25 Leary, “Past Mobilities;” Newsome, “Making Movement Meaningful.” See also Eckstein, “Florence on Foot;” Riello, “Material Culture of Walking”; Nevola, Street Life; and the essays in Gonzalez Martin, Salzberg, and Zenobi, eds., “Cities in Motion.”

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the streets, alleys, and passageways that connected sites of civic, economic, and religious activity.

Crossing borders Beyond the level of individual bodies and the micro-mobilities of everyday life, there is a well-developed field of scholarship on the longer-range journeys of early modern things and people. Much of this has followed the most prominent written sources, especially travel diaries, focusing on travel as an elite, voluntary activity.26 Nonetheless, in the last two decades there have been growing calls for a more expansive and inclusive conception of mobility. This requires dialogue between fields such as the history of travel, transport, and migration and collapsing traditional conceptual distinctions between different kinds of movement: between long and short distance, forced and voluntary migration, permanent and temporary dislocation, and so on.27 Historians have increasingly recognized that early modern journeys might be motivated by a variety of overlapping, intersecting motives, and that they frequently involved more complex trajectories than simply moving from A to B. As well as study of more familiar mobile groups from higher and lower ends of the social spectrum (from diplomats, pilgrims, merchants, and grand tourists to beggars and vagabonds), research is beginning to bring into focus a greater variety of people on the move, among them the students, friars, missionaries, alms collectors, news writers, healers, and patients examined in this volume. In the case of migration history, this has meant shifting away from a concentration on immigration or emigration and the “ethnic minorities” settled in cities to examine itinerant individuals, circular and seasonal migrants, and various “floating” groups who may have left fewer traces in the archive or on the built environment but who nonetheless constituted an important component of early modern societies.28 Far from 26 For brief, useful overviews, see Mączak, Travel in Early Modern Europe; Verdon, Travel in the Middle Ages. 27 See already Lucassen and Lucassen’s call to bridge the ‘canyon’ separating various approaches to studying migration, in their “Migration, Migration History.” See also Pooley, “Connecting Historical Studies;” Holmberg, “Renaissance and Early Modern Travel”; Gelléri and Willie, eds., Travel and Conflict. 28 Important collections focusing on longer-term processes of integration or marginalization of migrants but with an eye also to more transitory groups include De Munck and Winter, eds., Gated Communities; Quertier, Chilà, and Pluchot, eds., “Arriver” en ville.

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being marginal figures, mobile people have been posited as crucial economic and cultural actors, go-betweens, and intermediaries, even if we need to beware the risk of over-emphasizing the representativeness of extremely mobile individuals in the early modern world.29 A “connected” approach to mobility – surveying different kinds of journeys alongside one another as well as acknowledging how movement could have multiple, intersecting, and overlapping motivations and consequences – has led to thought-provoking studies of the exchanges and encounters that movement engendered in this period. A rich vein of scholarship has explored the connections between physical borders and religious divides, as mobility sometimes went hand in hand with confessional conflict or conversion, and could incorporate competing political, economic, and social motivations, especially in the multi-faith Mediterranean zone.30 Another emerging strand of research is attentive to the infrastructures of transport, lodging, and control that were designed to facilitate, impede, and channel different forms of mobility.31 While road and river systems, for example, have been a classic topic of research for transport history, new work reveals how these infrastructures operated at ground level as spaces of negotiation between local authorities, travellers, and settled groups and as sites that could both reinforce and express differences of power and access.32 At the same time, there is growing awareness of how practical aspects such as the availability of new forms of transport such as coaches and improved roads had significant consequences for the material and sensorial experience of moving.33 The economy of commercial hospitality – which ranged from closelymonitored, licenced inns and taverns to more informal and ad-hoc lodging in private houses – was especially important in placing people on the move into close contact both with other travellers and with locals, enabling economic 29 See, for example, Rothman, Brokering Empire; Terpstra, Religious Refugees; Fontaine, History of Pedlars; Degl’Innocenti and Rospocher, “Street Singers,” and below for further discussion of the role of intermediaries. See also Ghobrial, “Moving Stories.” 30 See, for example, Fosi, Inquisition, Conversion, and Foreigners; Marcocci, “Saltwater Conversion;” Siebenhüner, “Mobility, Conversion and the Roman Inquisition;” Clines, “The Converting Sea.” On those who moved in order to preserve their religious identities, see Corens, Confessional Mobility. 31 On the recent focus on infrastructure in contemporary migration studies, see Meeus, van Heur, and Arnaut, “Migration and the Infrastructural Politics;” Korpela, “Infrastructure.” 32 See Geltner, Roads to Health; Guldi, Roads to Power; Scholz, Borders and Freedom of Movement; and the work of the Early Modern Mobility Research Group at Stanford University (https:// emmobility.github.io/emm_site/). 33 See Gerrit Verhoeven’s chapter in this volume.

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and other forms of exchange. Such “spaces of arrival” brought various kinds of mobile individuals into proximity but also served to reinforce social distinctions and reproduce distinct experiences of mobility, as newcomers could meet a very different reception depending on factors such as social standing, gender, place of origin, and mode of transport.34 Study of the organization of Mediterranean merchant communities has emphasized the role of stable nodes where mercantile mobility was controlled and managed. One of the characteristic institutions of Mediterranean trade was the fondaco, a logistical base for coordinating the mercantile activities of a foreign community or “nation.” Common across both the Muslim and Christian Mediterranean, the fondaco concentrated a cluster of services and mechanisms into a single space, providing foreign merchants with lodging and warehouse facilities, a location to conduct commercial transactions, and a customs station for taxation by local authorities. By the sixteenth century, fondaci within Europe had largely ceased to provide lodging and increasingly served as warehouses and sites for coordinating logistics. Outside Europe, fondaci continued to provide a mechanism for civil authorities to regulate the movement of foreign merchants within the local urban environment. Where the residential function of the fondaco was maintained in continental Europe, as in the famous Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice, this served an identical function.35 At the same time as infrastructures shaped experiences of mobility, flows of people and goods in turn left their mark on the physical spaces of the urban environment, with the erection and maintenance of walls, gates, quays, and customs stations as well as fondaci, inns, and lodging houses.36 While increased consideration has been given to major urban hubs where large numbers of people moved around and came and went every day, there is still work to be done on investigating the impact of mobility on rural areas of transit and passage and on smaller, less heterogenous communities, which nevertheless participated in the operation of an inn, a checkpoint, or a customs station. Indeed, scholars are beginning to show how peripheral and border zones between city and countryside, or between one polity and 34 For an overview of research on inns in early modern Europe, see Kümin and Tlusty, World of the Tavern. See also Salzberg, “Mobility, Cohabitation and Cultural Exchange;” and Salzberg, “Little Worlds in Motion.” 35 Constable, Housing the Stranger, 64; Braunstein, Les allemands. 36 See, for example, Gonzalez Martin, Salzberg, and Zenobi, eds., “Cities in Motion;” Nevola, Street Life.

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another, were crucial sites for the contestation and negotiation of different kinds of mobilities.37 In addition to physical spaces, it is increasingly evident that the early modern period was pivotal in the development of ever more complex bureaucratic regimes to identify and monitor people on the move. Systems of documentary identification in particular came to play a much larger role in shaping the lives and movements of mobile people. Indeed, Sebouh Aslanian has argued that the escalation in global mobility in the early modern period, together with increasingly rapid information flows, helped to spark an early modern “crisis of recognizability” that in turn triggered new practices of identification like the use of passports and licences.38 Infrastructures to control mobility – both bureaucratic and architectural – proliferated in this period for many reasons, not least because the movement of people and goods could be, quite literally, a matter of life and death. As the onslaught of the Black Death in the fourteenth century was followed with brutal regularity by further bouts of plague, European polities worked to implement and refine mechanisms to control the movement of people and contagion. Cities such as Ragusa (now Dubrovnik), Venice, and Milan were especially susceptible to disease outbreaks due to their position as centres of trade and transit. These cities were also among the first to establish systems of quarantine for newly arrived people and goods, bans on travel to or from infected places, and the use of health passes authorising the movement of healthy travellers. These were later adopted in many other parts of Europe and elsewhere across the globe.39 At the same time, studies increasingly point to the many difficulties encountered in enforcing general rules and restrictions on the movement of people at the local level. As various chapters in this book suggest, we need to be attentive not only to normative decrees but also to the actual practices adopted in specific localities and to consider how top-down attempts to control movement were enacted, experienced, and understood by everyday actors.40 37 Canepari, “Unsettled Space;” Hewlett, “Locating Contadini;” Zenobi, “Borders and the Politics of Space;” Scholz, Borders and Freedom of Movement. 38 See Aslanian, “‘Many Have Come Here’,” and his chapter in this volume. See also Groebner, Who Are You?; Eliav-Feldon, Renaissance Impostors; Greefs and Winter, eds., Control of Migration; and Scholz, Borders and Freedom of Movement. On the continued importance of other ways of establishing identity such as oral testimony and neighbourhood fama, see Buono, “La manutenzione dell’identità;” Ghobrial, “Moving Stories;” Berry, “‘Go to Hyr Neybors’.” 39 Tomic, Expelling the Plague; Crawshaw, “Quarantine;” Bamji, “Health Passes.” See also Darka Bilić’s chapter in this volume. 40 See in particular the chapters by Irene Fosi and Sebouh Aslanian in this volume.

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Networks, distance, circulation As the preceding sketch illustrates, there were numerous local and regional mechanisms in place to manage and control human mobility. Long-distance travel – whether intra-European or inter-continental – was facilitated by similar constellations of institutions and practices. Scholars have recently begun to bring into sharper focus the social relationships and material arrangements necessary for maintaining connectivity and controlling movement across distance. Any consideration of long-distance mobility in the early modern world must necessarily begin with trade and commerce, the primary motor of geographic mobility in the pre-modern age. Economic historians have identified numerous institutions and practices that shaped the regional, continental, and global exchange of goods in this period. These include the family firm and its branch offices, partnerships, and trade fairs; shared record-keeping, accounting, and communication practices; and credit and legal mechanisms such as banking, bills of exchange, and contracts. 41 Studies that have moved beyond the institutionally rooted analytical framework that informs traditional approaches to economic history have illuminated the web of relationships that shaped the flow of people and goods. Much of this work is animated by concerns about networks and the spaces and places in which they operated. 42 As long-distance trade intensified and expanded between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, the infrastructures and mechanisms of mobility forged by trade networks supported numerous forms of non-mercantile movement, some of which are touched upon by the chapters in the present volume. Network analysis strives to identify the hubs, nodes, routes, and pathways that permit a network to function. Within a mobilities framework, the goal is not simply to describe movement across a network but rather to explore “the very different and often complex qualities of movement, flux, viscosity and stasis” that maintain connectivity in long-distance relationships. 43 Hubs, nodes, and routes perform mobility at different scales and make different demands of the social actors that populate any network. As Sebouh Aslanian has argued in his study of the Armenian merchants of 41 See for example Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers; Aslanian, Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. 42 On trade networks, see the useful discussion of Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants, 24–31; Aslanian, Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, 6–15. 43 Merriman, Mobility, Space and Culture, 5.

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New Julfa, early modern trade networks require both migratory mobility and sedentary nodes; they “need ‘anchor points’ not only to ‘fasten’ them in place and endow them with permanence and stability but also to steer or route, facilitate, and channel circulatory flows of men, information, and capital.”44 Work on inter-continental mercantile mobility routinely emphasizes the inter-connected nature of long-distance trade with local and regional trade networks, whether in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, or Indian Ocean trade corridors. 45 The kinds of mercantile mobility on a planetary scale that emerged over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries differed from earlier forms of long-distance mobility in significant ways. Foremost among these changes were the exponential increase in the distances covered and the consequent duration and intensity of maritime experience, the astonishingly high mortality rates suffered by social actors of all ranks, the systematic use of state-sanctioned violence, and the plurality of non-European cultures encountered. Yet when European traders left the Mediterranean to pursue trade in the Atlantic and, later, Indian oceans, familiar networks of trading nodes were established. The string of Portuguese feitoria or “factories” and the strategically located trading posts of the Dutch and English merchant companies shared many structural similarities with the Mediterranean fondaci mentioned above. This was due in part to some of the commonalities across Eurasian trade and in part to the deliberate reproduction of familiar modalities further afield. We now have detailed, ground-level studies of European trading nodes as multi-faceted sites of transit, exchange, and short- and long-term migration. 46 Merchant diasporas are another research area with important implications for mobility research. Recent work has shown that maintaining commercial relationships among far-flung members of distinct cultural and religious communities – Sephardic Jews, Armenians, Portuguese New Christians, or Multani Indians – did not flow effortlessly from a shared cultural identity but rather operated on the basis of a host of formal and informal institutions and practices for enforcing contracts, sharing information, and maintaining trust across distance. 47 At the same time, members 44 Aslanian, Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, 14. 45 Casado Alonso, “Viajes y negocios;” Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa; Subrahmanyam, Portuguese Empire in Asia. 46 Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa; Ward, Networks of Empire; Subrahmanyam, Portuguese Empire in Asia; Sicking, “Medieval Origin of the Factory.” 47 Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers; Aslanian, Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean; Forrest and Haour, “Trust in Long-Distance Relationships.”

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of these groups became adept at “establishing durable commercial relations with persons who did not speak their language, wore different garb, and worshipped other gods.”48 Bringing mercantile mobility into closer focus has allowed for greater precision in thinking about patterns and intensities of migration flows. In the Eurasian sphere of maritime commerce, the actual number of globally mobile social actors was relatively low in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, never more than a few thousand individuals in any given year. Though lying outside the scope of this introduction, New World mobility configurations experienced radically different migration patterns that involved massive settler migration and the large-scale coerced migration of African and indigenous populations. These population flows engendered numerous mechanisms for the coordination of long-distance and local mobility that came to characterize colonial societies in the Americas. 49 If merchants themselves circulated in relatively low numbers, research on mercantile networks has uncovered many of the other social actors and technologies that facilitated commercial mobility. Intermediaries – sometimes identified as exotic ‘go-betweens’ – were habitual, everyday players within long-distance networks. Studies of European commercial centres have shown how long-distance continental trade depended upon local intermediaries such as factors, procurators, brokers, notaries, innkeepers, auctioneers, and muleteers.50 Outside Europe, intermediaries in possession of local knowledge and specialized administrative, technical, and linguistic skills were crucial in brokering cross-cultural interactions of all kinds. Numerous studies have differentiated the highly specific ways in which intermediaries functioned, as well as the obstacles and risks they encountered as they crossed boundaries.51 The important role played by the circulation of information in maintaining long-distance networks has been emphasized by numerous scholars. Letters, reports, accounts, identity documents, and other paper tools were not merely the flotsam and jetsam of mobility. They were, rather, one of the key technologies that facilitated long-distance exchange. The flow of 48 Trivellato, “Cross-Cultural Trade,” 2. 49 See O’Reilly, “Movements of People in the Atlantic World,” for an overview. 50 Murray, Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism; Reyerson, Art of the Deal; Salzberg, “Little Worlds in Motion.” 51 See Raj, “Go-Betweens, Travelers, and Cultural Translators,” for an incisive overview; for examples, see Metcalf, Go-Betweens; Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to Be Alien; Rothman, Brokering Empire; Bonnotte-Hoover, “Language, Mediation, Conflict;” Rizzi, “Interpreting in Early Modern Diplomacy.”

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information has long been considered fundamental to Eurasian trade – “a luxury commodity … worth its weight in gold,” in Braudel’s classic formulation.52 While up-to-date knowledge of prices and markets was important for the successful execution of commercial transactions, the routine exchange of written instruments played a crucial role in maintaining connectivity between far-flung social actors. Written records were not the by-product of long-distance relationships but were one of the constituent components of the network. Within Europe, the development of an effective and extensive postal network over the course of the sixteenth century only intensified the role of information exchange.53 The “Committees for Correspondence” of the joint-stock mercantile corporations such as the English and Dutch East India companies, instituted to coordinate communication and the exchange of written records with their overseas offices, are an important indication of the importance of bureaucracy and paperwork for long-distance exchange in the early modern centuries.54 Though the material and bureaucratic apparatus of global mobility was organized according to the social logic of commerce, merchants and commercial goods were not the only people and things that moved. Other social actors and material objects travelled along these same pathways. Such parallel patterns of movement generated documentation and material evidence which, when combined with well-developed interpretive traditions in several fields of cultural history, can be used to illuminate many of the material, experiential, and intersubjective aspects of early modern mobility. Students, bureaucrats, pilgrims, and missionaries all moved along mercantile routes and pathways at varying scales.55 Recent work on early modern pilgrimage offers critical insights into the connected nature of mobility in the early modern period. It has been argued, for example, that “the iconic Western image of a long-distance pilgrim is far from representative of all pilgrimage practices, let alone broader sacred mobilities.”56 Religious sites were connected by an “interlocking geography” of pilgrim pathways linking local, regional, and transnational sites of devotion. As a practice, pilgrimage 52 Braudel, Mediterranean, 1: 365; Melis, “Intensità e regularità nella dif fusione dell’informazione;” Casado Alonso, “Los flujos de información;” Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants, 24–25. 53 For an overview, see Schobesberger et al., “European Postal Networks.” 54 Ogborn, Indian Ink; Aslanian, Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, 86–120; Chaudhuri, Trading World of Asia, 74–77. 55 For missionaries, see for example Clossey, Salvation and Globalization; Palomo, “Cultura religiosa;” Rubial García, “Religiosos viajeros.” 56 Maddrell, Terry, and Gale, eds., Sacred Mobilities, 3.

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can be considered a collaboration of people, objects, and places where sacrality is activated through movement.57 Pilgrims and merchants travelled the same roads, lodged in the same places, and were frequently one and the same person. Pilgrimage too spawned its own interconnected networks, as illustrated by the Franciscans responsible for the upkeep of Holy Land monuments studied by Felicita Tramontana in this volume. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed an explosion in both regional and longdistance pilgrimage across Catholic Europe, with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims in transit every year.58 Nor was this phenomenon limited to Europe. As Eric Tagliacozzo has shown, in Southeast Asia the Hajj pilgrimage was deeply intertwined with Indian Ocean mercantile networks.59 Other social groups populated the roads and sea routes of the early modern world, such as the ‘Grand Tour’ travellers studied by Gerrit Verhoeven, the Protestant students in Italy studied by Irene Fosi, and the diplomat-intraining Fynes Morrison studied by John Gallagher in this volume. Many of these actors operated with a heightened sense of perceptual awareness. Documenting the experience of pilgrimage, mission, or commercial travel through journals, letters, logs, and other written instruments was an integral component of many modes of early modern mobility. Traditionally these types of sources have been lumped together as a more or less homogenous body of ‘travel’ or ‘exploration’ literature. Yet when subjected to critical scrutiny and situated within the knowledge traditions that generated them, this body of documentation offers valuable testimony on the configurations and contingencies of early modern mobility. Taken as a whole they contributed to the “active making of a new global geography in the early modern period.”60 Used creatively, they can illuminate the ‘meshwork’ of early modern mobility alluded to at the outset of this introduction: the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and other phenomena of movement across streets, roads, and seas.61 57 Tingle, “Sacred Landscapes,” 91; Vincent and Pycke, eds., Cathédrale et pèlerinage; Forster, Catholic Revival, 77–121; Nelson, “The Parish in Its Landscapes;” Maddrell and Scriven, “Celtic Pilgrimage.” 58 Delano-Smith, “Milieus of Mobility;” Tingle, “Sacred Landscapes;” Duhamelle, “Pèlerinage et économie;” Maddrell et al., eds., Christian Pilgrimage. 59 Tagliacozzo, “Crossing the Great Water;” idem, Longest Journey. 60 Ogborn, “Writing Travels,” 157; see also Raj, “Go-Betweens;” Rubiés, “Instructions for Travellers;” Mancall, “What Fynes Moryson Knew;” Rubiés, ed., Medieval Ethnographies. On conventions of early modern travel-writing see also John Gallagher’s chapter in this volume. 61 For the maritime environment, see e.g. Arbel, “Daily Life on Board;” Brockey, “Largos caminhos;” Tempère, Vivre et mourir.

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Recent work by students of material culture and historians of art and architecture points in several complementary directions. Trade goods – whether calico cotton, dye woods, or spices – not only acquired value in transit but also forged new networks and acquired new meanings.62 The mobility of material objects can be regarded as integral to cultural and social dynamics. Movement and transformation are encountered not as external epiphenomena leaving deposits or encrustations to be scraped away, but rather as constitutive of objects themselves. From this perspective, objects are considered to be characterized by mutability rather than fixity. Mobility involves both physical and cultural trajectories. Several recent studies have transcended the social-material nexus in which mobile people and goods are habitually situated to explore the range of geographical, cultural, interpretive, and taxonomic mobilities experienced by objects.63 Mobility is considered not a by-product of cultural exchange but as central to an object’s form and meaning as things migrate across media, space, time, and culture. New ways of conceiving of the global movement of people, goods, information, texts, and knowledge conceptualize movement as occurring upon a continuum, as part of wider systems and networks of circulation. The notion of circulation provides another useful framework for exploring the varying scales and multiple modalities of mobility. Claude Markovits, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam have argued that “circulation is different from simple mobility, in as much as it implies a double movement of going back and forth and coming back, which can be repeated indefinitely. In circulating, things, men and notions often transform themselves.”64 While circulation is not the same as movement, it occurs within and across bounded spaces that are themselves frequently in geographical, temporal, and conceptual flux.65 At the same time, the framework of circulation has been criticized for “privileging mobility as its core concern” and therefore “ironically constrict[ing] the space to think about those who did not travel but were crucially implicated in the history of movement and circulation.”66 And indeed, future scholarship will not only need to track how and why things and people moved but also examine how, why, and where they came to 62 Riello, Cotton; Fraser, ed., Mobility of People. 63 Bleichmar and Martin, eds., “Objects in Motion;” Göttler and Mochizuki, eds., The Nomadic Object. 64 Markovits, Pouchepadass, and Subrahmanyam, Society and Circulation, 2–3. 65 Raj, “Beyond Postcolonialism,” 345. 66 Sinha, “The Idea of Home,” 211.

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rest; to “critique and redesign the framework of circulation to include both immobility and small-scale circulations.”67 A mobilities approach is ideally suited to differentiate these features of early modern society. As Kapil Raj has argued, “a focus on mobility … allows us to study intercultural relationships and phenomena at all scales, from the local to the planetary and not only in the past, but also right up to the present day.”68 To echo Raj, mobility is not the same as peregrination. There was much in the early modern world that cannot simply be willed into motion: elements of permanence, rootedness, stasis, resistance, and friction need to be accounted for in the study of mobility in any period of human history. By bringing forms of embodied and local mobility into dialogue with the study of movement across distance, things rooted in place also emerge in a new light.

The organization of the volume Following the framework charted above, this volume is organized into three sections. The chapters in the first section, “Moving Bodies,” explore the day-to-day motivations and experience of movement. John Gallagher’s chapter considers linguistic impediments to travel and the mechanisms for negotiating multilingual communication through the study of the English traveller Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617). Though one of the most oft-cited travel authors of the early modern period, Moryson himself has rarely been the subject of critical scrutiny. Gallagher offers a careful reconstruction of Moryson’s world and shows how the Itinerary can be used to shed light on many of the practicalities of mobility normally hidden from view. In a similar vein, Gerrit Verhoeven’s chapter, “Wading through the Mire,” re-situates traditional narratives of the Grand Tour by placing mobility at the centre of the experience of recreational travel in the early modern period. Through a detailed study of Dutch and Flemish travel diaries, Verhoeven locates the Grand Tour between the improved infrastructure and “hardware” for long-distance travel that emerged over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the shifting emotional and aesthetic responses to geographic dislocation. These included, for example, a new valorization of the landscape as not simply something to be passed through but as a tourist “site” in its own right, viewed from barge or coach.

67 Ibid., 214. 68 Raj, “Go-Betweens,” 43.

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Carolin Schmitz’s chapter, “Travelling for Health,” considers how mobility played a crucial role in the quest for health. Schmitz analyzes the routine local and regional journeys undertaken by patients in rural Spain. Based on the study of Inquisition trials of practitioners of “irregular” medicine, Schmitz shows that everyday people routinely travelled both shorter and longer distances in search of healing, meeting up with healers at nodal points such as inns. Those too ill to travel might send samples of their urine or hair with messengers for analysis. The decisive factor of movement in these cases, Schmitz suggests, was not the lack of medical expertise close to home but rather the patient’s desire for a particular form of treatment. The chapters in the second section, “Crossing Borders,” take a closer look at some of the mechanisms and infrastructures that worked to channel and control the movement of people, goods, and information over distance. In “Quarantine, Mobility, and Trade,” Darka Bilić examines lazzarettos in the early modern Adriatic. She demonstrates how these sites, originally established as hospitals for the treatment and isolation of plague victims, increasingly performed crucial commercial functions that allowed the flow of trade to continue almost uninterrupted even in times of epidemic, while at the same time minimizing the spread of disease. Tracking how the lazzaretto buildings were adapted over time for this purpose, Bilic unearths fascinating details about the use of travel documents, the disinfection of goods, and the practice and experience of quarantine for people on the move through this border region between the Venetian and Ottoman empires. In “Mobility and Danger on the Borders of the Papal States,” Irene Fosi focuses on another highly trafficked zone of transit and encounter. Fosi analyzes the case of “heretical” northern Europeans who travelled to centralnorthern Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to study, work, or trade. These temporary migrants represented both a religious threat and an economic opportunity to secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the Papal States. The rich source material studied by Fosi sheds light on the day-to-day efforts of the Roman Inquisition to stop the “infection of heresy” by controlling the movement of foreign students, merchants, and artists in their territories. As such, Fosi’s chapter again highlights the multiple, sometimes conflicting resonances of mobility in the early modern world and suggests that scholars need to be attentive not only to normative decrees but also to the actual practices adopted on the ground in specific locations. Paola Molino’s contribution, “News on the Road,” similarly underlines the importance of shifting between differing scales of analysis by tracing the

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“mobile technology” of handwritten newsletters. Highlighting how mobility and immobility intertwined, Molino describes how fixed infrastructures such as an expanding postal network enabled the dissemination of news, with regular newsletters emanating from the shops of newswriters in Europe’s major urban centres and reaching disparate networks of subscribers. These largely immobile newswriters thus played a fundamental role in managing flows of news stories from all directions: cutting and pasting, borrowing and censoring, as well as translating across numerous languages, and thereby shaping the transmission of information, opinions, truth, and falsehood. The chapters in the last section, “Global Networks,” explore three different examples of how long-distance networks were activated in the context of early modern religious mobility. In his chapter, Paul Nelles explores the global circulation of Agnus Dei, wax devotional objects made from leftover Easter candles in Rome and blessed by the pope. The chapter studies the global diffusion of the Agnus Dei cult across the Jesuit missionary network. Headquartered in Rome and with ready access to the disks, Nelles shows how Jesuit missionaries not only physically transported Agnus Dei to Asia and the Americas but also served as proxies for their Roman origin and as guarantors of their efficacy. With symbolic and material ties to baptism rites, the aquatic associations of Agnus Dei made them particularly valuable in warding off the perils of sea travel, in exorcism, and as markers of contact and conversion. Felicita Tramontana’s chapter, “Getting to the Holy Land,” studies how Franciscan friars organized the transfer of alms from Europe to the eastern Mediterranean for the upkeep of Christian holy sites. Tramontana shows how the Franciscan system, while reliant on mercantile infrastructure for the physical movement of funds and friars, drew on a far-flung network of Franciscan establishments that served to anchor and facilitate mobility at the local level. In the final chapter in the volume, “From Mount Lebanon to the Little Mount in Madras,” Sebouh Aslanian explores the movement of Andreas Ouzounean, a Catholic Armenian alms collector from Lebanon. As Aslanian shows, Father Andreas’s journeys – which included stops in Rome, Moscow, Istanbul, Calcutta, and Madras – were supported by the robust state-funded infrastructure networks that spanned the region. Aslanian draws particular attention to the role of correspondence, transcontinental alms certificates, and credit instruments in facilitating the flow of funds from the Armenian mercantile diaspora to religious institutions in Lebanon and Rome.

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Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank Niall Atkinson, Lucio Biasiori, Alessandro Buono, Richard Calis, Jason Coy, Giulia Delogu, Kelley Di Dio, David Young Kim, Christopher Kissane, Julia McClure, Ruth McKay, Adelina Modesti, Paola Molino, Alina Payne, Beth Petitjean, Maarten Prak, Stephan SanderFaes, Luca Scholz, Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Nick Terpstra, Anatole Upart, and Luca Zenobi; and audiences at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, the University of Padua, and the European University Institute, Fiesole, where many of the ideas for this volume were developed.

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Fraser, Elisabeth A., ed. The Mobility of People and Things in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Art of Travel. New York: Routledge, 2020. Gelléri, Gábor, and Rachel Willie, eds. Travel and Conflict in the Early Modern World. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021. Geltner, Guy. Roads to Health. Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Ghobrial, Jean-Paul A. “Moving Stories and What They Tell Us: Early Modern Mobility between Microhistory and Global History.” Past & Present 242 (Supplement 14) (2019): 243–80. ———, ed. “Global History and Microhistory.” Special issue, Past & Present 242 (Supplement 14) (2019). Gonzalez Martin, Pablo, Rosa Salzberg, and Luca Zenobi, eds. “Cities in Motion. Mobility and Urban Space in Early Modern Europe.” Special issue, Journal of Early Modern History 25, no. 1–2 (2021). Göttler, Christine, and Mia Mochizuki, eds. The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Greefs, Hilde, and Anne Winter, eds. Migration Policies and the Materiality of Identification in European Cities, 1500–1930s: Papers and Gates. New York: Routledge, 2018. Greenblatt, Stephen. “A Mobility Studies Manifesto.” In Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 250–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Groebner, Valentin. Who Are You? Identification, Deception, and Surveillance in Early Modern Europe. Translated by Mark Kyburz and John Peck. New York: Zone, 2007. Guldi, Jo. Roads to Power: Britain Invents the Infrastructure State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Hewlett, Cecilia. “Locating Contadini in the Renaissance City: Food Circulation and Mobility in the Marketplace.” I Tatti studies 19, no. 1 (2016): 93–113. Holmberg, Eva Johanna. “Introduction: Renaissance and Early Modern Travel – Practice and Experience, 1500–1700.” Renaissance Studies 33, no. 4 (2019): 515–23. Ingold, Tim. Lines. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Knox, Dilwyn. “Gesture and Comportment: Diversity and Uniformity.” In Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe. Vol 4: Forging European Identities, 1400–1700, edited by Herman Roodenburg, 289–307. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Korpela, Mari. “Infrastructure.” In Keywords of Mobility: Critical Engagements, edited by Noel B. Salazar and Kiran Jayaram, 113–32. New York: Berghan Books, 2016. Kümin, Beat, and B. Ann Tlusty, eds. The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002.

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Laurence, Ray, and David J. Newsome. Rome, Ostia, Pompeii. Movement and Space. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Leary, Jim. “Past Mobilities: An Introduction.” In Past Mobilities: Archaeological Approaches to Movement and Mobility, edited by Jim Leary, 1–19. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Lucassen, Jan, and Leo Lucassen. “Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives.” In Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, edited by Jan Lucassen and Leo Lucassen, 9–38. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997. ———. “The Mobility Transition Revisited, 1500–1900: What the Case of Europe Can Offer to Global History.” Journal of Global History 4, no. 3 (2009): 347–77. Maddrell, Avril, Alan Terry, and Tim Gale, eds. Sacred Mobilities: Journeys of Belief and Belonging. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Maddrell, Avril, Veronica della Dora, Alessandro Scafi, and Heather Walto, eds. Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape and Heritage: Journeying to the Sacred. New York: Routledge, 2015. Maddrell, Avril, and Richard Scriven. “Celtic Pilgrimage, Past and Present: From Historical Geography to Contemporary Embodied Practices.” Social and Cultural Geography 17 (2016): 300–21. Magli, Patrizia. “The Face and the Soul.” In Fragments for a History of the Human Body. Part Two, edited by Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, 87–127. New York: Zone, 1989. Mancall, Peter C. “Introduction: What Fynes Moryson Knew.” In Bringing the World to Early Modern Europe: Travel Accounts and Their Audiences, edited by Peter C. Mancall, 1–9. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Marcocci, Giuseppe. “Saltwater Conversion: Trans-Oceanic Sailing and Religious Transformation in the Iberian World.” In Space and Conversion in Global Perspective, edited by Giuseppe Marcocci et al., 235–59. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Markovits, Claude. The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750–1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Markovits, Claude, Jacques Pouchepadass, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds. Society and Circulation. Mobile People and Itinerant Cultures in South Asia, 1750–1950. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003. Mączak, Antoni. Travel in Early Modern Europe. Translated by Ursula Phillips. Cambridge: Polity, 1995. Meeus, Bruno, Bas van Heur, and Karel Arnaut. “Migration and the Infrastructural Politics of Urban Arrival.” In Arrival Infrastructures: Migration and Urban Social Mobilities, edited by Bruno Meeus, Bas van Heur, and Karel Arnaut, 1–23. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

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Melis, Federigo. “Intensità e regularità nella diffusione dell’informazione economica generale nel Mediterraneo e in Occidente alla fine del Medievo.” In Histoire économique du monde méditerranéen, 1450–1650. Mélanges en l’honneur de F. Braudel, 389–424. Toulouse: Privat, 1973. Merriman, Peter. Mobility, Space, and Culture. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012. Merriman, Peter, and Lynne Pearce, eds. “Mobility and the Humanities.” Special issue, Mobilities 12, no. 4 (2017). Metcalf, Alida C. Go-Betweens and the Colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Moatti, Claudia, and Wolfgang Kaiser, eds. Gens de passage en Méditerranée de l’Antiquité à l’époque modern. Procédures de contrôle et d’identification. Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2007. Moch, Leslie Page. Moving Europeans. Migration in Western Europe since 1650. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Moryson, Fynes. An Itinerary Containing his Ten Yeeres Travell. Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1907. Murray, James M. Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Nelson, Eric. “The Parish in its Landscape: Pilgrimage Processions in the Archdeaconry of Blois, 1500–1700.” French History 24 (2010): 318–40. Nevile, Jennifer. “Decorum and Desire: Dance in Renaissance Europe and the Maturation of a Discipline.” Renaissance Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2015): 597–612. ———, ed. Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politic, 1250–1750. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Nevola, Fabrizio. Street Life in Renaissance Italy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020. Newsome, David J. “Introduction: Making Movement Meaningful.” In Rome, Ostia, Pompeii. Movement and Space, edited by Ray Laurence and David J. Newsome, 1–54. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2011. Niccoli, Ottavia. “Gesti e posture del corpo in Italia tra Rinascimento e Controriforma.” Micrologus 15 (2007): 379–98. Ogborn, Miles. “Writing Travels: Power, Knowledge and Ritual on the English East India Company’s Early Voyages.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27, no. 2 (2002): 155–71. ———. Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. O’Reilly, William. “Movements of People in the Atlantic World, 1450–1850.” In The Oxford History of the Atlantic World, edited by Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan, 305–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. O’Sullivan, Timothy M. Walking in Roman Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

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Palomo, Federico. “Cultura religiosa, comunicación y escritura en el mundo ibérico de la Edad Moderna.” In De la tierra al cielo: Líneas recientes de investigación en historia moderna, edited by Eliseo Serrano Martín, 55–90. Zaragosa: Fundación Española de Historia Moderna, 2013. Pooley, Colin G. “Connecting Historical Studies of Transport, Mobility and Migration.” The Journal of Transport History 38, no. 2 (2017): 251–59. Preiser-Kapeller, Johannes, Lucian Reinfandt, and Yannis Stouraitis, eds. Migration Histories of the Medieval Afroeurasian Transition Zone: Aspects of Mobility Between Africa, Asia and Europe, 300–1500 C.E. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Quertier, Cédric, Roxane Chilà, and Nicolas Pluchot, eds. “Arriver” en ville. Les migrants en milieu urbain au Moyen Âge. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2013. Raj, Kapil. “Beyond Postcolonialism … and Postpositivism: Circulation and the Global History of Science.” Isis 104, no. 2 (2013): 337–47. ———. “Go-Betweens, Travelers, and Cultural Translators.” In A Companion to the History of Science, edited by Bernard Lightman, 39–57. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2016. Reyerson, Kathryn L. The Art of the Deal: Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval Montpellier. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Riello, Giorgio. “The Material Culture of Walking: Spaces of Methodologies in the Long Eighteenth Century.” In Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings, edited by Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson, 41–56. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. ———. Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Rizzi, Andrea. “Interpreting in Early Modern Diplomacy: Occasional Mobility and the Liminal Spaces of Trust.” Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 44, no. 1 (2021): 49–68. Roodenburg, Herman. “Dancing in the Dutch Republic: The Uses of Bodily Memory.” In Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe. Vol. 4: Forging European Identities, 1400–1700, edited by Herman Roodenburg, 329–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Rothman, E. Natalie. Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011. Rubial García, Antonio. “Religiosos viajeros en el mundo hispánico en la época de los Austrias (el caso de Nueva España).” Historia Mexicana 61 (2012): 813–48. Rubiés, Joan-Pau. “Instructions for Travellers: Teaching the Eye to See.” In Travellers and Cosmographers: Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology, 139–90. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. ———, ed. Medieval Ethnographies: European Perceptions of the World Beyond. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

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Salzberg, Rosa. “Mobility, Cohabitation and Cultural Exchange in the Lodging Houses of Early Modern Venice”. Urban History 46, no. 3 (2019): 398–418. ———. “Little Worlds in Motion: Mobility and Space in the Osterie of Early Modern Venice.” Journal of Early Modern History 25, no. 1–2 (2021): 96–117. Schmidt, Sandra. “‘Sauter et voltiger en l’air’. The Art of Movement in Late Renaissance Italy and France.” In The Body in Early Modern Italy, edited by Julia L. Hairston and Walter Stephens, 213–25. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. “The Ethics of Gesture.” In Fragments for a History of the Human Body. Part Two, edited by Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, 128–47. New York: Zone, 1989. ———. La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval. Paris: Gallimard, 1990. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 38, no. 2 (2006): 207–26. Schobesberger, Nikolaus et al. “European Postal Networks.” In News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, 19–63. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Scott, Hamish. “Travel and Communications.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern History: 1350–1750. Vol. 1: Peoples and Place, edited by Hamish Scott, 166–92. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Scholz, Luca. Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Sicking, Louis. “The Medieval Origin of the Factory or the Institutional Foundations of Overseas Trade: Toward a Model for Global Comparison.” Journal of World History 31, no. 2 (2020): 295–326. Siebenhuner, K. “Conversion, Mobility and the Roman Inquisition in Italy Around 1600.” Past & Present 200, no. 1 (2008): 5–35. Silva, Filipa Ribeiro da. Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa Empires, Merchants and the Atlantic System, 1580–1674. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Sinha, Nitin. “The Idea of Home in a World of Circulation: Steam, Women and Migration through Bhojpuri Folksongs.” International Review of Social History 63, no. 2 (2018): 203–37. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History. London: Longman, 1993. ———. Three Ways to Be Alien. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2011. Tagliacozzo, Eric. The Longest Journey: Southeast Asians and the Pilgrimage to Mecca. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. ———. “Crossing the Great Water. The Hajj and Commerce from Pre-Modern Southeast Asia.” In Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History,

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1000–1900, edited by Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Cátia Antunes, 216–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Tempère, Delphine. Vivre et mourir sur les navires du Siècle d’Or. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2009. Terpstra, Nicholas. Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Tingle, Elizabeth. “Sacred Landscapes, Spiritual Travel: Embodied Holiness and Long-Distance Pilgrimage in the Catholic Reformation.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 28 (2018): 89–106. Tomic, Zlata Blazina, and Vesna Blazina. Expelling the Plague: The Health Office and the Implementation of Quarantine in Dubrovnik, 1377–1533. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. Trivellato, Francesca. The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. ———. “Introduction: The Historical and Comparative Study of Cross-Cultural Trade.” In Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000–1900, edited by Francesca Trivellato, Leor Halevi, and Cátia Antunes, 1–23. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Tuccaro, Arcangelo. Trois dialogues de l’exercise de sauter, et voltiger en l’air. Paris: Claude de Monstroeil, 1599. Urry, John. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. Verdon, Jean. Travel in the Middle Ages. Translated by George Holoch. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Van Orden, Kate. Music, Discipline, and Arms in Early Modern France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Verhoeven, Gerrit, ed. Beyond the Grand Tour. Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour. New York: Routledge, 2017. Vigarello, Georges. “The Upward Training of the Body from the Age of Chivalry to Courtly Civility.” In Fragments for a History of the Human Body. Part Two, edited by Michel Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, 148–99. New York: Zone, 1989. Vincent, Catherine, and Jacques Pycke, eds. Cathédrale et pèlerinage aux époques médiévale et moderne. Louvain-la-Neuve: Collège Érasme, 2010. Ward, Kerry. Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Zenobi, Luca. “Borders and the Politics of Space in Late Medieval Italy: Milan, Venice and Their Territories in the Fifteenth Century.” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2019.

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About the authors Paul Nelles is associate professor of early modern history at Carleton University. His research focuses on the history of books, writing, and religion in early modern Europe. His study of Jesuit communication, The Information Order: Writing, Mobility and Distance in the Making of the Society of Jesus (1540–1573), is forthcoming. Rosa Salzberg is associate professor of early modern history at the University of Trento. Her research focuses on communication, urban history, and the history of migration and mobility in early modern Europe, with a focus on Venice. She is the author of Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice (2014).

Moving Bodies

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Linguistic Encounter: Fynes Moryson and the Uses of Language John Gallagher

Abstract Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617) is an enormously rich text for the study of travel practices in early modern Europe, though it has received relatively little sustained scholarly attention from this perspective. Moryson’s text is richly multi-lingual and uniquely engaged with questions of language acquisition, linguistic encounter, and multi-lingual communication. This essay uses Moryson’s travel writings as a lens through which to understand how far the encounter with linguistic difference underlay and animated early modern experiences of mobility. Considering both Moryson’s account of his own travels and his didactic writings on language learning, this article explores the uses of language for the early modern traveller, showing the linguistic practices that underpinned social, economic, and confessional encounters in late sixteenth-century travel. Keywords: translation; language acquisition; travel; travel writing; Fynes Moryson; communication

Writing in 1617, the English traveller Fynes Moryson noted how difficult and unprofitable it could be to travel without the knowledge of other languages. “[A]t the first step” of the traveller’s journey, Moryson wrote, “the ignorance of language doth most oppresse him, and hinder the fruite he should reape by his journey.” Before he had learnt the necessary language, the traveller would be “as it were deafe and doumb, and astonished with this Babylonian confusion of tongues.” What’s more, Moryson’s traveller would be unable to profit from his travels or from his encounters with new people, since he could “neither aske unknowne things, nor understand other mens speeches,

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch01

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by which hee might learn much.”1 Moryson understood that geographic mobility in early modern Europe was frequently shaped by the experience of linguistic difference. Though the question of how to transcend language barriers was central for many early modern travellers, the same cannot be said of historians of travel and migration in this period.2 This is understandable, not least because studying linguistic encounters that were largely oral and often unrecorded comes with its own methodological challenges. But to better comprehend how early modern mobilities worked requires an understanding of linguistic encounter on the ground: a sense of how multilingual communication was practised by the mobile populations of early modern Europe and how experiences of mobility were affected by linguistic difference.

“My long journey through confusion of tongues” Moryson was a veteran of what he called “my long journey through confusion of tongues.”3 First leaving England in 1591, he would travel through much of Europe, to Denmark and Italy and beyond, before ultimately journeying further east, spurred by “an itching desire to see Jerusalem, the fountaine of Religion, and Constantinople.”4 Later he would serve in Ireland during the Nine Years’ War (1593–1603) before returning home and – eventually – writing and publishing his mammoth Itinerary, a text in which he retraces and reflects on his travels while offering advice for future English voyagers abroad.5 The Itinerary is a powerfully multilingual text. Originally composed in Latin and later translated by Moryson for publication, it is a text that continually practises translation at all levels: its author translates documents, inscriptions, insults, proverbs, and other vocabulary in languages living and dead. Running throughout the text are Moryson’s own experiences 1 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 14. 2 An excellent overview of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English continental travel is Brennan, Origins of the Grand Tour, 9–47. On the language gap in accounts of early modern travel, see Gallagher, Learning Languages, 156–60; for a bibliography of classic work on English educational travel in this period, see ibid., 157–58. 3 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 161. 4 Ibid., 198. 5 Parkinson, “Finding Fynes,” 32–144. See also Thompson, “Moryson, Fynes,” and Holeton, “Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary.” The unpublished manuscript materials of Moryson’s Itinerary are published in Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, and Kew, Shakespeare’s Europe Revisited.

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of linguistic difference and language learning and suggested remedies for the traveller’s ‘astonishment’ at the linguistic variety of continental Europe. For Moryson, the ability to communicate across language barriers was essential for gathering the information and building the relationships which, according to the ars apodemica, were the fruits of diligent travel.6 Perhaps more than any other English writer of his time, Moryson offered an account of linguistic difference that was attentive both to theories of language and its study and to the practicalities (financial, social, religious) of communication and conversation on the road. An attentive reading of his work allows the historian to better appreciate the linguistic realities of early modern travel and to frame new and important questions about how mobility was shaped by the experience of linguistic difference. It also suggests new ways that historians of mobility might think about the role of language in encounter.

“A smak of many tounges”: Moryson’s linguistic precepts In the third part of his Itinerary – having already offered an extensive account of his travels, a history of Ireland, and a précis of the events of the Nine Years’ War – Moryson turned his hand to a series of detailed “Precepts for Travellers, which may instruct the unexperienced.”7 Other anglophone writers had published on the art of travel in the period between Moryson’s return from his own voyages and the publication of his Itinerary.8 But in 1617, the year that An Itinerary appeared in print, it was joined by Joseph Hall’s Quo Vadis? A Just Censure of Travell as it is commonly undertaken by the Gentlemen of our Nation, which could almost have been a direct riposte to Moryson’s work. Hall stated from the beginning that, rather than taking issue with travel for commercial or diplomatic purposes, “[i]t is the Travell of curiosity wherewith my quarrell shall bee maintained.”9 Hall was sceptical of the traditional arguments in favour of travel, seeing the voyage to the continent as a means whereby young English men were corrupted in a 6 On “the art of travel,” see Stagl, History of Curiosity; Rubiés, “Instructions for Travellers;” and the Art of Travel 1500–1850 database hosted by the National University of Ireland, Galway: https://artoftravel.nuigalway.ie/. 7 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 11–37. Peter Mancall describes Moryson’s “Precepts” as “perhaps the most sustained early modern European analysis of the nature of travel as an act to be both undertaken and then systematically analyzed.” See Mancall, “What Fynes Moryson Knew,” 1–2. 8 Dallington, Method for Travell; Palmer, Essay. 9 Hall, Quo Vadis?, 5.

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variety of ways. Those who went to learn languages would have to spend even longer abroad and thus be at a greater risk, argued Hall, and to little good: he wrote disparagingly that “all the wealth of a young Traveller is only in his tongue, wherein he exceeds his mothers Parrat at home, both for that hee can speake more, and knowes that he speaketh.”10 By contrast, Moryson urged his readers “to labour diligently, that we may attaine this rich Jewell of speaking Tongues.”11 Moryson had strong views on how languages should be learnt during travel. If Moryson shared little in common with Joseph Hall, both men seem to have had a horror of parrots: Moryson wrote that “Children like Parrats, soone learne forraigne languages, and sooner forget the same, yea, and their mothers tongue also.”12 This was a warning to the traveller who, having neglected to follow an approved method of language learning, risked forgetting everything he had learnt. For Moryson, the best way to retain linguistic knowledge was to prioritize the study of grammar over the study of speech, at least in the first instance: “first in the learning of a language, labour to know the grammer rules thereof, that thy selfe mayst know whether thou speakest right or no.”13 Neglecting these rules “and rushing into the rash practice of languages” might help the traveller develop good pronunciation or an ability to “speake common speeches, more gracefully then others,” but these advantages would be outweighed by an inability to write correctly. More importantly, those who followed this speech-first approach to language learning “alwaies forget it in short time, wanting the practice.”14 By contrast, “they who learne the rules, while they be attentive to the congruity of speaking, perhaps doe lesse gracefully pronounce the tongue, but in the meane time they both speake and write pure language, and never so forget it, as they may not with small labour and practice recover it againe.”15 Moryson’s language learning system prizes not just the successful acquisition of foreign languages in travel but also their retention for later use. In a letter written to an Italian friend, he imagined that on his return to England he would “scoure up that little Toscane language, which … shall be remaining to me, to make it appeare to you, that howsoever my language be

10 Hall, Quo Vadis?, 20. On travel, language learning, and identity, see Pfannebecker, “‘Lying by authority’,” 576–78. 11 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 16. 12 Ibid., 2. 13 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 14. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid.

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decreased, yet my heartie love towards you shall evermore increase.”16 The authors of the ars apodemica were clear that the languages learnt during travel could be put to use on one’s return home.17 For all his pronouncements on the importance of a solid grammatical grounding, Moryson did not suggest a one-size-fits-all model of language learning. He recognized that different learners had different goals and addressed them accordingly. For those who sought to “make themselves fitt to be imployed as Ambasadours, or in like services of the Commonwealth,” he counselled them “perfectly to learne one or two languages of most use, growing from diveres rootes,” and to focus first on reading and writing the language before proceeding to speak it.18 He was sceptical that “he that travelleth in few yeeres, through many Kingdoms, and learnes many languages” could ever learn to speak them “with naturall pronuntiation, and without errours, and some stamering, and slownesse in speech.”19 He nonetheless offered advice to travellers “who in speedy and short travell visite many nations, and desyre rather to have a smak of many tounges, then perfection in anyone.”20 These peripatetic learners he advised to get a sense of the grammar, to read the best authors, and to learn to write the language in the appropriate hand. But unlike those would-be ambassadors who left learning to speak until last, these travelling learners he urged “when they first beginn to reade, to joyne therewith the practise of speaking, lest in theire swift passage, by soden leaving of the Country, they should be prevented of having tyme of learning to speake the toung, with naturall pronountiation, true accents, and proper Phrases therof.”21 The occasional traveller should not concern himself with accuracy and perfection in language in the same way as the diplomat. It was, by Moryson’s lights, an imperfect method, but one that perhaps better reflected his own experience of travel than his more idealized pedagogical scheme.

“To gather the choice phrases”: Moryson as language-learner Moryson offers the historian an unusually clear picture of the processes of language acquisition in travel. He shines a light on how formal educational 16 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 161. 17 Palmer, Essay, 59. 18 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 321. 19 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 16. 20 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 321. 21 Ibid., 321–22.

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engagements such as study at a university or with tutors were combined with more informal pedagogical approaches, including sustained exposure to everyday spoken language. Thomas Palmer had argued that the traveller should learn the necessary languages prior to his departure, “for these are the instruments of knowledge and experience; without which men shall consume great time unprof itably in other Countries, whiles they are learning the tongue.”22 Moryson concurred, writing that “it is commendable at home before setting forth, to learne the reading and understanding of a language, and the writing thereof, yet cannot then bee prof itable to practice the speaking of the tongue, till hee can have the foresaid commodities in the part where it is naturall.”23 This method aimed at allowing the traveller to spend their time abroad not on picking up the rudiments of the language but on the information-gathering that was central to diligent travel. Prior to his departure from England, Moryson – classically educated and a fellow of a Cambridge college – already had substantial linguistic abilities. He was certainly a confident Latinist. While he does not indicate how he acquired his competence in French, it seems that he had acquired the language in England as he barely mentions any efforts to study French during his travels.24 Describing his preparations for travel, he wrote that “leaving the University, I went to London, there to follow some studies fit to inable this course; and there better taught.”25 Moryson does not specify which studies these were, though London was, even more than Cambridge, a hub of modern language teaching, and it seems likely that he engaged one of the city’s many private language teachers at this time.26 Moryson’s recognition of the usefulness of private language education in the capital comes through in his reflections on the life of his patron, Lord Mountjoy – the lord deputy in Ireland during Moryson’s time there. Moryson wrote of Mountjoy that “he came young and not well grounded from Oxford University; but in his youth at London, he so spent his vacant houres with Schollers best able to direct him” that he developed, among other academic accomplishments, “skill in tongues (so farre as he could read and understand the Italian and 22 Palmer, Essay, 38. 23 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 15. 24 In Leiden in 1592–3, following the death of his father, Moryson lodged at the house of a Frenchman, there “intending to bestow all my time in the French tongue;” Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 46. 25 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 1. 26 On private language teaching, see Gallagher, Learning Languages, 14–54; Boutcher, “A French Dexterity;” Lawrence, Who the Devil, 9–12.

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French, though he durst not adventure to speak them).”27 For Mountjoy – and, likely, for Moryson – it was not only at the universities but in London and with private tutors that the work of vernacular language learning was done in England. By the end of his travels, Moryson spoke, wrote, and read Italian and German (which he usually calls “Dutch”) in addition to Latin and French. Both his German and his Italian were, it seems, largely learnt during his time abroad. On his arrival in Germany in 1591, he “had not the language,” but he set himself quickly to studying it. Two extended city stays gave him a grounding in German: a good part of the summer in Wittenberg, and the winter in Leipzig. In Wittenberg, Moryson enrolled at the university and studied German grammar, likely with a private tutor.28 In choosing to study grammar as a first step in learning the language, Moryson was following advice he later articulated in the Itinerary. After his summer in Wittenberg and a period of travel, he spent the winter of the same year at Leipzig, where he hoped “that I might there learne to speake the Dutch toung (the Grammer wherof I had read at Witteberg,) because the Misen speech was held the purest of all other parts in Germany.”29 It seems unrealistic that Moryson would have avoided speaking entirely prior to his arrival at Leipzig, but his description of his progress squares with the staggered prioritization of different elements of competence which he mandated in his “Precepts.” Having begun his formal study of the language in the summer of 1591, Moryson’s account of his travels contained more verbatim transcriptions of spoken German and accounts of incidents when he was better able to experience German-language conversations. While travelling to Emden, for example, Moryson went in disguise as a poor Bohemian. He overheard the German-language discussions in the coach, recalling later how “my companions fell in talke of English affaires, so foolishly, as my laughter, though restrained, had often betraied me if twi-light had not kept mee from being seene.”30 By early 1592, he noted in a letter to a friend at Leipzig (reproduced in the Itinerary) how, during a journey to Dresden, “my companions laughed at me for babling dutch in my sleep.”31 27 Moryson, Itinerary, part II, 47. 28 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 307. Robert Dallington suggested a plan of study to be followed with a private tutor or ‘reader’ teaching Italian or French to the traveller: Dallington, Method for Travell, B3r–B4r. 29 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 12. 30 Ibid., 38. 31 Ibid., 14.

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Moryson’s study of German did not stop with the university curriculum. He is more reticent on his learning activities beyond these two city stays, though he mentioned buying in Lübeck in July 1593 “the foureteenth Booke of Amadis de Gaule, in the Dutch tongue, to practise the same,” reasoning that “these Bookes are most eloquently translated into the Dutch, and fit to teach familiar language.”32 Later, in his precepts, Moryson would advise the traveller “to gather the choice phrases, that hee may speake and write more eloquently, and let him use himselfe not to the translated formes of speech, but to the proper phrases of the tongue; for every language in this kinde hath certaine properties of speaking, which would be most absurd, being literally translated into another tongue.” To do so, “the stranger must reade those Bookes, which are best for speeches in familiar conference,” among which he listed the vernacular bible and the popular romance of Amadis of Gaul.33 Moryson’s reading advice was equally geared towards learning to speak well: engagement with texts would allow the learner to master idiomatically correct language that they could deploy in conversation. It reflected a method of language learning that saw formal and informal study as mutually reinforcing. In Italy, Moryson supplemented his formal study of the language with an engagement with everyday spoken Italian. He spent the winter of 1593 in Padua, “in which famous University I desired to perfect my Italian tongue.”34 Here, he may have studied under a private tutor – he would later write that once a traveller had begun to learn the language, he should “hier some skilfull man to teach him, and to reprove his errours, not passing by any his least omission.”35 He may equally have found the university a profitable environment for encountering spoken Italian and debates about the language. Half a century earlier, the English traveller Thomas Hoby had spent time in Padua attending the lectures of Claudio Tolomei, an authority on vernacular Italian and a key figure in Italy’s questione della lingua.36 The summer following, in 1594, Moryson chose to spend in “the State of Florence,” where he “especially desired to spend my time in learning the Italian tongue, reputed the most pure in those parts.” His initial hope was to live in Siena and to attend the university there, “but because many Dutch and English Gentlemen lived there, which were of my acquaintance, and solitarie 32 Ibid., 56. 33 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 14. 34 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 69. See also Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors; idem, “Padua and English Students.” 35 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 15. 36 Gallagher, “‘Ungratefull Tuscans’,” 403.

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conversing with the Italians best fitted my purpose,” he chose instead to base himself in San Casciano in Val di Pesa, a walled town on the road between Florence and Siena.37 San Casciano was likely the place Moryson referred to when he wrote that “myselfe for learning of the Language did lodge for some moneths in two Inns, whereof the first was in the high way to Rome, yet in a village, about eight myle distant from Florence, and the Hostesse being an old widow.” Moryson gives even less detail about the second of the inns in which he studied Italian, only saying that it was “kept by a shooemaker out of the high way to Rome, in a village.”38 Rosa Salzberg has written about the importance of lodging houses as “potent sites of encounter” and their operators as “important mediators in moments of cultural, linguistic, religious and sociable interaction.”39 Moryson would have agreed that the inns, lodging-houses, and other spaces of lodging, eating, and sociability through which he passed were helpful in attending to the practical necessities of travel: one of which was the learning of languages.

“To understand, and to bee understood”: how linguistic encounters worked Moryson gleefully recounts the story of a German who, while trying to speak Italian, found himself tripped up by the German tendency to pronounce the letter V with the sound of the letter F. This German, “when he would have sayd io ho Veduto sayd (io ho fututo) il papa con tutti Cardinali, instead of I have seene, sayd I have (with leave it be spoken) buggered, the Pope, with all the Cardinals.”40 A phrase that would have made sense on the page became transformed into a bawdy faux pas in the mouth of an insufficiently careful speaker. This tale indicates Moryson’s interest in language not in the abstract but in everyday use: he recounts, often in detail, what happens when speakers and learners engage in conversation, and to what ends. He is interested in the tools and techniques by which individual travellers could handle linguistic difference – by resorting to a notionally shared language, whether Latin or simple gestures, or through an interpreter. Moryson’s 37 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 154. Moryson’s contemporaries concurred on Tuscany as the home of the best Italian – see, for instance, Dallington, Method for Travell, B3r. 38 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 126. 39 Salzberg, “Mobility, Cohabitation and Cultural Exchange,” 417. See also Gallagher, Learning Languages, 173–74. 40 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 322.

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attention to linguistic and communicative dynamics reflect a crucial but little-understood aspect of early modern mobilities. As the original Latin manuscript of the Itinerary attests, Moryson was an accomplished Latinist. His travel writings illuminate how (and how far) Latin could be used as a spoken lingua franca and shed light on the vernacular Latin cultures of early modern Europe. Moryson spoke Latin with scholars but was also impressed at the social range of people who displayed some competence in the language, particularly in Germany and Poland. In Germany, he claimed, “[t]here is not a man among the Common sorte who cannot speake lattin, and hath not some skill in Arithmaticke, and Musicke.”41 In Poland, he wrote, “there is not a ragged boy, nor a smith that shooes your horse but he can speake latten readily the most corruptly I have ever heard”; 42 he wondered that “[t]he very Artificers of Polonia can speake Latin, but most rudely and falsly.”43 Of the seemingly socially widespread vernacular Latin of early modern Central Europe, Peter Burke has argued that “in this part of the world spoken Latin had become a pidgin.”44 Moryson’s anecdotes reflect Jürgen Leonhardt’s description of “the actual social use of Latin in the early modern era” as consisting of a “relatively less sophisticated, easy-to-learn Latin” as distinct from “the stylistic perfection promoted by the humanists.”45 Moryson would go on to criticize the spoken Latin he heard in Italy, complaining that “[t]he neerenes of the Italyan to the latten makes fewe of them write the latten and much lesse speake it purely, and without corruption of many words.”46 As well as indicating the social range of Latin’s utility in some parts of continental Europe, Moryson’s account also suggests that travel could be an activity through which English travellers might see their Latin competences develop through contact with foreign vernacular cultures. An educated Englishman would have been most familiar with Latin on the page and would have most commonly encountered it as a spoken language in formal educational environments such as the schoolroom or lecture hall.47 Moryson observed that the Germans he met “spake the latten readily in discourse, having practised the same from their childhood,” by contrast with the 41 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 300. 42 Ibid., 391. 43 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 15. 44 Burke, Languages and Communities, 47. 45 Leonhardt, Latin, 241. See also Waquet, Latin, 152–72. 46 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 436. 47 On Latin in educational environments, see Leonhardt, Latin, 122–244; Waquet, Latin, 7–40 and passim.

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scholars of English universities who wrote the language well but spoke it more haltingly. 48 He claimed that English-trained scholars who “seldome speake Latin, but onely in disputations, yea, and shunne the occasions of speaking it, yet when they come abroad, and are forced necessarily to make use of the latin tongue, they doe perhaps at first speake it less readily, but in short practice they speake it more eloquently and more easily than the said Polakes, or any other abroad who have practised the tongue from their young yeeres.” These others “might speake readily,” but they “neither cared for the quantity of sillables, nor the purity of phrase, nor the strict keeping of Grammer Rules.”49 As well as building competence in European vernacular languages, the traveller might also see himself developing a new facility for spoken Latin in order to communicate within the varied social environments in which the language was used. Moryson’s reflections on the use of Latin in travel are an important reminder that while it is easy to focus on the role of vernacular languages in the history of early modern mobilities, spoken Latin retained significant utility – and not only in conversations with elites. Vernacular and Latin cultures were never wholly separate, nor were they restricted to only one social echelon. At the same time, Moryson’s complaints about the “corruption” of the varieties of Latin he encountered are an indicator of the practical difficulties of communicating in a notionally shared language that nonetheless varied significantly depending on the speaker’s origin, education, and status. At the opposite end of the communicative spectrum to Latin, at least as far as prestige was concerned, was the language of gesture. Moryson is interested in gestural codes and in the abilities of certain groups to communicate without words, like the attendants at the Ottoman court who “speake by signes among themselves as fast as we doe by wordes” or the Ottoman soldiers who “keepe Wonderfull silence … speaking with becks, and signes.”50 Moryson sometimes found gesture helpful as a communicative tool when he and an interlocutor lacked a shared language: in Candia (modern-day Crete), sick and in need of help, he spotted a shepherd, “and I sheweing him gold, and naming Monastery, which word he understood, he swiftly ran to the Monastery,” where the monks sent an Italian-speaking servant to help Moryson and his companion.51 Here, Moryson’s display of 48 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 320. 49 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 15. 50 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 13, 43. 51 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 252.

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cash combined with his use of a mutually intelligible word allowed him to avoid the perils of a night in the mountains of Crete. Elsewhere, Moryson observed gestures as a means of better understanding the social relations and communicative codes of other societies. He compared the everyday gestures he observed in Italy and Turkey, writing that “[t]he Italians saluting one another, crosse the right hand over the breast laying it upon the heart, as the Turkes to the Contrary crosse the left hand,” and that the two peoples bowed in a similar way, “onely the Turkes never uncover their heades, wheras the Italyans lowely putt of their hatts.”52 In Italian, Moryson commented on the relationship between speech and gesture and remained attentive to regional differences, too, noting that “[t]he Italians if they salute neerer, give a light touch in manner of imbracing, but the gentlemen of Venice salute one another with a kisse upon the cheeke.”53 Moryson displays a keen awareness that understanding a foreign society’s gestural codes was an important aspect of communicative competence.54 Moryson was generally sceptical about the use of interpreters, describing it as an expense “which a man of small meanes cannot maintaine” and whose service meant that the traveller would only “borrow his knowledge, and take it at the second hand” rather than gathering it for himself.55 Nonetheless, he recognized the utility of interpreters, particularly in places where the language was wholly unknown to him. In Ireland, he noted without comment the cost to the English administration there of the services of interpreters, while in the Ottoman Empire he was grateful for the linguistic aid offered by the dragomans and janissaries who acted as interpreters on his behalf at various points.56 Moryson informed his readers that hiring a janissary to accompany them while travelling in the empire would be a wise financial decision, since “hee will easily save a man more than his wages, in governing his expences, and keeping him from those extortions, which the Turkes use to doe upon Christians, as also from all their injuries.”57 An interpreter’s advice was to save Moryson from physical peril on his approach to Jerusalem, when he and his fellow travellers were threatened by an armed horseman 52 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 266. 53 Ibid., 462. 54 On histories of gesture, see Bremmer and Roodenburg, Cultural History of Gesture, and Braddick, “Politics of Gesture;” see also the introduction to this volume by Paul Nelles and Rosa Salzberg. On communicative competence, see Hymes, “On Communicative Competence.” 55 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 14. 56 Moryson, Itinerary, part II, 29; Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 21. On dragomans, see Rothman, “Interpreting Dragomans,” 771–800. 57 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 207.

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who “was ready to assaile each man of us, and that only (as our Interpreter told us) because wee did him no reverence as he passed,” so that “we were glad to tumble off from our Asses, and bend our bodyes to him, which done, he rode away with a sterne proud looke.”58 Moryson valued the services of the interpreters he encountered in the Ottoman Empire not just for their linguistic mediation but also for their role as cultural translators, explaining unfamiliar customs and cultural differences.

“The difference of degrees”: Moryson the sociolinguist In order to learn a language well, Moryson wrote, the traveller “must converse with Weomen, Children, and the most talkative people.”59 His observations indicate his interest in how language use varied according to speakers’ identities. At one point, he offers a charming description of how German children speak to their mothers: “When the Children come into the house, they salute the mother, ‘Grusse dich Fraw,’ ‘woman health to thee,’ when they goe forth, ‘Hette dich Mutter,’ ‘Mother keepe thee well’.’’60 Moryson understood that spoken language could communicate differences in status or in the nature of relationships. Forms of address were telling, and he particularly remarked upon the use of exaggerated titles in everyday Italian conversation: “the Italyans give high and exessive tytles one to another, in their salutations by worde & writing, and have beene the Authors to spreade this flattery through all these parts of the worlde.”61 He ran through some standard Italian salutations, much in the manner of a multilingual conversation manual of the time: “in Italy vostra Signoria that is your mastershipp or worship is given to Plebeans, molto magnifico that is very magnificall is given to Cittizens, Illustro Signor that is Illustrous Sir is given to ordinary gentlemen” and so forth, noting (with his customary attention to regional variation) that “the gentlemen of Venice proude above all others, wilbe called in ordinary salutations Clarissimi that is most bright or famous.”62 Reflecting on the use of “Barone” as a term of abuse in Italian, Moryson noted how understanding potential false friends was important to a traveller in navigating an unfamiliar social structure.63 58 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 62. 59 Moryson, Itinerary, part III, 15. 60 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 322. 61 Ibid., 451. 62 Ibid., 414. 63 Ibid., 149.

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The same concern with the effects of inappropriate or offensive speech animated Moryson’s reflections on insult and illicit language. Presenting the Italians (and the Italian language) as the root of Polish profanity, Moryson was underlining his views on the place of “beastly wordes” in Italian speech: elsewhere, he noted their habit of using such terms as “Interjections of Exclamation or Admiration, namely Coglioni, Catzo, Potta, signifying the privy parts of men and wemen, and the like.”64 To navigate Italy’s culture of affront, the traveller would need a working knowledge of codes of insult which, as Peter Burke argues, “followed rules or conventions as closely as a sonnet.”65 Moryson thought the Germans ranked second only to the Italians in swearing, citing the use of phrases like “bey gott den herrn (by God the Lord), Gotts kranckheit (Gods sicknes), der Tivel hole dich (the divell take thee) meiner seale (by my soule) and the like,” used by “very boyes and virgins.”66 He recalled occasions when he had been insulted and counselled appropriate responses, writing of Germans that “when they are heated with drincke they are apt to give rude yea reprochfull wordes, espetially to strangers (whose best course is to passe them over, as not understood),” a tactic he claimed to have used himself.67 The Italian propensity to profanity remarked by Moryson was indicative of what he perceived as a greater national failing. He believed that “blasphemous oaths and rotten talke are among their nationall vices” and commented that “[a]mong other high Crymes it is not rare to heare blasphemous speeches in Italy, and the State of Venice is much to be praysed for the most severe Justice they use against such offendors, having a lawe to cutt out their tongues.”68 He recounted his own experiences while living in Venice, where some “roaring boyes” had sung “horrible blasphemyes against our Lord, his blessed mother, and the Apostle St. Peter” outside the residence of the papal nuncio. Moryson witnessed the punishment of the two who were caught, and recalled how, among other physical punishments and their eventual execution, “their tongues were cutt out under the windowe of the Popes Nuntio.”69 The vicious punishments meted out to blasphemers in Venice were a reminder of the different codes of verbal propriety that the traveller could encounter and of the danger of uncontrolled speech in a foreign linguistic environment. Moryson stressed the practical relevance of these observations to an English 64 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 417. 65 Cohen, “Lay Liturgy of Affront;” Burke, Historical Anthropology, 96. 66 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 268. 67 Ibid., 291. Compare Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 3. 68 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 417, 164. 69 Ibid., 164–65.

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Protestant traveller, writing that “[a]t Rome the least idle word of the Pope, the Church, or Religion, will drawe a man into the Inquisition” and open him up to a range of punishments.70 In his precepts, Moryson repeatedly underlines the value of the traveller’s silence.71 More generally, his reflections on insult and illicit speech are indicative of a crucial linguistic and communicative skill that the traveller needed to develop: that of verbal restraint. In the context of Venetian blasphemy regulations, Elizabeth Horodowich has argued for the importance of “[a] certain social knowledge – the ability to control unruly verbal outbursts and practice mannered speech” among members of the urban community.72 Travellers were not immune from these strictures. Self-restraint was a crucial skill for the traveller to learn, and the ability to understand and navigate potentially hostile encounters was an element of the linguistic competence they would need to acquire. If Moryson’s linguistic reflections often contained pragmatic lessons for the traveller, he also showed how other practicalities of travel were impacted by questions of language. He continually reflected on the economic realities of travel, listing exchange rates and commenting on prices from region to region while also noting the communicative and linguistic aspects of commercial culture. Recovering from illness in Crete, and exasperated by his expensive servant, who “having not himselfe the least skil in any forraine language … was rather a burthen then a comfort to me,” Moryson used his linguistic skills to avoid the expense of having someone else provide his meals, writing that “[s]o as all the Candians speaking Italian, as well as their naturall Greeke tongue … I determined to hier a chamber, and to buy my owne meate in the Market.”73 But linguistic skill was not always an advantage in commercial contexts: having reflected that one could get a good deal on a horse if travelling from Germany to Italy provided one had “the Dutch tongue” and knew “the waies of Germany himselfe, or [had] consorts skilfull therein,” he recalled ruefully how he had helped out one fellow traveller who spoke no German, only to find himself footing the man’s bill.74 Gerrit Verhoeven’s essay in this volume draws our attention to the experiences of mobility that were central to early modern educational travel but have been neglected in its historiography. Moryson’s detailed account shows language as central to the mechanics of mobility at every stage of the journey. 70 Ibid., 162. 71 On silence, travel, and language learning, see Gallagher, Learning Languages, 203–6. 72 Horodowich, Language and Statecraft, 83. 73 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 256. 74 Ibid., 271, 205.

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“My eyes, and eares were witnesses”: Moryson and questions of language Riding through “the villages of Carinthia,” Moryson was convinced that he could hear history speaking to him. “The Countrey people,” he wrote, “speake Wendish, or the tongue of the old Vandals.”75 Eavesdropping on locals’ speech, he concluded that “the old language of the Vandalls liveth in the mouthes of men at this day, howsoever that nation hath long beene scattered, and as it were extinct.”76 Moryson’s interest in thinking about language histories during his travels was matched by his keen ear for how language use reflected the period’s religious and political divisions. In Geneva, he reflected that “many French Gentlemen and Students comming thither for the libertie of their reliigion, did speake pure French,” but that “from that Citie all the people spake a barbarous French till I came neere Berne, where they first began to speake the Sweitzers language.”77 The language of Geneva, in his telling, had been influenced by religious migration to the so-called “Protestant Jerusalem.” The language of religious division assailed the traveller’s ears: Moryson remembered the insults hurled at the Jews of Prague daily in the streets, and recalled similarly vitriolic language being used by Christians of different confessions against each other in Leipzig on the death of the Elector Christian in 1591: “then my eyes, and eares were witnesses, what threatnings, what reproches, what violent abuses the Lutherans cast uppon the Calvenists, preferring the Papists yea Turkes before them.”78 His eyewitness (or earwitness) account of “Imodest hissing,” “tumolt,” “uprore,” and the spreading of libels between the two factions reflects his own fascination with how religious difference was communicated.79 Moryson made a point of attending the services of a variety of confessions and faiths during his travels: in Jerusalem, he attended the devotions of the different Christian communities of the city, similarly paying attention to differences of language and rite.80 Moryson’s observations on language in use in Catholic contexts were often deployed to denigrate the religion, as when he commented on “mumbled” masses or the “dumb signes, and movings of their lipps” used by priests 75 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 68. On Wendish and on the tradition of linguistic observation that Moryson is engaging with here, see Considine, Small Dictionaries and Curiosity, 187–90. 76 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 323–24. 77 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 182. 78 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 263. 79 Ibid., 262. 80 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 232–34.

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performing masses in side chapels in large Catholic churches.81 Describing an exorcism he witnessed at Loreto in Italy, Moryson wrote scornfully that the priest “often spake to the ignorant woman in the Latin tongue, but nothing lesse then in Tullies phrase,” meaning in Ciceronian Latin.82 A similar kind of disdain can be felt in Moryson’s observations on Jewish services in the synagogues of Prague. He recalled how the rabbi preached “with his head covered, sometymes in the language of the Germans, sometymes in the Hebrewe toung.”83 He observed the vocal and gestural participation of the congregation, describing how “their singing was in a hollow tone, very lowe at the first, but rysing by degrees.” His scorn can be detected in his comments on the congregation’s “mad gestures,” their “weeping and flatt roring.”84 Moryson’s intolerance for verbal sound which he deemed incomprehensible or uproarious was a theme he took up again in describing the Irish as “by nature very Clamorous.”85 Patricia Palmer notes that Moryson’s “effusiveness about continental languages points up the peculiarity of his erasure of Irish,” and indeed he offers very little by way of detailed engagement with the Irish language.86 He bemoaned the ways in which the English community in medieval Ireland “were forced to apply themselves to the [native Irish], by contracting affinity with them, and using their language and apparell.”87 The tenacity of the Irish language, even in the face of laws that aimed at severely limiting its use, was symptomatic of the failures of the English colonial endeavour in Ireland, in Moryson’s telling. He complained that in defiance of the law, “the Irish English altogether used the Irish tounge, forgetting or never learning the English,” while “the English Irish and the very Cittizens (excepting those of Dublin where the lord Deputy resides) though they could speake English as well as wee, yet Commonly speake Irish among themselves, and were hardly induced by our familiar Conversation to speake English with us.” Moryson wrote that when assizes were held throughout the country, “fewe of the people no not the very Jurymen could speake English, and at like Sessions in ulster, all the gentlemen and common people (excepting only the Judges trayne) and the very Jurimen putt upon 81 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 440. 82 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 98. 83 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 493. 84 Ibid. On English travellers’ encounters with and reflections on Jewish populations, see Holmberg, Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination. 85 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 484. 86 Palmer, Language and Conquest, 67. See also Crowley, Wars of Words, 9–35; Heal, “Mediating the Word.” 87 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 202.

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life and death and all tryalls in lawe, commonly spake Irish, many Spanish, and fewe or none could or would speake English.”88 Elsewhere an advocate of keeping one’s mouth shut when in a difficult situation – even if one knew the language – Moryson was less tolerant of the tactic when deployed by the polyglot Irish. Usually so keen to transcribe and translate, to engage closely with speech and language as he encountered them during his travels, Moryson in Ireland found himself unable to apply even his own precepts, or those of the ars apodemica, once he was swept up in the context of conquest and war: his observations of and engagement with spoken language took on new forms in the crucible of empire.

Conclusions Moryson’s travel writings offer a supremely detailed account of mobility in early modern Europe. The extent of his travels, from Elsinore to Ireland to Jerusalem and back again, is matched by the range of circumstances in which he recorded language in use. He swapped Italian sayings with sailors in the Mediterranean and joked with a friar in French in Jerusalem.89 In German, he noted proudly that he had “some skill in that Language, especially for vulgar speeches,” though he also expressed himself in more exalted registers, as when in Germany, “[b]y ill fortune,” he was “forced to exhibite a Petition to the Consuls, both in the Dutch and Latine tongues.”90 He took on a range of disguises – many of which had a linguistic component – to avoid robbery or religious persecution.91 He spoke Latin with craftsmen and German in his sleep. Moryson was just one traveller, and not necessarily a representative one. His account of his journeys is so vast, so detailed, and so attentive to questions of speech, language, and communication as to be unique in the corpus of early modern travel literature. The experience of travel refracted in Moryson’s writings allows historians to formulate new questions about how multilingual encounter shaped early modern mobilities. How did the ability to communicate in other languages – or the lack thereof – shape the movement of travellers and migrants as they traversed linguistic zones? How far were itineraries determined by relationships built through shared languages? Can we know more about 88 Hughes, Shakespeare’s Europe, 213–14. 89 Moryson, Itinerary, part I, 270, 238. 90 Ibid., 22. 91 On Moryson and disguise in travel, see Gallagher, Learning Languages, 198–200.

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the activities and economies of translation and mediation in which guides, interpreters, and teachers operated? How far might nationally bounded understandings of early modern oral cultures be challenged by considering the experience of mobility? The question posed to historians of mobility by the Itinerary is not simply, as Peter Mancall put it, to discover “what Fynes Moryson knew,” but to explore how we can put his mediated experiences of travel to use in forging an understanding of early modern mobility that is profoundly – and perhaps even essentially – multilingual.92

Works cited Bepler, Jill. “Travelling and Posterity: The Archive, the Library and the Cabinet.” In Grand Tour: Adeliges Reisen und Europäische Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, edited by Rainer Babel and Werner Paravicini, 191–203. Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005. Boutcher, Warren. “A French Dexterity, & an Italian Confidence: New Documents on John Florio, Learned Strangers and Protestant Humanist Study of Modern Languages in Renaissance England from c. 1547 to c. 1625.” Reformation 2 (1997): 39–109. Braddick, Michael J., ed. “The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspectives.” Special issue, Past and Present 203, Supplement 4, (2009). Bremmer, Jan, and Herman Roodenburg, eds. A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day. Cambridge: Polity, 1991. Brennan, Michael G., ed. The Origins of the Grand Tour: The Travels of Robert Montagu, Lord Mandeville (1649–1654), William Hammond (1655–1658), and Banaster Maynard (1660–1663). London: Hakluyt Society, 2004. Burke, Peter. The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ———. Languages and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Cohen, Thomas V. “The Lay Liturgy of Affront in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Journal of Social History 25 (1992): 857–77. Considine, John. Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-Medieval Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Crowley, Tony. Wars of Words: The Politics of Language in Ireland 1537–2004. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Dallington, Robert. A Method for Travell. London: Thomas Creede, 1605. 92 Mancall, “What Fynes Moryson Knew.”

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Gallagher, John. “‘Ungratefull Tuscans:’ Teaching Italian in Early Modern England.” The Italianist 36 (2016): 392–413. ———. Learning Languages in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Hall, Joseph. Quo vadis? A Just Censure of Travell as it is commonly undertaken by the Gentlemen of our Nation. London: Nathaniel Butter, 1617. Heal, Felicity. “Mediating the Word: Language and Dialects in the British and Irish Reformations.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (2005): 261–86. Holeton, David R. “Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary: A Sixteenth-Century English Traveller’s Observations on Bohemia, its Reformation, and its Liturgy.” In Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice. Vol. 5, Part 2, edited by David R. Holeton, 379–410. Prague: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Main Library, 2005. Holmberg, Eva Johanna. Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination: A Scattered Nation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2017. Horodowich, Elizabeth. Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Hughes, Charles, ed. Shakespeare’s Europe: A Survey of the Condition of Europe at the End of the 16th Century. Being unpublished chapters of Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary (1617). 2nd edition. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967. Hymes, Dell. “On Communicative Competence.” In Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings, edited by J.B. Pride and J. Holmes, 269–93. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. Kew, Graham, ed. Shakespeare’s Europe Revisited: The Unpublished Itinerary of Fynes Moryson (1566-1630). PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1995. https:// etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/3124/ Lawrence, Jason. Who the Devil Taught Thee So Much Italian? Italian Language Learning and Literary Imitation in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. Leonhardt, Jürgen, Latin: Story of a World Language. Translated by Kenneth Kronenberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Mancall, Peter C. “Introduction: What Fynes Moryson Knew.” In Bringing the World to Early Modern Europe: Travel Accounts and Their Audiences, edited by Peter C. Mancall, 1–9. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Moryson, Fynes. An Itinerary written by Fynes Moryson Gent. First in the latine Tongue, and then translated By him into English: containing his ten yeeres travell through the twelve dominions of Germany, Bohmerland, Sweitzerland, Netherland, Denmarke, Poland, Italy, Turky, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. London, 1617. Palmer, Patricia. Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance Literature and Elizabethan Imperial Expansion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

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Palmer, Thomas. An Essay of the Meanes how to make our Trauailes, into forraine Countries, the more profitable and honourable. London: Mathew Lownes, 1606. Parkinson, Tom. “Finding Fynes: Moryson’s Biography and the Latin Manuscript of Part One of the Itinerary (1617).” PhD diss., Queen Mary University of London, 2011. Pfannebecker, Mareile. ‘‘‘Lying by authority’: Travel Dissimulation in Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary.” Renaissance Studies 31 (2017): 569–85. Rothman, E. Natalie. “Interpreting Dragomans: Boundaries and Crossings in the Early Modern Mediterranean.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 51 (2009): 771–800. Rubiés, Joan-Pau. “Instructions for Travellers: Teaching the Eye to See.” In Rubiés, Travellers and Cosmographers: Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology, 139–90. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Salzberg, Rosa. “Mobility, Cohabitation and Cultural Exchange in the Lodging Houses of Early Modern Venice.” Urban History 46 (2019): 398–418. Stagl, Justin. A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel 1550–1800. London: Routledge, 1995. Thompson, Edward H. “Moryson, Fynes (1565/6–1630).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19385 Waquet, Françoise. Latin, or the Empire of a Sign. Translated by John Howe. London: Verso, 2001. Williams, Mark. “The Inner Lives of Early Modern Travel.” Historical Journal 62 (2019): 349–73. Woolfson, Jonathan. Padua and the Tudors: English Students in Italy, 1485–1603. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. ———. “Padua and English Students Revisited.” Renaissance Studies 27 (2013): 572–87.

About the author John Gallagher is lecturer in early modern history at the University of Leeds. His work focuses on language, migration, and education in early modern Britain and Europe. He is the author of Learning Languages in Early Modern England (2019).

2.

Wading Through the Mire: Mobility on the Grand Tour (1585–1750) Gerrit Verhoeven

Abstract Traditionally, mobility on the Grand Tour has been reduced to a highly stereotyped account of travellers facing bad roads, the blistering cold, steep mountain passes, highwaymen, and privateers. New evidence from Dutch and Flemish travel journals enables us to draw a much more subtle picture. In fact, early modern travel behaviour was gradually reshaped by the coming of new transport and communication means, as postal networks, coaches, and stone-slab paved roads gradually reduced the – real or imagined – dangers and discomforts of travelling. This led to a new appreciation for the landscape in between cities and also reshaped traditional travel itineraries and destinations. Last but not least, transport and communication innovations remodelled the emotional and symbolic value of the Grand Tour as a rite de passage. Keywords: Low Countries; early modern Italy; transport; travel writing; itineraries; communication

Even though mobility was an essential part of the Grand Tour, it has garnered little if any (serious) interest in classic historiography. Travellers covered hundreds of miles on horseback; embarked on sailing ships, feluccas, and barges; were jolted to pieces in carriages or nestled in sedan chairs; but their experience is rarely – if ever – examined in more than a few pages.1 Moreover, most classic reads on the Grand Tour do little more than to 1 Mobility is, for example, largely ignored in some classic studies on the Grand Tour. For example: Black, Italy and the Grand Tour; Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour. Nor is mobility (and transport) flagged as an important line of research in review articles such as Wilton-Ely, “Classic Ground.”

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch02

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hammer home some time-worn clichés, whereby early modern travel is reduced to a highly dangerous, strenuous, and uncomfortable experience. Travellers had to face bad roads, the blistering cold, steep mountain passes, ferocious animals, privateers and highwaymen, spectacular accidents, and myriad other calamities on their way to Rome. Taking these stories at face value, experts produced a highly romantic image of early modern travel that is contrasted to our modern – bland and uneventful – tourism.2 Classic historiography also largely fails to move beyond the static image of muddy roads and faltering communication, as if early modern Europe was frozen in time. It is a legacy of Fernand Braudel and other Annales scholars, who portrayed distance as enemy number one in early modern Europe. More recently, however, experts have shown how transport was slowly but surely revolutionized – or at least radically altered – by the rise of postal networks, stagecoach and barge services, metaled roads, and other innovations. It remains unclear, however, how and to what extent these evolutions in hardware remodelled the classic Grand Tour.3 Drawing on new evidence from Netherlandish travel accounts, this chapter aims to paint a much more dynamic portrait of early modern mobility. To do so, we also engage with some of the latest insights in mobility studies. In the last few decades, the historiography on early modern travel behaviour has developed in almost splendid isolation: unaware of some key theoretical developments in mobility studies, even if these models have the potential to spark new lines of research. By infusing travel history with some of these insights, this chapter will sketch a much more balanced picture of the Grand Tour. 4 Mobility studies has, in the last few years, evolved into a new, vibrant, and interdisciplinary field that is not only focused on the hardware of transport and communication means: from nineteenth-century trains, steamboats, and telegraph cables to the newest smart phones, drones, and futuristic hyperloops. Inspired by the cultural turn, it also takes a lively interest in how mobility was enacted, felt, perceived, expressed, choreographed, appreciated, or desired. Qualitative research methods are in the ascendancy to uncover 2 Examples of this romantic interpretation include Maczak, Travel in Early Modern Europe, 4–24, 158–80; Kirby, The Grand Tour in Italy; Colletta, “Introduction: The Grand Tour,” ix–xx; Roche, Humeurs vagabondes, 219–30. 3 For brief overviews of these innovations, see Behringer, “Communication Revolutions;” Scott, “Travel and Communications.” 4 More than a decade ago, John Walton launched a call for a close collaboration between these adjacent f ields, but it largely remained a cry in the desert: Walton, “Transport, Travel, Tourism.”

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this kinaesthesis – or the sensory experience – of mobility.5 At the same time, experts in mobility studies draw inspiration from (urban) theories on assemblage and the underlying Actor Network Theory (ANT), which looks closely at the interaction between human actors and non-human actants and flags the agency of material objects. Once created, transport and communication technology fundamentally warp the way in which space is used, perceived, experienced, and navigated.6 Although these theories have been circulating for some years now, they have failed to make a dent in the history of travel and tourism. An exception to the rule is the recent work of the British historian Colin Pooley. Drawing evidence from a large body of diaries, letters, memoirs, and other life-writing, Pooley was able to recreate the everyday experience of past mobilities in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England.7 Less is known, however, about early modern Europe. Therefore, a similar modus operandi to the one used by Pooley will be deployed in this chapter to explore how mobility (transport, as well as communication) was described, experienced, and embodied on the classic Grand Tour. Data were collected from a large corpus of Dutch and Flemish travel journals (more than 150 manuscripts in total), written between the late sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth century by Netherlandish burghers, who belonged to the upper crust of urban society. They not only wrote about their Groote Tour to Italy, France, or Switzerland but also reported on smaller trips through Northwest Europe.8 Travel journals, diaries, letters, and other ego-documents provide rich, qualitative data on the everyday experience of past mobilities, yet they are, by definition, less useful for quantitative analysis. Nevertheless, serial data have been harvested from the sources to trace these long-term evolutions. While this cannot provide rock-solid figures, the methodology can be valuable to put the more qualitative, not to say pointillistic, evidence in perspective.9 For the same reason, the data 5 Merriman and Pearce, “Mobility and the Humanities;” Cresswell and Merriman, “Introduction: Geographies of Mobilities;” Pooley, “Connecting Historical Studies.” 6 Brenner, Madden, and Wachsmuth, “Assemblage Urbanism;” Marcus and Saka, “Assemblage.” 7 Pooley, Mobility, Migration and Transport; idem, “Travelling through the City;” idem, “Connecting Historical Studies,” 253. Innovative in this regard is also the work of Geurts, “Modern Travel.” 8 For more details about the original sample, see Verhoeven, Europe Within Reach, 1–27; idem, “Foreshadowing Tourism?”. 9 For more about the methodological challenges of these sources, see Pooley, “Travelling through the City,” 598–609.

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has been subjected to a spatial analysis that remains, surprisingly enough, rarely used in travel history.10 Evidently, some methodological caveats are necessary. Travel journals, diaries, letters, and other ego-documents were predominantly written by members of the social elite. Moreover, they reported rather haphazardly on transport and communications, as their main interests lay elsewhere, and even when travellers zeroed in on the practical matters of their Grand Tour, they focused more on negative rather than positive experiences.11 These biases have to be taken into account when analyzing the source material. Mixed methodologies enable us to answer some open questions about mobility on the Grand Tour. First and foremost, the chapter focuses on transport. What means were used – horses, mules, stagecoaches, barges, ships, sedan chairs – by travellers to reach Rome? Why did they prefer one mode above another? How flexible were they in choosing a means of travel? To what extent did transport infrastructure shape travellers’ preferences for particular destinations and itineraries? Moreover, true to the paradigmatic shift, the chapter aims to dig deeper and to access actual experiences of mobility. Was the everyday reality as bumpy, hazardous, dirty, wearisome, and uncomfortable as the literature seems to suggest? What was the significance of all this suffering? During the second part of the chapter, attention shifts towards communication. How did travellers manage to keep up to date with the latest news from the home front? To whom did they write? What was the frequency, intensity, and goal of the correspondence?

Transport On his Grand Tour to Italy in 1652, an anonymous Dutch merchant penned some brief notes about the taxing journey from Viterbo to Rome that reflect a very commonly expressed sentiment: When we f inally arrived at the inn, I was unable to dismount, as my whole body was lame. I hadn’t felt a thing during the long and hard ride. Keeping still, however, they had to heave me from the saddle. Thank God, the stiffness or numbness was gone the next day.12 10 Up until now, the most impressive geographical analysis of early modern travel behaviour is that of the British geographer John Towner. See his “The Grand Tour.” 11 For more on these methodological snags, see Pooley, “Travelling through the City,” 568–609. 12 Anonymous, Mijn eerste voijagie, fol. 83v.

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More than half of Netherlandish Grand Tour travellers in the current sample relied on horses in the early seventeenth century.13 Literally hundreds of miles were covered in the saddle, whereby burghers made frequent use of the postal network. From the sixteenth century onwards, this Renaissance innovation had spread like wildfire through France, the Holy Roman Empire, and the rest of Europe. Fresh horses were available at every station, which, at least in theory, allowed travellers to make good progress and save some time.14 Less popular was the option of fagging out one’s own horse or buying one en route. Cornelis and Johan de Witt favoured this option on their Grand Tour to France in 1645. From Holland they had sailed to Rouen on a Man-of-War; they then hired some mounts to Paris, leased a carriage in the capital, and finally bought some good saddle horses for the long tour through the provinces. Detailed accounts evidence the constant care that was needed for stabling and fodder, to keep reins, bits, and saddles in good condition, not to mention the recurrent bills for farriers, stable boys, and other specialists. Due to their private horsepower, Cornelis and Johan could more easily stray from the well-trodden paths.15 Brittany served, for instance, as an interesting addition to their classic Grand Tour, while such a detour was not as popular among other travellers, as the Breton postal network was less extensive and fine-meshed than in the more central parts of France (Map 2.1).16 Nonetheless, most travellers seemed to prefer the slightly less malleable – but clearly more convenient – option of public and postal horse transport to the hassle associated with private alternatives.17 Travellers were, overall, extremely flexible in their preferences, as they probably switched transport means more often than their clothes. Barges were, for example, a tantalizing substitute to lengthy, wearying, and rough rides on horseback (14% of references in the sample). Wherever this comfortable alternative was available – for instance in the Loire valley, on the Brenta canal, or along the Rhine – travellers eagerly chose it.18 They 13 To draw a more quantitative picture, all explicit references to transport (n=233) in the sample were analyzed. These figures were sorted into seven categories. For the period 1585–1650, the results are as follows: Barge 14%, Coach 4%, Horse 57%, Mule 0%, Sedan Chair 4%, Ship 21%, Sledge 0%. 14 Behringer, “Communication Revolutions,” 339–42; Scott, “Travel and Communications,” 174–76; Livet, Histoire des routes, 229–34; Barker and Gerhold, Rise and Rise, 35–42. 15 De Wit, Journaal, fols 1r, 3r. Account book. 16 Detailed information on (evolutions in) the French network can be found in Bretagnolle, Giraud, and Verdier, “Modéliser l’efficacité.” 17 Most of them used the postal network. 18 Some examples: Colvius, Cort verhael, fol. 10; De With, Verhael, fol. 23v; De la Court, Reysboek, fol. 15v.

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Map 2.1 Destinations of Dutch travellers (1585–1650) projected onto Nicolas Sanson’s Carte géographique des postes qui traversent la France. Paris, 1632. Map photo: BnF / Gallica. Projection credit: Gerrit Verhoeven.

also opted for sea voyages to avoid long overland journeys through rough or dangerous terrain (21% of all references). Dutch travellers, for instance, frequently shunned the Habsburg Netherlands in the early seventeenth century, as the Republic was still at war with its former Spanish overlord. Instead, they embarked on warships heading to Boulogne, Dieppe, Rouen, or another French port. From Genoa, travellers frequently took a felucca to Livorno to avoid the foothills of the Apennines. Such sea voyages had their own disadvantages, however, as they were associated with privateers, seasickness, gales, and other calamities.19 In the Alps, travellers switched to mules, sedan chairs, and sledges to navigate steep mountain passes and yawning chasms (4% of all references). Coach services were still rare in the early seventeenth century and only operated in densely urbanized regions

19 Colvius, Cort verhael, fol. 3; De With, Verhael, fol. 10r; De la Court, Reysboek, fol. 9v; De Wit, Journaal, fol. 1r.

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such as Île-de France, Southern England, or the Po valley.20 Netherlandish travellers took a stagecoach wherever they could, but the opportunities were still extremely limited in the 1640s and 1650s (barely 4% of all references).21 Mobility on the Grand Tour changed radically over time, however. Coach travel gradually gained momentum in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, when regular services were radiating from London, Paris, Rome, and other European metropolises. At the turn of the century, even the more remote parts of the continent were within reach. The success of these services was closely linked to large-scale innovations in road construction and maintenance, whereby the classic dirt roads – dusty in summer, muddy in winter – made way for paved roads. From the late seventeenth century onwards, commercial turnpikes sped up transport in England, while the commissaire pour les ponts et chaussées plotted out a network of stone-slab paved roads in France.22 Netherlandish travellers were far from oblivious to this evolution: all evidence seems to suggest that they eagerly capitalized on these innovations. Postal horses were, within decades, swapped for stagecoaches. As a result, references to horse travel decreased from 57% in the early seventeenth century to barely 9% in the early eighteenth century, while the incidence of coach travel increased from 4% to 59% in the same period. Not only was the level of comfort much higher, as travellers were at least shielded from bad weather – from the scalding summer heat to the blistering winter cold – but they could also take much more luggage. Trunks with clothes, souvenirs, books, and other knickknacks could be taken along.23 Despite their predilection for stagecoaches, Grand Tourists remained extremely flexible. Even in the eighteenth century, they could choose from a large portfolio of transport modes that were sought out for sheer necessity or simply for comfort. Litters, sedan chairs, sledges, and mules remained the predominant options to cross the steep and narrow mountain passes in the

20 In France and England, the f irst regular coach service dates from around 1630. It took decades before these services were available in more remote areas of the country: Behringer, “Communication Revolutions,” 339–42; Livet, Histoire des routes, 229–34; Barker and Gerhold, Rise and Rise, 35–42. 21 De la Court, Reysboek, fol. 1v. 22 Behringer, “Communication Revolutions,” 358–62; Scott, “Travel and Communications,” 183–85; Livet, Histoire des routes, 287–92; Barker and Gerhold, Rise and Rise, 39–42. 23 Cornelis and Johan de Witt’s travel accounts illustrate the limitations of horsepower in this regard, as the bills mention “a cushioned horsecloth to put the valise on.” De Wit, Journaal, Account book. Teding van Berkhout, on the contrary, took all sorts of things with him, as his trunk could be lashed down to the stagecoach: Teding van Berkhout, Correspondentie met Pieter, 19 December 1739.

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Alps,24 while barges continued to be the favoured option on the Loire, the Rhine, and the Brenta (17% of all references in the period 1700–1750). Boats might have been somewhat slower than stagecoaches, but they provided more conveniences. Travellers could relax, sip a cup of tea, or enjoy a small lunch while enjoying the passing landscape from the deckhouse.25 Comfort also had an important impact on the experience of travel. Travellers wrote much more favourably about the landscape when they were cruising the Loire, the Rhine, or the Brenta, while they were less verbose when numbed by endless miles on horseback or jolted to pieces in a carriage.26 Flexibility was also necessary to fill in the gaps, for even in the most urbanized regions in Europe, the expanding network of stage-coach services remained rather wide-meshed. Travellers regularly had to look for alternatives.27 Well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, horses provided a convenient solution if travellers strayed from the well-trodden paths. In Italy, the Marmora Falls were a classic example of this. To reach the impressive waterfall, travellers had to leave the coach in Terni – a frequent stopping point between Ancona and Rome – and rent a horse to bridge the last miles through the mountains. According to an anonymous Dutch traveller, the rising popularity of the sight had made the excursion prohibitively expensive: “as the dealers try to earn as much money during the two months when the large crowds pass by in order to live through the calm season.”28 Travellers who were less adventurous or more penny-pinching omitted such excursions from their itinerary. This is a perfect illustration of how the available transport shaped the itineraries and destinations of the classic Grand Tour. Mobility warped the tourist space. Toeing the line was the norm, as travellers generally looked for the most reliable, safe, comfortable, and economical options to reach Rome, which led to a high degree of conformity on the ground. This was not only visible at the micro-level but also predetermined the meso- and macro-level. Destinations were, for instance, largely set in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, 24 For instance: Huycken, Verhaal, fol. 93; Major and Saint Bernard, Journal de voyage; Anonymous, Journal d’un voyage. Coach travel in the Alps only hesitantly gained momentum from the late eighteenth century: Scott, “Travel and Communications,” 170. 25 Some examples: Anonymous, Aantekeningh, fol. 36r; Van den Branden, Notes du voyage, fol. 89; Alensoon, Dag-register, fol. 33; Huycken, Verhaal, fol. 21. 26 For example: Alensoon, Dag-register, fol. 471; Coget, Journal, fol. 19v; Bruijningh, Rysbeschryving, fol. 133. 27 Even with the advent of steamboats and train, flexibility remained the norm in the nineteenth century: Geurts, “Modern Travel,” 214–34. 28 Anonymous, Voyages en Allemagne, fol. 70r

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when the Netherlandish Groote Tour was predominantly focused on France and Italy. While travellers also crossed the border to Switzerland (especially to Geneva), navigated the channel to England (limited to London), or sailed down the river Rhine to reach the pales of the Holy Roman Empire, these regions were only marginally incorporated into the travel programme. Scandinavia, the Iberian Peninsula, and large parts of Central Europe were by and large ignored. Conformism also ruled on a meso-level. In France, travellers almost blindly followed the traces of the Kleene Tour (literally Small Tour) from Paris to Orléans, down the Loire and up to Bordeaux, crossing the Languedoc and Provence to Lyon, where they sailed up the Saone to reach Paris again, which corresponded with the main postal networks in France (Map 2.1).29 Netherlandish travel in Italy was in the early seventeenth century usually limited to the Northern part of the Po valley and Tuscany, while fewer travellers ventured further south. Rome was, in most cases, the ultimate terminus.30 Cultural motives obviously modelled the tourist space, as the classic Grand Tour was, especially in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, still deeply inspired by humanist ideals that focused on Roman Antiquity and Renaissance acumen. Yet mobility also mattered. Travellers shied away from regions where transport facilities were limited or lacking. Netherlandish burghers complained bitterly, for instance, about the primitive transport on the Iberian Peninsula. Even between the larger cities, they were thrown back on slow, unreliable, and (extremely) uncomfortable trips on muleback. Nights were spent in miserable inns – the notorious ventas – where even the most basic comforts such as food, furniture, or heating were frequently lacking. It was often thought that the innkeepers were in league with highwaymen who were prowling along the main routes.31 Tall stories such as these must be taken with a grain of salt, yet they also mirror some ingrained imbalances in Europe’s public infrastructure. Postal services had been booming in late sixteenth-century Italy, France, and Spain, but in the Iberian case they fell into disrepair in the early seventeenth century due to the cataclysmic economic meltdown. Transport was also heavily disrupted in the Holy Roman Empire due to the Thirty Years’ War.32 29 Verhoeven, Europe Within Reach. 30 Ibid. 31 Some examples: Anonymous, Mijn eerste voijagie, fols 19v, 28v; Huygens, Reisjournaal van de Ambassade naar Spanje, fol. 37v; Coget, Journal, fol. 143r. 32 Behringer, “Communications Revolutions,” 357.

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It is no wonder, then, that most Netherlandish travellers neatly “coloured inside the lines” and opted for France and Italy, where public transport continued to run (relatively) smoothly. Even in France, the itineraries of travellers were tailored to the relays of the public post, in so far as they were an almost perfect copy of Nicolas Sanson’s famous Carte géographiques des postes qui traversent la France (Paris 1632). To a substantial degree, the postal services determined the success of entire regions, cities, and sites as travel destinations. Brittany, the Massif Central, the Franche-Comté, and other areas with basic transport facilities and inns were largely ignored (Map 2.1).33 Even in 1731, the Antwerp merchant Jean Coget still baulked at the logistic puzzle of a Breton detour to Saint Malo when he arrived in Nantes. There was no regular coach service, so travellers had to strike a deal with the postman: Twice a week the messenger leaves for Saint-Malo. You can rent a horse from him or rent one yourself to accompany him. You can also book full service with lunch and dinner, so you don’t have any worries and are well treated.34

Despite the arrangement, travel through Brittany stood in stark contrast with the well-oiled coach-services and excellent inns along the Loire. Transport infrastructure was, once created, able to shape itineraries and travel routes. It also fuelled the success of new destinations and sights. From the late seventeenth onwards, the classic blueprint of the Grand Tour was redrawn inch by inch. For one thing, the focus slowly but surely shifted northwards. During the eighteenth century, Rome was still the prime destination, yet ever more travellers also included long stays in London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, or any other metropolis of the North in their programme. At the same time, summer trips in the Low Countries became the newest fashion among Netherlandish elites, as well as brief excursions beyond the borders.35 Although this was triggered by numerous causes, transport facilities presumably played an important part, as mobility in Northwest Europe – roughly the area between London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Cologne – was gradually improved by a mix of stone-slab paved roads, diligences, towboats, ferries, and other means. Comfort, speed, and frequency increased, 33 Bretagnolle, Giraud, and Verdier, “Modéliser l’efficacité,” 117–31. 34 Coget, Journal, fols 17r–v. 35 For this shift: Goldsmith, Sweet, and Verhoeven, “Introduction;” Verhoeven, “In Search of the New Rome?”.

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while prices slowly but surely fell.36 For travellers from Amsterdam, it only took two or three days to reach Brussels in the eighteenth century, five days to the fashionable spa at Aix-la-Chappelle, a week to Paris, and – when the winds were favourable – even less to London. As a result, speelreijsjes (leisure trips), plaisierreisjes (pleasure trips), somertogjes (summer trips), and even vacances (vacation) – neologisms for brief, leisurely excursions in the Low Countries or just beyond the border – boomed.37 New mobility options also affected the Grand Tour in another way, as the desire for speed led to a reduction of the classic travel programme. Early seventeenth-century travellers had, for example, been forced to stop regularly at relays and smaller towns in western and southern France, but with the increasing speed and comfort of stagecoach travel, the journey could be made much faster. Provincial towns were gradually pruned from the programme, while the long detour through the Loire valley, Aquitaine, the Languedoc, and Provence fell into abeyance. Travellers increasingly opted for the fast thoroughfare from Paris to Lyons.38 Destinations that were not within easy reach were increasingly dropped from the itinerary. La Grande Chartreuse, the famous Carthusian monastery that was nestled at the foothills of the Alps, provides an illustrative example. In the early seventeenth century, travellers were prepared to endure a long, taxing, and perilous ride through the mountains to reach the isolated hermitage.39 It was a classic sight on the Grand Tour where travellers could nonetheless appear to stray from the worn tourist trails and demonstrate their nerve, hardiness, and other masculine values. Pieter Teding van Berkhout, scion of a wealthy Delft regent family, pulled out all the stops on his Grand Tour in 1664: … as the goal of my trip was to see some rock faces and abysses, I took the long way, which is not the usual one. So, I entered the mountains and I was very pleased to see one of the most terrible roads one can imagine, which I had to follow for three hours: gloomy woods, high peaks, horrible 36 For France: Bretagnolle, Giraud, and Verdier, “Modéliser l’efficacité,” 117–31; Livet, Histoire des routes, 229–34. For England: Dyos and Aldcroft, British Transport, 33–35; Barker and Gerhold, Rise and Rise, 35–42. For the Low Countries: De Vries, Barges and Capitalism; Blondé, “At the Cradle.” For more about the link between transport and travel, see Verhoeven, “Een divertissant somertogje?”. 37 For more about this new travel culture, see Verhoeven, “Foreshadowing Tourism?”. 38 These geographical changes did not garner much attention in the past. Exceptional in this regard is Towner, “The Grand Tour.” 39 For example: De Wit, Journaal, fol. 10v; Huygens, Reisjournaal van 1649–50, fol. 70; Anonymous, Journael van mijne reijse, fols 235–37; Ruysch, Journael, fol. 123v.

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bluffs, yawning ravines; in sum, I was in the Alps, which are world-famous. I feasted my eyes on the tall spruces, that are so numerous, and on the oaks with their abundant green, while the birds were warbling softly. Accidents could happen any time, it only takes half a step from the path to fall into the abyss and break one’s neck. 40

During the eighteenth century, this excursion slowly but surely disappeared from the long list, as travellers shied away from the highly uncomfortable, perilous, and gruelling experience or simply lost their interest. 41 Teding’s tale is also illustrative of the way in which mobility was experienced – or at least enacted – in the (early) seventeenth century. Travellers usually highlighted the risk and discomfort involved in their journeys by emphasizing language barriers, religious differences, or logistical problems.42 Calamities included bad roads, spectacular accidents, brigands and highwaymen, filthy inns, encounters with ferocious animals, and other obstacles. More than 64% of references to mobility in the sources had a negative ring in the early seventeenth century. 43 It would be unwise to deny the fact that early modern travel was, at least in some cases, extremely taxing, perilous, and uncomfortable, yet it would be equally short-sighted to ignore the staged nature of some of these tall tales. Travellers frequently hinted at how they had escaped some imminent danger by the skin of their teeth – banditti were always lurking around the corner; accidents were usually warded off at the last moment; feluccas managed to outrun corsairs – but rarely if ever reported on actual calamities. Featuring looming dangers and discomforts en route was – and is even today – a classic strategy to emphasize male values of bravery, stamina, and poise. 44 It fits well with the rationale of the Grand Tour as a classic rite de passage or a litmus test of the transition between adolescence and adulthood. Travellers eagerly drew on these narrative tropes to paint a self-portrait of hardiness and perseverance. Long rides on horseback and physical suffering in general were key ingredients. 45 40 Teding van Berkhout, Relation du voiage, fol. 36v. 41 Some late examples: Van der Dussen, Reisbeschrijving, fol. 105r; Van den Branden, Notes du voyage, fols 121–23. 42 On these themes, see the chapters by John Gallagher and Irene Fosi in this volume. 43 Once again, all references to transport (n=235) were drawn from the sample and were sorted into three categories: negative, positive, and neutral. For the period 1585–1650, this comes down to 64% negative and 36% neutral. 44 Elsrud, “Risk Creation;” Morgan and Pritchard, “Privileging the Male Gaze.” An excellent historical overview is: Thompson, Travel Writing, 168–90. 45 For more on masculinity and the Grand Tour, see Goldsmith, “Dogs, Servants, and Masculinities;” French and Rothery, Man’s Estate, 138–42. Masculinity also played a role on brief (domestic)

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New means of transport slowly but surely rebooted the rationale of the Grand Tour, as the spread of the kinds of innovations described in the first part of this chapter transformed the experience of travel. Negative remarks on the dangers and discomfort of travelling were progressively exchanged for more neutral or even positive assessments of mobility, whereby eighteenthcentury travellers wrote favourably about the speed, frequency, and comfort of stagecoaches.46 References to more negative experiences decreased from 64% in the early seventeenth century to 28% in the eighteenth century, while the incidence of more positive experiences rose from 0% to 23%. These innovations deeply modified the way of travelling, as the landscape between cities was gradually turned into a tourist sight. For example, in the Low Countries and Northern France, travellers started to see the landscape in a different light, now that they were seated in comfortable diligences that were racing from one city to another on well-paved roads. Pieter de la Ruë, a well-to-do lawyer from Middelburg, admired the modern infrastructure of the paved roads of the Austrian Netherlands in 1729, when he dashed from Brussels to Ghent “along a similar road to the one that leads to Leuven, which was extremely agreeable thanks to the diversity of scenic views. Fringed with trees, it cuts through a landscape of vales and hills.”47 Transport innovations led to a more positive framing of the landscape and a more leisurely way of travelling – one that was less focused on the personal struggle with the elements, bad roads, highwaymen, and other challenges. Eighteenth-century travellers still referred to these classic narrative tropes, but, as infrastructure developed, they were relegated to the fringes of the tourist account. Mountains and seas – and the occasional trips to Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, and other less-travelled spaces – still offered plenty of opportunity to display bravery. Johannes Franciscus van der Elst, a well-heeled Antwerp citizen, portrayed his crossing of the Alps on his Grand Tour in 1712 in dramatic terms, as his party were caught in a blizzard: Me and the others were forced to plough all night through the snow. Likely, I will remember this trial for the rest of my life, as the winds gathered in force, rain fell heavily, and the mist was so thick that I was barely able to see the horses and my companions before me. We had to march for a excursions: Verhoeven, “Not for Weaker Vessels?!”. 46 Some examples: Coget, Journal de mon Voyage, fol. 50v; Van Dorp, Kort verhaal, fol. 73r; Anonymous, Beschreyvinge, fol. 2r. 47 Anonymous, Speelreis, fol. 22.

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whole day through the storm. My poor servant fell in a crevasse when he tried to save me. Eight days later, he was found…48

For most travellers, the Alpine passage was less frightening. Eighteenthcentury travellers usually saw the crossing as a mildly frightening experience, which enabled them to break out of the rut of well-organized, smooth, and safe mobility in France and Italy. 49

Communication On 24 December 1610, Samuel de Bacher, a would-be merchant, penned a letter to his cousin Hans Martens. Frustrated, he wrote from Venice: “I had hoped that there would be some letters from father and some friends, but I found nothing. I felt extremely sad…”50 Bacher had not received a single letter since November, although he had sent several epistles home. Moreover, he had left the Dutch Republic more than a year before on a Grand Tour to Italy and France, so his distress was understandable. Even if the use of the emotive droevig (sad) was somewhat unusual, it was a common experience. Travellers made frequent use of the public postal system to keep up to date with the home front. Not much is known, however, about this virtual mobility on the Grand Tour, as collections of travel letters are relatively scarce.51 Bacher’s brieven (letters) and other similar examples are revealing. If Samuel’s collection is illustrative of the frequency of correspondence on the seventeenth-century Grand Tour, regularity was rather low. Every two or three months, a letter left for the Dutch Republic or reached Bacher’s temporary address.52 It seems this frequency increased as time passed, as the postal network became more efficient and gave birth to a lively letter culture.53 Pieter de la Court, a Leiden textile baron, set off on a short city break to Paris in the summer of 1700 together with his twelve-year old son, 48 Van der Elst, Voyage en Italie, fol. 9v. 49 Alensoon, Dag-register, fol. 193; Van den Branden, Notes du voyage, fol. 9v; Teding van Berkhout, Journal de mon voiage, fol. 221; Anonymous, Aantekeningh, fol. 5r. 50 De Bacher, Reisbrieven, December 24, 1610. 51 Even though some recent studies have illustrated the rich potential of these sources for early modern history in general, travel letters have only been sporadically examined. Some thought-provoking explorations of letters in general can be found in Broomhall and Van Gent, “Corresponding Affections.” 52 De Bacher, Reisbrieven (1608–1611). 53 Scott, “Travel and Communications,” 175.

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Allard. To keep his wife up to date, Pieter wrote frequent letters home. No less than nine missives were posted between 6 August and 8 September, which works out to almost one letter every three days.54 Barely seven years later, young Allard embarked on his own trip to Berlin, Hannover, and Brunswick. According to his account book, nearly 40 letters were dispatched and received over the course of three months. Close to four per cent of his travel budget was spent on communication.55 Frequent mail was also sent and received by Jan Teding van Berkhout, scion of a wealthy regent family in Delft and a relative of the aforementioned Pieter, on his Grand Tour to Italy in 1739. Berkhout wrote hundreds of letters, a dozen every month, and two or three every week. Like most travellers, he complained bitterly about the mail that had gone astray, was delayed or censored, or had simply never been sent, as the maxim “out of sight, out of mind” held for some family members, friends, and other acquaintances.56 Berkhout’s lamentations can be read as a symptom of a failing postal system, but they can just as well be seen as an indication of the opposite. Netherlandish burgers were so accustomed to smoothly running services that even the smallest delay or wrong delivery felt like an unacceptable aberration, even when they were hundreds of miles from home. This also hints at the emotional value of these letters. Letters created a virtual community – a feeling that the correspondents were close even though they were half a continent apart – which was welcome to ward off homesickness, nostalgia, and other unwanted feelings.57 Travellers frequently yearned for news and used strong emotive words such as vreugde (joy) and hoop (hope) to express their mood when they collected their mail in the post offices. Pieter Teding van Berkhout was seer verheugd (overjoyed) when the postman in Marseille presented five packs of letters from Holland.58 Leetwesen (regret), boos (anger), and droevig (sadness) were on the flip side of the coin, when the box remained empty.59 Fighting homesickness was an important function of correspondence, but there were other motives to put pen to paper. Pragmatic reasons should not 54 De la Court, Brieven. 55 De la Court, Aanteekening. Account book. 56 Teding van Berkhout, Correspondentie met Paulus, 27 October 1739, 12 December 1739, 2 January 1740, 19 November 1740. 57 For more about the importance of letters in this regard, see: Goldsmith, “Nostalgia, Homesickness;” Broomhall and Van Gent, “Corresponding Affections.” 58 Teding van Berkhout, Relation du voiage, fol. 40v. 59 Some examples: Thijs, Vervolgh, 1 January 1646; Anonymous, Reize door Duitsland, fol. 77; Teding van Berkhout, Correspondentie met Paulus, 1 January 1739.

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be downplayed. Travellers frequently wrote home to ask for more money, letters of recommendation, passports, permissions to prolong their journey, and other practical matters, while parents also used correspondence as a pedagogical tool. Letters were useful to keep a finger on the pulse of the everyday progress of their offspring in mastering foreign languages, fencing, dancing, horsemanship, conversation, and other polite skills.60 Moreover, as their frequency and length increased, letters were more intensely used to inform. Jan Teding van Berkhout penned long reports about his cultural explorations in Italy – about the Forum in Rome, the Uffizi in Florence, the opera in Venice – and the myriad entertainments in Paris and London. At the same time, his relatives kept him posted about the latest developments in Dutch politics, society, and culture, flavoured with the most recent gossip.61 Letters provided a window into the daily life at home or abroad and helped to create a sense of a shared, simultaneous experience, even if the correspondents were literally miles and miles apart.62 Travellers also read newspapers to keep in touch with the home front, while their relatives back home scanned the French and Italian columns to assess the situation abroad. On 12 February 1740, Teding van Berkhout reported in a letter to Uncle Paulus that he had read the obituary of a certain dike reeve named Hooft in the Gazettes. Even though it seems a trivial remark, the message was probably all but guileless, as the family was always on the lookout for lucrative jobs.63 Teding’s letters perfectly illustrate the hidden significance of correspondence, as Jan’s relatives back home were constantly working to prepare his future life after the Grand Tour. Uncle Paulus and other family members lobbied passionately for an easy yet well-paid position and for a prospective wedding party.64 For his part, Jan buttered them up with frequent letters and an endless stream of gifts. Paulus was, for example, honoured with a gilded snuffbox, while Jan’s eldest brother Pieter was swamped with Italian sheet music, which was one of his guilty pleasures.65 Myriad presents were also bought for Coenraad (Jan’s younger brother), for Susanna (his sister), 60 For more about the function of letters in language learning, see Chapter 4 of Gallagher, Learning Languages. 61 Some examples: Teding van Berkhout, Correspondentie met Paulus, 25 May 1739, 2 January 1740. 62 For this function of correspondence, see Broomhall and Van Gent, “Corresponding Affections,” 158. 63 Teding van Berkhout, Correspondentie met Paulus, 12 February 1740. 64 Ibid., 22 September 1739. 65 Teding van Berkhout, Correspondentie met Pieter, 30 April 1739, 16 January, 27 February, and 19 March 1740.

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and other relatives, while Jan also did a lot of proxy shopping for family members, friends, and acquaintances. Teding regularly dispatched these gifts and purchases to the Dutch Republic. They were carefully loaded in a box that was shipped by a man-of-war or a merchantman sailing home.66 On New Year’s Day, 1740, Pieter forwarded a letter from van der Meij, one of their relatives: … which was addressed to you. It contains a request to buy some engravings of Freij for him and burgomaster Hogeveen. You can easily understand, that it is not out of love for the painter, but for the president and mayor, that I ardently beg you to execute this order.67

Letters and gifts created an emotional community. In the absence of physical proximity, they provided a material substitute and renewed the do ut des mentality, which would prove extremely valuable upon return.68

Conclusion In the introduction to The Voyage of Italy, or a Compleat Journey through Italy (Paris 1670), the Catholic priest and bearleader (governor) Richard Lassels warned would-be travellers that a trip to Rome was extremely taxing. A Grand Tour would teach those gilded youths “…wholesome hardship; to lye in beds that are none of his acquaintance, to speak to men he never saw before … to endure any horse and weather, as well as any meat and drink.”69 This caution resonates well with the numerous heroic tales of travellers who had to face bad roads, the blistering cold and heat, steep mountain passes and yawning abysses, ferocious animals, merciless highwaymen, privateers, and numerous other calamities on their way to Rome. Up until today, these stories have fired the imagination – even the expert one – and fuelled a highly romantic image of early modern travelling. Drawing on a large body of Dutch and Flemish travel journals, I have tried to look beyond these hackneyed stereotypes and clichés. From the sixteenth century onwards, travel behaviour was deeply affected by some new technologies of mobility, 66 Ibid., 27 February and 19 March 1740. 67 Ibid., 1 January 1740. 68 For more about this link between correspondence and gifts, see Broomhall and Van Gent, “Corresponding Affections,” 145–52. 69 Quoted in French and Rothery, Man’s Estate, 141. For more information on Lassels, see: Chaney, Evolution of the Grand Tour.

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as transport and communication evolved radically – even if at a slow-burn pace. Although some experts have touched on the topic, serious reflection on the impact of these changes on early modern travel behaviour – praxis, space, experience – remains largely missing. Netherlandish travel journals can lift a corner of the veil. Travellers, for instance, eagerly capitalized on the postal network, which spread broadly across Europe in the early seventeenth century. Wherever services were available, they gradually switched to the more convenient and comfortable option of stagecoaches, although they remained – even in the eighteenth century – extremely flexible. Travellers still opted for barges, horses, sedan chairs, and other means to fill the blank spaces in the coach network or, simply, because they were much cheaper, safer, or more comfortable. Travellers also relied on the postal network to communicate with their family members, friends, and acquaintances back home. Not only the frequency but also the length of letters seems to have increased over time. Mobility – and its infrastructure – also bent tourist space, as the itineraries and destinations were neatly tailored by the available transport and communication networks. Travel routes in France, Italy, and England in the seventeenth century were, for instance, carbon copies of Nicolas Sanson’s Cartes Géographique des Postes and similar itineraries. Travellers rarely – if ever – strayed beyond the official network of relays, roadhouses, and other postal services. Even though there were exceptions, such as La Grande Chartreuse, the popularity of sights, sites, towns, regions, and even countries correlated strongly with their accessibility in terms of postal services. During the eighteenth century, the ties became even stronger, as travel behaviour was radically altered by new transport infrastructure. Due to a boom in paved roads and stage-coach services, the Grand Tour was not only more and more reoriented to the North, but these innovations also sparked a brand-new way of travelling. Dutch and Flemish travellers marked these brief, leisurely excursions in the Low Countries and beyond as plaisierreijsjes, somertogjes, or even vacance, yet they were anything but an exclusive Netherlandish phenomenon. Leisure trips and “city breaks” became the latest fashion in eighteenth-century Northwest Europe. New transport and communication infrastructures not only changed the tourist space, they also remodelled the experience of travel. More comfortable, safer, and faster means led to a less negative – and a more leisurely – interpretation of mobility in the eighteenth century, whereby the idea of the Grand Tour as a classic rite de passage was literally marginalized. While travelling in the early seventeenth century was still associated with

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danger, discomfort, and other taxing circumstances, these trials were slowly but surely relocated to the Alps, the North Sea, and other liminal spaces. Even though some hardship remained necessary in building a masculine identity, transport innovations progressively transformed travel practice from a perilous tribulation into a relaxing passe temps. They also affected travellers’ perception of landscapes and nature. Once seated in safe and comfortable coaches, litters, or barges, they began to appreciate the scenic views of valleys, hills, and even mountains. Communication also changed the everyday experience of travel, as homesickness, melancholy, and other unwanted feelings were honed away – or at least kept at bay – by frequent correspondence. Letters, newspapers, and other media created the illusion of closeness and connectedness, which scaled down the virtual distance between travellers and home. Both of the aspects considered remind us that the quotidian nature of transport and communication was all but trivial. Mobility really mattered.

Works cited Manuscript sources Alensoon, Jan. Dag-register van een korte reijs (1723–24). University Library, Amsterdam, coll. Hss. XV E 25. Anonymous. Aantekeningh van onse reijse door Duytslandt (1707). University Library, Amsterdam, coll hss. XV E 29. Anonymous. Beschreyvinge van een Rys in Franckryck (1713). Royal Library, Brussels, II 768. Anonymous. Journal du’un voyage des Paijs-Bas en Toscane (18th century). Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, M. 90. Anonymous. Journael van mijne reijse door Duijtslant en Italien (1666–67). University Library, Leiden, Ltk. 2184. Anonymous. Mijn eerste voijagie te water na Lixbona (1649). Royal Library, The Hague, 76 H 28. Anonymous. Reize door Duitsland na Italien (1667). Royal Library, The Hague, 70 J 3. Anonymous. Speelreis door sommige steden van Vlaanderen en Brabant (1724). University Library, Amsterdam, coll. Hss. XVI E 32a. Anonymous. Voyages en Allemagne en Autriche et en Italie (1640). National Library, Brussels, II.5499. Bruijningh, Jason. Rysbeschryving van Amsterdam naar Frankfort en terug (1742). City Archives, Amsterdam, FA Heshuysen 364.

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Coget, Jean-Antoine. Journal de mon Voyage d’Anvers à Cadix (1731). City Library, Antwerp, B 31146. Colvius, Andreas. Cort verhael vander reijse (1622). National Archives, The Hague, Coll. Aanw. 1891: 556. De Bacher, Samuel. Reisbrieven van Samuël Bacher (1608–11). University Library, Leiden, Thys. 151. De la Court, Allard. Aanteekening ofte Giornaal van mijn reys (1707). University Library, Amsterdam, coll. hss. IV J 10:1. De la Court, Pieter. Brieven van Pieter de la Court (1700). Regional Archives, Leiden, FA De la Court 64. ———. Reysboek door Vrankryke (1641–42). Regional Archives, Leiden, FA De la Court 14. De Wit, Johan. Journaal van zijn reis naar Frankrijk en Engeland (1645–47). National Archives, The Hague, FA de Wit 1[19]. De With, Gijsbrecht. Verhael van mijne reijse in Vrankrijck (1634–35). University Library, Amsterdam, coll. Hss. V J 41. Huycken, Johannes. Verhaal van een reis naar Rome (1737). University Library, Ghent, Hs. 1391. Huygens, Christiaan. Reisjournaal van de Ambassade naar Spanje (1660). Royal Library, The Hague, KA LVII. Huygens, Constantijn II. Reisjournaal van 1649–50 (1649). Royal Library, The Hague, KA LIII. Major, Charles, and Marie de Saint Bernard. Journal de voyage à Rome (1732). Royal Library, Brussels, II 1274: 1–2. Ruysch, Coenraad. Journael van de reijs (1677). National Archives, The Hague, 1408[a]. Teding van Berkhout, Jan. Correspondentie met Pieter (1739–41). National Archives, The Hague, FA Teding van Berkhout 309. ———. Correspondentie met Paulus Teding van Berkhout (1739–41). National Archives, The Hague, FA Teding van Berkhout 267. ———. Journal de mon voiage (1739–41). National Archives, The Hague, 353. Teding van Berkhout, Pieter. Relation du voiage depuis la Haije ius qua Paris (1664). National Archives, The Hague, FA Teding van Berkhout 219. Thijs, Johannes. Vervolgh van Copije van mijne Brieven (1646–49). University Library, Leiden, Thys 102: B1. Van den Branden, Corneille. Notes du voyage en France, Italie, partie de la Suisse et de l’Allemagne (1713–15). National Archives, Brussels, I 196 :15b. Van der Dussen, Jacob. Reisbeschrijving van ’s Hage naar Rome (1699). Royal Library, The Hague, 131 C 20. Van der Elst, Jean. Voyage en Italie (1712–13). University Library, Ghent, Hs. 1494.

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Van Dorp, Pieter. Kort verhaal van het divertissant somertogje (1732). Central Bureau for Genealogy, The Hague, FA Mispelblom 47.

Printed sources Barker, Theo, and Dorian Gerhold. The Rise and Rise of Road Transport, 1700–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Behringer, Wolfgang. “Communication Revolutions. A Historical Concept.” German History 24, no. 3 (2006): 333–74. Black, Jeremy. Italy and the Grand Tour. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Blondé, Bruno. “At the Cradle of the Transport Revolution? Paved Roads, Traffic Flows and Economic Development in Eighteenth-Century Brabant.” Journal of Transport History 31 (2010): 89–111. Brenner, Neil, David Madden, and David Wachsmuth. “Assemblage Urbanism and the Challenges of Critical Urban Theory.” City 15 (2011): 225–40. Bretagnolle, Anne, Thimotée Giraud, and Nicolas Verdier. “Modéliser l’efficacité d’un reseau: le cas de la poste aux chevaux dans la France pré-industrielle (1632–1833).” Espace géographique 39 (2010): 117–31. Broomhall, Susan, and Jacqueline Van Gent. “Corresponding Affections: Emotional Exchange Among Siblings in the Nassau Family.” Journal of Family History 34 (2009): 143–65. Chaney, Edward. The Evolution of the Grand Tour. Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations Since the Renaissance. London: Portland, 1998. Colletta, Lisa. “Introduction: The Grand Tour and its Legacy.” In The Legacy of the Grand Tour, edited by Lisa Colletta, ix–xx. London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015. Cresswell, Tim, and Peter Merriman. “Introduction: Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects.” In Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects, edited by Tim Cresswell and Peter Merriman, 1–15. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. De Vries, Jan. Barges and Capitalism. Passenger Transportation in the Dutch Economy, 1632–1839. Utrecht: HES Publishers, 1981. Dyos, Harold, and Derek Aldcroft. British Transport. An Economic Survey from the Seventeenth Century to the Twentieth. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1969. Elsrud, Tim. “Risk Creation in Travelling. Backpacker Adventure Narration.” Annals of Tourism Research 28 (2001): 597–617. French, Henry, and Mark Rothery. Man’s Estate. Landed Gentry Masculinities, 1660–1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Gallagher, John. Learning Languages in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

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Geurts, Anna. “Modern Travel: A Personal Affair.” In Travel Writing in Dutch and German, 1790–1930. Modernity, Regionality, Mobility, edited by Alison Martin, Lut Missine, and Beatrix Van Dam, 214–34. London: Routledge, 2017. Goldsmith, Sarah. “Dogs, Servants, and Masculinities: Writing about Danger on the Grand Tour.” Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies 40 (2017): 3–21. ———. “Nostalgia, Homesickness, and Emotional Formation on the EighteenthCentury Grand Tour.” Cultural and Social History 15 (2018): 333–60. Goldsmith, Sarah, Rosemary Sweet, and Gerrit Verhoeven. “Introduction.” In Beyond the Grand Tour. Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour, edited by Rosemary Sweet, Gerrit Verhoeven, and Sarah Goldsmith, 1–24. London: Routledge, 2017. Kirby, Paul. The Grand Tour in Italy (1700–1800). New York: Vanni, 1952. Livet, Georges. Histoire des routes et des transports en Europe. Des chemins de Saint-Jacques à l’âge d’or des diligences. Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2003. Marcus, George, and Erkan Saka. “Assemblage.” Theory, Culture & Society 23 (2006): 101–6. Mączak, Antoni. Travel in Early Modern Europe. Translated by Ursula Phillips. Cambridge: Polity, 1995. Merriman, Peter, and Lynne Pearce. “Mobility and the Humanities.” Mobilities 12, no. 4 (2017): 493–508. Morgan, Nigel, and Annette Pritchard. “Privileging the Male Gaze: Gendered Tourism Landscapes.” Annals of Tourism Research 27 (2000): 884–905. Pooley, Colin G. “Connecting Historical Studies on Transport, Mobility and Migration.” Journal of Transport History 38, no. 2 (2017): 251–59. ———. Mobility, Migration and Transport: Historical Perspectives. London: Palgrave, 2017. ———. “Travelling Through the City: Using Life Writing to Explore Individual Experiences of Urban Travel, ca. 1840–1940.” Mobilities 12 (2017): 598–609. Roche, Daniel. Humeurs vagabondes. De la circulation des hommes et de l’utilité des voyages. Paris: Fayard, 2003. Scott, Hamish. “Travel and Communications.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern History: 1350–1750. Vol. 1: Peoples and Place, 166–92. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Sweet, Rosemary. Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, c. 1690–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Thompson, Carl. Travel Writing. The New Critical Idiom. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011. Towner, John. “The Grand Tour. A Key Phase in the History of Tourism.” Annals of Tourism Research 12 (1985): 297–333.

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Verhoeven, Gerrit. “Een divertissant somertogje? Transport Innovations and the Rise of Short-Term Pleasure Trips in the Low Counties (1600–1750).” Journal of Transport History 30 (2009): 78–97. ———. “Foreshadowing Tourism? Looking for Modern and Obsolete Features – or a Missing Link – in Early Modern Travel Behaviour (1600–1750).” Annals of Tourism Research 42 (2013): 262–83. ———. Europe Within Reach. Netherlandish Travellers on the Grand Tour and Beyond (1585–1750). Leiden: Brill, 2015. ———. “In Search of the New Rome? Creative Cities and Early Modern Travel Behaviour.” In Cities and Creativity from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Ilja Van Damme, Berk De Munck, and Andrew Miles, 65–84. New York: Routledge, 2018. ———. “Not for Weaker Vessels?! Travel and Gender in the Early Modern Low Countries.” In Gender, Companionship, and Travel. Discourses in Pre-Modern and Modern Travel Literature, edited by Floris Meens and Tom Sintobin, 66–78. London: Routledge, 2019. Walton, John. “Transport, Travel, Tourism and Mobility: A Cultural Turn?” Journal of Transport History 27 (2006): 129–34. Wilton-Ely, John. “Classic Ground: Britain, Italy and the Grand Tour.” EighteenthCentury Life 28 (2004): 136–65.

About the author Gerrit Verhoeven is an associate professor of the Department of Heritage at the University of Antwerp and a research fellow at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. Among other topics, he has written about the history of travel and tourism, including Beyond the Grand Tour. Northern Metropolises and Early Modern Travel Behaviour as co-editor (2017) and Europe within Reach. Netherlandish Travellers on the Grand Tour and Beyond (2015).

3.

Travelling for Health: Medicine and Rural Mobility in Early Modern Spain Carolin Schmitz*1

Abstract Healthcare and mobility were closely intertwined in the early modern world. While studies have focused primarily on exceptional forms of medical mobility, this chapter shifts the perspective by looking closely at routine local and regional journeys performed by patients of humble, mostly rural backgrounds in early modern Spain. Based on legal proceedings produced by the Spanish Inquisition and other courts, this chapter first elucidates the circumstances and motives that prompted people to leave their local communities for health reasons. It then explores the practical arrangements involved when embarking on such journeys, including travelling partners and accommodations. Gaining a more nuanced understanding of these frequent journeys for health helps overcome simplistic explanations such as the lack of local medical provision. The chapter offers a reassessment of how much geographic proximity really mattered when deciding on a treatment within the context of medical pluralism. Keywords: history of medicine; rural healthcare; medical practitioners; walking; medical pluralism; history of the patient

Illness in early modern Europe frequently involved travel. While healthrelated travel was common in epidemics, movement also took place in unremarkable, everyday circumstances. The connection between mobility * This chapter is partly based on material published in Schmitz, Los enfermos, 229–305. I thank the publisher CSIC for permission to reintegrate it into this new version. All translations from Spanish to English are my own.

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch03

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and medicine is certainly not a new area of scholarly interest. People, ideas, and objects related to medical matters travelled globally. The early modern Atlantic world has become an increasingly popular focus of research on how empires made materia medica mobile – in trade, encounters, and the circulation of associated knowledge.1 Within the European Republic of Letters, correspondence between university-trained physicians also resulted in the circulation of books, specimens, prescriptions, and tailor-made medicines.2 Concrete sites such as apothecary shops served as important hubs for the movement of information, and the domestic setting is now recognized as a place of production of medical recipes and a starting point for their circulation in manuscript and print.3 Furthermore, scholars have explored the fashionable visits to spas and thermal waters, health manuals for travelling, and professionally motivated travel, such as the peregrinatio academica of physicians or the movement of itinerant charlatans.4 As this rich scholarship has demonstrated, mobility needs to be understood as a central component of medicine in practice. While there is an increasing interest to access the perspective of the users of early modern healthcare systems,5 studies have focused primarily on exceptional forms of medical mobility and on well-defined social groups. More frequent forms of travel undertaken by ordinary patients have largely gone unnoticed. As short journeys have been described as “the most frequent forms of pre-modern and (modern) mobility,”6 this chapter connects these routine forms of travel with medicine by focusing on mobile patients in predominantly local and regional settings. It takes an alternative analytical perspective to Darka Bilić’s chapter in this volume: while Bilić’s insightful examination of Adriatic lazarettos shows us how mobility was affected by health concerns, this study explores how the experience of health seeking was shaped by mobility. When the search for treatment could not be satisfied within the local community, the sick often continued their therapeutic itinerary by moving 1 For an overview of the vast literature, see Cook and Walker, “Circulation of Medicine,” and in general the special issue on “Mobilising Medicine: Trade & Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic World” in the same volume. For an extension to the East, see Fontes da Costa, ed., Medicine, Trade and Empire; for recent contributions to the Spanish speaking world, see Crawford, Andean Wonder Drug; Gómez, Experiential Caribbean. 2 Brockliss, Calvet’s Web; Steinke and Stuber, “Medical Correspondence.” 3 De Vivo, “Pharmacies;” Leong, Recipes. 4 Moss, “Bath Waters;” Grell, Cunningham and Arrizabalaga, eds., Centres of Medical Excellence; Enenkel and de Jong, eds., Artes apodemicae; Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism. 5 Finucci, “‘There’s the Rub’;” Bamji, “Health Passes.” 6 Ehmer, “Quantifying Mobility,” 329. See also Ambrose, Plotting Movement.

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further afield.7 In analyzing the mobility of patients and their willingness to travel, this chapter addresses two central questions. First, it seeks to identify the motives and related health practices that led people to set off on a journey. This is a necessary step if we wish to go beyond the habitual assumption that the reason people in the past travelled to obtain healthcare was an absence of provision close to home, particularly in rural areas or outside large urban centres.8 Given the consensus that geographical proximity was a decisive factor in the choice of healer, exploring the motives for travel might allow us to better estimate how much distance really mattered when making healthcare decisions.9 Second, this chapter will explore the practical arrangements involved in health-related journeys. These include the forms of travelling and the use of inns as meeting spaces for patients and practitioners. Although patient mobility is our primary focus, the movement of practitioners is occasionally included to achieve a more comprehensive picture of medical mobility. In foregrounding the coping strategies of social actors and looking closely at the conditions that made travelling for health possible, this approach is partly informed by practice theory, which understands social actions through their material and corporeal character and the performativity of practice.10 To reconstruct the experience of medical travel, this chapter draws on sources derived from the legal proceedings of the Spanish Inquisition during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, supplemented by trial records from other judicial authorities, medical correspondence, and literary accounts. The records preserved by the local inquisitorial courts of Cuenca and Toledo include lengthy witness testimonies of patients, their family members, and neighbours, providing a uniquely rich account of the day-to-day experience of health-related mobility. Because the Inquisition focused on healers suspected of incorporating superstitious or unorthodox elements in their treatments, the forms of medical practice discussed here 7 While “therapeutic itinerary” is an anthropological concept usually referring to patients accessing a range of healers, I will use it here in the literal geographical sense of the term as the route of a journey to seek health. For an anthropological definition, see Janzen, Social Fabric, 220. 8 Even Cristian Berco’s otherwise excellent book maintains this claim: Berco, From Body to Community, 61–62. 9 MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 54–71; Sawyer, Patients, Healers, and Disease, 196; Lane, John Hall; Nagy, Popular Medicine, 4–19. Pelling points out, however, that the logic of proximity does not apply in the case of a metropolis like London; see Pelling, Medical Conflicts, 231. 10 Freist, “Diskurse.”

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lie primarily within what are usually called irregular forms of healing.11 Irregular medicine—carried out by wise men and wise women, herbalists, or bonesetters who had not received regulated forms of training and frequently combined empirical knowledge with spiritual or magic rituals—continued to play an important part in the medical cultures of early modern Spain. One practitioner we will encounter often in this chapter is the healer La Obispa from Hontecillas (Cuenca) in 1742.12 Her case vividly exemplifies the intertwined connection of religion and healing within early modern medicine. The use of superstitious elements or the appropriation of sacred rituals belonging to the church were often the reasons why healers like La Obispa ended up being put on trial by the Inquisition. Although prayers or the sign of the cross were common components of healing practices,13 it was a blurry line between what was tolerated by the church and what was not. In the case of Ana de la Casa alias La Obispa, it was the combined factors of signing, making her patients kneel in front of her while saying a prayer, and curing the evil eye that aroused suspicion among local clerics. Certainly, her local nickname La Obispa, Spanish for “the female bishop,” did nothing to reduce official interest in her activities. Her case, however, was dropped before her interrogation, as the inquisitors deemed La Obispa’s practices not unorthodox enough to proceed. What was left behind was a bundle of patient testimonies that detail a number of aspects related to travel, which explains why her case surfaces repeatedly in this study. Despite the inquisitors’ interest in controlling irregular medicine, the sources also provide information about regular forms of medicine practiced by physicians, surgeons, and barbers, providing a unique vantage point from which to view the intersection of learned, artisanal, and popular medicine in early modern Spain. The cases documented in the courts of Cuenca and Toledo stem primarily from towns and villages in the vast rural areas of Castile, shedding much-needed light on the healthcare behaviour of members of rural communities, the majority of early modern Spain’s population.14 This also means that the socio-economic status of most of the 11 For the different suggestions of how to categorize non-regulated practitioners, see Brockliss and Jones, Medical World; Gentilcore, Healers and Healing; López-Terrada, “Las prácticas médicas;” Pelling, Medical Conflicts. 12 Archivo Diocesano de Cuenca (hereafter ADC), Leg. 598, exp. 7216, trial of La Obispa, Hontecillas, 1742. 13 Ruggiero, “The Strange Death,” 1152; Seitz, Witchcraft and Inquisition, 144. 14 By the end of the early modern period, about eleven per cent of Spain’s population lived in cities; the rest lived in towns and villages. See Cardesín-Díaz and Mirás-Araujo, “Historic Urbanization.”

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travellers depicted here is that of workers, farmers, and servants, covering only exceptionally the cases of more privileged individuals. When in search of health, travel was prompted by a wide range of reasons. Most people sought healing outside their immediate community due to dissatisfaction with locally available treatment. Dissatisfaction did not necessarily arise from a lack of medical assistance in general but rather from treatments deemed ineffective or unhelpful. This could occur both with regular and irregular medical practitioners. Some specific examples will help distinguish the various circumstances that led people to seek alternatives elsewhere. In 1699, María de Fuentemilla’s son fell ill. As she explained to the Inquisitor, she had visited the healer Francisco Gonzalo, who resided approximately seventeen kilometres from her hometown of Almazán, because she simply could not find any remedy in her locality that would help.15 Almazán was not a small village but a middle-sized town with fairly good medical provision. In the mid-eighteenth century, the census known as the Catastro de Ensenada registered two hospitals, two town physicians, three apothecaries, two barbers, and a surgeon, all employed by the town council, which meant that they were obliged to serve the whole population and to treat the poor free of charge.16 The reason to travel can hardly have been a lack of medical resources. Irregular healers too could be found unsatisfactory, leading people to travel. When suffering from a bewitched form of impotence in 1619, Pedro de Andújar, from the town of Sisante, first sought the help of the nearby healer Juan de Linares. But when prayers and the suggestion of confronting the suspected witch did not help, he decided to visit Francisca Juvera, a female healer based in the town of Alarcón. Juvera’s treatment to undo the spell and restore his potency also involved Pedro’s wife, so he travelled home to return with her, resulting in two consecutive roundtrip journeys – each of 21 kilometres – in two days. A healer’s reputation was of considerable importance in the decision to take on the hardships of a journey, particularly when basic medical services could be found close at hand. The fame of medical practitioners of all kinds attracted sick people from near and far. While this so-called “geography of desperation” has been recognized in the cases of travel to visit the English 15 ADC, leg. 560, exp. 6970, trial of Francisco Gonzalo, Mamblona, 1699, n.f. 16 Archivo General de Simancas, Catastro de Ensenada, Respuestas Generales, Libro 565, fols 308r, 315v–16r. For the local practice of contracting medical professionals, see Astrain-Gallart, “La práctica médica.”

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astrologer physician Richard Napier, the elite physician Samuel Auguste Tissot in Switzerland, or the German town surgeon Gerhard Eichhorn, it was no less the case with irregular healers in rural Spain.17 In what follows, we will encounter a range of regionally renowned practitioners such as La Obispa, Francisco Gonzalo, or Mariana Pérez and see in detail how their reputation affected the geographic mobility of patients. Factors such as family traditions, the recommendations of friends or neighbours, or simply personal preference were also in play.18 Apart from dissatisfaction with certain practitioners and the fame of others, some journeys were triggered by specific ways of understanding health and illness, which in themselves led to distinct forms and practices of mobility. These include ‘change of cause,’ ‘healing by proxy,’ and ‘change of air.’ In early modern medicine, both learned and popular, establishing the nature and cause of the disease was crucial, as diagnosis determined the therapy. In the words of the French physician Nicolas Abraham de La Framboisière (1560–1636): “while the [cause] is present, the Disease remains; but when it is remov’d, the Disease ceases.”19 This was especially important when there were doubts about whether the cause was natural or supernatural.20 The latter was sometimes deduced when symptoms did not correspond to normal events, such as absence of high or low temperature or an unusual prolongation of the illness. In such cases, a change in the underlying cause often led to a change of practitioner, who sometimes resided in a distant location. An example is the case of María Guijarro and her baby daughter.21 When the nine-month-old infant started to suffer from continuous fever and diarrhea in the summer of 1742, her mother took her to the surgeon of her village, La Almarcha. He explained that these symptoms were associated with teething; it was a natural cause, and because the girl was so young, remedies were not advisable. This explanation, and particularly the surgeon’s opinion that there was little she could do but accept the situation and wait, did not please the mother. Her concern must have increased further when her neighbours suspected that the cause of the illness was the evil eye. Knowing of the powers of La Obispa in treating the evil eye, María 17 MacDonald, who coined the term, provides estimates of distances patients travelled; MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 54–71; see also Jütte, “German Barber-Surgeon;” Pilloud, “Tourisme médical.” 18 In the case of Úrsula Díaz, several generations used the same healer and passed the tradition on to their in-laws; ADC, leg. 598, exp. 7216, trial of La Obispa, Hontecillas, 1742, fol. 15v. 19 La Framboisière, The Art of Physick, 103, cited in Newton, “‘Nature Concocts & Expels’,” 474. 20 Fernel, On the Hidden Causes of Things; see also Ruggiero, “The Strange Death.” 21 ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216, trial of La Obispa, Hontecillas, 1742.

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and her husband travelled twenty kilometres to the town of Hontecillas to have their daughter “blessed.” Despite receiving the healer’s treatment, the daughter eventually died. The example of La Obispa also points to some of the underlying social factors behind the appeal of popular medicine. In contrast to the surgeon’s explanation, which left the mother powerless, the suspicion of the evil eye opened up a space for an alternative solution and for action. As Sawyer succinctly points out, the advantage of invoking the supernatural lies in the broader scope offered for the sick and community members to involve themselves directly in the search for both an explanation and a remedy.22 Not infrequently, this led to travel. Although travelling to find the most suitable cure often involved taking the sick person to the healer, sometimes a portable proxy was considered equally effective. These substitutions could take on a variety of forms, be it through detailed descriptions in letters, reading the stars by drawing astronomical charts, or the practice of uroscopy, that is, the examination of urine and probably the most ubiquitous form of medical diagnosis in the early modern period.23 In addition, the medical cultures of rural Castile offered another way of making patients mobile. This involved taking a lock of the patient’s hair to the healer to be diagnosed or blessed from afar. Similar to the inspection of urine, delivering a lock of hair fulfilled a range of diagnostic and therapeutic functions and allowed the practitioner to assess the nature and state of the disorder and even offer a prognosis without needing to meet the patient in person. Also central to this method was the act of delivery – that is, someone had to travel to hand over the lock of hair.24 Judging by the frequency with which this practice is mentioned in the trial records, it seems to have been a common method of substitution, much more common than has been acknowledged in previous studies.25 In the inquisitorial trial records that were analyzed for this study, the practice of delivering a lock of hair to a healer is found in eight different places, widely dispersed over the whole region around Cuenca, covering an extensive time span from 1630 to 1746.26 22 Sawyer, “‘Strangely Handled’,” 471. 23 Pardo-Tomás and Martínez-Vidal, “Stories of Disease;” Kassell, Medicine and Magic; Stolberg, Uroscopy. 24 Because of the high popularity of uroscopy, “piss messengers” (both male and female) offered a professional service to transport urine; see Stolberg, Uroscopy, 79–80. 25 Blázquez-Miguel, Eros y Tanatos, 235. 26 The places are Momblona (ADC, Leg. 560, exp. 6970), Trillo (ADC, Leg. 431, exp. 6090), Molina de Aragón (Archivo Histórico Nacional, hereafter AHN), Inq., Leg. 3728, exp. 96), Torrecilla

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One healer who frequently used the sick person’s hair as a diagnostic tool was Francisco Gonzalo in the village of Momblona. In 1699, when María de Fuentemilla wanted to enquire whether her son’s illness was due to the evil eye without her husband’s knowledge, she had her servant travel to see Francisco with a lock of the boy’s hair. Before leaving the town of Almazán on foot, the servant was stopped by a neighbour, who asked him to take her son’s hair too to have it inspected by the healer.27 This episode illustrates the various strategies ordinary people employed to overcome the obstacle of distance and obtain a cure. After walking a total of some 34 kilometres that day, the servant returned with diagnoses for each patient, one more optimistic, the other less so. The latter was accompanied by detailed therapeutic instructions. Normally, men were used to transport the lock of hair and return with the diagnosis. In many of the cases detailed in the records, the carriers were members of the patient’s family or household: husbands, brothers, uncles, fathers-in-law, and servants. The fact that delivering hair was apparently a man’s job and not typically carried out by women was likely due to the often more remote location of healers and/or patients in the rural setting, combined with issues of safety and vulnerability on the road. Sending strands of hair was sometimes a preparatory exercise, to be followed by an encounter between practitioner and patient in person.28 In other cases, by using the hair as a substitute for the ill body, the practice served to bless and cure the patient from a distance. This method was sometimes applied as a supplement to treatment by physicians.29 However, opinions varied, even among irregular healers, as to the efficacy of remote healing. While Juan Ruiz, a healer from Villarejo de Periesteban, stated in 1695 “that it was the same to bless the [woman’s] hair or to bless her,”30 La Obispa voiced her concern to the carrier, when saying a prayer over a girl’s hair, “that the little angel would benefit more, if she were here in person.”31 The act of delivering hair adds to the plurality of medicine by substitution in the early modern period. Considering these practices both widens our understanding of the medical encounter and raises the whole notion of portability as a distinct form of mobility. (ADC, Leg. 601, exp. 7251), Gascueña (ADC, Leg. 472, exp. 6453), La Almarcha (ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216), Villarejo de Periesteban (ADC, Leg. 558, exp. 6958), and Requena (ADC, Leg. 595, exp. 7198). 27 ADC, Leg. 560, exp. 6970, trial of Francisco Gonzalo, Momblona, 1699, n.f. 28 AHN, Inq., Leg. 3728, exp. 96, trial of Mari Caxa, Molina de Aragón, 1726, n.f. 29 ADC, Leg. 595, exp. 7198, trial of La Tía Morena, Caudete, 1734, n.f. 30 ADC, Leg. 558, exp. 6958, trial of Juan Ruiz, Villarejo de Pedro Esteban, 1698, fol. 5r. 31 ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216, trial of La Obispa, Hontecillas, 1742, fol. 8r.

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The roads of Castile took people not only to popular healers but also to places that could, in themselves, help them recover. As has been noted in studies of thermal waters, sanctuaries, and medical hospitals, space was central to healing in early modern Europe.32 While air was closely associated with health and ill-health in Galenic medicine, it has received rather less attention as an environment-specific therapeutic factor.33 The idea of a change of air, firmly rooted in the Galenic model of the six non-naturals, frequently prompted people to move temporally to places with a healthier environment. In this regard, travelling for a change of air differs from the primarily local journeys described here, since moving often involved travelling longer distances and required transport as well as a more protracted stay. The concept of the non-naturals was the organizing principle of the Regimen sanitatis, a genre of health manuals that became increasingly popular in the sixteenth century. It encouraged individuals to live moderately, and thus healthily, in the six areas that govern the body externally: air, food and drink, sleeping and waking, motion and rest, excretion and retention, and the passions of the soul. Air, which headed the list, was known to have both positive and negative effects on the body, like all the non-naturals. A change of air was thus considered an effective means of preserving or restoring health. In Italy it was common practice among the more privileged groups to move seasonally to higher ground outside or indeed within the city, sometimes just for a few days, to areas that provided healthier air.34 Given that Galenic medicine understood illness as an individual phenomenon, remedies were often tailored to fit the personal characteristics – the ‘complexion,’ in Galenic language – of the patient. There was no single definition of what constituted healthy air; it was subject to the circumstances and humoural constitution of the individual. In many cases, depending on the type of illness, it was held to be particularly beneficial for patients not merely to have a general change of air but to return to their place of birth, as the natural environment of the body’s origin was considered to possess particular properties that restored the damaged body.35 How this theory was implemented in practice will be illustrated by the following two examples. 32 De la Rosa and Mosso Romeo, “Historia de las aguas;” Christian, Local Religion; Campagne, “Cultura popular;” Berco, From Body to Community. 33 There are some exceptions. For studies that have given attention to air, see Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living, 70–112; Cavallo and Storey, eds., Conserving Health. 34 Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living, 84; Gage, “Good Air.” 35 Gage, “Good Air,” 243; Earle, “Climate, Travel and Colonialism,” 26.

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In 1629, Francisco Corellano, a man of relatively humble origin, fell sick of melancholy while working as an administrator in the port of La Yunta (Guadalajara). The physician of the nearby town of Molina de Aragón, Dr. Zaragoza, recommended that he returned to his place of origin because, in his judgement, Corellano would not recover if he did not move to a different region.36 A return to his hometown, Cervera de Alhambra (now known as Cervera del Río Alhama) in the northern region of La Rioja, involved travelling approximately 160 kilometres. Nonetheless, Francisco made the journey, as we shall see. Several letters from patients to the royal physician Juan Muñoz y Peralta (1668–1746) testify to this same practice in a very different social sphere. In one letter, Fernando de Zuloeta reports how he had decided to move with his wife, who was suffering from a dangerous fever, from Antequera to her native city of Seville in the hope “that the native temper of the place would help her improve.”37 The royal physician himself experienced a similar situation. When he fell ill during his stay in Paris in 1712, the French court physicians attending him felt obliged, given the severity of his illness, “to advise him to return to his native air” and concluded that “nothing would be more useful than a change of air to remedy the disorder.”38 Such accounts indicate that a change of air was a common therapeutic practice, recommended by doctors in a range of different geographical, social, and temporal contexts and followed by patients across the social spectrum – not restricted to the elite – who were prepared to cover considerable distances for this purpose. Patients were meant to be active participants in maintaining and restoring health within the Galenic system, be it as informants about the internal flow of humours in their body or by self-regulating their dietary choices. Beyond this expected form of behaviour, in both regular and irregular forms of medical practice, patients were also active in establishing the underlying cause of their illness, in judging treatments to be ineffective, in looking for alternatives, and in searching for remedies. As we have seen, these forms of agency express themselves in close connection to mobility. It is perhaps in the act of travel where early modern patients most visibly participated in the care of the body. 36 ADC, Leg. 430, exp. 6076, trial of Catalina Díaz y María Muñoz, 1629, fol. 28v. 37 AHN, Inq., Leg. 4208, letter from Fernando José de Zuloeta y Monsalve, Osuna, 30 September 1716. 38 AHN, Inq., Leg. 3946, letter signed by Nicolao Brunel de La Carlière, Philippe Hecquet, and Pedro de Acevedo, Paris, 8 September 1712. All were elite physicians with links to the royal court, the Académie des Sciences, and the Faculty of Medicine of Paris.

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While mobility was not an uncommon component of medical treatment, the practical arrangements involved in movement turned the pursuit of health into a particular social and physical experience. To begin with, one common feature stands out: going on a journey when ill was normally not something that an ailing person did alone but rather with the protection or support of someone else.39 This was true for both men and women. Juan de Sastre, severely injured by a sword wound to the face in 1655, was given two recommendations for medical treatment, both in the city of Cuenca, the economic and administrative centre of the region. He could choose between the surgeon Cristóbal de Bocanegra or the itinerant healer Mariana Pérez, who happened to be staying with a good friend, the sacristan of the Carmelite convent in Cuenca.40 Opting for the latter, his father offered to accompany Juan on the journey from their hometown of La Ventosa, a distance of approximately 37 kilometres. The wound was complicated (the sword had entered the cheek, pierced the tongue and exited through the throat) and the treatment required several days, during which his father stayed with him in the convent. Despite Mariana’s celebrated skills, the young man died in Cuenca. The body had to be transported back to La Ventosa for the funeral. For this purpose, the father managed to organize a donkey upon which the body was placed, secured between two sacks of straw to prevent it from falling. Having accompanied his injured son on the journey to Cuenca, he himself was now accompanied, in turn, by a group of men to walk the body home. 41 Transporting a corpse points to the flexibility with which roads became the scene for a variety of events linked to health and ill-health. The exertions that could be involved for the accompanying travel partner are illustrated in a further example. In 1742, Francisco Palacios, a resident of Valera de Abajo (Cuenca), suffered from an intermittent tertian fever. Suspecting it to be caused by the evil eye, he went on foot to the village of Hontecillas to see the wise woman La Obispa, accompanied by a neighbour familiar with the destination. 42 After the treatment was completed, both returned to Valera de Abajo the same day. The distance between the two villages is twelve kilometres, which would have taken them about three hours each way under normal conditions, and probably more when in a weakened state. A month later, having still not recovered from his illness, he returned 39 40 41 42

See Mączak, Travel in Early Modern Europe, chap. 6. ADC, Leg. 496, exp. 6592, trial of Mariana Pérez, Jadraque, 1655, fol. 11r. ADC, Leg. 496, exp. 6592, fol. 11v. ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216, trial of La Obispa, Hontecillas, 1742, fols 4r–6v.

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to Hontecillas, this time with his elder brother, Atanasio. Francisco had to stay overnight at La Obispa’s family house; Atanasio, meanwhile, went back to Valera de Abajo and reappeared in Hontecillas at midday the next day to collect Francisco and take him home. 43 This meant that Atanasio walked 48 kilometres in two days. For sick women and children, it seems that husbands and fathers were the companions of choice, judging from the numerous cases in which women or mothers of sick children were accompanied by their spouses. This finding is further supported by the recurrent formula “por ausencia de mi/su marido” (“because of my/her husband’s absence”), often used by female witnesses when the travel partner is specified. As this phrase indicates, if the husband was not available, whether because of work commitments or for any other reason, a substitute was found, either a family member, a neighbour, or friend. María Sotoca, for example, explained that she asked her elder brother to accompany her and her daughter on their trip to see La Obispa because her husband, a shepherd, was on his half-yearly transhumance to Murcia, in the south of Spain.44 Mobility, over long or short distances, motivated by work or health, was usually a shared experience for early modern people. Elder brothers, fathers-in-law, or sometimes small groups of friends also accompanied the sick if the nature of the illness or the journey required it. As is evident from these cases and from the task of delivering hair seen earlier, male members of the family and the wider household, including servants and neighbours, were actively involved in the quest for therapy and thus played a significant part in the activation of healthcare practices. Such involvement confirms the findings of recent studies that emphasize the collective dimension of healthcare within families. 45 In the collection of inquisitorial records that provide the basis for this study, women seem to act less often as travel partners for health-related journeys. As when delivering hair for blessing or diagnosis, women not accompanying the sick was no doubt related to questions of safety. While women were frequently involved with the provision of healthcare locally, men typically acted as go-betweens and intermediaries across distance and between villages. Though additional research is needed to obtain a more complete picture of the relationship between gender and travel for health, 43 ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216, fols 7r–8v. 44 ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216, fol. 21r. 45 See Leong, “Making Medicines.” Attention has recently been drawn to the role played by male family members in healthcare practices; see Smith, “Relative Duties;” Astbury, “Being Well;” Evans and Read, “‘Before Midnight’.”

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these examples raise questions concerning gendered aspects of early modern mobility in general, beyond the realm of medicine. 46 Related to the question of how people travelled for health are the means of transport they used. Providing that the patient’s body allowed for it, most people in rural Spain walked to their destination of choice. Covering long distances on foot, as we will see in more detail, was not unusual in a period when people routinely walked to reach distant locations such as markets or fairs. 47 The sources here only exceptionally mention the use of a horse or a mule. However, when the patient was unfit for travel and/or the journey too long, people found ways to make travelling possible. This is evident in the case of Francisco Corellano, mentioned earlier, the man suffering from melancholy who was advised by his doctor to return to his birthplace in the distant north. The journey of some 160 kilometres, away from the main roads, represented a severe challenge for a man in a weakened state lacking means of transport. Despite the obstacles, Francisco looked for a solution: he approached the alguacil mayor (senior constable) of the town Molina de Aragón, an old friend, and asked him if he was willing to lend him his horse for the journey. The constable agreed, and in addition – knowing his horse’s fierce character and his friend’s state of health – he supplied Francisco with a cart. Accompanied by a priest and other travellers, the sick man of humble origin was ready to set off to his hometown. This example is of particular value, as it offers rare insight into the ways ordinary people arranged travel logistics and sought ways to comply with therapeutic recommendations based on the framework of the six non-naturals. These sources also address the concerns of scholars of early modern medicine who have lamented the difficulty of knowing whether health advice was in fact followed across society or whether it merely represented the behaviour of a small social elite. 48 The general determination to travel can also be reflected in the distances people were willing to cover. When one reads of an impotent man walking 21 kilometres to obtain a cure, or of a patient’s brother covering a distance of 48 kilometres in two days to accompany him, one might suppose that these are exceptional cases or interpret this degree of mobility as evidence 46 Women’s mobility remains an understudied subject; for a recent contribution, see Akhimie and Andrea, eds., Travel and Travail, which is primarily concerned with elite women on longer journeys rather than the forms of local travel by ordinary women studied here. 47 Mączak, Travel in Early Modern Europe. For the pedestrian journeys of medical students and charlatans, see respectively Cunningham, “Peregrinatio Medica,” 6; Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism, 288. 48 Pennell, “Alimentary Knowledge;” Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living.

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of a desperate desire for treatment. However, our assessment of whether these distances should be classified as unusual or were, in fact, typical can be informed by other cases. In his seminal work on the casebooks of the astrologer physician Richard Napier and his mentally ill patients, Michael MacDonald has determined that over 60 per cent of Napier’s patients came from within a radius of around 24 kilometres from the practitioner’s village.49 As regards the rate of travel on foot, albeit for a group other than patients, Gentilcore finds that charlatans covered on average 25 kilometres per day.50 On the basis of inquisitorial trial proceedings, and particularly the witness testimonies, it has been possible to document 23 itineraries that were covered to visit irregular healers. Quite a few of these routes were undertaken by more than one patient from the same village or town, and several were followed on more than one occasion. Out of 31 individual episodes of illness, roughly three-quarters involved distances of between 10 and 25 kilometres. In four cases, people were willing to travel between 37 and 50 kilometres to seek care. Although these figures are not quantitatively sufficient to make general claims about distances travelled on foot, they suggest that walking 10 or 20 kilometres to visit a healer was not an exceptional event in the early modern Spanish countryside. The question of accommodation naturally arises in any consideration of travel across distance. It was not uncommon for patients to stay overnight at the home of an irregular practitioner, where they were provided with mattresses and took their meals with the healer’s family.51 When Bernardo Castillo visited the healer Mari Caxa in Baños de Tajo accompanied by his father-in-law in 1726, she made room for both of them to stay overnight while repeating her blessing procedure four to five times.52 Others faced harsher conditions when required to overnight at their destination. On a summer evening in June 1742, a young shepherd travelled to La Obispa’s house in Hontecillas to deliver a lock of his little niece’s hair. He gave a detailed account of his journey. He left the village of La Almarcha as the evening Angelus sounded (“el toque del Ave María de la Noche”) and reached Hontecillas, over 20 kilometres away, after midnight.53 Upon arriving at La Obispa’s house, he found it locked, as she had already gone to bed. Obliged to wait for her until morning, he spent the night sleeping 49 MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, 56. 50 Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism, 289. 51 ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216, trial of La Obispa, Hontecillas, 1742. 52 AHN, Inq., Leg. 3728, exp. 96, trial of Mari Caxa, Molina de Aragón, 1726, n.f. 53 ADC, Leg. 598, exp. 7216, trial of La Obispa, Hontecillas, 1742, fols 23r–23v.

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outside the door. Just before sunrise, the healer fulf illed his request to bless his niece’s hair. Practitioners were also highly mobile. Though the topic deserves fuller study, it can nonetheless be noted that in many cases, the mobility of the practitioner was determined by the immobility of the patient, when the latter was too weak to travel to the healer’s place of residence. It was not uncommon for practitioners who usually received their patients at their home to offer something like a mobile care service, treating patients in the surrounding villages.54 Just as the sick sometimes stayed overnight at the healer’s home, these travelling practitioners, too, would receive accommodation and food in the patient’s house. In some cases, they lived together for more than a week. Rafael de la Cuesta, for example, was summoned several times in 1647 and 1648 to the distant city of Pastrana, about 73 kilometres from his hometown of Gascueña.55 He stayed in the patients’ households anywhere from eight to fifteen days, eating with the family and sleeping in their house. The administration of his treatment twice a day allowed him some free time, during which he left the house and moved around the city.56 Francisco Gonzalo, a healer from Momblona, travelled to Almazán to treat an elderly couple for about four days in 1699, during which he not only gave his patients medical care but also assisted them with domestic chores, for which he received an additional payment.57 If treatment in the patient’s home lasted for an extended period, the travelling healer thus temporarily formed part of the fabric of the household and could take on various functions within and outside the domestic setting. Such arrangements were not always free of conflict. When Mateo de Lerma hosted the itinerant healer Juan de Ayala at his house, the sick man’s initial hope for a cure turned after a few days into a clash of attitudes regarding spiritual forms of healing, ending with the patient himself denouncing Ayala to the Holy Off ice.58 The cohabitation of healer and patient has parallels with other scenarios common to the pre-modern mobile world. Strangers were welcomed into domestic spaces such as when tenants lived with lodging housekeepers or when customers put peddlers up for the

54 Examples are Catalina Caravajal and María de Mora, two women healers from La Puebla de Don Fadrique (Toledo), 1684, ADC, Leg. 546, exp. 6869, and Juan Tejedor, a healer from Trillo (Guadalajara), 1630, ADC, Leg. 431, exp. 6090. 55 ADC, Leg. 472, exp. 6453, trial of Rafael de la Cuesta, Gascueña, 1648. 56 ADC, Leg. 472, exp. 6453, fols 43v–44v, fols 45r–46r. 57 ADC, Leg. 560, exp. 6970, trial of Francisco Gonzalo, Momblona, 1699, n.f. 58 ADC, Leg. 560, exp. 6969, trial of Juan de Ayala, Villanueva de la Jara, 1699.

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night, resulting in mutual adaption, cultural exchange, and sometimes unavoidable confrontation.59 In other cases where either patients or healers (or both) were compelled to move, private lodgings and inns were used for medical encounters. In 1684, a man travelled from the city of Ocaña to the smaller town of La Puebla de Don Fadrique, 50 kilometres south, to see the female healers Catalina Caravajal and María La Mora, whose fame had spread throughout the region.60 On his arrival, the patient approached a local resident and asked if he could provide him with lodging in his private house. He refused, so the sick man put up at an inn, the Mesón de Lucas, where María La Mora later performed her treatment on him. Private lodging was a popular choice and was sometimes, as in this case, the first port of call before resorting to an inn.61 On the other hand, this example illustrates the multiple functions of inns and guest houses. As well as providing shelter for travellers, refreshment for humans and animals, entertainment, and exchange of information, they not infrequently served as spaces for medical practice.62 Sometimes inns were turned into the temporary centre of operations for itinerant practitioners. An illustrative example is the case of Mariana Pérez, the itinerant healer mentioned earlier. Known as an expert in curing fractures and eye diseases, Mariana stayed longer than planned at the inn in the village of Riofrío del Llano (Guadalajara) to treat the dislocated wrist of the innkeeper’s wife. Meanwhile, word spread rapidly of her affordable and painless treatments, based on the curative powers of her saliva. Soon, patients from surrounding and more distant villages were travelling to the guesthouse in Riofrío. As the innkeeper reports: “drawn by her fame, various people have come from Atance, Caracena, La Olmeda, and other places hoping to be cured.”63 Though the inn was within relatively easy reach of most of these places, Caracena was some 48 kilometres away, extending further the mainly local radius of attraction. Something similar occurred with the “Holy Child Cristóbal,” the little son of an itinerant vagrant family, who claimed that he possessed extraordinary 59 Salzberg, “Mobility, Cohabitation;” Diner, “Road Food.” 60 ADC, Leg. 546, exp. 6869, trial of Catalina Caravajal, Villa de Don Fadrique, and of María de Mora, Herencia, 1684, fol. 5v. 61 On the use of inns and private lodgings by sick travellers in late medieval Spain, see FerragudDomingo, “Enfermar lejos de casa,” 105. Regarding private lodgings in general and their use in preference to inns, see Salzberg, “Mobility, Cohabitation.” 62 Vassberg, The Village and the Outside World, 129–34; Mączak, Travel in Early Modern Europe, 30–71. 63 ADC, Leg. 496, exp. 6592, trial of Mariana Pérez, Cuenca, 1655, fol. 7v.

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healing powers. Switching between inns and private lodgings while travelling to numerous centres throughout Castile in 1645, the family would make the temporary residence their base for attending to crowds of infirm individuals.64 While settled at Juan García’s house in Gascueña, one of the bystanders observed how the multitude of patients who came to see the “Holy Child Cristóbal” was of such proportions that “the house was full of people, including the kitchen and the porch.”65 Inns also served as sites of healing for travellers who fell ill during their journey. Various types of medical practitioners could be summoned, ranging from irregular healers to barber-surgeons to royal physicians. In 1624, the health of a mule driver deteriorated dramatically after arriving at an inn in the town of Los Yébenes (Toledo).66 On the innkeeper’s initiative, a physician was called in, who ordered a barber to perform a bloodletting on the patient and sent the innkeeper to fetch some medicines from the local apothecary. Despite these collaborative efforts, the man succumbed to his illness the same day. In adopting the role of care, innkeepers were also frequently paid for their service, turning caring into business.67 The function of inns in providing space for medical encounters at all social levels is exemplif ied by a message delivered to the royal physician Juan Muñoz y Peralta in Madrid in the early eighteenth century.68 The brief note requests the physician to present himself at his earliest convenience at the inn called “Las tres damas” to tender his services to the cousin of the Marquis of Bay, who was suffering from an alarming fever. To ensure his attendance, exact indications of the inn’s location were provided.69 Other examples that speak to the variety of medical practices in inns are depicted in the picaresque novel Estebanillo González (1646). As a rogue travelling around Europe during the Thirty Years’ War, all of Estebanillo’s surgical treatments, from a broken arm to a bullet wound, are set in guesthouses, to which he summons either a simple rural barber or a cohort of surgeons and their assistants, depending on his ever-changing economic 64 For example, in Madrid at “El Parador,” in Alcalá de Henares at “Mesón de las Manchegas.” ADC, Leg. 468, exp. 6391, trial of Simón Azcoita Valdés, Cuenca, 1645, fols 5v–6r. 65 ADC, Leg. 468, exp. 6391, fol. 25r. 66 Archivo Municipal de Toledo, C. 6436, exp. 6999, trial of Alonso de Aranda, Yébenes, 1624. 67 Ferragud-Domingo, “Enfermar lejos de casa,” 95. 68 AHN, Inq., Leg. 4208, exp. 1, n.f. 69 “By the Plaza de Santo Domingo, opposite Sr. Ronquillo’s house, in an inn called ‘The Three Ladies’ on the corner of the street leading to the Convent of the Incarnation,” AHN, Inq., Leg. 4208, exp. 1.

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status.70 One episode depicts vividly how different the social experiences of being ill at a guesthouse could be when with or without money. At one point, Estebanillo fell ill while staying at an inn in Brussels. As a servant to the military general Ottavio Piccolomini, who had just won the Battle of Thionville, Estebanillo enjoyed part of this prestige. A numerous and caring bedside community gathered at the inn. With time, the flow of money stopped and so did the interest in his health and the quality of care provided by doctors and the innkeeper. My Indisposition being known abroad, abundance of Friends and Acquaintance came to Visit me; the ablest Physicians took me in Hand; my Landlady attended me very Carefully; the Maids waited upon, and the Neighbours presented me. At length my Money fell short, which was adding one Distemper to another; and I am of Opinion, That the Sickness of the Purse is worse than that of the Body. My Friends and Acquaintance left me; the Doctors, Landlady, Maids, and Neighbours all vanish’d; by which I was convinced that all those Visits were not Works of Mercy, or for the sake of Estevanillo, but made to my Money, and to endeavour to drein it from me.71

This episode sarcastically portrays the opportunities for financial profit for both medical practitioners and innkeepers in early modern Europe. But it also highlights the fact that inns were important sites of social interaction. Often strategically located on the roads or within towns or villages close to the main road networks, travellers of all social backgrounds could find in them an unofficial hub of medical assistance. Mobility intersected with the pursuit of health in the early modern period in significant ways. A striking diversity of reasons drove people to seek medical assistance outside their local community, indicating the inadequacy of simplistic explanations such as a lack of medical services in rural areas. These reasons ranged from dissatisfaction with local practitioners, whether regular and irregular, to the fame of a particular healer. They also embraced healthcare practices grounded in both Galenic and popular medicine. The decision to travel to a distant healer highlights the importance of medical pluralism in early modern society.

70 Carreira and Cid, eds., Estebanillo González, 101–2, 339. 71 This is the earliest English translation published in 1707, Stevens, “Estevanillo Gonzales,” 425–26.

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By focusing on the logistical arrangements of local mobility, the chapter has aimed to achieve a more nuanced understanding of what it meant in practice to travel for health. The ubiquitous presence of travelling companions, a role often played by male family members, is worthy of note. The evidence examined here on the types of support provided to patients on their journeys contributes to recent scholarship on collective health and family involvement. In most cases, people travelled on foot; and walking between 10 and 25 kilometres seems to have been typical. Individuals with few or no means of travel looked for ways of covering shorter and longer distances by collaborating with neighbours or relying on the support of an informal social network. Medical encounters involving travel took place in various settings, including the healer’s or the patient’s home or in more public spaces. As multi-functional temporary residences for a society on the move, inns in particular were important nodes in health-related itineraries. As with temporary private lodgings, they could be spontaneously transformed into a site of pluralistic medical practice at all levels of society. The evidence considered here forces us to reconsider the degree to which geographical proximity determined the pursuit of healthcare by patients, as is often claimed. Certainly, as a first step towards a more refined articulation of this proposition, more data is needed to establish what ‘proximity’ meant in an early modern perception of time and distance. As the cases discussed here indicate, the decision to embark on a journey was a complex process in which a wide array of factors was considered. For the most part, proximity seems to have played a secondary role. Mobility was a common rather than an exceptional element of medical practice for both patients and practitioners. The extent to which healthcare practices were shaped by mobility, or to put it the other way round, how frequently health prompted people to travel, argues for the pertinence of including healthcare in the standard catalogue of motives for geographical mobility. Along with routine local travel for economic, social, or religious purposes, short journeys undertaken in pursuit of health were yet another reason why roads were busy. The mobile or immobile patient set in motion a range of other travelling individuals, from companions, messengers, and practitioners to dead bodies. Travelling for health was not a privilege conf ined to élites; ordinary individuals also travelled, encouraged by the hope for a cure or following therapeutic recommendations. Taken together, the various aspects of medical mobility help broaden the collective image of the travellers that populated early modern roads.

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Gage, Frances. “Chasing ‘Good Air’ and Viewing Beautiful Perspectives: Painting and Health Preservation in Seventeenth-Century Rome.” In Conserving Health in Early Modern Culture: Bodies and Environments in Italy and England, edited by Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, 237–61. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. Gentilcore, David. Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. ———. Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Gómez, Pablo F. The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Grell, Ole Peter, Andrew Cunningham, and Jon Arrizabalaga, eds. Centres of Medical Excellence? Medical Travel and Education in Europe 1500–1789. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. Janzen, John M. The Social Fabric of Health: An Introduction to Medical Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. Jütte, Robert. “A Seventeenth-Century German Barber-Surgeon and His Patients.” Medical History 33 (1989): 184–98. Kassell, Lauren. Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. La Framboisière, Nicolas Abraham de. The Art of Physick. London: H.C., 1684. Lane, Joan. John Hall and His Patients: The Medical Practice of Shakespeare’s Son-inLaw. Stratford-upon-Avon: The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Alan Sutton, 1996. Leong, Elaine. “Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (2008): 145–68. ———. Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. López-Terrada, María Luz. “Las prácticas médicas extraacadémicas en la ciudad de Valencia durante los siglos XVI y XVII.” Dynamis 22 (2002): 85–120. MacDonald, Michael. Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Mączak, Antoni. Travel in Early Modern Europe. Translated by Ursula Phillips. Cambridge: Polity, 1995. Moss, Jean Dietz. “The Promotion of Bath Waters by Physicians in the Renaissance.” In Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe, edited by Stephen Spender and Nancy Struever, 61–82. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012. Nagy, Doreen G. Popular Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988.

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Newton, Hannah. “‘Nature Concocts & Expels’: The Agents and Processes of Recovery from Disease in Early Modern England.” Social History of Medicine 28 (2015): 465–86. Pardo-Tomás, José, and Àlvar Martínez-Vidal. “Stories of Disease Written by Patients and Lay Mediators in the Spanish Republic of Letters (1680–1720).” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 38 (2008): 467–91. Pelling, Margaret. Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians and Irregular Practitioners, 1550–1640. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pennell, Sara. “‘A Matter of So Great Importance to My Health’: Alimentary Knowledge in Practice.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2012): 418–24. Pilloud, Séverine. “Tourisme médical à Lausanne dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle. Le réseau des patients du Dr Tissot (1728–1797).” Revue historique vaudoise 114 (2006): 9–23. Ruggiero, Guido. “The Strange Death of Margarita Marcellini: Male, Signs, and the Everyday World of Pre-Modern Medicine.” The American Historical Review 106 (2001): 1141–58. Salzberg, Rosa. “Mobility, Cohabitation and Cultural Exchange in the Lodging Houses of Early Modern Venice.” Urban History 46, no. 3 (2019): 398–418. Sawyer, Ronald C. Patients, Healers, and Disease in the Southeast Midlands, 1597–1634. PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1986. ———. “‘Strangely Handled in All Her Lyms’: Witchcraft and Healing in Jacobean England.” Journal of Social History 22 (1989): 461–85. Schmitz, Carolin. Los enfermos en la España barroca y el pluralismo médico. Espacios, estrategias, actitudes. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2018. Seitz, Jonathan. Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Smith, Lisa. “The Relative Duties of a Man: Domestic Medicine in England and France, ca. 1685–1740.” Journal of Family History 31 (2006): 237–56. Steinke, Hubert, and Martin Stuber. “Medical Correspondence in Early Modern Europe. An Introduction.” Gesnerus 61 (2004): 139–60. Stevens, John, trans. “The Life of Estevanillo Gonzales, the Pleasantest and most Diverting of All Comical Scoundrels.” In The Spanish Libertines; Or, the Lives of Justina, The Country Jilt; Celestina, The Bawd of Madrid; and Estevanillo Gonzales, the Most Arch and Comical of Scoundrels, translated by John Stevens, 253–528. London: Samuel Benchley, 1707. Stolberg, Michael. Uroscopy in Early Modern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Vassberg, David E. The Village and the Outside World in Golden Age Castile: Mobility and Migration in Everyday Rural Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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About the author Carolin Schmitz holds a PhD in the history of medicine (University of Valencia, 2016) and is the author of Los enfermos en la España barroca y el pluralimso médico (2018). She has held a Wellcome Trust Fellowship at the Department of History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, and is currently Research Fellow on the UKRI “Medicine and Making of Race” project at King’s College London.

Crossing Borders

4. Mobility and Danger on the Borders of the Papal States(SixteenthSeventeenth Centuries) Irene Fosi*

Abstract This chapter examines the Inquisition’s attempts to control the movement of students and merchants within the Papal States. The Roman Inquisition attempted to monitor the movements of ‘heretical’ foreign students, merchants, artisans, artists, and diplomats. Yet such figures moved frequently and as such were not easy to control, convert, or expel. In many cases, local authorities tried to apply the rigorous guidelines def ined by pontif ical law, although these were diff icult to apply in practice. Inquisitors and their agents in the Papal States were frequently unable to act decisively or coherently. The rich documentation allows us to observe the daily activities of people directly involved in controlling movement. Keywords: Roman Inquisition; Papal States; merchants; students; universities; heresy

This chapter focuses on the Roman Inquisition’s efforts to protect the borders of the early modern Papal States. This territory posed particular challenges to the Inquisition because it was both geographically complex and marked by distinct political characteristics dating back to the Middle Ages. The main sources used are the correspondence between the Roman * I am grateful to Laurie Nussdorfer, a very dear friend, who read and revised the translation.

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch04

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tribunal of the Inquisition and its peripheral branches – local deputies (vicari) and Inquisitors – and other officials such as bishops, governors, and municipal magistrates who wielded local authority. This rich body of documentation allows us to observe the daily activities of the various actors involved in controlling mobility in the Papal States and the difficulties encountered in regulation. The competence and ineptitude of the tribunal’s agents emerge in equal measure from these documents. The letters also enable us to observe how the “tribunal of the faith” and its intimidating system of justice were perceived by a particularly vulnerable population: the foreigners – especially students, merchants, and artists – who came to Italy from countries beyond the Alps where the Reformation had established itself. In the early modern period, the borders inside Europe – the Italian states included – increased in number as an expression of the consolidation of geographic, political, religious, or economic power.1 These new frontiers created new confessional boundaries and identities. Looking at the edges of territorial boundaries illuminates this process of consolidation from several viewpoints. They reveal the external perceptions of frontiers that students, merchants, and artists had and the strategies of prudence and subterfuge they employed in negotiating them. They also show the internal strategies used by authorities to protect their borders. Yet as we know, boundaries are not immovable: they change according to political, military, and economic imperatives. Moreover, the lines drawn in papal bulls and local legislation to protect the purity of faith were boundaries in theory only. In practice, borders were regulated on a case-by-case basis, with accommodation made between local civic and ecclesiastical powers in order to avoid trouble (scandali) and conflict. In principle, the border – which was intended to be a protective barrier against the “infection of heresy” – could only be crossed by those willing to convert. In reality, both in Rome and in many other Italian cities and states, even after the Council of Trent it was often possible for Protestant migrants to retain their faith. The definition of what might cause trouble was itself unstable and subject to compromises, political trends, and religious conflicts. Moreover, papal policies and their enforcement – at both the local and central levels – were always influenced by the broader political, military, and religious situation in Europe.

1 For a semantic analysis of the word and concept of ‘border,’ see Merisalo, ed., Frontiers in the Middle Ages.

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The Inquisitor’s doubts In the Italian states, the confusion of the custodians of faith regarding mobility and the growing popularity of travel – increasingly prevalent among casual visitors and not limited to work or study – is clearly expressed in a letter of June 1627 sent to the cardinal padrone, the cardinal nephew Francesco Barberini, secretary of the Roman Congregation of the Holy Office, from Fra’ Giovan Michele Pio, the Inquisitor of Milan. He writes that “the wars of the Milanese state, the grandeur and opulence of this city – noble emporium of the region, its proximity to Germany and France [and] the desire of foreigners to see the beauty of Italy leads me to believe that many heretics set foot in this state which is, so to speak, the first Italian threshold, thus obliging me and other inquisitors to be most vigilant.”2 The Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples were under Spanish rule and strategically defined the peninsula’s geopolitics. In this period the Milanese territory was a staging area for military operations, frequented by armies on their way to repress Protestants in the Valtellina.3 From Milan, imperial troops would also be deployed to the wars of Monferrato and in the Duchy of Mantua. German troops plundered, caused destruction, carried the bubonic plague, and, as the Inquisitor feared, also disseminated the “heretical plague” (peste ereticale). He wrote that he was not afraid of merchants with papal permits (concessione apostolica) that allowed them to engage in business. Nor did he fear “the soldiers whose presence is tolerated because of the wars, provided they avoid trouble and mentioning [religious] doctrine.” But what should he do about “those hidden heretics who do not request permission [to be here] from this tribunal”?4 Moreover, “how am I to handle those heretics […] who, in order to visit Italy, or for other impermissible purposes, come here illegally, yet in good faith (bona fide)”?5 These would-be casual travellers believed they could obtain permission from the Inquisitor to stay for a few days, a notion based on an interpretation of Gregory XV’s Romani Pontificis constitution of 2 July 1622,6 “which appears not to prohibit them from coming but only from living and staying here.”7 The Inquisitor feared that the severe treatment of these travellers, “who were generally nobles,” would have 2 Vatican City, Archivio della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede (hereafter ACDF), SO, St. St. M 4–b (1), fols 339r–v; 443r. 3 Borromeo, La Valtellina crocevia; Pastore, “Shaping of a Religious Migration.” 4 ACDF, SO, St. St. M 4–b (1), fol. 339v. 5 Ibid. 6 Bullarum, diplomatum et privilegiorum, 708–9. 7 ACDF, SO, St. St. M 4–b (1), fol. 439r.

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negative repercussions for many “Catholic Italians living north of the Alps.” He therefore implored the Holy Office to find a solution to avoid “capturing and punishing them, for it is undeniable that it is easier to reason with them than with hidden heretics, since these visitors present themselves in good faith and request permission from the tribunal.”8 In responding to the doubts expressed in Pio’s long letter, the Congregation of the Inquisition took a hard line, reaffirming the exclusion of foreign Protestants and prohibitions on Italian contacts with heretics or travel to heretical lands.9 Indeed, it called for the forceful removal of non-Catholic foreigners because the presence of individuals capable of contaminating “good Catholics” (bonos catholicos) could not be tolerated.10 The congregation in Rome rejected the lenient interpretation of the 1622 constitution of Gregory XV (1621–23), which was not intended to change the firm stance taken earlier by Clement VIII (1592–1605).11 These papal regulations became part of the Inquisitorial arsenal and influenced subsequent treatises on the topic, including that of Cesare Carena, a jurist and author of the Tractatus de Officio S.me Inquisitionis (1641).12 In a somewhat polemical tone, Carena complained that, thanks to the concession of privileges by some sovereigns, there were innumerable heretical merchants and supporters of heresy in the peninsula.13 8 Ibid., fol. 439v. 9 On this topic see Mazzei, Itinera Mercatorum. 10 ACDF, SO, St. St. M 4–b (1), fol. 443v. 11 Gregory XV’s legislation referred back to Clement VIII’s bull, which was aimed “against heretics and their advocates residing, under any pretext, in the Italian territory and nearby islands” and, though frequently disregarded, stated that, “we attentively resolve and decree to prevent the presence of heretics in the Italian territory, or nearby islands, whether for business or trade, or under any other pretext, or permission to maintain a house or property, or reside or stay therein, so as to prohibit a further influx.” The supporters of heretics within the peninsula were threatened with the same penalty as the heretics themselves, “in forma iuris,” notwithstanding ignorantia legis, as it was obligatory to publicly display the bull: Bullarum, diplomatum et privilegiorum, 708–9. 12 See Borromeo, “Carena, Cesare.” 13 “Because sometimes these heretics come to Christian lands for reasons of trade, and this is permitted by sovereigns, as was the case, for a time, between our most powerful Spanish King and the King of England, so long as there is no threat to the Religion and Faith, unless there arose scandals, and, as per the law, then there is reason for them to be punished.” Carena, Tractatus de officio S.me Inquisitionis, pt. 2 tit. XVII, 6: 236. He further added that “whenever there was a scandal, the inquisitors needed to punish those involved, not for the heresy, but for the scandal itself,” and they could proceed in this way “if the permission to remain in the Catholic territory was not recognized by the pope or if they fell into the hands of the court prior to the granting of said permission.”

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The rigid response from Rome in fact clashed with a reality that was in continual flux, one that was becoming more itinerant and uncontrollable. This is reflected in Pio’s letter of 1627 emphasizing the confusion of those beyond the Alps vis-à-vis Inquisitorial procedures and the sombre, intolerant climate of Italy, now viewed as an obstacle to overcome by means of acquaintances, recommendations, or the intervention of influential members of religious orders like the Jesuits. Inquisitorial reaction would remain, by and large, simply a reiteration of official policy, supported by regulations that were problematic to enforce. The Roman Congregation’s unyielding stance can also be explained by the difficult position in which the pope found himself during the Thirty Years’ War.14 The military actions that took place on Italian territory – the war of Monferrato, the war of the Mantuan succession, and the sack of Mantua (18 July 1630) – had upset the delicate balance that Urban VIII (1623–44) hoped to defend as the “common father of all” (padre comune), in his difficult position of neutrality. Nevertheless, orthodox purity also required protection from the scandals provoked by German troops who, when drunk in taverns, mocked the pope and the Catholic faith. It was also feared that, along with their wares, merchants were transporting dangerous books (libri perniciossimi), and that noble travellers coming to Italy to admire her beauty and antiquities might deride the Church and the pontiff. The memory of the Lutheran armies that had sacked Rome (1527), insulted the pope, and destroyed churches was evident in the letters written during those years by Ferrara’s Roman legate, who was pained by afflictions of war and the plague that traversed borders and threatened the papal territories.15 In Modena, the Inquisitor, Giacomo Tinti, complained of Duke Alfonso III’s lack of cooperation in supporting his efforts to control the presence of heretic merchants and soldiers in the Estense State.16 Indeed, it was soldiers who were thought to be the ones causing the most scandal. In a 1643 trial summary, the assault on the faith by soldiers was confirmed by the fact that the dragoons quartered at Nonantola “greatly misinterpreted the sacrament of penance and blasphemously recited the Litanies of the Madonna.”17 14 Koller, Imperator und Pontifex, 157–94; Fosi and Koller, eds., Papato e Impero; Braun, “The Papacy.” 15 Fosi and Gardi, Legazione di Ferrara, ad indicem. 16 On this figure, see Black, “Trials and Tribulations;” idem, “Relations between Inquisitors.” 17 ACDF, SO, St. St., M 4–b (3), fols 186r–92v. On the problems posed by the presence of soldiers and their behaviour, which were often unorthodox, see Donati, ed., Alle frontiere della Lombardia; De Boer, “Soldati in terra straniera.”

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It was in this climate of suspicion that local Inquisitors wrote to Rome with their doubts and fears. These officials were often hindered in their duty of repression, as Carena intimated, by a lack of cooperation on the part of secular authorities and, in some cases, even of bishops themselves. Moreover, enforcement was complicated by the fact that the political and military situation was changing constantly, threatening the borders of the Papal States. The territories of Ferrara and Bologna became the papacy’s northern outposts not only against foreign armies but also against the diffusion of heresy. The experiences of two highly mobile social groups – students and merchants – reveals some of the difficulties faced by the Inquisition and the continuous, inevitable compromises. As we will see, despite the efforts of the Roman Congregation, both groups were agents of interaction and adaptation across confessional boundaries.

Students on the road The pre-Reformation custom of young northern European aristocrats schooled in the humanist tradition travelling to the peninsula out of “curiosity” or to study in Italian universities never disappeared.18 Difficulties stemming from division, intolerance, and reciprocal suspicion between religions and cultures, north and south, were not easily overcome. But, despite these obstacles, travel for work, study, or curiosity more and more frequently permitted the exchange and circulation of ideas, books, objects, fashion, and even manners.19 Visiting Italian cities and attending Italian universities undoubtedly served as a bridge between northern and southern Europe. But it also taught Protestant students and travellers to hide, dissimulate, and generally maintain a low profile in order to avoid being caught by Catholic authorities who might persecute, or even worse, try to convert them.20 The tradition 18 See, for example, Becker, “Peregrinatio academica,” who analyzes continuities in the movement of German students in Italy during the long sixteenth century (1448–1648). See also Gerrit Verhoeven’s chapter on the Grand Tour in the present volume. 19 On the topic of cultural and religious “exchange,” see Tóth and Schilling, eds., Religion and Cultural Exchange; for greater elaboration on the economic and artistic problems, see Calabi and Christensen, eds., Cities and Cultural Exchange. On interreligious contacts, see Andor and Tóth, eds., Frontiers of Faith; Dixon, Freist, and Greengrass, eds., Living with Religious Diversity; Cristellon, “Mixed Marriages.” 20 Stagl, “Ars apodemica,” 170–71. Bibliography on the topic of travel is abundant. For the European context, see the essays in Paravicini and Babel, eds., Grand Tour; Verhoeven, Europe

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of travelling and studying in Italy developed profound new ambiguities: it was alluring, useful, and, at the same time, dangerous. And while the educational advantages for young nobles were inarguable, there was always the risk that a stay in a foreign Catholic land could result in a change of religious affiliation. This peril emerges clearly in the seventeenth-century travel diaries kept by the tutors who often accompanied young aristocrats during their travels to monitor their behaviour and safeguard their religious identity.21 The world of students, though highly structured, was difficult to control by the authorities who monitored orthodoxy. Since the Middle Ages, students attending Italian universities constituted a privileged group governed by time-honoured rules and agreements. These regulations were often renewed after lengthy negotiations with civic authorities and territorial princes. During the seventeenth century, along with the trouble of obstructing, controlling, and removing heretical students, local officials were faced with yet another dilemma. They feared that religious intolerance could lead to the alienation of ultramontani students, with serious consequences for the local economy. It also threatened to taint the reputation of the peninsula’s major centres of study. This worry particularly affected universities of the Papal States such as Bologna and Perugia, which were in competition with the University of Padua whose students were not required to profess the Catholic faith. Consequently, in papal territory a more permissive and occasionally ambivalent policy was adopted for the granting of privileges.22 In other Italian states, papal nuncios were involved in monitoring the presence of foreign travellers and students. On 2 November 1624 Alfonso Giglioli, the nuncio of Florence, informed Cardinal Gian Garzia Millini about a physician from Saxony in Siena “who, I am made to understand, is an avowed and scandalous heretic.” Some weeks later – on 31 January 1625 – the nuncio went to Siena in person and reported his findings to Rome. The person in question was “Ludovico Herniceo, a native of the state of the Landgrave of Darmstadt whose studies have, for a year’s time, been financed by the landgrave himself and he has resided in the house of a Saxon called Hesler.”23 He was a “hidden heretic” (heretico occulto) who practiced medicine among Siena’s German nation (natio) and who was the cause of “many troubles” within Reach; Goldsmith, Sweet, and Verhoeven, eds., Beyond the Grand Tour, especially the Introduction and bibliography. 21 Mauer, “Voraussetzungen und Grundlegung,” 247–50. 22 Grendler, Universities, 190–95. 23 ACDF, SO, St. St. M 4–b (1), fols 262v–63v.

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(molti mali). The nuncio wanted to be sure that he was prohibited from living not only in Siena but anywhere within the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The nuncio no doubt reproached the Inquisitor of Siena, Clemente Egidi da Montefalco, for his negligence. The Inquisitor sought to exonerate himself, stating that “he could not be certain that the ultramontani, who come here under the pretext of studying, would not bring prohibited books, since their chests and trunks are not opened upon arrival, nor are any other measures taken” against them by civic authorities.24 This shows how difficult it was to monitor foreigners, especially students. Indeed, local institutional controls remained superf icial precisely to avoid discouraging young foreigners attracted to the vibrant university of Siena.25 In the Tuscan city, where there had been a strong German presence since the Middle Ages, local authorities, particularly university officials (Savi allo Studio), showed little interest in investigating and prosecuting suspicious matters of faith. Inquisitors could not always rely on their cooperation, and the intellectual milieu itself concealed currents of religious dissidence dispersed among members of the nobility.26 The presence of privileged groups in university towns tested relations between civic magistrates and ecclesiastical authorities, including bishops and Inquisitors, and was undoubtedly influenced by politics. In Bologna, the German Nation was not only a privileged interlocutor for the ultramontani students but also a powerful community capable of obtaining and defending privileges throughout the seventeenth century. In 1611, the German Nation succeeded in lodging a complaint against civic authorities for not having been informed of the “arrivals and departures of clandestine Germans.”27 This procedure reaffirmed the privileged position of the natio and prevented undesirable Inquisitorial investigations of the new arrivals’ religious affiliations.28 In Perugia, both civic and papal policies towards ultramontani students oscillated between protection and repression. The repeated requests 24 Ibid., fol. 263r. 25 On aspects of the Sienese education, see Minnucci and Košuta, Studio di Siena; Ascheri and Cantini, L’Università di Siena. 26 Some observations on many aspects of seventeenth-century Sienese culture can be found in Lavenia, “L’arca e gli astri.” 27 “Germanorum adventum et transitum […] per fraudem.” Neri and Penuti, eds., Natio germanica Bononiae, 251. 28 As Penuti affirms in “La nazione degli studenti alemanni,” 20–21, a superficial reading of the acts “reveals that the absence of a reference for the complicated events taking place in the Germanic world during the period leading up to the Thirty Years’ War, as well as the lack of signs of intolerance towards religious practices whereas the fact that the countries of some students became Lutheran or reformed would lead one to suppose that there was a certain unease.” The

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by the German Nation to be granted the same privileges accorded those at the universities of Bologna and Padua induced the magistrates of Perugia in 1604 to send a letter of support to the pope, though to no avail. Attempts to pressure the pontiff were again made in 1614, 1627, and 1638 and resulted in several concessions, including the request of a scholar of the German Nation to be awarded a free doctoral degree. Towards the end of his papacy, Urban VIII granted other privileges, including removing the German Nation from the purview of the city’s criminal and civil judges.29 In the past, the pope had avoided granting such privileges, and not only because he feared that other student nations might follow the German example. Rather, he was likely influenced by the effort to balance opposing forces as he tried to steer a neutral course in the Thirty Years’ War. Conflicts between the mandate of local Inquisitors at home and the broader conversion efforts of the papacy abroad complicated matters further. From 1622, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregazione de Propaganda Fide) was especially active in the enterprise of conversion and reconquest of Protestant territories and worked alongside the Inquisition and the Congregation for Spontaneous Conversions (the Congregazione de iis qui sponte veniut ad fidem, founded in 1600).30 But they did not always follow the methods and procedures established by the Inquisitors. In 1625, several missionaries involved in the re-Catholicization of northern Europe sent the Propaganda Fide a statement to include in letters to the cardinal legate of Bologna; the nuncios of France, Naples, and Florence; and the bishop of Padua.31 In their Istruttione, they expressed their belief that to achieve lasting success in their work it was important to “attract the nobility.” This conversion strategy had been followed since the late sixteenth century, especially from the time when Rome established its new embassies “of the Reformation” in imperial territories.32 The missionaries felt it was important to adopt a distinct policy for young Protestant nobles attending Italian universities and aristocrats travelling to the peninsula for leisure and culture. The Capuchin Valeriano Magni, who presented his conversionist project to the Propaganda Fide in 1653, supported the Catholic effort to win over the nobility but criticized what he regarded as the unsuitable nature of the “silence” of the sources can also be interpreted as a manifest sign of the acquired ability to dissimulate to avoid scandal caused by suspected, or manifest, displays of heresy. 29 Ermini, Storia dell’Università di Perugia, 282–87. 30 Fosi, Inquisition, Conversion, and Foreigners, 43–66. 31 ACDF, SO, St. St. TT1–b, fol. 123r: Istruttione da mettersi nelle lettere che si scrivono all’Ill.mo Legato di Bologna, alli nuntii di Francia, Napoli e Fiorenza et a mons.re Vescovo di Padova. 32 On this topic, see Fosi, “‘Procurar a tutt’huomo’.”

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missionaries’ methods.33 The education of young nobles from Denmark, Saxony, Brandenburg, Sweden, Pomerania, and elsewhere at Italian universities could be an opportunity to mold them into Catholic missionaries par excellence in their homelands.34 The project, however, required several steps. First, it was a matter of efficiently discovering them – and not only through the network of spies who, experience had shown, were easily corrupted and not always reliable. He proposed that “authorities be assigned to each of the cities diligently to oversee the arrivals of foreigners, especially from Germany, and learn if any youths were among them.”35 The “discovery” of a heretic did not immediately require his appearance before the Tribunal of Faith, however. Next, it would … be good to coddle them with displays of affection, so they become amenable to and grow fond of Catholics. It would be helpful to find a judicious and educated cleric who knows the German language, or at least Latin, since many of the nobles in those countries speak it well. He should frequent them often, and show them the city’s most noteworthy places and, when speaking to them, find an opportune time to introduce religious ideas. For it would not be difficult to win over someone from that tranquil people, capable of true virtue, and convert some who, upon returning to their homelands, would lead the way for missionaries to disseminate the Catholic religion among the convert’s relatives, compatriots and friends.36

This optimistic attitude about the reconquest of lands infected with heresy was certainly bolstered by Catholic victories during the first phase of the Thirty Years’ War. However, the system of control and encouragement proposed in the 1625 Istruttione required follow-up when young nobles left the cities where they had been staying. To this end, “it would be advantageous for the deputy to alert the authorities in the cities to which they are travelling, so that the work begun in one can be completed in another.”37 The chain of communication would operate through legates and governors, like those of Bologna and Perugia, and nuncios and bishops such as the bishop of Padua, who was explicitly named in the text. The secretary of the 33 Denzler, Die Propagandakongregation, 185–212. On Magni, see Catalano, “Valeriano Magni;” Caccamo, Roma, Venezia e l’Europa, 365–413. 34 On Jesuit strategies of Catholic reconquest in northern Europe, see Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation, 72–242. 35 ACDF, S. O, St. St. TT1–b, fol. 123r. 36 This instruction is specifically referred to in Tüchle, Acta S. Congregationis. 37 ACDF, SO, St. St. TT 1–b, fol. 123r.

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Propaganda Fide, Francesco Ingoli, conveyed the missionaries’ instructions to the Holy Office and to the bishop of Naples, Lorenzo Tramallo, “so that you might appoint individuals who adhere to the requirements…”38 The nuncio of Florence, Alfonso Giglioli, having learned of the Istruttione, informed the Inquisition that he had consulted with Signor Vasoli, the prior of San Lorenzo, and questioned many nuncios in Germany to find “a person of quality” capable of teaching the young nobles “in a Catholic manner.” Baccio Bandinelli was identified as “a religious person with a good knowledge of Latin, and familiar with the [German] nation, having travelled to most of the northern countries. But, above all, he is well versed in ecclesiastical polemics and, on other occasions, has made an effort to convert heretics.”39 However, the nuncio pointed out that the ban on entry into Italy was still in effect for ultramontani heretics and therefore in conflict with the suggestions in the Istruttione. The Holy Office was thus charged with the difficult task of finding a solution to this contradictory policy. The Istruttione revealed endemic problems with efforts to control mobility that regularly presented themselves throughout the seventeenth century. These included missionary activity in northern Europe, cultural exchange with local nobility, and the often-exaggerated under-preparation of the missionaries, who not only lacked theological expertise but even a basic education. Francesco Ingoli shed light on Rome’s response to the quandary raised by the nuncio of Florence when he wrote to the nuncio of Naples on 23 May 1625. He said that the Istruttione did not permit granting “residential permits to heretics in Italy but only indicated what to do once they were found in the Italian cities in order to convert them.”40 Ingoli acknowledged the good intentions (bontà) of the missionaries’ proposals but stated: “if this order [the ban on entry] were to be revoked it would cause much harm; first, because having a responsible official makes it easier to discover heretics who come to Italy; second, because much is accomplished with this prohibition.”41 As proof of this, he produced the note sent to Rome by the bishop of Padua, Pietro Valier, discussing 34 conversions between January and April 1625, which included “nine important and educated persons.”42 While Ingoli reiterated the need to keep the ban on heretics 38 Ibid., fol. 121r. On Ingoli and his work within the congregation, see Pizzorusso, “Ingoli, Francesco.” 39 ACDF, SO, St. St. TT 1–b, fol. 122r. On Bandinelli, not to be confused with the sixteenth-century sculptor of that name, see De Blasi, “Bandinelli, Baccio.” 40 ACDF, SO, St. St. TT1–b, fol. 124r–v. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid.

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entering Italy, he also stated that it might be sufficient to have a declaration from the Holy Office affirming that “the Istruttione prohibits heretics from residing in Italy but cannot stop them from passing through, especially since they come disguised; thus the guidelines mentioned in the said Istruttione can prove useful.”43 Every decision was therefore placed in the hands of the Holy Office and “the judiciousness of the signori who know more than I.”44 However, a compromise was implied that opened a channel for the intensification of the peregrinatio academia on the part of young northern Europeans. The intense correspondence between the Inquisitors and bishops highlighted the multi-faceted problems that ecclesiastical authorities faced locally. These situations were too intricate to be dealt with according to the uniform, monolithic guidelines established in bulls by popes who categorically forbade “heretical” foreigners from setting foot on Italian soil.

Merchants: disadvantages and advantages Merchants were another group regarded as “dangerous foreigners.” Like artisans, artists, and diplomats, merchants moved about frequently, often with their households, and consequently were not easy to control, convert, or cast out. The voluminous folders in the Holy Office’s archive Contra haereses in Italia degentes45 [“Against heretics residing in Italy”], on the one hand, bear witness to a constant concern with controlling the situation centrally, by means of the Inquisition’s network throughout Italy. On the other hand, although Inquisitors and their staff in the Papal States were very much preoccupied with controlling the merchant population, they were often unable to act decisively or coherently. They did not have the resources or the men to do so, and they often did not have the wherewithal to confiscate properties and expel people. 43 Ibid., fol. 124v. 44 Ibid. 45 ACDF, S. O., St. St. M 4–b, 1–2. The problem of the presence of foreign merchants in Italy and how this related to the Inquisition has been the topic of some important studies: Schmidt, “L’inquisizione e gli stranieri.” In his “Fernhandel und die römische Inquisition,” Schmidt highlights the complex structure of this archive, which reveals the diff iculties experienced by the tribunal in prosecuting privileged bodies (corpi privilegiati), since they were protected by agreements with local political authorities. See also Pagano De Divitiis, Mercanti inglesi nell’Italia; Zaugg, “Mercanti stranieri,” 141–46. On the circulation of merchants in northern Italy, see Zunkel, “Esperienze e strategie commerciali.”

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Following the devastation in Monferrato and Mantua caused by roving armies in 1630, many people moved into the area from the Swiss cantons and from the duchies of Savoy (Piedmont) and Milan. Among them were not only merchants but a floating population that moved on to the papal territories of Bologna and Ferrara. They were perceived as a threat to local Inquisitors and to the social order of the communities. Whereas some newcomers successfully passed as Catholics through dissimulation or the protection of local Catholic merchants interested in safeguarding their business interests, others inevitably found themselves called before the Inquisition. The condemnation of foreign heretics, their imprisonment, attempts to convert them, their deportation, and the sequestration of their property were not infrequent and were favourably reported to Rome. Yet, although the local Inquisitor was triumphant, he often remained wary of the potential interference of civic authorities who readily issued passes (salvacondotti), licences, and other permits that allowed foreign Protestants to conduct trade, travel, and reside in their territories. This is revealed in documents arriving from Rome, the Duchy of Savoy, Mantua, Florence, and Naples. These records also show how collaboration between Inquisitors, bishops, and nuncios could be fraught with difficulty, and how the interpretation of subjective categories such as tolerance, order, and scandal could vary enormously. Even if they followed the approved steps for “correcting” foreign heretics who had been caught and brought before the tribunal, Inquisitors still expressed reservations about their repressive actions and sought confirmation from Rome of the virtues and benefits of these procedures. This hesitation is revealed in the exchange between the Holy Office and the Inquisitor of Milan regarding the case of a certain Lonardo Elps of Basel, who had been imprisoned in Milan. Though the Senate of Basel pushed for his release, Rome observed that “this is a case of a heretic who enticed Catholic [goldworkers] to go to Basel and thus damaged the state [of Milan] by weakening the goldsmith’s craft in order to introduce it there.”46 The Inquisitor was told that the Roman Congregation had not made any decision about “whether or not to permit Swiss heretics to come to [Milan]” but was awaiting the opinion of its head, Cardinal Francesco Barberini. Clearly there were doubts about how to proceed so as not to damage the local economy while still protecting the population from contacts with heretics. The disparity of opinions about repressive actions against foreign merchants and jurisdictional rivalry between Inquisitors and local princes such as the dukes of Mantua and Savoy also became evident. Letters from 46 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (hereafter BAV), Barb. Lat. 6336, fol. 76r.

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the Roman Congregation frequently raised procedural questions regarding the prohibitions reaffirmed by Gregory XV in his Romani Pontificis bull of 1622. These disagreements went beyond mere religious and devotional matters. Shutting out foreigners exacerbated a growing tension between the Italian states and the Roman Church, which in some cases anticipated later jurisdictional struggles between secular rulers and the church. Merchants and students were mostly residents and therefore easier to monitor, but it was harder to discover the religious identity of foreigners who passed through the city on their way back from Rome, following an itinerary that would later be used on the Grand Tour. Their intentions and activities eluded the watchful attention of spies in lodging houses and hostels around the city. Spies did, however, inform the Inquisitors of their presence, who in turn wrote back to Rome asking for advice on the procedures to adopt. These procedures emerge clearly from correspondence between the Inquisitor of Bologna and the Holy Office over repeated requests from Paolo Bruno, a Protestant from Nuremberg long engaged in trade in Bologna. According to the Inquisitor, Bruno sought to obtain a permit to leave Italy and return to his homeland for business reasons. The Roman Congregation replied that his previous permit had been “granted due to the kindness of the pope on condition that he pay a security of 10,000 scudi and he must present himself before the Holy Office each time he received permission to exit and reenter Italy.”47 In short, in exchange for payment of substantial sums, it was possible for heretics to move, trade, depart from, and return to Italy. On 27 November 1627, the Bolognese Inquisitor Paolo de’ Vicari laid out his concerns in a letter to Rome. He had … discovered that every day foreigners come to this city from entirely heretical countries such as Saxony, Silesia, and similar places, and they stay in lodgings for four or five months, and sometimes more; they are presumably heretics, even if they have not been denounced, and there is no certain knowledge about them. They do not behave scandalously and appear to be Catholics. I would like to know if I should take action against them or if I should tolerate them, since at the moment three of them have come here from Rome and Naples, they are seeing Italy and my spies tell me that they plan to stay here until after Lent. They are staying at an inn and I am having them watched to see if I can find out whether they do anything contrary to our Holy Faith. 48 47 BAV, Barb. Lat. 6335, fol. 28r. 48 ACDF, SO, St. St. M 4–b (2), fol. 150r.

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The Congregation’s response was that de’ Vicari should try to get the foreigners to leave the city. He had to find out for certain if they were Catholics, but if there was any doubt, or any kind of trouble, the Inquisitor should order them to leave Bologna. If the foreigners disobeyed, he was to take action against them. Faced with frequent requests of this kind, the attitude of the Roman Inquisition continued to be rigid. Notes jotted on the back of documents show a constant attention to outward signs that might give away a person’s true religious beliefs. The genuineness of these beliefs had to be tested locally by the Inquisitor, using his network of spies, “friends of the court,” and other informers. Whether people ate meat on forbidden days, or bought large quantities on the days beforehand, or carried a rosary or special prayers to the Virgin Mary in their pocket, could all be considered by the Inquisitor as sufficient proof that a foreigner was either a heretic or a Catholic. Most foreigners rarely betrayed their beliefs in theological arguments or in thoughtless statements to spies. They had learned how to protect themselves, to hide their true inclinations, attending Catholic services and speaking well of the pope and of Rome in order to be able to stay in Italy. Not everybody chose to be prudent, however. Some foreigners – those who felt confident in popular support based on their profession, their status, their prestige, or the protection of the city that hosted them – were not afraid to make a show of their heretical convictions. In these cases, the vigilant Inquisitors were required to take action. As in the rest of Italy, even in papal territories the question of whether to “tolerate” the presence of foreign Protestant merchants or throw them out, causing serious financial consequences to the local economy, was a constant dilemma. Authorities often tried to proceed in accordance with the rigorous guidelines of the papacy and the Holy Office, although these were often difficult to apply in practice. In Ferrara, the Inquisitor Paolo de’ Franci published a papal command on 15 April 1626 to keep under observation the eating habits of Swiss merchants living in the city and its territories who “would go to taverns, wanting to eat meat and milk on forbidden days.”49 The same problems – and the same doubts – about heretical foreigners who were active in commerce and owned storerooms and shops were described in a letter from Cardinal Roberto Ubaldini to Cardinal Gian Garzia Millini. Ubaldini was cardinal legate to Bologna between 1623 and 1627, while Millini was an eminent member of the Holy Office. The letter included a memorandum on the benefits of having heretical merchants do business in the city. Although the case discussed in the letter regarded the Tellarits 49 ACDF, S. O., St. St., M 4–b (1), fol. 355r.

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family from St. Gallen and the issue of whether they should be allowed to continue working in Bologna, the memorandum examined the problem more generally. It noted that the Tellarits also employed … Italians from this area. They have always brought in textiles of all kinds, cheap and luxury, particularly from St. Gallen where they have their family. Since they are from that area, they can sell their merchandise at a better price than locals can; you can see how successful they are from the fact that they supply most of the city and villages as well… but when they provide leather to shoemakers or commission brass work from other artisans, they help by extending credit to [local] workshops, so that many families who have no money and can barely keep up their households greatly benefit from having them here.50

At times, tensions between the Inquisition and other tribunals emerged. A dispute that arose in Rome between the Tribunal of the Governor, the city’s most important criminal court, and the Holy Office in the 1730s is a good example. After repeated protests from Catholic merchants, the Inquisition ordered the expulsion of “heretical” merchants and pastry chefs who had been working successfully in Rome for some time. This was an obvious attempt to drive out competitors, and the accusation of spreading heresy, creating “scandal and astonishment,” was clearly false. On various occasions, the Governor did not immediately activate an expulsion warrant and the confiscation of property required by the Inquisition because of pressure from other entities or individuals with a vested interest in the criminalized activities. The Governor’s excuse for not obeying the orders of the Inquisition was that procedures were very slow. In the case of a Protestant cloth merchant, Giovanni Mattia Schmitz from Geneva, the roles played by the different law courts are clear: the expulsion decree issued by the Inquisition had to be executed by the Governor’s tribunal “without mentioning the name of the Holy Office.”51 The Governor refused, afraid that the expulsion order would have negative repercussions, and the Inquisition then decided that the matter would have to be resolved by yet another office, the Secretariat of State. At that time, when the privileges of the Inquisition were being strongly criticized, nobody wanted to take responsibility for making an unpopular decision, and the tribunal was also wary of accepting cases falsely labelled 50 Ibid., fol. 220r. 51 ACDF, S. O., Materiae Diversae 1750–1772 B, fols nn. On the relations between heretical merchants living in Rome and the Inquisition, see Groppi, “Concorrenza economica.”

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as “matters of faith” (materia fidei). In Rome and elsewhere, “heretical” merchants often were brought in front of the Inquisition and charged with issues of faith or “scandal,” when in reality the allegations were the result of envy and personal vendettas.52 The records of the archive of the Holy Office permit a nuanced consideration of the constraints upon the mobility of northern Protestants in papal lands between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. If in Rome the will of the Inquisition could usually be imposed, it was harder to apply pressure elsewhere in the Papal States. These records shed new light on the Inquisition’s powers of repression and the surveillance it was able to exercise over foreigners suspected of disseminating reformed doctrines amongst the population. This was an offence as grave as referring to Catholic ceremonies as superstition or deriding the Church’s rites and clergy. Yet the efficiency of this system of control, which became more extensive during the seventeenth century, was undermined by complications at the local level. Local officials were recalcitrant allies, sometimes delaying or blocking implementation. Regulations that were put in place were forcefully, but uselessly, reaffirmed throughout the seventeenth century. In addition to rigid rules and procedures, Rome also set in motion a scheme to convert “heretical” students and other social groups such as artisans and merchants that eventually spread to other Italian cities. Unfortunately, this project was also in conflict with the priorities of civic authorities, who protected the invisible borders around the privileged bodies of students and merchants and who with increasing frequency refused to collaborate with the tribunal of the faith.

Works cited Andor, Eszter, and István György Tóth, eds. Frontiers of Faith: Religious Exchange and the Constitution of Religious Identities 1400–1750. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001. Ascheri, Mario, and Carlo Cantini. L’Università di Siena. 750 anni di storia. Siena: Monte dei Paschi, 1991. Becker, Rainald. “Peregrinatio academica. Bayerische Studenten in Italien im Zeitalter des Humanismus.” In Von Bayern nach Italien: transalpiner Transfer in der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Alois Schmid, 71–96. Munich: Beck, 2010. 52 See, among others, the case of the two wealthy Huguenot merchants Luigi Maigre and Claudio Teissier: ACDF, S. O., Materiae Diversae 1750–1772 B, fols nn (1731–1734).

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Black, Christopher F. “The Trials and Tribulations of a Local Roman Inquisitor: Giacomo Tinti in Modena, 1626–1647.” Giornale di Storia 9 (2012): www.giornaledistoria.net. Black, Christopher F. “Relations between Inquisitors in Modena and the Roman Congregation in the Seventeenth Century.” In The Roman Inquisition: Centre versus Peripheries, edited by Christopher F. Black and Katherine Aron-Beller, 91–117. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Borromeo, Agostino. “Carena, Cesare.” In Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, edited by Adriano Prosperi, Vincenzo Lavenia, and John Tedeschi, 1: 272–73. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2010. ———, ed. La Valtellina crocevia dell’Europa: politica e religione nell’età della Guerra dei Trent’anni. Milan-Sondrio: Mondadori-Credito Valtellinese, 1998. Braun, Guido. “The Papacy.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to the Thirty Years’ War, edited by Olaf Asbach and Peter Schröder, 101–13. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Bullarum, diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum. Vol. 12. Turin: Vecco, 1867. Caccamo, Domenico. Roma, Venezia e l’Europa centro-orientale: ricerche sulla prima età moderna. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2010. Calabi, Donatella, and Stephen Turk Christensen, eds. Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Carena, Cesare. Tractatus de officio Sanctissimae Inquisitionis et modo procedendi in causis fidei. Lyon: Anisson, 1669. Catalano, Alessandro. “Valeriano Magni, il cardinale e il teatro del mondo.” eSamizdat 1 (2003): 217–24. Cristellon, Cecilia. “Mixed Marriages in Early Modern Europe.” In Marriage in Europe 1400–1800, edited by Silvana Seidel Menchi, 294–317. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2016. De Blasi, Nicola. “Bandinelli, Baccio.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 5: 692–93. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1963. De Boer, Wietse. “Soldati in terra straniera. La fede tra inquisizione e ragion di stato.” Studia Borromaica 23 (2009): 403–27. Denzler, Georg. Die Propagandakongregation in Rom und die Kirche in Deutschland im ersten Jahrzehnt nach dem Westfälischen Frieden. Paderbron: Schöning, 1969. Dixon, C. Scott, Dagmar Freist, and Mark Greengrass, eds. Living with Religious Diversity in Early Modern Europe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Donati, Claudio, ed. Alle frontiere della Lombardia. Politica, guerra e religione nell’età moderna. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006. Ermini, Giuseppe. Storia dell’Università di Perugia. Vol. 1. Florence: Olschki, 1971.

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Fosi, Irene. “‘Procurar a tutt’huomo la conversione degli heretici’. Roma e le conversioni nell’Impero nella prima metà del Seicento.” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 88 (2008): 335–68. ———. Inquisition, Conversion, and Foreigners in Baroque Rome. Translated by Giuseppe Bruno-Chomin. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Fosi, Irene, and Andrea Gardi, eds. La legazione di Ferrara del Cardinale Giulio Sacchetti, 2 vols. Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2006. Fosi, Irene, and Alexander Koller, eds. Papato e Impero nel pontificato di Urbano VIII (1623–1644). Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2013. Garstein, Oskar. Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia. Vol. 2: The Age of Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina of Sweden 1622–1656. Leiden: Brill, 1992. Goldsmith, Sarah, Rosemary Sweet, and Gerrit Verhoeven, eds. Beyond the Grand Tour. Northern Metropolises and the Early Modern Travel Behaviour. London: Routledge, 2017. Grendler, Paul. The Universities of the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Groppi, Angela. “Concorrenza economica e confessione religiosa. Mercanti cattolici contro calvinisti e luterani nella Roma dei papi (secc. XVII-XVIII).” Quaderni Storici 152 (2016): 471–502. Koller, Alexander. Imperator und Pontifex. Forschungen zum Verhältnis von Kaiserhof und römischer Kurie im Zeitalter der Konfessionalisierung (1555–1648). Münster: Aschendorff, 2012. Lavenia, Vincenzo. “L’arca e gli astri. Esoterismo e miscredenza davanti all’Inquisizione (1587–91).” In Esoterismo, edited by Gian Mario Cazzaniga, 289–322. Storia d’Italia. Annali 25. Turin: Einaudi, 2010. Mauer, Michael. “Voraussetzungen und Grundlegung eines europäischen Bewußtein im konfessionellen Zeitalter.” In Petrus Canisius S.J. (1521–1597): Humanist und Europäer, edited by Rainer Berndt, 239–57. Berlin: Akademie, 2000. Mazzei, Rita. Itinera Mercatorum: circolazione di uomini e beni nell’Europa centroorientale 1550–1650. Lucca: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1999. Merisalo, Outi, ed., with the collaboration of Päivi Pahta. Frontiers in the Middle Ages. Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d’études médiévales, 2006. Minnucci, Giovanni, and Leo Košuta. Lo Studio di Siena nei secoli XIV-XVI. Documenti e notizie biografiche. Milan: Giuffré, 1989. Neri, Silvia, and Carla Penuti, eds. Natio germanica Bononiae. Vol. 2, Annales 1595– 1619. Bologna: CLUEB, 2002. Pagano De Divitiis, Gigliola. Mercanti inglesi nell’Italia del Seicento. Navi, traffici, egemonie. Venice: Marsilio, 1990.

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Paravicini, Werner, and Rainer Babel, eds. Grand Tour. Adeliges Reisen und europäische Kultur vom 14. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert. Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2005. Pastore, Alessandro. “The Shaping of a Religious Migration: The Sacro Macello of 1620 and the Refugees from Valtellina.” In Exile and Religious Identity, 1500–1800, edited by Jesse Spohnholz and Gary K. Waite, 171–249. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014. Penuti, Carla. “La nazione degli studenti alemanni di Bologna tra fine Cinquecento e primo Seicento.” In Natio germanica Bononiae. Vol. 2, Annales 1595–1619, edited by Silvia Neri and Carla Penuti, 11–21. Bologna: CLUEB, 2002. Pizzorusso, Giovanni. “Ingoli, Francesco.” In Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 62: 388–91. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2004. Schmidt, Peter. “L’inquisizione e gli stranieri.” In L’inquisizione e gli storici: un cantiere aperto, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 365–72. Rome: Bardi, 2000. ———. “Fernhandel und die römische Inquisition. Interkulturelles Management im konfessionellen Zeitalter.” In Inquisition, Index, Zensur. Wissenkultur der Neuzeit im Widestreit, edited by Hubert Wolf, 105–20. Paderborn: Schöning, 2001. Stagl, Justin. “Ars apodemica: Bildungsreise und Reisemethodik von 1560 bis 1600.” In Reisen und Reiseliteratur im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Xenja von Ertzdorff and Dieter Umkirch, 141–89. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992. Tóth, István György, and Heinz Schilling, eds. Religion and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Tüchle, Hermann, ed. Acta S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide Germaniam spectantia: Die Protokolle der Propagandakongregation zu deutschen Angelegenheiten 1622–1649. Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1962. Verhoeven, Gerrit. Europe within Reach. Netherlandish Travellers on the Grand Tour and Beyond (1585–1750). Leiden: Brill, 2015. Zaugg, Roberto. “Mercanti stranieri e giudici napoletani. La gestione dei conflitti in antico regime.” Quaderni Storici 133 (2010): 139–69. Zunkel, Julia. “Esperienze e strategie commerciali di mercanti tedeschi fra Milano e Napoli nell’epoca della controriforma.” In Commerce, voyage et expérience religieuse XVIe-XVIIIe siècles, edited by Albrecht Burkardt, 231–55. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2007.

About the author Irene Fosi is Professor Emerita of Early Modern History at the “G. D’Annunzio” University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy. Her main research topics are justice and society in early modern Italy and religious conversion in the Baroque period. Her most recent monograph is Conversion, Inquisition, and Foreigners in Baroque Rome (2020).

5.

News on the Road: The Mobility of Handwritten Newsletters in Early Modern Europe Paola Molino*1

Abstract In light of the mobility turn in the humanities, this chapter attempts to rethink networks of communication and the circulation of handwritten news in early modern Europe. Challenging assumptions about the ‘private’ or ‘secret’ nature of handwritten communication, the chapter focuses on the intermediality of news sheets. It traces the movement of news as a series of operations combining practices of textual manipulation, writing, and copying in the newswriter’s workshop, the physical mobility of news sheets by means of postal networks and other mechanisms of transmission, and linguistic mobility through repeated translation. The mobility of handwritten news was linked to its format, which allowed for constant small corrections, adaptations, and changes to pieces of moving text. But news must also be seen in dynamic relation to stable infrastructures such as the postal system and newswriters’ workshops. Keywords: news; avvisi; postal systems; manuscript culture; translation; communication

* The central arguments of this article have been discussed with my colleagues at the Centre for Mobility and the Humanities based at the University of Padua – Lucio Biasiori, Andrea Caracausi, Tania Rossetto – to whom I am particularly indebted. For ‘reading together’ and the indexing and transcription of German newsletters, I thank Katrin Keller. I would also like to thank Arndt Brendecke and Susanne Friedrich for their suggestions, and Sebastian Conrad, Filippo De Vivo, and Mario Infelise for their readings. The handwritten newsletters are translated from Italian or German into English by the author. Research for this article has been supported by the Italian Ministry for Research and Education in the framework of the research project ‘Universal Relations, Selected Libraries. Catalogues and the Topography of Knowledge in the Early Modern World.’

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch05

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If the mobility turn in history is beginning to provide a new understanding of movement, interaction, and encounter in the past, the history of information and networks of communication are a central topic to re-assess.1 Handwritten newsletters (avvisi in Italian, geschriebene Zeitungen in German, cartas de aviso in Spanish, nouvelles à la main in French), namely manuscript sheets containing fresh news that kept Europeans up to date about current events from the mid-sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, help us to reflect on the implications of a mobilities turn in history from both a material and an epistemological perspective.2 Historians have studied the movement of people, goods, and news through centres – courts, cities, postal hubs – and also peripheries. They have shown how news travelling along these networks kept members of the network informed, and how these same individuals in turn spread the news more widely and influenced or even ‘disturbed’ other national or ethnic communities, though without actually modifying them.3 In this traditional view, although individuals, goods, and information entered into movement and came into contact, nonetheless fixity or ‘sedentarism’ constituted a kind of natural condition. 4 It is a conception that, as Caren Kaplan writes, “rests on forms of territorial nationalism and their associated technologies of mapping and visualisation which emerged out of the Enlightenment cosmic view of the world.”5 Looking at mobility as a historical force implies accepting a far less reassuring idea of the past, in which the local is found to be constantly entangled with the larger world, even if these connections may at times appear weak. Here we encounter an idea of the past with different conceptions of spatiality and scale.6 As far as textual mobility is concerned, Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham have recently shown how the long querelle over whether the freshest and most reliable news in early modern Europe was transmitted in manuscript or print 1 On the mobility turn, see Sheller and Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm.” For an interdisciplinary perspective focused on the humanities, see Merriman and Pearce, “Mobility and the Humanities,” in particular 493–94. For interactions between mobility and the rise of modernity, see Kaplan, “Mobility and War,” 396–97. 2 Raymond and Moxham, “News Networks,” 9; Barbarics-Hermanik, “ Handwritten Newsletters as Interregional Information Sources;” Barbarics-Hermanik, “Coexistence of Manuscript and Print;” Keller, “Die Fuggerzeitungen,” 24–39. 3 An example is Pettegree, The Invention of News, which considers differences in the production and spread of news mechanisms between north and south Europe as tightly related to the rise of modernity. 4 Sheller and Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm,” 208, write that “sedentarism treats as normal stability, meaning, and place, and treats as abnormal distance, change, and placelessness.” 5 Kaplan, “Mobility and War,” 397. 6 Sheller and Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm,” 214.

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is now outdated. A careful examination of the actual content of the news has confirmed that news was “more efficiently and speedily transmitted in person,” namely orally, and that the whole debate around the two media is more about the ways in which news was confirmed, corrected, and contextualized.7 Consider the following piece of news, preserved among the items collected by the brothers Octavian Secundus and Philipp Eduard Fugger from Augsburg: On this very same day, the ambassadors from Portugal went to talk to the King [of Spain, Phillip II] and they expressed their message in such a low voice that nobody could hear them. The king responded to them so loudly that he was heard by everyone, telling them that such important affairs should not be handled in words but that they should submit them in writing, and that he would answer in kind. And he removed his hat and went into another room.8

Such a passage should not be interpreted in terms of the ‘progress’ towards a fully bureaucratized, paper-based state but rather as testimony of the co-existence of different mechanisms of communicating news. The aim of this chapter is not to assess which medium most effectively conveyed news in early modern Europe, a topic already abundantly discussed in recent media studies,9 but rather to explore certain features of handwritten news media in light of the mobilities turn in history. More specifically, by focusing on the infrastructure of circulation, the processes of translation from one language and context to another, and the manual technologies of production, I hope to show that handwritten news was intrinsically mobile well before the Enlightenment and that while news circulation was facilitated by relatively stable infrastructures such as postal networks – and later by printing – it was not defined by these infrastructures. The mobility of news was rather based on micro-technologies of text-transfer and translation that 7 Raymond and Moxham, “News Networks,” 2. 8 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (hereafter ÖNB) Cod. 8953, fols 478r–478v (Mérida, 02.06.1580), and in particular, fol. 478r: “In questo giorno istesso gli Amb[asciato]ri di Portugallo andorno a parlare al Re, quali esposero la loro Amb[ascia]ta tanto piano, che non furno uditi da persona alc[un]a. Sua M[aest]à gli rispose tanto forte, che fu sentita da tutti, dicendogli che i negotii di tanta importanza non si debbon trattar con parole, ma che ce le dessero in scrittura, che gli risponderebbe, et levatasi la beretta andò in un’altra stanza.” The Fugger collection is preserved in ÖNB, Cod. 8949–8975, now digitalized and accessible at http:// fuggerzeitungen.univie.ac.at/faksimiles. 9 Böning, “‘Gewiss ist es/ dass alle gedruckten’;” Rospocher, “What is the History of Communication?”; Rospocher, Il papa guerriero; Randall, Credibility; De Vivo, Information and Communication; Salzberg, Ephemeral City.

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early modern European newswriters most likely shared with other writers around the world.10 By examining several brief excerpts of news written by newswriters who in most cases never left their workshops, towards the end of this chapter I try to demonstrate that the mobility of handwritten news is not an argument against the notion of veracity or certainty. I propose to reverse a topos in the history of information that has long connected handwritten forms of communication with private, secret, or less reliable interpretations of facts. Small movements of text and meaning highlight the constructed and complex processes through which facts were generated in the past.

Beyond the postal infrastructure The handwritten newsletter is a commodity typical of late Renaissance urban contexts.11 It originated in the middle of the fifteenth century in Italy in correspondence among diplomats and merchants and developed into a more anonymous form primarily (but not only) as a consequence of religious conflicts and wars against the Ottoman Empire starting from the second half of the sixteenth century.12 By this time, handwritten newsletters moved quickly across geographical, confessional, and linguistic boundaries. They were sold on subscription to wealthy readers and circulated among other strata of society through public readings, street and workshop discussions, and by posting on walls in public locations. As such, they slowly developed from private letters into more general newsletters, and in this new format they teased the curiosity of a larger audience.13 Since the appearance of national histories of journalism in the nineteenth century, handwritten newsletters have been regarded for many years by historians as news “as it might appear on the unedited, continuously moving tape of a press agency’s teletype,” in which “true reports and false rumours, trivial occurrences and important events follow one upon the other without interruption and without discrimination.”14 Only in the last 30 years has the medium been rehabilitated and regarded as the first form of professional 10 See as an example McDermott and Burke, Introduction, 55–64. 11 On the economic value of the newsletters and of the commerce of the news, see Infelise, Prima dei giornali, 38–42. 12 See on this Infelise, “Merchant’s Letters;” Zwierlein, Discorso und Lex Dei, 574. 13 Barker, “‘Secret and Uncertain’,” 717 n. 5 and passim for other examples of a larger audience of avvisi at court; Infelise, Prima dei giornali, 42, 154 ff. 14 Matthews, News and Rumor, 20–21.

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journalism with a specific agency, goals, and audience and not only as the sources of later printed gazettes, with which, in fact, handwritten newsletters long co-existed.15 As Mario Infelise has recently pointed out, news circulated in Europe as a sort of virtual hypertext made up of a sequence of strings each reporting more or less reliable news. A piece of news could actually materialize in various textual contexts produced in the same time period, such as a report by a nuncio or an ambassador, in handwritten or printed gazettes, sometimes using literally the same words or in paraphrase.16 In such a context, the handwritten form was surely an advantage, although the apparently evanescent character of news written by hand was based on very stable, concrete structures. From the late sixteenth through to the seventeenth century, the most important (and most studied) of these structures was the European postal network, which determined the trajectories of circulation and translation of news. The European postal system based on post-houses and couriers has recently been described as forming the “spine” of news networks.17 The existence of consolidated postal routes not only was the premise but also had consequences for the diffusion of news. Newswriters had to coordinate their activities in order to write newsletters in the span of time between the arrival and departure of couriers. Their sheets primarily contained news from cities connected through the postal roads, and over time news started to follow not so much by the shortest but rather by the “preferential routes” in which speed was combined with political relationships and other forms of connectivity.18 Generally speaking, news from a specific place was always as fresh as regular relays allowed it to be: news from Rome needed five days to reach Venice in normal conditions, news from Vienna ten days, news from Istanbul two weeks, while news from Spain could take as long as one month. In news networks, the concepts of centre and peripheries are relational and could also have a temporary status.19 The presence of a post office contributed to making a city ‘central’ or ‘peripherical,’ as the cases of Antwerp and Cologne demonstrate. As the sources remind us, the 15 The first studies in this direction have in fact been already taken by Bongi, “Le prime gazzette in Italia;” Ancel, “Étude critique;” and more recently as a systematic phenomenon by Infelise, Prima dei giornali. 16 Infelise, “Communication and Information,” 58, see also Colavizza, Infelise, and Kaplan, “Mapping the Early Modern News Flow;” Raymond and Moxham, “News Networks,” 4. 17 Schobesberger et al., “European Postal Networks,” 19. A comprehensive study that f irst proposed this approach is Behringer, Im Zeichen des Merkur. 18 Schobesberger et al., “European Postal Networks,” 31. 19 Raymond and Moxham, “News Networks,” 14.

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official postal service (“commercially aggressive and juridically protected”)20 determined the periodicity of handwritten news, yet a piece of writing a few lines or a few pages long could move through the network using any means, from the horse of a special courier or in the sacks of travellers, missionaries, or migrants. In this sense, the history of postal networks belongs to the broader history of roads, with their inns, staging posts, specific territorial configurations and constraints, dangers, and rules, all facilitating or hindering the circulation of news. Georg Simmel has described the human need for connection as an ability to leave a sign on “the surface of the earth,” generating the “miracle of the road” as well as bridges.21 Of course, handwritten newsletters are only one among the many forms taken by news along the roads, and one among the many items travelling along these routes. Carrying news, in whatever form, was a dangerous enterprise at any time but became even more dangerous in certain conditions, such as during wars and epidemics. The vicissitudes of couriers were often reported in the handwritten news.22 These tales developed a special narrative that emphasized the importance and influence of couriers beyond their narrow function of carrying the post. In one case reported in an avviso from Venice, a courier travelling with an unknown Jew was robbed due to the fact that the case of letters he was carrying contained 2500 ducats from “several merchants.” The courier and his companion survived and followed the tracks of the two highwaymen on their way from Venice to Chioggia, one of whom killed himself rather than face arrest.23 In another case in Provence, a courier from Spain was killed for political reasons, robbed only of letters from the Spanish King.24 From Venice, Rome, and Istanbul in the south, Augsburg, Antwerp, Cologne, Paris, and Lyon at the centre, and Vienna and Prague at the eastern and Madrid and Lisbon at the western extremes, the main nodes of the European information network are well-known to historians. In this framework, however, scholarship has tended to overlook the explosion of places of production of handwritten news and the various arrangements required to modify news on the move in response to specific, localized events. Starting with the revolt of the Moriscos in La Alpujarra (1568–1571), and subsequently with the Spanish-Dutch war, the Ottoman-Safavid War 20 Fedele, “Postal Geography,” 75–79. 21 Simmel, On Culture, 171. 22 See the case of epidemics, when letters were taken outside the city and underwent quarantine and fumigation, in Barker, “‘Secret and Uncertain’,” 720–21. 23 ÖNB, Cod. 8949, fol. 22v (Venice, 01.08. 1568). 24 ÖNB, Cod. 8949, fol. 38r (Rome, 16.10.1568).

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(1578–1590), the long Turkish war on the Hungarian front from 1593, and the occupation of the city of Geneva in 1589, just to name a few, the map of news production constantly shifted.25 Newswriters based in urban centres could barely process the quantity of relazioni of specific events coming from war fronts, such as those from Nagykanisza in Hungary, along with many other smaller localities on the eastern front, echoed by the emergence of avvisi from Graz, where news from Hungary was collected and most probably translated into Italian.26 This suggests that the European information system was flexible and able to adapt and change according to political and military events, often at some distance from the major nodes of the postal and political infrastructures. While there was a stabilization of certain centres over time, at the same time news created its own networks in response to specific needs, as can be observed when reading the volumes of newsletters from Venice preserved in the Archivio Mediceo del Principato in Florence for the thorny year of 1588, shortly after the death of Francesco de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello.27 One of these volumes principally contains gazettes written and spread by newswriters active in Venice.28 They normally contain an avviso from Rome, one from Venice, one from Cologne, and one from Antwerp. These were quite standard products, and it is not by chance that we find some identical gazettes with almost identical contents and handwriting among those now preserved in Rome. The newsletters from Cologne and Antwerp are translations into Italian of German gazettes very similar to those to be found in the Fugger collection. A second volume of newsletters in the same collection shows rather different trajectories. This volume not only contains proper avvisi but also letters with news without reference to a place, normally bearing the date at the end and – unlike most newsletters of the time – they are signed. The author is a certain Isidoro Manfredi, who admitted in the letters that he was active in the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, the headquarters of the German community in Venice.29 These letters were apparently forwarded to an agent who signed his letters as Ulisse del Pace and wrote from Trento, sometimes in cyphered letters, at other times pretending to trade not in news but in 25 See on this Schobesberger, “Räume und Einzugsgebiete;” and Molino, “Connected News,” 270–82. 26 See the mapping of the newsletters from Nagykanisza between 1583 and 1601 in https:// fuggerzeitungen.univie.ac.at/orte/nagykanisza-kanischa. 27 Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato (hereafter ASF, MdP), filze 3084 and 3085. 28 ASF, MdP, 3085. 29 ASF, MdP, 3084, fols 557r–58r (January 9, 1588) and fols 569r–71r (January 23, 1588).

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clothes.30 Even Del Pace’s ‘clothes,’ however, were not sent directly to Florence but were first forwarded to Perugia addressed to a further broker, Ermonio Venturi, who then collected other pieces of news and sent the packet to the secretary of the Grand Duke in Florence, Belisario Vinta.31 Del Pace bought, collected, transcribed, and forwarded to Perugia (and eventually Florence) news coming from Cologne, Antwerp, Rome, Prague, Istanbul, Turin, Milan, and Lyon. Most of the Italian news sent by Del Pace from the Holy Roman Empire and Antwerp is translated from German newsletters that circulated in northern Europe in these same years.32 The composition of this volume shows an unusual trajectory of news circulation that not only co-existed with the more traditional network but was intermingled with it. Careful study of the volume reveals a highly unusual geography of news transmission. Clearly, the archival designation of “Venice” for the volume is misleading in this case, as Venice is only one among many places in which news was compiled. News originating from Venice already assumed a more private format than the common avviso (the more usual information letter signed by Isidoro Manfredi) and on the move became increasingly more reserved and encrypted, containing information directed to the Medici only. Nonetheless, this was all inserted among sheets of more public news similar to those in other collections.

Translation Translation practices also facilitated the formation of distinct informal news geographies. Newswriters did not always translate news, at times inserting news excerpts in the language it had been received by the compiler (see Fig. 5.1.).33 It is therefore important to contextualize this practice in the rise of translations from Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic into European vernacular languages (and sometimes also from vernaculars back into Latin), on the one hand, and in the development of the news network as an interregional phenomenon, on the other.34

30 Molino, “Connected News,” 279–80. 31 ASF, MdP, 3084, fols 593r–94v and 595v. 32 Keller and Molino, Fuggerzeitungen im Kontext, 173. 33 See for instance Figure 5.1, in which news items in German and Italian are copied in the original language one after the other, or the newsletters from Vienna and Prague of the 1570s preserved in the Fuggerzeitungen, all still in Italian. 34 See on this Burke, “Cultures of Translation,” 10–11.

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Figure 5.1 German and Italian paragraphs in a German Zeitung, written in two separate hands. The Italian paragraphs are separated by the symbol %. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 8949, fol. 232r.

As for the first point, there are two concomitant circumstances to be considered. First, starting from the second half of the sixteenth century, the translation of newsletters was facilitated by the publication of dictionaries and tables of correspondences organized according to specific categories, reporting the exact meaning of words or of entire sentences and common expressions to be used in everyday life. The numerous editions of the multi-lingual dictionary first drawn up by Ambrogio Calepino at the

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beginning of the sixteenth century in seven, eight, or even eleven languages is a well-known example. Less known is the Nomenclatura rerum, published in Frankfurt by Abraham Saur in 1615. This dictionary provides German translations of words divided into 61 classes, including cities and places, buildings and clothes, instruments and coins, titles of important personalities, and also adjectives, fruits, and plants.35 There are many other examples that could be considered, also in light of a second circumstance. These books – along with atlases, city plans, postal itineraries, and other tools – converged with the circulation of news in the print shops and workshops of newswriters in important print centres such as Venice.36 While each town or city along the postal routes might become a relevant node of the news network, not every city could become a centre for the translation of news. Places where political, knowledge, and communications networks intertwined provided dynamic locations for the quick and reliable translation of the news, often made by post-masters, travellers, mercantile agents, scholars, or other actors possessing the requisite linguistic expertise.37 Among the many typologies of translation, news for the most part followed a pattern of literal translation. Joad Raymond has observed that these apparently neutral texts were less a response to local policies, such as confessional restrictions, but rather fed a hunger for novelty at the local level. Knowledge of recent events anywhere was “an extension of transnational news.”38 Printed gazettes, which were also translated literally, were normally translated in the print shop, and not infrequently the printer also served as news editor and translator. Did the format of handwritten news facilitate the mobility of meaning? To paraphrase Filippo de Vivo, can we investigate “what mobility did” to the news?39 In the three collections of newsletters in Vienna (Fuggerzeitungen), Florence (Avvisi in the Mediceo del Principato), and Rome (Avvisi Urbinati Latini) that I have investigated in detail, we can find different examples. 40 One example is the immediate translation of German newsletters for an Italian audience, such as those mentioned above to be found in Florence in the volumes of newsletters from Venice. Here we find, for instance, a piece 35 Saur, Nomenclatura Rerum. 36 Burke, “Cultures of Translation,” 16. 37 See the example of Wolfgang Zündelin in Bezold, “Wolfgang Zündelin,”and Kohlndorfer-Fries, “Wolfgang Zündelin.” 38 Raymond, “Exporting Impartiality,” 160. 39 De Vivo, “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information,” 190. 40 As for Rome, the collection is preserved in Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Codici Urbinati Latini, (hereafter BAV, Urb. Lat.), 1038–1101.

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of news from Antwerp dated 2 January 1588 reporting from Middelburg that English ships had attacked a convoy coming from Brazil, carrying fifteen ships laden with sugar. 41 This piece of news is the translation of a German news piece that can be found among the Fugger newsletters in two different Zeitungen from Antwerp bearing the same date. 42 The German version has more details: it clarifies that Middelburg is in Zeeland and the value of the cargo is clearly expressed, although with differences from one version to the other. One more particular is omitted in the Italian translation, not only in the copy preserved in Florence but also in a different translation in Rome in the avvisi from Urbino. 43 Whereas both German Zeitungen report the Portuguese origins of the news, in both Italian translations this detail is omitted. 44 The entries in the German Zeitungen were concise, and the translators did not need to exercise much imagination in rendering them into Italian. Of course, distance in time and space made the news less sharp, and the name of a place or one or two zeros when referring to the value of the cargo could easily get lost in translation. More relevant, however, is what seems to be a deliberate choice of the Italian newswriters, namely to omit the fact that the news was spread by the Portuguese community in Antwerp. As I have shown elsewhere, exporting Italian avvisi in other languages was more complicated.45 Over the second half of the sixteenth century, the avviso developed into an entertaining narrative source. It was normally long, full of stories, gossip, and fake news from the banchi in Rome. When it travelled to Cologne, Augsburg, or later to Amsterdam or London, not all news was pertinent for the intended audience and not all items were understood by readers, even those with a knowledge of Italian. Here the textual organization of the avviso in paragraphs allowed translators to make a first rough choice according to the tastes and needs of their subscribers. Once a particular paragraph was selected, it was normally translated literally and cleaned of phrases deemed likely to be irrelevant or ill-understood by new audiences. There could be other structural constraints on translation practices. In England, for example, once foreign newsletters – the corantos – started to be printed in the 1620s, the government required faithful translation of news items, both to ensure neutrality in a time of continental 41 ASF, MdP, 3084, fols 561v–562r. 42 ÖNB, Cod. 8961, fols 1r–1v and 3r–3v. 43 BAV, Urb. Lat. 1056, fol. 25r–25v 44 “wie allhie die Portugalleser selbs darvon reden,” in ÖNB, Cod. 8961, fol. 1r–1v, or “wie die Portugöser ausgeben.” Ibid., fol. 3r–3v. 45 Molino, “Connected News,” 282–86.

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war and to facilitate quick control and surveillance. 46 If literal translation was habitually regarded with disdain in Renaissance Europe, in the case of news, literal translation became a sign of fidelity to the original source and hence of the veracity of the news.

Technology A second structural element in the handwritten newsletters was its technology, based on an attentive use of ink and paper developed over the years in the workshops of the newswriter. To re-trace these practices, historians have to rely on the traces left by newswriters between the lines of their texts. Occasionally there are explicit explanations of their work, for instance if they wished to sell their workshops, as in the case of Giovanni Quorli reconstructed by Mario Infelise, or were intercepted by the Inquisitori di Stato. 47 The work of a newswriter, like work in a printing shop, was at the same time a “theoretical and mechanical” profession. 48 Theoretically, a newswriter was a publisher of information, ideas, and opinions, in many cases produced by somebody else and copied by scribes employed in his workshop. The activity of copying and spreading ‘secret’ news was forbidden in Italy and elsewhere. The term ‘secret’ was, however, very broad and covered all news not destined to a larger audience or not ‘published’ by an authority itself. The category ‘forbidden news’ could also include news that came from the street, the so-called notizie di piazza or dei banchi, terms that refer to the specific area in Venice or Rome where news was copied and sold, separately or organized in gazettes. 49 As interdictions against newswriters reiterate, news was a “potentially dangerous genre” for its power to discredit people and because it leaked information that not every ear was prepared to hear.50 More deeply, however, as Sara Barker writes, in a society based on “order and stability,” news was a threat as it 46 Raymond, “Exporting Impartiality,” 159 and ff. 47 Infelise, Prima dei giornali, 36 and ff. 48 Grafton, Inky fingers, 33. 49 With the word ‘gazettes,’ I understand here a group of two or more newsletters sent together by a newswriter to a subscriber. A standard Italian gazette at the end of the sixteenth century encompassed for instance an avviso from Rome, one from Venice, one from Antwerp, one from Cologne, and possibly one from Lyon or Paris, Vienna, or Prague. For a more detailed analysis of the word, see Infelise, Gazzetta. 50 One of the most effective distinctions between secret and public news is in an avviso that was circulating in Rome in late 1587 after the Inquisition’s condemnation to death of Annibale Cappello, at the time one of the most active newswriters in the city of the pope. The avviso is

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offered “a catalogue of change over time […] without offering an end” and without the reassurance offered by history, which was already resolved.51 Mechanically, the work of the newswriter involved managing news that converged in his workshop from different locations. News from abroad was brought by post or other channels and when it reached the workshop was immediately copied onto one or more sheets by copyists. The physical space for the news was the sheet of paper onto which it was pasted, after being cut from the copy sheet, in order to form a gazzetta made up of single newsletters written in different localities. News might be four or five days old if the city was close, older if coming from far away. Under pressure to meet the departure of the next courier, different pieces of news were copied in haste and sent to subscribers at the last moment. The sense of immediacy is expressed by sentences added at the very end of the page in hasty handwriting. In one example the newswriter advised that coded letters had just arrived from Istanbul, but the writers did not have enough time to decipher them and sent them straightaway. Or another from Venice, reporting on the plague in Milan: “While I am writing, letters from Milan of the 23rd [of January] have arrived with the printed avviso reporting the liberation of that city and territory from the prolongued infection.”52 Such briskness imposed a basic narrative, producing a seemingly neutral tone. More generally, handwritten newsletters followed the simple and dry style recommended in treatises for secretaries and chanceries, although newsletters tended to overuse expressions that conveyed a sense of distance between the writer and his sources by using special formulas that connected senses, media, places, and the actors involved: “it was heard” or “it was said” or “through avvisi from…” or “through the Ambassador from Spain, news came.” In Italian and in German, a consequence of this was also an overuse of verbs in the passive form that allowed the newswriter to hide the subjects of certain sentences. In other cases, and when the newswriter had direct knowledge of his subscriber and of the context he was writing about, he added sentences such as the following referring to an agent of the King of France, inspected by Venetian agents on his way to Istanbul: “Reports (discorsi) are not lacking but everything is up in the air. However, since it is always better to speak soberly about the affairs of one’s masters, it is enough to have mentioned this, preserved in ASF, MdP, 4027, fol. 181r and quoted in Molino, “Connected News,” 288. See also the example in Infelise, Prima dei giornali, 36. 51 Barker, “Time in English Translations,” 349. 52 ÖNB, Cod. 8951, fol. 400v (Venice, 31.01.1578): “Intanto sono sopragiunte lettere di Milano delli 23 con l’aviso in istampa della liberatione di quella città et territorio dal lungo contagio.”

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leaving it to more mature judgements to go further.”53 Through a careful use of words, the newswriter is explicit neither about who his ‘masters’ are nor what the reports contain, limiting his role to that of informer. Because news was copied when it reached the workshop, the order of arrival was usually also the order in which the news was compiled for circulation. Whereas in early manifestations, newsletters were often copied as a continuous flow of text, over time a sort of division into paragraphs arose according to the different directions or sources from which the news reached the workshop (see Fig. 5.1). In one avviso from Venice, the first paragraph is a piece from Croatia, followed by a report on oral news circulating in Venice on Flanders: “qui si vocifera.”54 These are followed by pieces from Malta, one from Constantinople and Syria, then news brought from France by ambassador Jérôme de Gondi, followed by a piece of local news, one from Turin, another from Venice and lastly the “freshest” news from Ferrara (Fig. 5.2). In other cases, from the mark-up of a news sheet it seems that in order to discourage direct knowledge of an entire avviso, the chief newswriter gave to each of his scribes only one paragraph to copy. After having copied his excerpt, the scribe would pass the avviso to the next in order for him to add the next piece, and so on until the end (Fig. 5.1).55 In his analysis of the circulation of French- and English-language printed gazettes across the Atlantic at the time of the American Revolution, Will Slauter calls this manner of structuring news “mobile paragraphs,” regarding it as typical of the Enlightenment.56 He notes that the mobile paragraph also existed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although it only later developed as “the basic unit of political and military news” in a printed newspaper, a unit of meaning visually evident to the reader.57 However, one feature of eighteenth-century printed newspapers also applies to the previous period, namely the division into paragraphs. While not always evident to the reader, it was certainly clear to the newswriter, signalling the different human or geographical directions from which news reached the workshop.58 53 ÖNB, Cod. 8952, fol. 463r (Venice, 06.02.1579): “Discorsi non mancano, tutte cose in aria. Ma perché dei consigli dei principali è sempre bene parlarne sobriamente, basterà d’haverne solo accennato, lasciando a piú maturi giudicii il passar piú oltre.” 54 ÖNB, Cod. 8951, fols 526r–527r (Venice, 05.09.1578). 55 ÖNB, Cod. 8949, fol. 232r (Rome, 17.03.1571). 56 Slauter, “Le paragraphe mobile.” 57 Ibid., 365. 58 An early instance in many respects similar to that considered by Slauter and between print and manuscript is that of the newsletters excerpted in the 1620s by Joseph Mede and described in Raymond, “Exporting Impartiality,” 160.

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Figure 5.2 Handwritten paragraphs in an Italian avviso. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 8951, fol. 526r.

Grazioso Graziosi, the Roman agent of Francesco Maria II della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, developed a kind of personal technology based on paragraphs, when the authorities imposed stricter control over the spread of news. He then turned his usual marginalia into a form of instant messaging written on small separate paper slips and related to the actual avviso through a key-word system. The slips were then copied onto a separate sheet that contained key words referring to the corresponding incipits of

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a paragraph in the avviso sent earlier and that Graziosi believed required comment. First, Graziosi signalled to the Duke when the avviso reported news that he had already received in other forms, or verified and commented on the reliability of pieces coming from the banchi, as for example in one case in which he cautioned that “this is what is chatted about in Rome, but actually no certain news is yet known,” or in another case in which he wrote: “this is chatter from the banchi.”59 At a second level, Graziosi provided personal judgments based on direct observation of a certain situation or event. As eyewitness, he reported what he had noticed, smelled, overheard in corridors, or read between the lines of a speech. For this deeper level of understanding, the physical presence of Graziosi in Rome and his frequent attendance of the Papal court and of the palaces of influential cardinals were essential. An avviso bearing the date 16 January 1588 reports fresh news brought by two cavalieri that Calvinists were “at mal partito” (in dire straights) and in particular that the Duke of Guise had cut to pieces 800 Raitri (knights) at a pass on the border with Savoy. Graziosi commented as follows: I could not meet either yesterday or today the Cardinal of Sans, but I have heard from different personalities what he says about the rout of the Raitri. I have spoken about this today in the afternoon with the Spanish Ambassador, who told me that this is not true, whereas what I have already written in his letter of avviso is very true.60

In another case, while speaking about a decision of the Pope, Graziosi adds on a separate sheet: “The Cardinal della Rovere did not say anything about it, but I have observed in His Holiness an attitude that seems to me extremely cautious, on the one hand, and too affectionate, on the other.”61 On a third level, Graziosi did not refrain from making ironic or crude comments or adding personal complaints on everyday topics. If the first typology of targeted commentary aimed at providing a complete written account, the second and third added to the written word all the other senses: 59 BAV, Urb. Lat. 1056, fol. 58v: “Cosi si ciarla per Roma, ma veramente non se ne sa ancora cosa certa;” or fol. 59r: “Dell’arciduca Carlo vuol dir lui: ciarle de’ banchi.” 60 BAV, Urb. Lat. 1056, fol. 23r: “Non havendo io havuta comodità di veder hieri ne’ hoggi il Cardinale di Sans, ma’ havendo inteso da diversi per certissimo quello che costui dice della Rotta dei Raitri, n’ho parlato hoggi al tardi col Sig.re Ambasciatore Cattolico il quale m’ha detto che non è vero, et di quanto ho già scritto nella lettera di avviso suo è verissimo.” 61 Ibid: “Il Cardinale della Rovere non me ne ha detto niente; io però ho osservato in Sua Santità Ill.ma un termine che mi pare prudentissimo, da una parte, come dall’altro troppo amorevole.”

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sight, smell, and finally the voice of Graziosi, which can almost be heard when commenting on the sad death of a child, provoked by a disease similar to rabies, or the news that the city of Rome had decided to “pave the streets and remove the old paving because of the humidity,” complaining “they meet and meet again, and every day we live worse in this swamp.”62

Moving texts and the reliability of the news Beside the specific case of Graziosi, who was able to use the paragraph in a sophisticated way, dividing a newsletter into clearly recognizable paragraphs allowed at the same time the use and re-use of the same piece of news in different geographical contexts and in different media. It also allowed a newswriter to choose to omit a paragraph (or not have it copied) in two otherwise identical newsletters addressed to different subscribers. This all resulted in a proliferation of similar but not identical pieces of news across Europe.63 In each collection it is also possible to find multiple copies of the same newsletter diverging by only a single sentence or paragraph.64 In Florence, Ferrara, and elsewhere, as in the Fugger house in Augsburg, the recipients of these slightly different versions of the same news developed techniques of everyday philology to discover the truth by comparing various printed and handwritten texts.65 Of course, the question remains open as for the reasons underpinning the presence or absence of a paragraph in a newsletter. Historians can, for example, make hypotheses about the reasons for omitting a ‘sensitive’ sentence reporting political or confessional news, such as that of uprisings in Vienna protesting the “inquisition of forbidden books,” lost in the transfer from the bi-confessional city of Augsburg to Catholic Florence. It is, however, harder to provide an explanation for apparently more neutral paragraphs, such as those announcing the departure of an ambassador or the journey of a king. It may have been a matter of space, 62 BAV, Urb. Lat. 1056, fol. 58r; 65r: “Congregano, Congregano et ogni dí stiamo peggio in questo Pantano.” 63 On the brevity of facts, the epistemological implication of brevity, and the possibility to combine and re-combine excerpts of texts “strictly independent of this or that explanatory framework”, see Daston, Why Are Facts Short? 64 For the Florence case, see Barker, “‘Secret and Uncertain’,” 730. For another case, see Molino, “Beyond the Language Divide,” 125–27. 65 ÖNB Cod. 8951, fol. 175r–v, Zeitungen from Antwerp and Cologne 10.08.1578 and 14.08.1578 have a similar content using different words to those with the same date in fols 180r–81r. The same applies to the Zeitungen from Prague in Cod. 8952, fol. 226r–v, Zeitung of the 17.06.1579 and that of 05.06.1579 at fols 218r–v and 222r.

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cost, or perhaps contradiction of the news by other avvisi. What is certain is that one consequence of copying, recycling, and selecting in haste was in some cases a loss of the original meaning, and in other cases the transmission of an opinion that was not directly expressed by the newswriter who was forwarding the news but that of somebody else.66 The question of the technological mobility of handwritten news in contrast to the immobility of the newswriter is a further issue to be considered when reflecting upon the reliability of the news. Newswriters wrote with diligence about places they had never seen, misspelled the names of people they did not know who lived in corners of Europe they likely could not locate on a map. In some circumstances, the newswriters travelled with armies or diplomatic missions, but it was more common that news written on the go was later inserted as paragraphs in newsletters compiled in major centres. In most cases, the capacity of a newswriter relied on tailoring the best product as a result of a thick, reliable, and inf luential network made up of authoritative sources from different social strata and different locations. This system did not require the physical presence of all the informants, was rapid, and could be adapted to personal taste. In order to perform this complex role, the newswriter had to report exactly the steps in the process through which a piece of news reached his eyes, ears, and pen, mentioning when possible the social actors who provided conf irmation, the existence of other written documents reporting the event, and the degree of notoriety of a piece of news. Such was the case of this Venetian avviso, in which a variety of media and senses are mobilized, all the various steps are described, but most probably due to a slip in copying one line, the writer omitted the actual news item: On Tuesday night, at about eight, arrived here an extraordinary courier from Rome, sent from there on Sunday 28 of the past month, at two at night, from Mons. Vincenzo Bucio, the steward of the Castellan, nephew of His Holiness, with a letter in which he briefly gave to the Serenissimo Principe [the Doge] this aviso: that at that point there had arrived two couriers from the army and they carried news that the Ottoman army 66 Compare, for instance, ÖNB Cod. 8951, fols 395r–396r: “Martedí di poi fu signatura dove si trattò della causa già scritta de i’ Colonnesi, et il papa l’istesso giorno se ne andò alla Magliana e stasera è ritornato,” with ASF, MdP, 3082, fols 547r–548r: “Martedì Sua Santità tenne signatura nella quale fu trattata la causa delli Signori Colonesi già scritta, et dopo pranzo se n’andò alla Magliana con animo di ritornare per andare a Civitavecchia.” Rather than sharing the same author, these two newsletters most probably share a common source.

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[here, the news item is missing] and since he was so fond of the Doge he wanted him to have this avviso, postponing however all particulars until he could read the reports of the ambassadors. Once this news arrived, Monsignor legate communicated it to all the ambassadors, and it was spread throughout the city and people moved with great noise, running through the streets towards the squares and the Palace in order to hear this avviso, and they ran towards water’s edge in the hope that a galley would arrive with the confirmation, and it was impossible to hear anything else but the noise of people and the sound of bells through the entire quarter.67

The omission suggests that this lively account is most probably not particularly authentic and that the scribe was not actually present in Venice to hear cries and bells but was simply copying from a further written source. Even if this was the case, the authority and origins of the news (Rome, Monsignor Vincenzo Bucio) did not change. This happened also in the instance of unconfirmed or odd news. One report referring to a voice from a cave in the Marche threatening war against the Italian states was followed immediately by a second report of an alleged goblin who apparently followed Isabella de’ Medici, “visible only to her.”68 Clearly, the point here is not whether a voice can actually call for war from a cave or a goblin actually exist but the fact that such news, in the second case involving the most glamourous couple in late sixteenth-century Italy, Isabella de’ Medici and Paolo Giordano Orsini, circulated at all. In the latter case, the diligent newswriter dutifully reported that the story of the goblin had been confirmed by the Archbishop of Florence and other sources. The delicate relationship between the immediacy and truthfulness of news, so important for us today, seems to have been equally crucial in the context of the late Renaissance information landscape 69 and was facilitated by the handwritten form. A few days after news of the famous 67 ÖNB, Cod, 8949, fol. 358r (Venice, 03.10.1572). 68 ÖNB, Cod. 8949, fol. 128r (Rome, 01.02.1570): “Si intende della Marca che in una terra detta St. Nataglia vicina a Camerino si sente sotto terra di caverna una voce spaventosa che minaccia guerra in Italia et in particulare a danni di Roma, Fiorenza e Bologna di questo ci sono lettere del vescovo e de governatori, se bene per ancora non sia penetrato l’origine di questo strano accidente; et che la S.ra Donna Isabella dé Medici moglie del Signore Paulo Giordano è seguitata da un spirito folletto a lei sola visibile ma non palpabile che gli si dimostra in diverse maniere tra le altre in forma de huomo vechio e alla volte ancora viene da giovane e gli dice ch’é stato mandato ma che non puo dire da chi per custodia sua et questo anco viene confirmato qui dal Arcivescovo di Fiorenza et da altri personaggi ne se ne sa altro.” 69 See on this Shapiro, Culture of Fact, pp. 86 and ff.

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battle of Lepanto reached Venice, Philipp Eduard Fugger’s newswriter asked for indulgence for not sending all the details immediately because many different versions of the event were circulating (“si parla variamente”) and the printed accounts were incorrect and differed one from the other.70 In the next avviso from Venice, dated 2 November, he clearly reports the ways in which the news from the battle was ‘brought’ from reliable eye witnesses in different Italian cities: “On Saturday there arrived here the galea of Giovanni Battista Contarini […] which had unloaded three ambassadors in Otranto sent by Don Juan of Austria, one directed to Rome, one to Spain and the other here to recount all the particulars of the battle.”71 Sheila Barker reports a similar circumstance for the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, in which unconfirmed news was printed in order to grant it more credibility and drive the audience towards one version of the many truths that were circulated by alleged eye-witnesses.72 These examples show that, as in the field of natural history, veracity depended not only on actual eye-witnesses but also on the authority and competence of the compiler and on a process of translating observations in a structured written form.73 As Joad Raymond has noted, several different versions of the same news and events made up of eye-witness accounts, reports, letters, and pamphlets contributed to the formation of a new conception of impartiality as the result of comparison.74 Reaching a ‘complete’ fact in several stages and alluding to different materials to be attached in subsequent newsletters – or possible updates – also had economic implications, as it kept readers curious about the next episodes, a feature then taken from handwritten to printed newspapers.75

70 ÖNB, Cod. 8949, fol. 273v (Venice, 26.10.1571): “S’aspetta d’intendere li particolari della battaglia seguita perche si parla variamente et le stampe, che si sono date fuori non sono molto giuste, e difettive l’una de l’altra.” On the battle of Lepanto as a ‘media event’ see BarbaricsHermanik and Pieper, “Handwritten Newsletters as a Means of Communication,” 65–78. 71 Ibid, fol. 276v (Venice, 02.11.1571): “Sabbato giunse qua la galea del mag.co Giovanni Battista Contarini …, il quale havea sbarcato 3 Ambasciatori ad Otranto mandati dal S.or Gio. d’Austria uno a Roma, uno in Spagna, et l’altro qua per dare conto particolare d’ogni successo della battaglia.” 72 Barker, “‘Secret and Uncertain’,” 733. 73 On the development of the “epistemic eye-witness” in pre-modern travel writing, see Frisch, Invention of the Eyewitness. See also Shapiro, Culture of Fact, p. 89. 74 Raymond, “Exporting Impartiality,” 162–63. 75 For a contextual understanding of the concept of “complete knowledge,” see Brendecke, Empirical Empire, 151 and ff.

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Conclusion Filippo de Vivo has recently written that “before telegraphy and the steam press, the specificity of information was its mixed nature, at once located and in movement.”76 I have tried to show in these pages that thinking about handwritten newsletters, taking into consideration suggestions coming from the mobilities turn, means focusing on the material, social, and linguistic implications of this tension between location and movement. In doing this, I propose to leave behind the idea that the trans-regionality of news was a condition that emerged in the early modern era as a result only of institutional and material infrastructures, in favour of the idea that news, as it was materialized in handwritten newsletters, was the local manifestation of a trans-regional hunger for news. Postal, political, and knowledge networks were all active and even interwoven into this system, but news found its way outside, beyond, and around these networks. Ordered in tidy manuscript sheets and sometimes printed, news also sought other means to circulate outside the page. Handwritten newsletters, analyzed in the material and intellectual context of their creation and in relation to other written and oral media, reveal all the messy permutations of a connected European information system at a global level. This challenges the idea of an exceptional European path in the production and spread of news, especially related to the alleged technological predominance of the printing press.

Works cited Ancel, René. “Étude critique sur quelques recueils d’Avvisi: contribution à l’histoire du journalisme en Italie.” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 38 (1908): 125–39. Barbarics-Hermanik, Zsuzsa. “The Coexistence of Manuscript and Print: Handwritten Newsletters in the Second Century of Print: 1540–1640.” In The Book Triumphant. Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Malcolm Walsby and Graeme Kemp, 347–68. Leiden: Brill, 2011. ———. “Handwritten Newsletters as Interregional Information Sources in Central and Southeastern Europe.” In The Dissemination of News and the Emergence of Contemporaneity in Early Modern Europe, edited by Brendan Dooley, 220–54. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Barbarics-Hermanik, Zsuzsa, and Renate Pieper. “Handwritten Newsletters as a Means of Communication in Early Modern Europe.” In Cultural Exchange in 76 De Vivo, “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information,” 210.

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Early Modern Europe. Vol. 3: Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Florike Egmond, 53–79. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Barker, Sara. “Time in English Translations of Continental News.” In News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, 328–49. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Barker, Sheila. “‘Secret and Uncertain’: A History of Avvisi at the Court of the Medici Grand Dukes.” In News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, 716–38. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Behringer, Wolfgang. Im Zeichen des Merkur. Reichspost und Kommunikationsrevolution in der frühen Neuzeit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003. Bezold, Friedrich von. “Wolfgang Zündelin als protestantischer Zeitungsschreiber und Diplomat in Italien, 1573–1590.” Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen und historischen Classe der k. b. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München 2 (1882): 139–74. Böning, Holger. “‘Gewiss ist es/ dass alle gedruckten Zeitungen erst geschrieben seyn müssen.’ Handgeschriebene und gedruckte Zeitung im Spannungsfeld von Abhängigkeit, Koexistenz und Konkurrenz.” Daphnis 37 (2008): 203–42. Bongi, Salvatore. “Le prime gazzette in Italia.” Nuova antologia di scienze, lettere ed arti 11, no. 6 (1869): 311–46. Brendecke, Arndt. The Empirical Empire: Spanish Colonial Rule and the Politics of Knowledge. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Burke, Peter. “Cultures of Translation in Early Modern Europe.” In Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe, edited by Peter Burke and Ronnie Po-chia Hsia, 7–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Colavizza, Giovanni, Mario Infelise, and Frederic Kaplan. “Mapping the Early Modern News Flow: An Enquiry by Robust Text Reuse Detection.” Social Informatics 8852 (2014): 244–53. Daston, Lorraine. “Why Are Facts Short?” In Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Preprint 174: A History of Facts, 5–21. Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2001. De Vivo, Filippo. Information and Communication in Venice. Rethinking Early Modern Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. ———. “Microhistories of Long-Distance Information: Space, Movement and Agency in the Early Modern News.” Past & Present 242, Supplement 14 (2019): 179–214. Fedele, Clemente. “The Postal Geography of Ottavio Codogno.” In Europa Postale. L’opera di Ottavio Codogno luogotenente dei Tasso nella Milano seicentesca, edited by Clemente Fedele, Marco Gerosa, Armando Serra, 66–92. Camerata Cornello: Museo dei Tasso e della Storia Postale, 2014.

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Frisch, Andrea. The Invention of the Eyewitness: Witnessing and Testimony in Early Modern France. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Grafton, Anthony. Inky Fingers: the Making of Books in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Infelise, Mario. “Communication and Information in Early Modern Europe. From National Historiographies to a European Model.” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 45, no. 2 (2019): 41–61. ———. Gazzetta. Storia di una parola. Venice: Marsilio, 2017. ———. “From Merchant’s Letters to Handwritten Political Avvisi: Notes on the Origins of Public Information.” In Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe. Vol. 3: Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400–1700, edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Florike Egmond, 33–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ———. Prima dei giornali. Alle origini della pubblica informazione. Rome: Laterza, 2002. Keller, Katrin. “Die Fuggerzeitungen als geschriebene Zeitungen.” In Katrin Keller and Paola Molino, Die Fuggerzeitungen im Kontext. Zeitungssammlungen im Alten Reich und in Italien, 11–48. Vienna: Böhlau, 2015. Keller, Katrin, and Paola Molino. Die Fuggerzeitungen im Kontext. Zeitungssammlungen im Alten Reich und in Italien. Vienna: Böhlau, 2015. Kohlndorfer-Fries, Ruth. “Wolfgang Zündelin und die ‘konfessionelle’ Nachrichtenpolitik in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts.” In Internationale Beziehungen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ansätze und Perspektiven, edited by Heidrun Kugeler, Christian Sepp, and Georg Wolf, 102–19. Münster: LIT, 2006. Matthews, George Tennyson. News and Rumor in Rennaissance Europe. The Fugger Newsletters. New York: Capricorn, 1959. McDermott, Joseph P., and Peter Burke. “Introduction.” In The Book Worlds of East Asia and Europe. Connections and Comparisons, edited by Joseph P. McDermott and Peter Burke 1–65. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. Merriman, Peter, and Lynne Pearce. “Mobility and the Humanities.” Mobilities 12, no. 4 (2017): 493–508. Molino, Paola. “Connected News: German Zeitungen and Italian Avvisi in the Fugger collection (1568–1604).” Media History 22, no. 3–4 (2016): 267–96. ———. “Beyond the Language Divide. The Endless Chain of the News between Italian ‘Avvisi’ and German ‘Zeitungen’.” Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 45, no. 2 (2019): 107–28. Pettegree, Andrew. The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014. Randall, David. Credibility in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Military News. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008.

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Raymond, Joad. “Exporting Impartiality.” In The Emergence of Impartiality: Towards a Prehistory of Objectivity, edited by Anita Traninger and Kathryn Murphy, 141–67. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Raymond, Joad, and Noah Moxham. “News Networks in Early Modern Europe.” In News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, 1–16. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Rospocher, Massimo. Il papa guerriero. Giulio II nello spazio pubblico europeo. Bologna: Mulino, 2015. ———. “What is the History of Communication? An Early Modernist Perspective.” Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte 20 (2018): 9–15. Salzberg, Rosa. Ephemeral City: Cheap Print and Urban Culture in Renaissance Venice. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014. Saur, Abraham. Nomenclatura Rerum. Frankfurt am Main: Leonhard Bürck and Wolfgang Richter, 1615. Schobesberger, Nikolaus. “Räume und Einzugsgebiete der Wiener Fuggerzeitungen. Die Geographie eines frühneuzeitlichen Nachrichtenmediums.” Frühneuzeit-Info 24 (2013): 68–80. ——— et al. “European Postal Networks.” In News Networks in Early Modern Europe, edited by Joad Raymond and Noah Moxham, 19–63. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Shapiro, Barbara J. A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. Simmel, Georg. On Culture, edited by David Patrick Frisby and Mike Featherstone. London: Sage, 1997. Slauter, Will. “Le paragraphe mobile. Circulation et transformation des informations dans le monde atlantique du XVIIIe siècle.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 67, no. 2 (2012): 363–89. Zwierlein, Cornel. Discorso und Lex Dei. Die Entstehung neuer Denkrahmen im 16. Jahrhundert und die Wahrnehmung der französischen Religionskriege in Italien und Deutschland. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2006.

About the author Paola Molino is associate professor of early modern history at the University of Padua. Her research focuses on the history of knowledge in early modern Central Europe, with a special interest in libraries, catalogues, and bibliographies. The English translation of her forthcoming book L’Impero di carta. Vienna, una biblioteca un bibliotecario (Rome, 2017) will be published by Brill.

6. Quarantine, Mobility, and Trade: Commercial Lazzarettos in the Early Modern Adriatic Darka Bilić*

Abstract In the context of maritime transport, defensive measures of preventive isolation and disinfection of goods were fully developed in Venice only in the mid-sixteenth century. The institution of the lazzaretto, established a century earlier as a plague hospital, gained new, commercial functions developed further in the lazzaretti in Venice’s overseas border territories in Dalmatia and the Ionian islands. The chapter focuses on the evolution of the lazaretto from its original purpose as a plague hospital into a complex architectural site for managing the movement of people and goods between Ottoman territories and Western Europe. Keywords: disease; early modern Adriatic; Venice; Dalmatia; plague hospitals; borders

During his twelve-year pilgrimage, Simēon, an Armenian pilgrim from the town of Zamość in Poland, visited prominent holy sites in Istanbul, Jerusalem, and the Surb Karapet Monastery in Anatolia before deciding to call on the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome.1 Thus, in 1611, after crossing the Ottoman-Venetian border on the eastern side of the * The present work is the result of research conducted at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, as a Berenson Fellow in 2018. The work is part of the project PU-IPU-2019–3 “The architectural heritage of Adriatic Croatia in the early modern period through written historical sources” at the Institute of Art History, Croatia. 1 Bournoutian, Travel Accounts, 68–75; Bracewell, Orientations, 25–26. I thank Alexandr Osipian for this reference.

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch06

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Adriatic on his way from Istanbul to Rome and finally arriving, after years of travel, in Christian lands, Simēon found himself suddenly incarcerated in the lazzaretto of Split. As a passenger who had joined a caravan of merchants with horses and mules loaded with goods, Simēon travelled from Istanbul along the great highway of the Ottoman Balkans to Edirne (Turkey) and then to Plovdiv (Philippopolis, Bulgaria). From Plovdiv, after seven days’ travel along mountainous roads, the caravan arrived in Skopje (Northern Macedonia). After another six days of strenuous journey along the difficult path, the pilgrim arrived in Novi Pazar (Serbia) and then in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). From there, Simēon and the caravan reached the fortress of Klis (Croatia), situated on the mountain pass overlooking the Venetian town of Split (Spalato) on the Adriatic coast. The caravan that arrived at the Ottoman-Venetian border was composed of five or six hundred men. As Simēon recounts, Venetian soldiers arrived to accompany the caravan to Split. There, on the Ottoman-Venetian border, began Simēon’s extraordinary experience – his first encounter with the practice of quarantine. The soldiers whom he expected would greet him and provide safety, instead deprived him of his freedom and took the whole caravan directly (avoiding the town centre) to the lazzaretto, where Simēon was locked in a cell without any explanation. Simēon’s traumatic experience during the next month could have been avoided if his travelling companions had warned him about the quarantine in Split. It is likely that his lack of knowledge of the local language and his tendency to keep the company of other Armenians during the journey deprived Simēon of awareness of the Split quarantine requirements that had been in place for almost 20 years. Soon after being confined, Simēon learned that the practice of quarantine was applied to all travellers without exception, and that he and his companions had no hope of avoiding it. The imposition of quarantine did not depend on their behaviour – which Simēon seemed to believe initially because for him the events of his arrival were comparable to being imprisoned. Nonetheless, according to the testimonies of numerous merchants arriving in the lazzaretto: “Even if the Sultan of Turkey came they would have to put him in quarantine.”2 During the quarantine period in Split, Simēon and his companions were required to pay for all food procured for them. This differed from their experience of travelling across Ottoman Rumelia. According to Simēon, 2 Bournoutian, Travel Accounts, 73.

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along the main road in Edirne there was an abundance of different types of accommodation: inns, rooms, baths, guest houses, and hospices in which copious meals were served twice a day free of charge. The travellers were also free to visit the baths and flower gardens and walk the streets of the capital of Ottoman Rumelia. But, apart from the amount and quality of amenities and comfort, the main difference between Simēon’s journey along the roads in Rumelia and in Venetian territory was the loss of personal liberty and the overwhelming powerlessness he experienced when quarantine was imposed. Simēon spent the next 40 days in a cell with other travel companions. Once a week, the lazzaretto personnel came in to assess their state of health and to air their robes and other textiles. According to Simēon, during that time the whole company grew low-spirited, each withdrew into himself, and they stopped talking to one another. After the initial consternation and attempts to remedy the unfortunate situation in which they found themselves, they became pensive and depressed. In this state of mind, Simēon composed a poem describing quarantine as a calamity. O Lord, save us from here from this quarantine in a foreign land, …. This quarantine is a prison a trap for innocent people, Without a writ or God’s command but through a law, created by fools. This quarantine, like an envious beast has no bread or water, There is only a dumb guardian there are large mosquitoes and fleas. This quarantine resembles Hades it melts the bones of mankind.3

After 40 days in the lazzaretto, the sight of splendid churches, bell towers, and golden crosses in the town of Split lifted their spirits, revived their bodies and souls, and filled Simēon and his companions with joy so that they almost forgot about their arduous trip and harrowing quarantine. However, it should be noted that the impression that quarantine left on Simēon was much more profound than that made afterwards by the Catholic symbols, sacred objects, and works of art, judging by the significantly shorter part of

3 Ibid., 73–74.

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the travelogue dedicated to a description of the wonders of the Split than the space he devotes to his quarantine. Confinement in the lazzaretto in Split was for many Ottoman merchants and travellers from the East, just as it was for the Simēon, their first experience of quarantine, practised at that time only in the Christian part of the Mediterranean. 4 It was here, on the shores of the eastern Adriatic, even before the appearance of the Ottomans on the eastern horizon, that the practice appeared and developed. In what follows, I explore the mechanisms of quarantine practice in the context of trade and mobility. Analyzing the construction of selected buildings intended for quarantine and disinfection, I illustrate how the institution of the lazzaretto, originally intended for the isolation and treatment of infected members of the local population, was adapted over time to commercial functions. I do this by tracing the progress from those buildings established and built as local plague hospitals and subsequently adapted for quarantine to those explicitly conceived and built to improve trade conditions. I begin by considering their direct precursors, the first fourteenth-century quarantine stations in the territory of the Republic of Dubrovnik, rather than the lazzaretto prototypes established in fifteenthcentury Northern Italy which served as plague hospitals. Given their distinct commercial specialization, both in form and function, the examples of lazzarettos presented here cannot be characterized as plague hospitals and instead are referred to as commercial lazzarettos. Examining the foundation process of quarantine and disinfection facilities in Split and the Ionian Islands brings to light the crucial role this frontier region played in the establishment of a cordon sanitaire in the Adriatic, a system comprised of quarantine stations in border territories meant to defend Venice and its territory against the spread of contagion.

The first quarantine stations in the Adriatic During one of the subsequent outbreaks of plague that followed the Black Death, the Great Council of the Republic of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) approved on 27 May 1377 a decision stating that natives and foreigners arriving from epidemic-struck regions would not be granted access to the city or its surroundings without having spent a month on the island of Mrkan or in the 4 Panzac, La peste; White, “Rethinking Disease,” 549–67; Bulmus, Plague, Quarantines, 97–125; Varlik, Plague and Empire.

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town of Cavtat in order to undergo a process of purification (ad purgandum) in an appropriate structure.5 Locations designated for preventive isolation were as far away as possible from the city, on the borders of the Republic. Quarantine was applied in the same way to maritime and road traffic. Ships and their crew were sent to quarantine on the islands of Mrkan, Bobara, and Supetar, where in 1429 the Council decided to build stone quarters instead of huts or the converted buildings used until then for that purpose. Land merchants quarantined in the town of Cavtat. Although it is impossible to reconstruct the exact appearance of these structures, they can be considered forerunners of the commercial lazzaretto. Twenty years later, in 1397, the Great Council, with a series of new decrees, further regulated the implementation of quarantine.6 The regulations determined that all people coming from areas where plague was suspected were to be placed in isolation and under medical observation on the islands. Boats’ cargo could be unloaded only after being carefully examined. Grains and intact textiles could be immediately imported, but clothes already worn had to accompany their owner in quarantine and thoroughly cleaned by being exposed to the sun and fresh air. The quarantine lasted around 30 days. The Benedictine monastery of St. Mary on the island of Mljet was designated as the main location for the preventive isolation of those coming to Dubrovnik by sea. The monastery was chosen for this purpose due to its remote location and the lack of any larger settlement in the vicinity. Its choice likely stems from the desire of the people of Dubrovnik to improve quarantine conditions. The solid construction of the monastery was selfsufficient, with enough interior space for the separate quarantine of different groups of travellers, with a church attached. The position of the monastery on the small island contributed to the effective isolation of travellers and provided access to sea water to facilitate the process of purification. There was also ample outside space for the airing and disinfecting of merchandise and two nearby ports suitable for anchoring ships. The conversion of existing monastery buildings, conveniently situated outside city walls, into plague hospitals for the local population would become common practice at the beginning of the fifteenth century in Venice and in the cities of its terra ferma.7 Later, other locations closer to the city of Dubrovnik were used for 5 Grmek, Le concept d’infection, 44–46, 49–50, 51–54; Blažina-Tomić and Blažina, Expelling the Plague, 106–7; Blažina-Tomić, Kacamorti i kuga, 81–82; Ravančić, Dubrovnik’s Invention, 83–86. 6 Blažina-Tomić, Kacamorti i kuga, 88–89, 93; Grmek, Le concept d’infection, 52–53; Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 33; Blažina-Tomić and Blažina, Expelling the Plague, 113. 7 Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 187–88; Crawshaw, Plague Hospitals, 19–22.

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quarantine. More than one quarantine location is sometimes mentioned in the sources, likely indicating that locals and travellers arriving by land or sea quarantined at different locations.

Ra’d, an Arab merchant from Aleppo in the Lazzaretto Nuovo in Venice The idea of isolation and quarantine to prevent the import of the plague made its way very slowly from Dubrovnik to other cities. The first decision of the Venetian authorities to keep the plague outside its territory was adopted in May 1400 and concerned a ship arriving from Dubrovnik. Venice decided to deny entry to the ship, full of refugees from the plague-infested city, although the Senate decision was more a retaliation against Dubrovnik, which had previously banned access to Venetian ships.8 Other similar decisions were slow to be implemented systematically. A Venetian regulation approved in 1423 mentions keeping contagious people and goods outside the city or state territory in order to prevent the spread of contagion, but it does not explicitly refer to quarantine or methods of implementation.9 In the fifteenth century, Venice attempted to oblige infected ships to stop in Istria and to undergo quarantine and disinfection there.10 From 1540, permanent guards in boats were placed at the main entrances to the Venetian lagoon as the first line of defence of the city from travellers and ships arriving by sea.11 In late 1654, the guards intercepted at the entrance to the lagoon the ship on which Ra’d, an Arab merchant from Aleppo was travelling.12 Ra’d and his companion Abd al-Masīḥ had left Aleppo in August of that year and boarded the ship in Tripoli; after two months, toward the end of November, they arrived at the entrance to the Venetian lagoon. Ra’d, still fascinated by his experience as he recorded his memories probably in 1672, 16 years after his trip, recounted in vivid detail the scene at the entrance to the lagoon.13 There, the captain of his ship approached the Venetian guards and handed over their travel documents from a distance, avoiding any close contact. The bundle of documents probably consisted of a statement written by the Venetian consul in Tripoli who issued a health pass to the captain of the 8 Grmek, Le concept d’infection, 54; Palmer, “The Control of Plague,” 36, 51. 9 Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 28, 29, 34–36, 52–53, 326. 10 Ibid., 52, 136. 11 Ibid., 135; Bondioli, “Invention,” 91. 12 Pedani and Issa, “Il viaggio,” 375–400; Kallas, Travel Account. 13 Pedani and Issa, “Il viaggio,” 377.

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ship and any traveller heading to Venice, and other statements from the authorities of the ports the ship visited en route to Venice. These documents, called bollettini or fedi di sanità, were first introduced in the fifteenth century in Milan to identify the provenance of the traveller and the route taken.14 They also contained information on whether the traveller was coming from a plague-free territory or not. They soon became indispensable for travelling in many parts of the Mediterranean, while in Venice they were essential for movement even between the lagoon islands. After close inspection of the health bill – handled with tweezers and dipped in vinegar to be disinfected – and of the crew and goods, another guardian was assigned to the merchants. The group of thirteen Ottoman and Western European merchants were then escorted with the guardian to the lazzaretto for a period of 40 days.15 Other passengers aboard the ship with its crew were also put under guard, preventing them from disembarking in the city for the next 40 days. Their merchandise was then taken to the lazzaretto and there exposed to the sun and air for even longer – 60 days – to expunge any trace of contagion. These procedures for ships arriving in Venice were likely put in place during the first half of the sixteenth century. A series of new regulations approved at the beginning of the sixteenth century changed the way travellers and their goods arriving by ship in Venice were handled. Healthy travellers arriving from territories suspected of contagion were required to disembark and quarantine in the Lazzaretto Nuovo. As in Ra’d’s case, travellers and merchants arriving on the same ship were assigned a guardian who accompanied them through the process of quarantine and remained with them for the whole period of isolation, eating and drinking with them. The guardian received his pay from those he took care of in the lazzaretto.16 The Lazzaretto Nuovo in which Ra’d experienced quarantine was built in 1468 on a remote island at the start of the Sant’Erasmo canal, as a supplementary structure to the original Lazzaretto Vecchio, a plague hospital for infected citizens of Venice and neighbouring islands and sick passengers arriving in Venice by ship.17 The original structure of the Lazzaretto Nuovo consisted of a row of numerous attached identical dwellings distributed evenly around a spacious rectangular courtyard intended to accommodate a 14 Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 137–38. 15 Pedani and Issa, “Il viaggio,” 394. 16 Morachiello, “Lazzaretti e contumacie,” 826–27; Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 198; Vanzan Marchini, “Il controllo della laguna,” 208–9. 17 Vanzan Marchini, “ll lazzaretto novo,” 26.

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large number of people.18 A drawing by Domenico Gallo from 1552 illustrates the Church of San Bartolomeo with a bell tower in the south-eastern corner of the lazzaretto and the high walls of the cemetery attached to the outside of the perimeter. Nearby, on the south side of the island, there was a docking station and canal that provided access to seawater, probably for sanitary purposes. Originally founded and built for the 40-day recovery of those who had survived contagion by the plague in the Lazzaretto Vecchio, as its founding document states,19 the Lazzaretto Nuovo was over time assigned additional functions. These included quarantine of local inhabitants of Venice suspected of illness and quarantine of merchants and travellers arriving by ship from territories affected by plague.20 From around 1520, goods from ships started to arrive regularly in the lazzaretto for disinfection. The governor of the lazzaretto, Prior Christoforo di Bortolo, described the Lazzaretto Nuovo in 1541 as resembling a customs house. Even goods arriving by land from Milan and Lombardy were sent there to be disinfected.21 Determination to control the circulation of people and goods arriving on ships from distant territories in order to prevent the spread of contagion led to the progressive enlargement of the complex.22 From the mid-sixteenth century onward, existing buildings were reconstructed and enlarged and new structures built in order to augment capacity for the disinfection of goods. In the ample courtyard, where grapevines were cultivated until recently, numerous sheds (tezoni) were erected for disinfection purposes.23 18 Caniato, “Mercanti e guardiani,” 38; idem, “Il Lazzaretto Nuovo,” 344, 351; Morachiello, “Lazzaretti e contumacie,” 824; Bondioli, “Invention,” 95. 19 Vanzan Marchini, “Venezia e l’invenzione,” 27; Caniato, “Documenti,” 349; Mazzucco, “Una grangia,” 22; Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 355: “MCCCCLXVIII. Die XVIII Julii Jn Rogatis. Locus Nazaret prout omnibus notum est, singulari remedio et benefitio fuit et est ad preservandam hanc civitatem a pestiIentia. Sed huiusmodi remedium et benef itium, non potest perfecte proficere propterea quod iIIi, qui discendunt sanati a Nazaret, quam primum huc redeunt, et inficiunt ac corrumpunt eos cum quibus versantur. Cui rei necessario providendum est. Vadit pars, quod provisores nostri saIis, auctoritate huius consilii edificare faciant supra Vinea murata unum Iocum quemadmodum eis convenire videbitur, et expensa que fiet in edificando dicto loco fieri debeat de pecuniis pensionum apotecarurn et riparandum nostri dominii. Et quoniam dicta Vinea murata est fratrum sancti Georgii maioris. Captum sit quod suprascriptos provisores nostros dari debeant dicti fratribus ducati cinquanta singulo anno de IiveIIo… prout sit loco Nazaret.” 20 Caniato, “Il Lazzaretto Nuovo,” 344; Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 189–90; Vanzan Marchini, “Venezia,” 200. 21 Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 198–99. 22 Morachiello, “Lazzaretti e contumacie,” 824; Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 198–99. 23 Caniato, “Il Lazzaretto Nuovo,” 344; idem, “Documenti,” 352.

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Four different areas of the complex – neatly distinguished by barriers before 1503 as different quarantine units separating those suspected of having the plague from those who were actually sick and convalescents from the personnel of the lazzaretto and the service areas – were now filled with additional buildings.24 A cemetery for Muslims was also erected. The goods disinfected in the lazzaretto were primarily textiles and their raw materials: wool, fleeces, cotton, silks, and carpets, together with rope, feathers, camel hair, leather goods, and other materials. They were unpacked, left in the open air, and rotated continuously, shifted from one place to another.25 Warehouses with unenclosed sides and a roof supported by columns were used for this purpose. Ra’d recounts how, upon arrival in the Lazzaretto Nuovo, their guardian instructed them to open all their packed belongings and expose them to the sun.26 They had to even strip off their robes and shirt and leave them to air together with the turban which they had to unfold to expose its fabric to the sun. The guardian also insisted on opening and airing a crate they had with them, noting there was a foul smell inside. Ra’d also recounts how rigorous the measures of physical distancing were in the lazzaretto. During the Sunday service that his group of merchants attended in the Church of San Bartolomeo, each quarantined group was positioned in a different corner of the church at some distance from the other groups and from the priest, with a container for the offertory collection being pushed along the floor to one group and then another. Ra’d also recalls that in those initial days in the lazzaretto, the prior visited them and checked their health and physical condition, even stripping one very lean member of their company to assure himself of his good health. Unlike Simēon, the Armenian pilgrim who stayed in the Split lazzaretto in 1611, Ra’d does not appear to have been surprised by the practice of quarantine. He was likely aware of what to expect in advance, but the fact that he described in close detail the practices and methods of quarantine indicates that he was fascinated by the process. It does not appear, however, that he was convinced of the efficacy of Venetian procedures. Nonetheless, it was here, in Lazzaretto Nuovo, that the symbiosis between the institution of the lazzaretto and the practice of quarantine and disinfection in service of trade began – a development that was crucial for the longevity of the institution even in times when epidemics became a 24 Morachiello, “Howard e i lazzaretti,” 158; Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 190. 25 Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 190, 200–201. 26 Pedani and Issa, “Il viaggio,” 394.

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rare occurrence. The addition of new functions meant that the form of the original Lazaretto Nuovo was changed gradually, implemented in a series of different interventions over time. As a consequence, without an established architectural prototype, subsequent commercial lazzaretto structures in the Venetian overseas territories followed various designs. During outbreaks of contagion, the Lazzaretto Nuovo continued to serve as a plague hospital and quarantine for locals. In between those times, the lazzaretto remained a crucial stop for the control of passengers and goods coming to Venice from overseas territories for more than 200 years. In 1574, Zorzi Nassin, Prior of the Lazzaretto Nuovo, described the innumerable quantities of merchandise arriving from Cyprus, Alexandria, Syria, Spain, the Peloponnese, and Albania.27 Even during periods of hostility and war with the Ottomans, commercial activities in Venice continued between both parties, with merchants travelling to and from Venice with their goods. Such was the case during the War of Cyprus and the Cretan War (1644–69), as the 1654 trip of Ra’d, an Ottoman subject, shows.28 This was dissimilar to commercial activities in Split, which was closer to the border and where actual hostilities took place. During the Cretan War and the Morean War (1684–99), trade in Dalmatia between the conflicting parties – Venice and the Ottomans – came to a halt, resulting in the closure of the Split lazzaretto.29

The Split lazzaretto as the ultimate quarantine and transit station The Split lazzaretto, where the pilgrim Simēon found himself in 1611, was a place bustling with activity. Goods arriving at the lazzaretto at that time came from as far away as Persia, Armenia, Cairo, and Alexandria by way of Ankara, Constantinople, Sofia, Edirne, and Thessaloniki as well as from the closer territories of the Ottoman Balkans. Caravans arriving in Split carried the goods of over a hundred different merchants who shipped wool, fur, silk, textiles, and leather products; minerals such as orpiment and copper; and foodstuffs such as pepper, beef tongue, plums, and rice destined for Venice.30 27 28 29 30

Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 199. Pedani and Issa, “Il viaggio,” 379. Vitale D’Alberton, “Tra sanità e commercio,” 265–66. Ljubić, “O Markantunu Dominisu,” 69; Traljić, “Izvoz bosanske robe,” 809.

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This abundance of trade had been promised to the Venetian Senate 30 years earlier by the Jewish merchant Daniel Rodriga when proposing the establishment of a new commercial route through the port of Split.31 In 1580, Rodriga had obtained approval from the Senate for this new route, intended to enhance commercial exchange between Venice and the Ottoman Balkans.32 Rodriga’s initiative aligned with long-standing Ottoman efforts to divert trade from the already established route conducting goods from the Balkans via Dubrovnik to the papal states on the Italian peninsula.33 The intention to divert profits from Ottoman trade away from papal territories toward Venice was promoted by members of the Ottoman Sokollu family – Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha and his nephews Ali-Pasha and Ferhad-Pasha, who were important state officials in Bosnia – and Rodriga likely cooperated with them during his trade and diplomatic missions there.34 In 1580, Rodriga began the construction of a complex of buildings (scala) in Split at his own expense. These were indispensable for the establishment of the new commercial route. In order to accommodate Ottoman merchants, Rodriga adapted the model of the Ottoman han or caravanserai, used in larger Ottoman trade centres such as Banja Luka, Sarajevo, and Skopje to host merchant caravans.35 Rodriga, who spent much of his life travelling in Bosnia, was certainly familiar with the hans, an indispensable part of the Ottoman trade infrastructure. Several architectural features of these multi-functional buildings corresponded to Rodriga’s needs. Among those borrowed by Rodriga for the design of the scala were a clearly def ined perimeter enclosed by a high wall with minimal openings, isolating the structure from surrounding buildings and thus providing much-needed security for trade goods. A spacious central courtyard facilitated the handling of merchandise, while there was storage space for goods on the ground floor of adjacent buildings. There were ample living quarters for the merchants on the first floor.36 Adapting the model of the Ottoman han was part of a comprehensive enterprise conducted alongside the construction of roads 31 Ravid, “Autobiographical Memorandum,” 189–213. 32 Morpurgo, “Daniel Rodriguez” (1962), 206, 221, 226; Arbel, Trading Nations, 11. 33 Panciera, “Building a Boundary,” 32; idem, “Tagliare i confini,” 270–72. 34 Morpurgo, “Daniel Rodriguez” (1962), 186–89, 191–97; Paci, La scala di Spalato e il commercio, 49–50; idem, “La scala di Spalato e la politica,” 51–52, 54; Arbel, Trading Nations, 146; Pedani, Inventory, 54, 57; Ravid, “Tale of Three Cities,” 148–50; idem, “First Charter,” 187–222; idem, “Daniel Rodriga,” 212–13; Kečkemet, Židovi, 31–50; Preto, I servizi segreti, 250; Miović, Židovski rodovi, 220. 35 Bilić, “Daniel Rodriga’s Lazaretto,” 70–72. 36 Kreševljaković, Hanovi i karavansaraji, 20–26; Čoralić, Put, Putnici, Putovanja, 157–58.

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and bridges, meant to attract Ottoman merchants to Split and make their stay more agreeable.37 After Rodriga abandoned the construction of the complex for financial reasons, the Republic of Venice took over the project without significantly changing the general plan.38 At the time of its opening in 1592, the scala consisted of a quadrangular courtyard enclosed on three sides by one-story buildings and on the fourth by a wall. Soon afterwards Venice invested in the construction of a larger, almost identical attached courtyard to the west of the existing complex, following the same spatial distribution. The buildings around the new courtyard had storage space on the ground floor, each with a separate entrance and a window, and above them, on the first floor, rooms for the merchants. A large stable for horses was located on the fourth side of the spacious courtyard, with its central water fountain.39 The new quadrangle served as a fondaco – a lodging for Ottoman merchants and travellers after undergoing quarantine. There, the merchants stayed while waiting for the convoyed galley to transport them to Venice with their merchandise; they also lodged there on their return journey. After the construction of the fondaco, the old, original courtyard of the complex was dedicated to the usual process of disinfection and quarantine. In the old warehouses, goods arriving from the Ottoman Empire were aired in order to eliminate contagion, and merchants and travellers were isolated in rooms above for different periods of time. 40 In the following years, the complex was expanded with new units built in a row on the seashore, east of the original complex, so that after reaching its maximum dimensions in 1629, the entire complex consisted of six clearly defined units interconnected with guarded gates and supervised passages. Progressive addition of new units and efforts to improve the efficiency of quarantine resulted in subsequent changes in the function of various older parts of the complex. During the seventeenth century, the first unit from the west, which served as a fondaco and was the largest in the floor plan, was repurposed as the residence of the general governor of Dalmatia and Albania and was no longer part of the lazzaretto, and the original courtyard, 37 The same policy was applied by Dubrovnik patricians in the sixteenth and later in the eighteenth century for hosting Ottoman merchants in the suburbs of Ploče. Beritić, “Ubikacija nestalih građevinskih spomenika,” 64; Miović, “Life in the Quarantine,” 14, 41; Šundrica, “Arhivsko gradivo,” 33–35; Bilić, “Plague and Trade Control,” 111–13, 116. 38 Morpurgo, “Daniel Rodriguez” (1962), 226–28. 39 Perojević, “Izgradnja lazareta,” 125–26. 40 On the role of fondaci as trading stations in the early modern Mediterranean, see the Introduction to the present volume.

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whose construction was started by Daniel Rodriga, was repurposed to become the logistics centre of the entire complex. This courtyard had its own separate entrance through which personnel were free to leave and enter the city. 41 It also housed the residence of the Ottoman emin (customs official and unofficial Ottoman consul) which, unlike other rooms in the complex, had openings towards the city street. All facilities that allowed the complex to operate independently of the city were located here, such as a large bread oven. Furthermore, in the buildings attached to the western wall of the courtyard, above the warehouses for tools, food, and hay, lived guards and bastazzi, workers who carried out the disinfection, and there were also temporary residences for Jewish and Ottoman merchants awaiting transport to Venice. Along the south wall of this unit was a customs house from which goods were carried to the dock through a wide opening in the south wall and loaded onto ships heading to Venice. Here also lived a vivandiere or victualer, and on the ground floor of the eastern building there were warehouses for tools and grain. Shortly before 1611, a residence for the Prior of the lazzaretto was added to the outside of the eastern wall of the original complex, together with a chapel dedicated to the saint and protector from plague, San Rocco, catering to the needs of lazaretto personnel. Due to the influx of an exceptional amount of merchandise, within a year – between 1615 and 1616 – the complex was extended with an additional unit on the eastern side.42 This, as well as all later additions, followed the already established spatial scheme: central courtyards surrounded by one-storey buildings, with storage space on the ground floor and residential rooms on the first floor. The ground floors of almost all the buildings in the lazzaretto were intended for storage and the disinfection of merchandise, which was their primary distinguishing feature. Such space allocation reflected the commercial purpose of the complex, unlike fifteenth-century lazzarettos in which the capacity to accommodate as many people as possible was of utmost importance. In order to implement quarantine in an efficient manner, access to the rooms above the warehouses where merchants quarantined was possible only via external staircases situated at the end of the buildings leading to a protruding gallery opening onto the courtyards and allowing access to each room separately. Following the same principle of maximal isolation, the rooms were not connected to each other. The system was applied in all units. According to the engineer Antonio Moser de Filseck’s detailed drawing 41 Fisković, “Splitski lazaret,” 16. 42 Novak, Povijest, 475.

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Figure 6.1 Drawing of the ground plan of the Lazzaretto in Split. Moser de Filseck, 1778. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Provveditori di Sanità, busta 10, dis. 17. Photo: Archivio di Stato di Venezia.

of the lazzaretto from 1778, in this third unit where merchants quarantined there were two separate parlatori, parlours intended for safe communication between those in quarantine and outside parties, preventing direct contact and the possibility of transmitting infection (Fig. 6.1). 43 Between 1625 and 1627, the complex was again enlarged toward the east.44 In the north wall of this unit was the main land entrance of the lazzaretto complex, used exclusively for the entry and exit of caravans. 45 Along the south wall of the courtyard was a barn with an opening in its rear wall permitting the transfer of delicate goods arriving by sea. This courtyard hosted the soldiers and guards who accompanied the caravans from the border to the lazzaretto. Attached to the complex, further east, a fifth smaller courtyard was situated, comprising a cavana or cavanellà, a large seawater pool attached to the south wall and a shed along the north wall. Immersion in the pool for a period of 48 hours was considered a valid method for cleaning waterresistant goods, such as wax, leather, and wool packed in bags, which were then dried by exposure to air and sun in a nearby shed. 46 This pool was the most advanced disinfecting feature of the lazzaretto and indicated that the Venetian authorities did not spare any cost in their determination to

43 Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Provveditori di Sanità, busta 10, dis. 17. On the Moser family of engineers and their activity in Dalmatia, see Bilić, Inženjeri u službi Mletačke Republike, 226–35; Kečkemet, Kulturna i umjetnička baština, 357. 44 Perojević, “Izgradnja lazareta,” 129. 45 Visible in the drawing of engineer Giuseppe D’Andre from 1714: Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Provveditori di Sanità, busta 10, dis. 16. For more information about D’Andre’s activity in Dalmatia, see Bilić, Inženjeri u službi Mletačke Republike, 164–67. 46 Fisković, “Splitski lazaret,” 16.

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process the goods in the most efficient way possible in order to speed their passage on to Venice. The last, sixth courtyard was built between 1627 and 1629. Its floor plan was identical to that of the fourth yard. The entire complex was subsequently partially shortened from the east due to the construction of Split’s defensive walls, encompassing the lazzaretto within the confines of the city.

Security, control, profit The quarantine system in Split was organized so well that the import and export of goods through the port continued unhindered even during epidemics. During the 1607 plague epidemic in Split, with hundreds of dead in the city, trade through the lazzaretto continued without major difficulties. 47 The system of delivery of merchandise from the border with the Ottoman Empire to the port took place in convoys under military escort, preventing contact with the local population. Although located beside the city walls, the lazzaretto functioned independently of the city of Split, and both spatially and functionally the complex acted as a city within a city. The structure itself was surrounded by high walls, simultaneously protecting those who were inside from attacks by the Uskok pirates and locals and segregating the Ottoman merchants in order to control their movement. There were limited openings, mostly toward the sea, and communication within was strictly regulated. The lazzaretto had a separate source of water; its staff lived within its walls; and food supplies were stored for merchants and draft animals. With such an efficient organization of quarantine, regardless of the tragedy that befell the local population during the plague of 1607, the Venetian Republic managed to maintain trade activity, and thus profit continued to accumulate. Also, during the subsequent epidemics that frequently ravaged Split, the lazzaretto did not serve as a plague hospital for the local population nor to disinfect their belongings.48 Instead, provisional wooden lazzarettos were built and temporary shelters also made available close to the city gates for the sick and to quarantine suspected cases. The lazzaretto in Split was the ultimate transit station. It was conceived, built, and perfected in the service of trade. During its planning stages, Venetian officials referred to it predominantly as a scala and dogana, a 47 Ljubić, “O Markantunu Dominisu,” 71–73; Novak, Povijest, 132. 48 Vitale D’Alberton, “Tra sanità e commercio,” 281–82; Božić-Bužančić, “Izvještaj Izvanrednog,” 186–87; Duplančić, “Nekadašnje groblje,” 51; Kečkemet, Kulturna i umjetnička baština, 385, 392.

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customs house. 49 Its prevailing commercial function was also reinforced by the fact that until 1614 the lazzaretto was under the jurisdiction of the Venetian Board of Trade, the Cinque Savi alla Mercanzia.50 But even after the Health Office, the Provveditori alla Sanità, took charge of administering the complex, the lazzaretto continued to cater exclusively to merchants, and its doors remained shut to the needs of the local population during epidemics, contrary to the practice in Venice and the rest of its territory and to the dismay of Venetian patricians who were sent to Split to subdue the epidemics.51 After reaching its f inal form, the lazzaretto complex consisted of a fondaco, a customs house, warehouses, a pier with a regular convoy to Venice, its own horses and horsemen for the transport of goods from the hinterland, surveillance and security towers, up-to-date sanitation facilities, and its own administrative staff (Fig. 6.2). A single, clearly defined complex encompassed everything needed to facilitate the movement of people and goods, to disinfect merchandise, and to quarantine people. Grouping different functions in this manner, the state was able to control trade and the movement of foreigners at the same time. Unlike in Venice, here foreigners – or specifically Ottoman subjects – were isolated outside the city walls. The space was physically contiguous to the city for the convenience of trade and security but nevertheless segregated in a single location outside the city gates. Such a practice was applied only to Ottoman subjects while, for example, the Jewish community that in 1589 gained a permit to establish intermediary trade in Split lived and worked inside the city walls without any restrictions.52 Zan Battista Giustinian who visited Dalmatia in 1553 in the role of sindico or inspector offered a likely explanation as to why such a practice applied only to Ottoman merchants.53 In describing nearby Šibenik (Sebenico), Giustinian explains that there trade with Ottoman subjects had been moved outside the city for security reasons. Šibenik’s trade with the Ottomans, which amounted to 50,000 ducats of profit annually, was essential for the city and constituted an important source of income for the state. Nonetheless, the danger of possible violent clashes occasioned by the presence of five or six hundred Ottoman traders led to the displacement of trade further away from the city walls. Close to 49 Vitale D’Alberton, “Tra sanità e commercio,” 255–57, 263–64. 50 Strunje, “Splitska skala,” 20. 51 Vitale D’Alberton, “Tra sanità e commercio,” 266–67, 281–82. 52 Morpurgo, “Daniel Rodriguez” (1966), 391–95, 399–400; Kečkemet, Židovi, 46–50, 62; Freĭdenberg, Židovi na Balkanu, 90–91. 53 Šimunković, Dalmacija Godine Gospodnje, 39–40.

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Figure. 6.2 View of Split with the lazaretto in the foreground. Pierre-Adrien Pâris, as per drawing of L.F. Cassas, 1802. Print Collection, National and University Library in Zagreb.

the Mandalina peninsula, a new residence for an emin was constructed, together with a new gabella, a shop for salt trade with the Ottomans. The solution diminished the chances of escalation of diplomatic and military incidents on this volatile borderland.

Lazarettos on the Ionian islands of Corfu and Zakynthos During the last decades of the sixteenth century, Venice founded not only a lazzaretto in Split but also lazzarettos on the Ionian islands of Corfu and Zakynthos (Zante).54 Although these near-contemporaneous facilities appear to belong to the same centralized initiative to implement uniform sanitary measures in Venice’s overseas territories, on closer inspection these examples point to another conclusion. The lazzarettos of Corfu and Zakynthos were founded in 1588 after repeated requests for a permanent structure from the Jewish merchant Vidal Mazza, who even offered to partially fund, together with other Jewish and Greek merchants, the construction of the new facility.55 Considering that merchants coming to the islands with their goods had to stop in the lazzaretto, the existence of a permanent structure

54 Konstantinidou, Lazzaretti, 17. 55 Ibid., 48–50, 62.

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permitted Venetian authorities to better control trade, collect taxes, and provide locals with some sense of security against the deadly disease. As in the case of Split, investment in the construction of the lazzarettos of Zakynthos and Corfu in 1588 reflected Venice’s desire to improve trading conditions, while the amelioration of processes of quarantine and disinfection was secondary.56 It is important to emphasize that in the founding documents of the lazzarettos and the accompanying instructions addressed to local governors, there is no mention of government resolutions to safeguard public health against the spread of the plague.57 On the contrary, it is evident that the establishment of the permanent structures on the islands of Corfu and Zakynthos was meant to provide better conditions for trade.58 Almost all prescribed provisions of the Senate for the construction of the facilities refer to the safety of the structure and the goods housed within it. New structures had to be detached from surrounding buildings. The desired dimensions – the length and height of the perimeter walls – were prescribed along with specifications for the differentiation of internal structures. Two towers were to be erected in opposite corners from which it would be possible to control all four façades of the lazzaretto. Inside the lazzaretto, sheds of prescribed height and width were to be built with a gabled roof resting on pilasters. The Venetian government considered the construction of the two lazzarettos to be a first step in generating better trading conditions in the area. A similar strategy was employed by Ottoman officials on the other side of the frontier through the construction of hans and other infrastructure in order to boost the economic development of the region. This cluster of practices came to the fore in the case of the construction of the lazzaretto of Kefalonia. This lazzaretto was founded in 1741, constructed in order to attract merchant ships to stop on the island, effectively creating a new maritime route.59 The same design of lazzaretto buildings used on Zakynthos and Corfu in 1588 was used. There is the same rectangular structure enclosing a large courtyard with two diagonally placed towers, two entrances in the opposite shorter walls, and separate warehouses leaning against the longer peripheral walls. There was thus long continuity in the form and function of the lazzarettos. The propagation of the original form was the work of engineers in the service of the Venetian administration on the Ionian islands who presented the plans for a new lazzaretto to the 56 Morachiello, “Lazzaretti e contumacie,” 823. 57 Konstantinidou, Lazzaretti, 18, 51–3, 62. 58 Konstantinidou, “Santi rifugi di sanità,” 242. 59 Konstantinidou, Lazzaretti, 19.

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central government in Venice for approval.60 Nevertheless, during outbreaks of contagion, these structures were transformed into plague hospitals, just as in the Lazzaretto Nuovo in Venice. The sick from nearby settlements were segregated in the lazzaretto and treated together with those suspected of having come into contact with the infected.61 The binary role of Ionian lazzarettos as structures for care and prevention – as plague hospitals and quarantine stations – confirms the exceptional nature of the lazzaretto in Split.

The new lazzaretto in Dubrovnik Although the Republic of Dubrovnik continued to implement quarantine for all merchants and passengers arriving on its territory from its first establishment in 1377, at the end of the sixteenth century it saw the need for a modern lazzaretto.62 The decision to build a new facility was most likely influenced by the construction of the competing structure in Split, which entailed the transfer of a significant amount of trade from Dubrovnik. Considering the position chosen for the new lazzaretto in Dubrovnik – in the vicinity of the city gates, the city harbour, the customs office, and proximity to the lodgings of Ottoman merchants – it is likely that the efficiency and success of the lazzaretto in Split, which combined all of these same features, convinced Dubrovnik to build a new facility in the town suburb of Ploče (Fig. 6.3). Unlike the older lazzarettos in the territory of the Republic of Dubrovnik on the island of Mljet, in the suburb of Danče, and on the island of Lokrum, the new lazzaretto was built with economic concerns as an integral part of the commercial infrastructure. It was located at the end of what was known as the Ragusa Road, which carried goods from the interior of the Balkans to the city gates.63 The proximity of the port and customs house contributed to the safe and speedy circulation of goods after they had been disinfected in the lazzaretto. The nearby han, meanwhile, conveniently provided lodging for Ottoman merchants, enabling Dubrovnik authorities to better control the movement of people. When the French diplomat Philippe de La Canaye du Fresne stopped in Dubrovnik in 1572 on his way 60 Carini Venturini, “I lazzaretti delle isole,” 250–51. 61 Konstantinidou, Lazzaretti, 37. 62 Šundrica, Arhivsko gradivo”; Miović, “Life in the Quarantine,” 13; Bilić, “Plague and Trade Control,” 108. 63 Howell, “Balkan Caravans,” 53–55.

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Figure 6.3 View of city of Dubrovnik with the lazaretto in the foreground. Photo: Institute for Restauration of Dubrovnik.

from Venice to Istanbul, he described the diplomatic and trading skills of the city’s merchants in his journal.64 He admired them for their ability to use the political circumstances of the time for their economic gain, especially during the Ottoman–Venetian Wars when all Ottoman trade to Europe flowed through the port of Dubrovnik. He also observed that Dubrovnik spent a great deal of money on sanitation measures and that authorities forced all caravans to stop in the lazzaretto outside the city, suggesting that the success of its trade was linked to the application of strict sanitary measures which offered customers a guarantee of contagion-free merchandise. Although all passengers were required to undergo quarantine, not all were sent to the lazzaretto. The Republic of Dubrovnik provided separate, more comfortable accommodation for prominent travellers crossing its territory.65 According to Phillipe de La Canaye, just before his sojourn in Dubrovnik, the French ambassador who landed in the city on his way to Istanbul had been quarantined in the suburb of Gruž in a beautiful, spacious, and secure palace, surrounded by an orchard where he could walk during quarantine. 64 Du Fresne-Canaye, Le voyage, 16; Graciotti, “La Dalmazia,” 108. 65 Miović, “Life in the Quarantine,” 43–44; Du Fresne-Canaye, Le voyage, 16.

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This suggests that the conditions of quarantine in the lazzarettos were not ideal and that perhaps Simeon’s displeasure with the quarantine in Split was partially justified. However, the privilege that the Republic purposefully granted to distinguished guests was not granted to its own citizens. Thus, three Dubrovnik poklisari, ambassadors who had spent almost a year and a half in an Istanbul prison between 1679 and 1680 were required – after a trip home that lasted a month – to undergo quarantine in the lazzaretto for yet another month upon their return to Dubrovnik.66 Unlike the Lazzaretto Nuovo in Venice, the lazzarettos considered here were not adapted plague hospitals but were built from the ground up for the quarantine of travellers and for the disinfection of merchandise along trade routes.67 Their commercial role is reflected in the security provided in the form of watch towers, by the ample storage and disinfection space, and by the division of the interior space into multiple, smaller units which permitted the simultaneous isolation of different ship crews and goods. They were part of trade infrastructure and, apart from brief periods during epidemics, served entirely commercial purposes. In Split, the lazzaretto did not serve as a plague hospital even during outbreaks of plague. Consequently, the precursors of commercial lazzarettos in the Adriatic should not be sought in the plague hospitals of northern Italy but in the territory of the Republic of Dubrovnik, in the first structures on the islands of Mrkan, Bobara, Supetar, and Mljet which, from the end of the fourteenth century, served as quarantine stations for the preventive isolation of travellers and for the purification of goods. Commercial lazzarettos like the ones in Split and Dubrovnik were not only quarantine stations but also state-of-the-art facilities that provided merchants with the logistics for the better and safer distribution of their merchandise. To the state, they enabled an augmented influx of trade, control of movement, and the possibility of safeguarding public health. The features and functions of the lazzarettos in Split and Dubrovnik were shaped in response to the challenges particular to this frontier region, not shared by centres such as Venice and Istanbul. This desire to control the mobility of people was derived not only from public health concerns but also from the need to maintain order, security, and peace along a volatile border. Therefore, both Split and Dubrovnik decided to segregate Ottoman merchants outside the city walls in special buildings whose form derived from Ottoman architecture. 66 Miović, “Life in the Quarantine,” 17. 67 Konstantinidou, Lazzaretti, 18.

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The Jewish merchants who moved to this border region, attracted by the commercial possibilities it offered, were crucial to the development of commercial lazzarettos in the second half of the sixteenth century. As early as 1568, Jewish merchants, in cooperation with the Venetian authorities, introduced in the Ottoman port of Neretva procedures for disinfecting goods before their shipment to Venice. In Neretva, where they practised intermediary trade, a site was provided for disinfection, accommodation for an officer, along with the funds needed to carry out the necessary operations.68 The foundation of the lazzaretto in Split and on the Ionian islands was due to the initiative of Jewish merchants who offered to partially fund the operations in order to persuade the Republic to issue the necessary permits. Moreover, in the case of the foundation of the Split lazzaretto, the crucial involvement of the Ottoman authorities, both in the planning and realization phases, cannot be denied, proving that the formation of the frontier-long Venetian cordon sanitaire at the end of sixteenth century was primarily driven from the border region itself.69 These commercial lazzarettos bore their own identity, which was the result of the particular conditions of a region that precluded clearly defined cultural borders and hosted a ceaseless circulation of diverse people, commodities, and ideas.

Works cited Arbel, Benjamin. Trading Nations: Jews and Venetians in the Early-Modern Eastern Mediterranean. New York: Brill, 1995. Beritić, Lukša. “Ubikacija nestalih građevinskih spomenika u Dubrovniku.” Prilozi povijesti umjetnosti u Dalmaciji 12 (1960): 61–84. Bilić, Darka. “Plague and Trade Control. Form and Function of the Dubrovnik Lazaretto.” In Lazaretto in Dubrovnik, edited by Ante Milošević, 103–19. Dubrovnik: Institute for Restoration of Dubrovnik, 2018. ———. Inženjeri u službi Mletačke Republike. Inženjeri i civilna arhitektura u 18. stoljeću u mletačkoj Dalmaciji i Albaniji. Split: Književni krug, 2013. ———. “Daniel Rodriga’s Lazaretto in Split and Ottoman Caravanserais in Bosnia: The Transcultural Transfer of an Architectonic Model.” In The Land Between Two Seas. Art on the Move in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea 1300–1700, edited by Alina Payne, 59–78. Leiden: Brill, 2022. 68 Palmer, “Control of Plague,” 205–206. 69 On Venetian sanitary corridors, see ibid., 205–6, 315–16; Vanzan Marchini, “ll lazzaretto novo,” 35; idem, “Venezia e l’invenzione,” 42–44; Morachiello, “Lazzaretti e contumacie,” 823.

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Blažina-Tomić, Zlata. Kacamorti i kuga: utemeljenje i razvoj zdravstvene službe u Dubrovniku. Zagreb: Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, 2007. Blažina-Tomić, Zlata, and Vesna Blažina. Expelling the Plague: The Health Office and the Implementation of Quarantine in Dubrovnik, 1377–1533. Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015. Bondioli, Mauro. “The Invention of the Lazarets: Bulwarks Against the Plague in Venice and in the Western Mediterranean.” In Lazaretto in Dubrovnik, edited by Ante Milošević, 83–102. Dubrovnik: Institute for Restoration of Dubrovnik, 2018. Bournoutian, George A. The Travel Accounts of Simēon of Poland. Introduction and Annotated Translation, Armenian Studies Series, No. 10. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2007. Božić-Bužančić, Danica. “Izvještaj Izvanrednog Providura za zdravstvo Angela Dieda o prilikama u Dalmaciji za vrijeme kuge 1783–1784.” Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti: Rasprave i građa za povijest znanosti 5, Razred za medicinske znanosti 1 (1989): 183–201. Bracewell, Wendy, ed. Orientations: An Anthology of East European Travel Writing, ca. 1550–2000. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2009. Bulmus, Birsen. Plague, Quarantines and Geopolitics in the Ottoman Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Caniato, Giovanni. “Documenti su ‘Lazzaretto Nuovo’.” In Venezia e la peste 1348/1797, 347–62. Venice: Marsilio, 1980. ———. “Il Lazzaretto Nuovo.” In Venezia e la peste 1348/1797, 343–46. Venice: Marsilio, 1980. ———. “Mercanti e guardiani, commerci e contumacie. Note preliminari sulla costruzione del Tezon grando e sui marchi mercantile.” In Venezia, Isola del Lazzaretto Nuovo, edited by Gerolamo Fazzini, 37–46. Venice: Archeoclub d’Italia, 2004. Carini Venturini, Domenica Viola. “I lazzaretti delle isole ionie.” In Rotte mediterranee e baluardi di sanità, edited by Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini, 25–63. Milan: Skira, 2004. Crawshaw, Jane L. Stevens. Plague Hospitals: Public Health for the City in Early Modern Venice. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. Čoralić, Lovorka. Put, putnici, putovanja: ceste i putovi u srednjovjekovnim hrvatskim zemljama. Zagreb: AGM, 1997. Du Fresne-Canaye, Phillipe. Le voyage du Levant, edited by H. Hauser and E. Leroux. Paris, 1897. Duplančić, Arsen. “Nekadašnje groblje kod splitskih konventualaca.” Kulturna baština 16 (1985): 45–56. Fisković, Cvito. “Splitski lazaret.” In Četiri priloga historiji grada Splita XVII i XVIII stoljeća, Izdanje Muzeja grada Splita 4, 5–37. Split: Muzej grada Splita, 1953.

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Freĭdenberg, Maren. Židovi na Balkanu na isteku srednjeg vijeka. Zagreb: Dora Krupićeva, 2000. Graciotti, Sante. “La Dalmazia e l’iter gerosolimitano da Venezia tra affari, devozione e scoperte.” In La Dalmazia nelle relazioni di viaggiatori e pellegrini da Venezia tra Quattro e Seicento, edited by Sante Graciotti, 67–114. Rome: Bardi, 2009. Grmek, Mirko Dražen. “Le concept d’infection dans l’antiquité et au Moyen Age. Les anciennes mesures sociales contre les maladies contagieuses et la fondation de la 1ère quarantaine à Dubrovnik (1377).” Rad Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti. Razred za medicinske znanosti 16 (1980): 9–55. Howell, Jesse. “Balkan Caravans: Dubrovnik’s Overland Networks in the Ottoman Era.” In Lazaretto in Dubrovnik, edited by Ante Milošević, 51–64. Dubrovnik: Institute for Restoration of Dubrovnik, 2018. Kallas, Elie. The Travel Account of Ra’d to Venice (1656) and its Aleppo Dialect according to the Ms. Sbath 89. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2015. Kečkemet, Duško. Kulturna i umjetnička baština Dalmacije. Izabrani radovi. Split: Marjan tisak, 2004. ———. Židovi u povijesti Splita. Split: Jevrejska općina, 1971. Konstantinidou, Katerina. “Santi rifugi di sanità: i lazzaretti delle quattro isole di Levante.” Studi veneziani 53 (2007): 239–59. ———. Lazzaretti veneziani in Grecia. Padua: Elzeviro, 2015. Kreševljaković, Hamdija. Hanovi i karavansaraji u Bosni i Hercegovini, Djela, Knjiga 8, Sarajevo: Naučno društvo NR Bosne i Hercegovine, Odjeljenje istorisko-filoloških nauka, 1957. Ljubić, Šime.“O Markantunu Dominisu Rabljaninu historičko-kritičko iztraživanje navlastito po izvorih mletačkoga arkiva i knjižnice arsenala parizkoga.” Rad Jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti 10 (1870): 1–159. Mazzucco, Gabriele. “Una grangia del monastero di San Giorgio Maggiore di Venezia: l’isola della Vigna Murata poi Lazzaretto Nuovo.” In Venezia, Isola del Lazzaretto Nuovo, edited by Gerolamo Fazzini, 15–22. Venice: Archeoclub d’Italia, 2004. Miović, Vesna. Židovski rodovi u Dubrovniku (1546–1940). Zagreb-Dubrovnik: Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Zavod za povijesne znanosti u Dubrovniku, 2017. ———. “Life in the Quarantine: Lazaretto at Ploče during the Republic.” In Lazaretto in Dubrovnik, edited by Ante Milošević, 13–49. Dubrovnik: Institute for Restoration of Dubrovnik, 2018. Morachiello, Paolo. “Howard e i lazzaretti da Marsiglia a Venezia: gli spazi della prevenzione.” In Venezia e la peste 1348/1797, 157–64. Venice: Marsilio, 1980. ———. “Lazzaretti e contumacie.” In Storia di Venezia – il Mare, edited by Alberto Tenenti and Ugo Tucci, 819–35. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1991.

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Morpurgo, Viktor. “Daniel Rodriguez i osnivanje splitske skele u XVI stoljeću.” Starine 52 (1962): 185–248. ———. “Daniel Rodriguez i osnivanje splitske skele u XVI stoljeću.” Starine 53 (1966): 363–415. Novak, Grga. Povijest Splita, vol. 1. Split: Škuna, 2005. Paci, Renzo. “La scala di Spalato e la politica veneziana in Adriatico.” Quaderni Storici 5, no. 13 (1970): 48–105. ———. La scala di Spalato e il commercio veneziano nei Balcani fra Cinque e Seicento. Venice: Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, 1971. Palmer, Richard J. “The Control of Plague in Venice and Northern Italy 1348–1600.” PhD diss., University of Kent, 1978. Panciera, Walter. “‘Tagliare i conf ini’: la linea di frontiera Soranzo-Ferhat in Dalmazia (1576).” In Studi storici dedicati a Orazio Cancila, edited by Antonino Giuffrida, Fabrizio D’Avenia, Daniele Palermo, 237–72. Palermo: Associazione Mediterranea, 2011. ———. “Building a Boundary: The First Venetian-Ottoman Border in Dalmatia 1573–1576.” Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Svučilišta u Zagrebu 45 (2013): 9–37. Panzac, Daniel. La peste dans l’Empire ottoman: 1700–1850. Leuven: Éditions Peeters, 1985. Pedani, Maria Pia, and Alessio Bombaci, eds. Inventory of the ‘Lettere e Scritture Turchesche’ in the Venetian State Archives. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Pedani, Maria Pia, and Paola Issa. “Il viaggio dell’arabo Ra’d di Aleppo a Venezia (1654–1656).” Mediterranea – ricerche storiche 37 (2016): 375–400. Perojević, Snježana. “Izgradnja lazareta u Splitu.” Prostor: znanstveni časopis za arhitekturu i urbanizam 10, no. 2(24) (2002): 119–34. Preto, Paolo. I servizi segreti di Venezia. Spionaggio e controspionaggio ai tempi della Serenissima. Milan: il Saggiatore, 2010. Ravančić, Gordan. “Dubrovnik’s Invention of the Quarantine and the Transfer of Knowledge about the Spread of Epicemics.” Radovi ‒ Zavod za hrvatsku povijest 53 (2021): 81–95. Ravid, Benjamin. “The First Charter of the Jewish Merchants of Venice, 1589.” AJS Review 1 (1976): 187–222. ———. “An Autobiographical Memorandum by Daniel Rodriga, Inventor of the scala of Spalato.” In The Mediterranean and the Jews, edited by Ariel Toaff and Simon Schwarzfuchs, 189–213. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1989. ———. “A Tale of Three Cities and their Raison d’État: Ancona, Venice, Livorno, and the Competition for Jewish Merchants in the Sixteenth Century.” Mediterranean Historical Review 6, no. 2 (1991): 138–62.

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———. “Daniel Rodriga and the First Decade of the Jewish Merchants of Venice.” In Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart, edited by Aharon Mirsky, Avraham Grossman, and Yosef Kaplan, 203–23. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute-Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991. Strunje, Petar. “Splitska skala (1566–1700).” MA Thesis, University of Zagreb, 2018. Šimunković, Ljerka. Dalmacija godine Gospodnje 1553: Putopis po Istri, Dalmaciji i Mletačkoj Albaniji 1553. godine, zapisao Zan Battista Giustinian. Split: Dante Alighieri, 2011. Šundrica, Zdravko. “Arhivsko gradivo o izgradnji Lazareta na Pločama.” In Tajna kutija dubrovačkog arhiva, edited by Vladimir Stipetić, 2: 11–117. ZagrebDubrovnik: HAZU-Zavod za povijesne znanosti u Dubrovniku, 2009. Traljić, Seid M. “Izvoz bosanske robe preko splitske luke u XVIII stoljeću.” Pomorski zbornik knj. 3 (1965): 809–27. Vanzan Marchini, Nelli-Elena. “Il controllo della laguna e il funzionamento dei lazzaretti veneziani.” In Rotte mediterranee e baluardi di sanità, edited by Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini, 208–9. Milan: Skira, 2004. ———. “ll lazzaretto novo fra Venezia e il mediterraneo.” In Venezia: Isola del Lazzaretto Nuovo, edited by Gerolamo Fazzini, 23–36. Venice: Archeoclub d’Italia, 2004. ———. “Venezia.” In Rotte mediterranee e baluardi di sanità, edited by Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini, 200–205. Milan: Skira, 2004. ———. “Venezia e l’invenzione del Lazzaretto.” In Rotte mediterranee e baluardi di sanità, edited by Nelli-Elena Vanzan Marchini, 17–45. Milan: Skira, 2004. Varlik, Nükhet. Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Vitale D’Alberton, Rossana. “Tra sanità e commercio: il difficile ruolo del lazzaretto veneziano alla scala di Spalato.” Studi veneziani 39 (2000): 253–88. White, Sam. “Rethinking Disease in Ottoman History.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 4 (2010): 549–67.

About the author Darka Bilić is a research associate at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb, Croatia. She focuses on the history of early modern architecture on the eastern Adriatic coast, exploring the role of the Venetian Republic in the shaping of the built environment, with special interest in the cross-cultural character of Dalmatian architecture.

Global Networks

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Devotion in Transit: Agnus Dei, Jesuit Missionaries, and Global Salvation in the Sixteenth Century Paul Nelles*1

Abstract Agnus Dei were round disks made from the wax of the leftover paschal candles in Rome and blessed by the pope. Stamped with the image of the “Lamb of God,” they possessed powerful apotropaic and thaumaturgical powers and were commonly used as amulets. Meant to be mobile, they were particularly valued for their ability to ward off the perils of travel. The paper explores the ways Agnus Dei intersected with both global and local mobilities. The paper follows the circulation of the wax lambs along the well-organized global communications network of the Society of Jesus. The chapter locates the circulation of Agnus Dei and other Christian devotional objects within a global economy of devotional exchange. Keywords: devotional objects; material culture; early modern Rome; New Spain; Society of Jesus; conversion

Agnus Dei were wax disks formed from the leftover candles used in papal Easter celebrations, produced during the first year of a pontificate and every seventh year thereafter. They were either round or, increasingly in early modern iterations, oval in shape. On one side was an image of the “Lamb of God” carrying a cross or flag atop the “mystical book” with the seven seals. * I would like to thank Simon Ditchf ield and Jon Greenwood for comments on an earlier version of this chapter, and Irene Gallandra Cooper for generously sharing her knowledge of early modern Agnus Dei.

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch07

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The reverse usually bore the image of Christ, a saint, or a devotional scene. The disks were imprinted with the papal arms and year of consecration, and were blessed by the pope during Holy Week ceremonies. The Lamb of God was a ubiquitous Christological symbol of medieval and early modern visual culture. The lamb figures Christ’s sacrifice, while the mystical book and the seven seals refers to the second coming as foretold in the Book of Revelation. Agnus Dei were more than Roman trinkets touched by the pope. Attributed with prodigious apotropaic and thaumaturgical properties, the disks functioned as powerful Church-sanctioned amulets. The manufacture of Agnus Dei in Rome reaches back to at least the ninth century. The ceremonies around their making and distribution varied. By the sixteenth century, the ritual emphasized papal sacrality and consecration by baptism. Promoted by successive early modern popes, by the final decades of the sixteenth century Agnus Dei had become a mass phenomenon.1 The wax lambs were also one of the first globalized Roman religious objects, carried from Rome by pilgrims and transported across the globe by missionaries. This chapter explores one of the most distinctive, if habitually overlooked, features of Agnus Dei – their mobility. Agnus Dei belong to a category of religious objects whose significance and sacred power were activated through movement. The lambs did not move by accident. They were destined for transit, meant to be carried from Rome. As Alina Payne has argued, portable objects occupy a distinct position in early modern economies of movement, engendering relationships and serving as reified manifestations of contact. When associated with specific sites such as buildings or cities, they became mobile proxies for things very much fixed in place. And as Eckhard Kessler has shown, other portable Roman objects such as pilgrim tokens and icons were similarly activated through movement, acquiring value in transit from Roman sacred sites to new locations.2 The most salient feature of the early modern Agnus Dei cult, I wish to suggest, lies in the mobility of the wax lambs. In the same way as other religious objects such as relics or pilgrim tokens, Agnus Dei were marked by dislocation and passage. As Ines Županov has written of relics, Agnus Dei had “irresistible mobility,” disseminated by missionaries along the global 1 Franz, Kirchlichen Benediktionen, 1:553–75; Brückner, “Christlicher Amulett-Gebrauch,” 110; Caspers and Brekelmans, “The Power of Prayer.” 2 Payne, “Republic of the Sea;” Kessler, “Paradigms of Movement,” 30–34. For an exposition of similar themes in a different context, see the pioneering essay of James Secord, “Knowledge in Transit,” from which the title of my chapter is derived.

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pathways of mercantile networks.3 As they travelled, the Roman identity of the disks at times came into sharper focus, while at other times it was occluded. This chapter follows Agnus Dei in the wake of Jesuit missionaries. Mission and mobility defined the Society of Jesus. It is no coincidence that Jesuits were instrumental in the global spread of other devotional cults such as the Holy House of Loreto and the 11,000 Virgins of Cologne which, like Agnus Dei, were imbricated with processes of movement and displacement. 4 As we shall see, as globalized objects Agnus Dei furnished tangible links to Rome, provided salvific protection at sea, and functioned as material markers of cross-cultural contact. It is not simply that the meaning of Agnus Dei was mutable or that the disks functioned as polysemic objects. The more interesting question revolves around the series of operations that permitted this to occur. Across distance and across cultures, objects function to elicit responses, gestures, and actions. Methodologically, objects can serve to re-orient the study of religious culture towards what Inga Clendinnen has described as “religion as performed,” with an attendant focus on activities and actions. And as Caroline Bynum has shown, objects have a valuable role to play in our understanding of periods of religious change.5 Objects also have the potential to decentre missionaries from the wellknown pitfalls of studying processes of cross-cultural contact accessible through missionary sources alone. When objects are brought more sharply into focus, missionaries are more easily rendered subjects to be placed under the historian’s microscope. Missionaries mediated the value of sacred things and furnish us with evidence of the rituals, gestures, and outward responses – including their own – elicited by religious objects. While missionaries functioned as agents connecting the local and global pathways in which Agnus Dei circulated, tracing the trajectory of devotional objects does not need to be a story about missionary ‘success’ or ‘failure,’ about the collision or melding of belief systems, and still less about processes of syncretism or acculturation. It is possible to ‘read around’ stories about Agnus Dei, paying attention to their narrative settings, the phenomena described, and the actions performed. I also consider the material and iconographical frame supplied by several surviving Agnus Dei reliquaries. In 3 Županov, “Relics Management;” Smith, “Portable Christianity;” Kessler, “Paradigms of movement,” 34. 4 See Veléz, Miraculous Flying House of Loreto; San Juan, “Virgin Skulls.” 5 Bynum, Dissimilar Similitudes, esp. 29–57, 145–48; Clendinnen, “Ways to the Sacred,” 110; Bynum, “Are Things ‘Indifferent’?,” 94.

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this way, specific practices enacted around Agnus Dei in localized settings are permitted to emerge. This chapter is therefore attentive to connections between Agnus Dei and other objects, to the places the disks passed through in transit, and to the locations in which they came to rest.6 In what follows, I first explore the Roman milieu in which Agnus Dei began their journey, the cluster of attributes acquired through papal rituals, and their identity as pilgrimage objects. I then trace the Jesuit global supply chain of Roman devotional objects and examine how the disks were used during maritime journeys. I conclude by considering some of the entanglements of the wax lambs upon arriving on distant shores, far from Rome.

Made in Rome Ceremony, ritual, and gesture imbued Agnus Dei with spiritual power from their origin in Rome to their activation across seas and oceans. One marker of the shift in the field of signification of Agnus Dei is to be found in changes to papal rituals. As Sergio Bertelli has shown, medieval Agnus Dei ceremonies were predominantly inflected with Eucharistic associations. The distribution rather than the consecration of the disks was the most significant rite, and the most public. The distribution recalled the fraction (or breaking) of the Eucharistic host during mass, at which point the Agnus Dei prayer was recited: Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi (“Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”). It is these words that frame the image of lamb and standard on the face of Agnus Dei disks, reinforcing the ties of the wax lambs to the Eucharistic rituals of the mass.7 In the sixteenth century, Agnus Dei became more closely identified with the ‘baptism’ of the disks by the pope during the benediction ceremony, which played a relatively minor role in the medieval sources.8 The pope first 6 Amidst a growing literature on early modern object mobility, see Findlen, “Early Modern Things;” Göttler and Mochizuki, The Nomadic Object; and more generally, Hahn and Weiss, eds., Mobility, Meaning. 7 Bertelli, The King’s Body, 128–38; Paravicini-Bagliani, The Pope’s Body, 76–81; Zchomelidse, “Liminal Phenomena,” 257–59. 8 My reconstruction of the sixteenth-century ceremonies is based on Barbier de Montault, “Traité liturgique,” 1487–94; Franz, Kirchlichen Benediktionen, 556–57; Sebastiani, Discorso, 10–14, 26–27; Baldassari, I Pontificii Agnus Dei dilucidati, 19–28; Panvinio, De baptismate Paschali, 34–35; Molanus, “Oratio de Agnis Dei,” 359–60; Lunadoro, Relatione della corte di Roma, 74. See also Kuntz, “Liturgical, Ritual, and Diplomatic Spaces,” 90–93.

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blessed the water in which the lambs were to be immersed. Chrism and balsam were then added in the pattern of the cross, and prayers of blessing offered. Finally, the Agnus Dei, mounded in silver dishes, were immersed in the water by the pope himself, assisted by cardinals. In the early sixteenth century, both the consecration of the disks and their distribution occurred in the Sistine Chapel. As before, these were public ceremonies, with cardinals, bishops, ambassadors, and other invited guests in attendance. Larger rooms were used as the ceremonies increased in popularity. The principal chambers of papal government in the Vatican Palace – the Sala del Consistoro, the Sala Ducale – as well as the Guardaroba (a storeroom for precious objects of all kinds, including relics) are all mentioned in early modern sources as being transformed into ‘papal chapels’ for the purpose. The consecration rituals became large public spectacles. The increased production of Agnus Dei, to which we shall turn shortly, meant that the rites now took longer. Formerly held on the Saturday following Easter, at some point they began to be performed over a full three days – the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday after Easter. The College of Cardinals was divided into three “squads,” as one source puts it, to assist at the consecration ceremonies. Barricades manned by Swiss Guards were erected to contain the crush of locals and pilgrims. Distribution occurred on the Saturday. The pope himself presented Agnus Dei to church worthies and visiting dignitaries, while an assistant distributed the disks to others. Remaining Agnus Dei were divided into two lots, one reserved for the pope to use as diplomatic gifts, the other placed in the care of the papal chamberlain for distribution to pilgrims. The ceremonies established a ritual sequence that made the baptism of Agnus Dei a public spectacle. These changes placed increased emphasis on a host of baptismal and aquatic associations that, by no means absent in the late medieval period, had significant implications for the function of Agnus Dei as globally mobile objects in the sixteenth century. Equally important was a new historical vision of Agnus Dei that traced their origin to rites of conversion and baptism in the early Church. We can follow the discussion of the Franciscan scholar Vincenzo Bonardo. His 1586 treatise, published following the Agnus Dei ceremonies of Sixtus V, synthesizes contemporary views on the historical significance of the disks. Bonardo located Agnus Dei within the conversion rites for catechumens in the early Church. He cited evidence from the Church Fathers on the papal custom of blessing wax for the Paschal candles and on the common use of the image of the lamb to represent new Christians, referencing extant early Christian images located in Roman sacred sites. He noted that in the early

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Church the baptism of new Christians was an annual event, occurring at Easter. For pagan converts, the ceremony involved the renunciation of evil spirits. In the fourth and fifth centuries, he argued, it had been customary to present catechumens with a wax seal or bulla as a visible token of their conversion to Christianity. Blessed by the pope, the bulla had considerable spiritual power. Agnus Dei effectively took the place of the pagan amulets formerly worn by converts, which were thrown to the ground, shattered, and replaced with the wax pendants. The disks delivered new Christians from pagan superstition and offered ongoing protection from the devil, intent on pulling converts back to the old religion. They were worn by neophytes around the neck as a marker of baptism and as an emblem of the triumph of Christ over demonic forces. The practice was of long-standing custom, Bonardo confidently asserted – “if not from the time of the Apostles, shortly thereafter.” It is easy to imagine, he wrote, “that they began to bless and distribute the wax, which over time began to be imprinted with the sign of the lamb, as a figure of Christ.” It was reasoned that popes later baptized Agnus Dei in ritual commemoration of the ancient practice of baptizing converts.9 The historical framework propounded by Bonardo and others imbued Agnus Dei with a new identity as markers of conversion and as active agents in the work of global evangelization. A print depicting the 1566 consecration ceremonies shows Pius V “consecrating lambs of wax … according to the ancient rite” of the Church (see Fig. 7.1). The pope is shown at various stages of the ceremonies unloading Agnus Dei from their cases (top), donning liturgical vestments (top right), baptizing Agnus Dei disks assisted by cardinals (centre right), and blessing the baptismal water (bottom right). Baptismal themes were sometimes incorporated into Agnus Dei iconography. An existing Agnus Dei of Pius V now in Mantua depicts Christ being baptized in the company of angels. Christ stands in a large cistern, conforming to early modern notions of practices of Early Christian adult baptism (Fig. 7.2). A 1619 Agnus Dei disk of Paul V, preserved in a remarkable tablet reliquary in Mexico, shows Christ standing in the river Jordan being baptized by John the Baptist.10 9 Bonardo, Discorso, 12–16. The earliest versions of this interpretation emerged in antiquarian circles in Rome in the 1550s: Panfilo, L’origine del consacrare gli Agnus Dei, A3r, B6r; Panvinio, De baptismate Paschali, 11–18, 33, 37–8. Panvinio’s work, first published in 1560, is an extended Latin elaboration of Panfilo’s 1556 text. The two men were both Augustinian friars resident in Rome and likely collaborated in writing the treatise. 10 Reproduced in Tovar de Teresa, El arte de los Lagarto, 188.

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Figure 7.1 Pius V and cardinals consecrating Agnus Dei in Rome. Etching on paper. Rome: Bartolomeo Faleti, 1567. 40 cm x 54 cm. British Museum, No. Ii,5.107.

The intensification of the Agnus Dei cult was fuelled by the increased production of disks over the course of the second half of the sixteenth century. Sources from early in the century indicate that some 1,200 Roman pounds of wax were normally used in manufacture.11 In 1555, a credible observer of the Roman scene reported that 1,300 pounds (440 kgs) of wax was purchased and that some 206,000 Agnus Dei were consecrated by Pope Marcellus II. Though most certainly additional supplies of wax were used, there is no reason to question the stated number of consecrated lambs.12 In the decades that followed, exponentially greater quantities of wax were used in Agnus Dei manufacture, as Anne Lepoittevin’s research has shown. For the 1566 ceremonies of Pius V, for example, just over 15,000 Roman pounds (around 5,000 kgs) of wax was purchased. Seven years later, nearly 8,000 kilos were purchased for the same pope. The largest quantity, over 12,000 kilos, was purchased under Gregory XIII in 1573 in anticipation of the 1575 Holy Year. How many lambs might 12,000 kilos of wax produce? Though there was little uniformity, contemporary records refer to three basic sizes: 11 Franz, Kirchlichen Benediktionen, 1:560; Brückner, “Christlicher Amulett-Gebrauch,” 110. 12 Kuntz, “Liturgical, Ritual, and Diplomatic Spaces,” 93.

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Figure 7.2 Tablet reliquary with Agnus Dei and arms of Pius V. Metal on cloth and board. 330 cm. x 447 cm. Casa della beata Osanna Andreasi, Mantua, Inv. Gen. 03/00016267-Inv. Reliquei n. 52. Photo: Massimo Di Cillo.

small, medium, and large. The smallest were only two or three centimetres in diameter, while large oval disks could be over 20 centimetres tall. Agnus Dei weigh anywhere between five and 50 grams each, depending on their size. According to Lepoittevin’s calculations, this yields a figure of either 250,000 if they were all of the larger size, or 2.4 million if all of the smaller type.13 The reality no doubt lies somewhere in the middle. Given the serial nature of their production, it is evident that millions of Agnus Dei were in circulation in the early modern centuries, primed in Rome to serve as instruments of global salvation. 13 Cherry, “Containers for Agnus Dei,” 171; Lepoittevin, “Picciolini, picolini et piccioli,” 103–105.

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Pilgrimage and peregrination If Agnus Dei circulated in part as tokens of Rome, we may well ask how Rome was materially marked on the disks. The most obvious manner this was done was by imprint of the reigning pope’s name and arms. In some examples, Roman sacred sites were shown on the reverse of the disks, though such scenes remain the exception. Most images depict Christ, Mary, or saints with few Roman associations. The word ‘Rome’ only occasionally appears. Consequently, it was neither through inscription nor through an overtly Roman iconography that Agnus Dei served as markers of Rome. There is nothing intrinsically Roman or papal about the lamb and standard on the face of the disk. Drawn from the Book of Revelation, the image is one of the most common Christological symbols of the medieval and early modern periods. It was routinely incorporated into church decoration and secular coins, seals, medals, and merchants’ marks.14 The lamb and standard became associated with Rome due to the way Agnus Dei most commonly travelled from the city – in the company of pilgrims. The modern Agnus Dei cult emerged over the course of the fourteenth century in conjunction with the establishment of a fixed calendar of Holy Year celebrations and the increased popularity of pilgrimage to Rome. In the same period, Agnus Dei imagery began to be incorporated into other Roman souvenirs such as medals and pilgrims’ badges.15 It is possible that the standard was sometimes conflated with the pilgrim’s staff, a recurring motif of many pilgrimage objects. The image of the lamb and standard was frequently imprinted on decorated Agnus Dei cases, serving as a visible marker of the container’s contents.16 In other words, Agnus Dei iconography was metonymous with practices of movement as much as it was with the city of Rome as a localized sacred site. The distribution of Agnus Dei to pilgrims was an important feature of Holy Year celebrations. By the sixteenth century, a jubilee was proclaimed every 25 years. The vast quantity of wax purchased for Gregory XIII in 1573 was done in anticipation of the great number of disks required for distribution to pilgrims during the 1575 Holy Year. Even then, there were shortages. During the jubilee year itself, broken Agnus Dei and larger disks in the papal stores 14 See Torres Jiménez, “Ecce Agnus Dei;” Vunk, “Medieval Pilgrimages,” 132–34. 15 See several examples at the British Museum: 1913,0619.18; OA.663; 1896,0501.68; Vunk, “Medieval Pilgrimages,” 134–36. 16 Cherry, “Containers for Agnus Dei;” Vunk, “Medieval Pilgrimages,” 133–38. Further on pilgrimage, see the Introduction to the present volume.

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were melted down and refabricated to produce smaller lambs.17 For the 1600 Holy Year, it was reported that Clement VIII manufactured Agnus Dei several times, an exception to the usual procedures, producing “hundreds of chests” each time for distribution to pilgrims.18 While pilgrimage served as a mechanism for the material diffusion of Agnus Dei, it also framed the social and cultural field in which the disks operated. Pilgrimage is occasionally reflected in the iconography of the disks. Roman images and sacred sites such as the Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore, the Lateran baptistery, and Bernini’s Baldacchino in St Peter’s, for example, feature on extant moulds.19 Pilgrimage is most vividly communicated by surviving moulds that bear the imprint of the Porta Sancta (or ‘Holy Door’) at St Peter’s on the reverse of the disks. Normally bricked up, the Porta Sancta was ritually demolished with a silver hammer by the pope at the beginning of a Holy Year. Pilgrims who passed through the door were granted a plenary indulgence, the remittance of all temporal penalties for sin. Some moulds depict the ritual destruction of the wall, while others offer a rendering of the portal itself. Though the moulds are not easily dated, certainly some are of sixteenth-century origin. Similar iconography was used in 1575 jubilee medals.20 The attribution of many of the protective powers commonly ascribed to Agnus Dei likely originated with their use by pilgrims returning from Rome. Other pilgrim souvenirs functioned in a similar manner. The Coquille St Jacques collected by pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, for example, was commonly interpreted as a shield. Among the most common Roman souvenirs were those that displayed images of Veronica’s shroud, the cloth said to have been used to wipe Christ’s face as he made his way to Cavalry and which bore the image of Christ’s face imprinted with his own blood. Kept at St Peter’s, the Veronica was revealed to pilgrims on designated feast days. By the sixteenth century, the Veronica was the most widely dispersed 17 Riera, Historia utilissima, 122: “che però sua Santità per haverne maggior numero da distribuirsi à pellegrini, et à forestieri, fece usare diligenza per trovarne delli vecchi di quelli di forma grande, e de’ rotti, accioché di quella medesimo materia disfatti, e liquefatta la cera, se ne facessero de’ nuovi di minor forma; il che fu fato con gran consolatione di tante migliaia di persone, che ne ricevettero in quest’anno Santo.” 18 Lunadoro, Relatione della corte di Roma, 13: “è gli Agnus Dei benedetti, che si fanno nella medesima Guardarobba, distribuendo essi giornalmente. I quali Agnus Dei, è solito che il Papa gli faccino, ogni sette anni, se bene … de Papa Clemente ottavo, all’Anno Santo del 1600 li fece più volte, è sempre gran quantità di casse à centinara, è volse che si distribuissero largamente.” 19 Zecchino, “Agnus Dei di cera,” 221, 233. 20 Zecchino, “Agnus Dei di cera,” 230–32; Lepoittevin, “Picciolini, picolini et piccioli,” 97. For jubilee medals, see e.g. British Museum, M.1396; G3, PMAE6.106.

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Figure 7.3 a-b Portable silver Agnus Dei reliquary, ca. 1500. Engraved image of the Lamb of God with standard on the obverse, and the Veronica on the reverse. Ø 4.1 cm. Historisches Museum Basel, Inv. Nr. 1878.39. Photo: P. Portner.

Roman pilgrimage image, leaving the city imprinted on medals, prints, figurines, and miniature reproductions in textile. In a manner similar to the mantle of the Virgin of Mercy, Veronica’s shroud offered protection to travellers undertaking their homeward journey.21 The enmeshment of Agnus Dei with pilgrimage to Rome is forcefully attested by the image of the Veronica on several surviving Agnus Dei cases and reliquaries.22 In the silver Agnus Dei container shown here, the lamb and standard depicted on one side communicate the contents of the container, while on the other side the Veronica, whose powers remain undiminished when copied, serves to concentrate a surfeit of divine power within the object (Figures 7.3a and 7.3b). Like many portable Agnus Dei containers, it was not meant to be opened once its contents were secured. Containers might combine Agnus Dei with other pilgrimage objects with protective properties such as contact relics.23 When worn upon the body, they had the potential to transform everyday, local ambulation into iterations of Roman pilgrimage. 21 Kessler, “Paradigms of Movement,” 36; Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, 317–58. 22 Cherry, “Containers for Agnus Dei,” 175; Corry, Howard, and Laven, Madonnas and Miracles, 130–31; Zchomelidse, “Liminal Phenomena,” 260–61, 282–86. 23 Blick, “Bringing Pilgrimage Home,” 5.

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Agnus Dei were deployed in other ways that suggest close association with Roman pilgrimage. In 1573, a Roman newssheet reported that Gregory XIII had sent 10,000 Agnus Dei to Spain and Portugal. Another account states that the pope blessed 250 chests for pilgrims in Rome that same year and sent others to “all the regions of Christendom.”24 The Agnus Dei shipped in bulk from Rome were intended for distribution to would-be Holy Year pilgrims unable to make the journey to Rome. It is likely that the disks had been granted an ad instar indulgence, a common form of jubilee indulgence. In return for the performance of a prescribed number of devotional acts, which usually included visiting local sacred sites in lieu of the seven Roman pilgrimage churches, the penitent was granted the same indulgences as those who journeyed to Rome. Indulgences augmented the already considerable spiritual value of Agnus Dei. A shipment of devotional objects dispatched in 1591 with Jesuit missionaries to the Philippines was graced with just such an ad instar indulgence. The objects, which along with Agnus Dei included rosary beads, medals, relics, crucifixes, and images, had all been indulgenced by the pope. A printed handbill explained that anyone who visited a church housing one of the objects and offered a rosary prayer for the Christianization of the Philippines would gain the same indulgences as pilgrims who visited the churches of Rome.25 A similar indulgence, together with further shipments of holy objects, was later extended to Jesuits in Peru and New Spain.

Global pathways The principal missionary orders – Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Jesuits – all made use of portable devotional objects such as crucifixes, rosary beads, images, relics, and prayer cards. While missionary use of images has benefited from sustained study, the manner in which other forms of material Christianity were deployed as salvific objects in the mission field has received less attention.26

24 Schraven, “Beyond the Studiolo,” 79; Maffei, Annali di Gregorio XIII, 1:108. 25 Vatican City, Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (hereafter ARSI), F.G. 676: Indulgenze concesse … alli Granni, Agnus Dei, Reliquie, Croci, Medaglie, Quadri, et Imagini benedette ad istanza del P. Alfonso Sanchez della Compagnia di Giesù mandato dalli Stati delle isole Filippine. 26 Among studies with an explicit focus on Christian devotional objects outside Europe, see Clair, “Corps et décor;” De Caro, “From the Altar to the Household;” Friant, “‘Ils aiment bien leur chapelet’;” Tramontana, “‘Per ornamento e servizio’;” Vu Thanh, “L’économie des objets de

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None were better placed to become global brokers of Roman devotional materials than Jesuits. Headquartered in Rome and with a centralized administrative structure, the Society of Jesus enjoyed a dynamic communications system and robust mechanisms for the circulation of men, documents, and objects across Europe and around the globe. 27 The f inely textured nature of surviving Jesuit documentation permits an up-close view of one of the primary global circuits along which Agnus Dei travelled. Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus emerged as a global missionary order in the same decades that witnessed the increased production of Agnus Dei in Rome. At first, the disks were acquired cautiously, obtained through intermediaries in the papal curia. They were doled out carefully, sent singly or in pairs, and usually reserved for benefactors. In one instance, an Agnus Dei for Leonora Osorio, wife of the Spanish Viceroy in Sicily, was obtained from the Neapolitan cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa (later Pope Paul IV), who was approached through his nephew.28 In 1557, a handful of disks were sent to Prague for presentation to Archduke Maximilian and members of his family.29 The lambs travelled more freely along the Jesuit network as supply increased. In 1568, Pedro de Ribadeneyra sent an entire chest of Agnus Dei to Seville. Some were destined for his own family, while the rest were for distribution by the rector of the Seville college. A few years later, 120 Agnus Dei were dispatched to Jesuits in Germany, with a disclaimer that only their bulkiness prevented more from being sent. In these same years, 300 wax lambs were sent to Spanish colleges, six dozen to Peru, 200 to the college at Pátzcuaro in New Spain, and so on. Jesuits travelling from Rome commonly departed with small quantities of disks in their baggage.30 In 1592, the Jesuit-run Collegio Germanico in Rome was supplied with “a full chest” – likely containing several hundred disks – of Agnus Dei by Clement VIII. Students at the college, most destined for ministry in northern and central Europe, each received five lambs.31 dévotion.” There is a larger literature on relics; for orientation, see Fabre, “Reliquias Romanas;” Županov, “Relics Management;” Coello de la Rosa, “Reliquias globales.” 27 See Nelles, “Jesuit Letters,” for further bibliography; Clossey, Salvation and Globalization. On early modern religious networks, see also the contributions of Sebouh Aslanian and Felicita Tramontana in the present volume. 28 MI Epp. 3:73; MI Epp. 1:563. 29 LQ 4:431; LQ 5:170. 30 LQ 5:663; M Rib. 1:621; Canisius Epp. 7:52; ARSI, Hisp. 117, fol. 100r; M Per. 1:360–61; M Mex. 3:453. 31 Rome, Archivum Collegium Germanicum-Hungaricum, Hist. 104a, fol. 38.

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Jesuits in the missions were aware that supply depended on events in Rome. Close attention was paid to the papal calendar as a result. After the long drought following the mass distributions of the 1575 Holy Year, in 1579 the Jesuit procurator in Seville eagerly awaited the Indies’ share of the “great abundance of Agnus Dei recently produced.” The bounty did not last long. Three years later, Rome informed New Spain that “we will try to send what agnusdei we can, though we have very few, as it has been many years since His Holiness has consecrated.”32 When Jesuits in New Spain requested additional disks in 1588, only two years after the ceremonies of Sixtus V, Rome advised that lambs were in short supply “and nor will His Holiness consecrate any time soon.”33 Jesuits enjoyed privileged access to Agnus Dei. They evidently maintained a good working relationship with the Cistercian monks who manufactured the disks. When Jesuits in New Spain asked for larger Agnus to adorn chapel altars, Rome replied that all their larger disks had been melted down to make smaller ones.34 And when in 1601 Jesuits in Asia reported that Agnus Dei frequently became discoloured during their long maritime journey, the Jesuit procurator in Rome obtained papal licence for Jesuit artists to colour the disks, a practice prohibited by Gregory XIII in 1572.35 Roman objects and other goods bound for the overseas missions were routed through Portugal or Spain. The first Jesuit missions – initiated in the 1540s – were in areas of Portuguese influence in Asia, Brazil, and Africa. Activities in these regions were coordinated through Lisbon. Jesuit missions to Spanish territories in the Americas and the Philippines, begun in 1568, were managed through Seville. In Lisbon and Seville logistics were overseen by Jesuit procurators who coordinated communications and supplies. Procurators were charged with outfitting embarking missionaries for the voyage and preparing administrative documents, printed books, bulk goods, and devotional images and objects for maritime transit.36 32 M Mex. 1:490–91; 2:66. 33 M Mex. 3:448. 34 M Mex. 6:120: “porque se deschicieron casi todos los que havía para hacerlos pequeños.” 35 Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Secr. Brev. Reg. 316, 15r: “Beatissimo Padre. Li Padri della Compagnia di Giesù dell’Indie espongono à Vostra Santità che li Agnus Dei, che li sono mandati da Roma, diventano negri per la longa Navigationi, però supplicano Vostra Santità humilmente che si degni dar facoltà à uno delli lor fratelli pittori che sono in qualli parti, che possa miniare detti Agnus Dei, che lo riceveranno dall Santità Vostra per gratia singolarissima.” A papal brief licencing the Society to paint Agnus Dei was issued on January 9, 1602 (14r). On the prohibitions of Gregory XIII, see Barbier de Montault, “Traité liturgique,” 1506–1508. 36 On Jesuit procurators, see Alcalá, “‘De compras por Europa’;” Martínez-Serna, “Procurators;” Nelles, “Cosas y cartas;” Palomo, “Procurators.”

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The mission procurators were expected to have a ready stockpile of Roman objects and to keep headquarters informed when supplies of Agnus Dei, images, and rosary beads ran low. There were frequent complaints of shortage. In 1572 the procurator in Lisbon reported that no relics whatsoever had arrived for Brazil, he had only four Agnus Dei, and very few images remained.37 As with other goods shipped over distances, theft was a threat. After one shipment of devotional objects sent from Rome was pilfered in transit, the exasperated Lisbon procurator explained how things were organized locally. Goods such as Agnus Dei and rosary beads were packed and sealed with strict instructions not to open the shipment. A few pieces were kept loose to satisfy officials accustomed to helping themselves to goods in transit. The procurator briskly requested that shipments be similarly packaged in Rome.38 As we have seen, wax lambs did not voyage alone. Other objects of Roman provenance travelled in their company. Most common were rosary beads blessed by the pope and copies of Roman images such as the Veronica. Jesuits on rural and urban missions in Europe were instructed to carry images, rosaries, devotional pamphlets, and Agnus Dei as a matter of course. These were to be distributed freely to those who merited them. When Francisco de Angulo, later a missionary in Peru, was sent to the Spanish Netherlands, he asked for “spiritual arms” from Rome in the form of relics, rosary beads, and Agnus Dei to combat “the sterility of the region.” Another Jesuit sent to reform a convent in France was similarly furnished with indulgences, a rosary blessed by the pope, and a supply of wax lambs.39 Devotional objects were at times shipped in astonishing quantities. Jesuits received an enormous number of Agnus Dei shortly before the death of Pius V in 1572. For the Society’s Iberian provinces alone, 262 Agnus Dei were sent to Aragon, 355 to Castille, and 374 to Toledo. Additional disks were designated for the Spanish overseas missions: 80 for Peru, 73 for New Spain, and 50 for Florida. Additional chests, likely containing hundreds more wax lambs, were dispatched to Portugal. 40 In 1579, the mission procurator in Lisbon received 25,500 papal beads to send to India. He received a separate shipment of 15,000 beads and three chests of Agnus Dei for Japan. A large group of Jesuits embarking for India that same year were each given 50 Agnus 37 DI 9: 619; ARSI, Lus. 64, fol. 251r: “las reliquias no parecen. Los agnus dei son quatro y imagines muy pocas.” 38 DI 12: 164. 39 ARSI, Opp. NN 55, “Ricordi per li nostri che vanno alle Castelli et Ville,” fol. 54v; Storni, “Documentos,” 152; MI Epp. 8:398. 40 DI 8:556; ARSI Hisp. 69, fol. 100v; Hisp. 117, fol. 100r.

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Dei, 1,000 rosary beads, and a dozen prayer cards. Alessandro Valignano, dispatched to inspect the Jesuit Asian missions in 1574, expressed outrage upon reaching Lisbon that the two cases of Agnus Dei he had transported from Rome contained only 3,500 Agnus Dei apiece, when he had been promised in Rome that he would find 15,000 to 20,000 of the wax lambs in each chest.41 Despite frequent complaints of shortages, Jesuits were evidently well-stocked brokers of Roman devotional objects.

Presence, portability, and fragmentation Suffused with divine presence, Agnus Dei – like other Christian sacramentals – needed to be physically present to be effective. They were consequently highly mobile objects, frequently worn upon the body. The fragility of the wax lambs meant that they were normally kept in a case or container, which might be very basic cloth sacks or purses. Most surviving Agnus Dei containers are made of metal. Some are relatively simple affairs of lead or copper, while others are more elaborate objects, such as the silver case encountered above. The containers themselves were portable, wearable objects. Suspended by a chain or cord, they were commonly worn around the neck. They might also be hung from a girdle or, when enclosed within a purse fabric covering, pinned to other articles of clothing. 42 Like other sacramentals such as relics and holy water, the sacred power of Agnus Dei was undiminished when divided. This meant that they could be broken up, shared, and circulated ever more widely. Jesuits in the Low Countries reportedly developed a method for restoring “broken lambs” for those who possessed fragments. 43 From Japan, the missionary Luís Fróis reported that he had transported an entire chest of disks from India. Called locally “relics of love,” Fróis explained that they were habitually shared by Japanese Christians. After one Jesuit had preached a fervent sermon on the power of the lambs, broken disks were shared with more than 41 DI 9:581; DI 15:828; DI 9:223: “Io ho trovato nella casse degl’Agnus Dei che veniva nell’India che erano in tutto da 3500 poco più o meno, et altri tanti penso che saranno stati quelli ch’erano nell’altra cassetta, che ha havuta il P. Provinciale, perché erano de una istessa qualità et capacità. Et perché sono stati si pochi, gli porto meco nell’Indie divisi in diverse navi; et sono riusciti molto meno di quello che ci pensavamo, poiché in Roma et qui ci dicevano che in ciascuna di quelle cassette ce n’erano 15 o 20 milia, et è stato certo gran calo.” 42 Cherry, “Healing through Faith,” 157–60; Cherry, “Containers for Agnus Dei;” Cooper, “Investigating the ‘Case’ of the Agnus Dei,” 229–31. 43 Molanus, “Oratio de Agnus Dei,” 375, 381; Caspers and Brekelmans, “Power of Prayer,” 66.

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1,500 people. Jesuits in New Spain almost always spoke of fragments – “un pedaço de agnusdei.” In Teotlalco, one missionary reported distributing fragments the size of a pinhead. Another mentioned pieces so small they were “indivisible.”44 The frequent mention of fragments in the sources has several implications. Fragmentation greatly augmented the portability of Agnus Dei, producing small pieces easily carried upon the body. At the material level, this indicates that even though abundant quantities of Agnus Dei travelled from Rome, the actual number of wax artefacts in circulation was much greater, perhaps exponentially so. It also suggests that there may be reasons apart from the vagaries of time that a relatively low proportion of whole Agnus Dei have survived from the medieval and early modern centuries. The frequency of reports of fragmentation in textual sources suggests that many surviving Agnus Dei containers, particularly smaller containers, may never have contained whole disks. In such instances, the container’s shape and iconography served an indexical function, providing a figurative frame furnishing essential context about the aniconic contents of the container. Fragmentation also raises questions about the stability of the Roman identity of the wax lambs and the nature of the sacred economy in which they operated. Papal markings and devotional imagery were evidently not the only means of ascribing value to Agnus Dei. Far from devaluing the wax lambs, fragmentation may well have enhanced their desirability. It made the wax lambs physically homologous to relics, the sacred objects with which Agnus Dei were most closely identified and most frequently combined, as the testimony of the Agnus Dei reliquaries considered here attests. Fragmentation rendered the iconography and Roman identity of the disks not merely indecipherable but obliterated. It meant that ascertaining the reality of the miracle-working bits of wax would require an intermediary. Who better suited than the Jesuit missionaries who had carried the wax lambs from Rome?

Lambs on the move In global transit, Agnus Dei were staples of ship-board religion. The attributed maritime efficacy of the wax lambs likely derived from the fact that they had acquired their sacred powers through immersion. This was no 44 Fróis, Cartas 1575, 171v, 173r; M Mex. 7:188; M Mex. 2:577: “A los indios los repartí, dando a cado uno como una cabeça de alfiler;” M Mex. 3:493; DI 4:620: “hum pouco de Agnus Dei.”

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doubt enhanced by the natural properties of the physical matter of which the disks were made. Wax floats, after all, and is inherently water-repellent. The thaumaturgical and apotropaic powers attributed to Agnus Dei – objects destined to travel – meant that they remained in perpetual circulation. Many of their powers were derived from a cluster of aquatic associations related to their baptism in Rome. They were employed to ward off waterborn dangers such as rain, hail, flooding, and, as we shall see presently, rough waters at sea. Their aquatic associations also explain their use as prophylactics against lightening and fire. Other uses for Agnus Dei were derived from the salvific powers of baptism as a rite of passage. They were used during pregnancy, childbirth, and early infancy and were commonly included in dowries. Clerical exorcism remained an essential component of baptismal rites in the medieval and early modern centuries, and Agnus Dei were consequently commonly used in exorcisms as well as serving as more general talismans against the devil. Other sacramentals associated with baptismal exorcism, such as holy water and salt, were similarly employed in exorcisms and were carried on the body to ward off evil. Although they were papally sanctified ritual objects, Agnus Dei frequently intersected with practices of popular religion, healing, and magic. Combining evidence from inquisitorial records with attentive study of Agnus Dei containers, Irene Gallandra Cooper has shown how the layered meanings and sacred powers of Agnus Dei were appropriated by individuals and activated in everyday devotions. Agnus Dei were sometimes combined with other materials and objects not always sacred in character. While they are found alongside relics and rosaries, they were also combined with coral, textual amulets, and other materials with medical or supernatural attributes. 45 Agnus Dei consequently possessed specific material and spiritual qualities that made them objects of extreme value in the face of the dangers of sea travel. Jesuits were not mere passengers aboard ship. Their spiritual services were called upon from the moment of embarkation. Missionaries considered the ships that carried them to new lands a pastoral zone like any other. They heard confession, held mass, organized prayers and processions, and engaged crew and passengers in devout conversation. For seasoned Jesuits, it was an opportunity to exercise skills acquired in their pastoral missions in Europe. For new Jesuits the ship served as a training ground for the missionary work 45 Cooper, “Investigating the ‘Case’ of the Agnus Dei.” On the function of Agnus Dei as domestic devotional objects, see also Cooper’s catalogue entries in Corry, Howard, and Laven, Madonnas and Miracles, 123–25, 130–33; Musacchio, “Lambs, Coral, Teeth,” 149–51; Crispí, “The Use of Devotional Objects;” Muller, “Agnus Dei.”

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that lay ahead. It was at moments of grave danger – when ships were lost, battered by heavy seas, or had foundered – that Jesuit spiritual services were most urgently required. Missionaries led collective prayer, processions, and summoned the intercession of the saints. In times of imminent peril, they effected what Giuseppe Marcocci has called the “saltwater conversion” of soldiers, sailors, and passengers. 46 Ritual, prayer, and religious objects were essential components of shipboard ministry. Agnus Dei were commonly used as devotional and liturgical aids, as in the following account by Nicolas Spinola, reporting on a voyage from Lisbon to Goa in 1578. Having just passed the equatorial line and bound for the dangerous waters around the Cape of Good Hope, preventative measures were taken. On the day of Corpus Christi we created a solemn procession around the ship with the large leaves much used in this part of the world, carrying a beautifully decorated chest with very large Agnus Dei inside and many candles alight, carried by two well-dressed boys singing, while one of us wore sacerdotal vestments. These Portuguese being very fond of relics, that day we also showed them some that we had with us, and they showed great devotion, bearing torches, and advancing on their knees to kiss them. 47

When a storm arose when rounding the Cape, Spinola reported that passengers, soldiers, and sailors alike feared for their lives. Jesuits won numerous converts when the waters miraculously calmed in response to the collective prayers of all aboard. A second, more virulent storm, leaving everyone drenched in seawater, abated only after an Agnus Dei was thrown into the waves.48 Immersion at sea was the enduring fate of many Agnus Dei. Wax lambs were not the only objects thrown overboard in times of crisis. Sailors had made oblations to the sea for centuries: bread, clothing, money, salt, oil, bits of sailcloth, images, and candles were among the many objects offered at times of crisis. 49 Agnus Dei were especially well-suited to the task, due in part to their relative abundance. But there were other logics at play. Maritime immersion re-enacted the baptismal rites that had infused the wax lambs 46 On Jesuit shipboard pastoral activities, see Brockey, “Largos caminhos e vastos mares;” Brockey, “Jesuit Missionaries on the Carreira da Índia;” Tempère, “Conversion, évangélisation et miracles;” idem, “Marins et missionnaires;” Marcocci, “Saltwater conversion;” Salomoni, “Jesuits on Board.” 47 DI 11:311. 48 DI 11:312. 49 Bassett, Legends and Superstitions, 379–98, offers an exhaustive if uncritical survey; see Tempère, “Conversion, évangélisation et miracles,” 325; idem, Vivre et mourir, 241–54.

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with sacred power in the first place. And when missionaries discerned storms to be the work of the devil, plunging Agnus Dei overboard served to sacralize raging seas. There are countless reports of Agnus Dei being thrown overboard. One Jesuit travelling on a separate ship in the same 1578 fleet as Spinola described a ferocious storm encountered near Mozambique. After reciting prayers and the litanies of the saints, a candle blessed by the pope was lit and, around midnight, an Agnus Dei was cast into the ocean together with the relic of a Roman martyr – with immediate effect. During another stormy sea journey in Brazil, an Agnus Dei was thrown overboard, upon which the sea calmed completely within half an hour of having sensed the power of the “holy relic.”50 Amidst a six-day storm encountered during a voyage between Salvador de Bahia and Pernambuco in Brazil, relics and Agnus Dei were repeatedly thrown on the waters. During another storm on a journey from Marseille to Alicante, prayers, an Agnus Dei, an image of the Virgin, and a candle touched to the “sacred key” in Rome were all pressed into service.51 Fragments rather than whole disks were commonly thrown overboard. This was in part a sensible economy: one Jesuit exhausted an entire supply of Agnus Dei intended for the Asia mission during a series of storms around the Cape of Good Hope.52 Jettisoning fragments may also have held ritual significance. Immersion at sea recalls the liturgical moment of the commingling during mass, when a piece of the fragmented host is placed in the sacramental wine of the chalice, a material enactment of the reincorporation of the body and blood of Christ. The Agnus Dei verses were recited or sung immediately afterward.53 Aboard ship, hurling fragments of the wax lambs into heaving seas promised more immediate salvation. The work of salvific reincorporation performed by Agnus Dei is strikingly conveyed in the account of a Minim friar who voyaged from Rome to Naples in the early seventeenth century. A tremendous storm arose immediately after setting to sea. The friar recited a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria, invoking the aid of Pius V. Carrying with him an Agnus Dei bearing the pope’s arms, he broke off a fragment and threw it in the water. The sea calmed immediately. The storm resumed twice again, each time more ferociously than the last. The friar repeated the process, breaking off pieces of the lamb and throwing them into the sea, with the same effect. The fourth time – with the storm at its height – the friar 50 DI 11:339; M Bras. 2:298. 51 DI 6:534; DI 7:235, 366; M Bras. 3:326; M Borja 5:337; DI 11: 312. 52 DI 7:235. 53 Craig, Fractio panis, 225–29.

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was beseeched by passengers to throw the entire thing into the water. He complied, but not wishing to lose what little remained of the disk, he attached a string so that the piece could be recovered when the storm abated. When the string was finally pulled from the water in Naples, it was discovered that not only had the fragment remained attached, but that it had become whole: “the fragments, though broken and separated at different times, and at places at some distance from one another, were reunited in such a way that only the marks where they had once been separated could be seen.”54 As bearers of sacred goods, Jesuit missionaries were closely associated with Roman objects. Jesuits were not only a source of material supply of Agnus Dei, however: the order’s well-known ties to Rome imbued material objects with the aura of their Roman provenance. The transit of the objects from Rome and their status as things that had journeyed became part of their identity. One Jesuit newly arrived in India marvelled at the scale of local devotion to the pope and “Roman things” such as blessed beads, relics, Veronicas, crosses, and Agnus Dei. He was swarmed by students at the Jesuit college in Goa once they learned he was newly arrived from Rome. Jesuits also served as conduits for stories about the Roman origin of the disks, their status as sacred objects, and their spiritual power. As one Jesuit reported from New Spain, “no one will take them, unless they come from our hands.”55

Local/global enmeshment When Agnus Dei arrived at locations across the planet, they encountered local cultural and religious systems. It is beyond the scope of the present analysis to explore the intersection of Agnus Dei with non-Western objects and practices. But there is no question that from the perspective of Jesuit missionaries, the baptismal associations of Agnus Dei made them unparalleled instruments of conversion. From almost every locale of mission activity, we find reports of the wax lambs worn as pendants by new Christians. Missionary sources from Brazil, Japan, New Spain, and New France all matter-of-factly state that Agnus Dei were suspended from the necks of those who had received baptism.56 In other words, Agnus Dei appear to have been activated on mission much as they began their life in Rome – as material tokens of baptism. A Franciscan 54 Maffei, Vita di S. Pio Quinto, 409–10. 55 DI 6:253; M Mex. 2:615: “y que nadie los pueda tomar, sino venir a nuestras manos.” 56 See for example M Mex. 6:391; Fróis, Relations, 42–43; 67–68, 115.

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missionary in New France reported that the life of his Huron interpreter was saved by the Agnus he wore around his neck. Ambushed by Iroquois, when his attackers tried to tear the lamb away, thunder sounded with such sound and fury that they feared for their very lives “for having dared to try and murder this Christian and remove his reliquary.” Nuns at the Hôtel-Dieu in Québec devised a hierarchy of devotional objects. They provided unbaptized indigenous catechumens with scallop shells from the shores of the St Lawrence. The Coquille St Jacques pendants were an emblem (for the nuns, at least) of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Agnus Dei were reserved for neophytes who had received baptism.57 In Brazil, one Jesuit recounted how the Tupi exchanged feathered capes – also worn in baptismal ceremonies – for Agnus Dei.58 While the nature of the experience of Christian conversion for non-European peoples can only remain a matter of conjecture, it is clear that in some way Agnus Dei served as markers of cross-cultural contact. Just as Agnus Dei were combined with other objects in transit, so too when they reached distant shores. To conclude, we can consider a few examples from New Spain. We first turn to the Jesuit mission of Guanaceví in north-western New Spain in the 1590s, which was then at the frontier of colonial expansion. Conditions differed greatly from the established Nahua mission territory of central Mexico, where forms of indigenous Christianity had existed for generations. Local Tepehuán had limited previous exposure to Spanish colonial influences, and Jesuits ministered to some of the first indigenous communities to encounter Christianity. The annual letter of 1597 reports the baptism of adults and children at Guanaceví. Among the catechumens was a youth from a prominent family who had been given the Christian name of Gerónimo. A large theatre was built in front of the church, on which was erected an altar in honour of the apostle James, whose feast day it was, adorned with bunting. In front of this was placed the baptismal font, ingeniously arboured with branches. The cantors and their assistants entered and organized several dances with these same Indians. After singing the mass with much solemnity … there was a procession around the church singing the Litanies, in the middle of which were the catechumens and their parents, all of whom were dressed for the occasion, with the children in front, followed by the adults. At the very end was Gerónimo … dressed in white from head to toe like a dove, with a cloak (tilma) made of silk over everything, and a wreath on his head made of gold and white feathers. There was also a 57 Sagard, Grand voyage du pays des Hurons, 218–19; MNF 4:760. 58 Buono, “Tupi Featherwork,” 351.

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plume on his left hand, as is their custom, set in a brocade bracelet, and around his neck a necklace of gold and very fine corals, with an agnusdei and a large cross full of relics. His parents were two of the most important Indians of the area, dressed in almost exactly the same manner.59

In this episode, we find European and indigenous objects deployed together in Christian baptism rites that incorporated familiar Tepehuán rituals. The Agnus amulet was combined with a cross-reliquary, while the coral and goldwork were certainly of local provenance. The group proceeded to the baptismal font to be baptized one by one, accompanied by dancing, music, and singing performed by indigenous participants. The ceremony was one long communal spectacle, full of sound and motion. Dressed entirely in white, Gerónimo’s attire fulfilled European requirements for baptism and confirmation while at the same time incorporating items of indigenous dress such as the tilma, a brocade bracelet, and a feather head-dress. Agnus Dei were incorporated into the new colonial and settler societies that arose across the globe. In Puebla, testaments and dowry records reveal how Agnus Dei served as objects of domestic devotion. While some were modestly adorned, as in Europe others were framed with gold or silver, bore a crystal cover, or were decorated with coral and precious materials. Listed alongside rosary beads, images, reliquaries, and domestic oratories, Agnus Dei were evidently much prized. It was not uncommon for wealthier individuals to possess several disks. One rich bride entered her marriage with “an entire large, gilded silver chest of Agnus Dei.” In at least one case, the Roman origin of an Agnus Dei is indexed in the inventory, listed alongside an image of the Veronica. That is not the only sign of global connections. Agnus Dei commingle with porcelain objects and, in one instance, a ‘Chinese’ rosary (likely ivory) – things that would have travelled from the Philippines via the Manilla galleons.60 59 M Mex. 6:430–31: “Híçose un gran theatro delante de la iglesia, leventando en él un altar en honrra del glorioso apóstol Santiago, cuyo día era, adornado con muchos arcos. Delante estava puesta la pila de el baptismo, muy curiosamente enrramada. Vinieron los cantores con sus ministriles, y ordenáronse algunas danças de los mesmos indios. Y después de averse cantado la missa con mucha solemnidad […] se ordenó una processión alrededor de la iglesia cantando las letanías; y en medio de ella ivan los catecúmenos con sus padrinos, bien adereçados: delante los niños, y detrás los adultos, y el postrero Gerónimo […] vestido de blanco, de pies a caveça, como una paloma, con una tilma sobre lo demás, de seda, y una guirnalda en la caveça, hecha de oro y seda y plumas blancas, de las quales traya un penacho en el braço izquiedro (como ellos usan), con su braçalete de brocado, y al cuello, una cadena de oro y corales muy finos, con su agnusdei y una cruz grande, llena de reliquias. Fueron sus padrinos dos indios de los más principales, vestidos casi de la misma manera.” 60 Galí Boadella, “Arte, devoción y vida cotidiana.”

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Figure 7.4 Tablet reliquary with Agnus Dei of Paul V, with illuminated miniatures, relics, and relic labels. Andrés Lagarto, Mexico City, 17th c. Mexico City, Museo Soumaya.

In New Spain as elsewhere, Agnus Dei were enshrined in reliquaries. In the example considered here, an Agnus Dei of Paul V is mounted on a tablet reliquary surrounded by relics, relic labels, and painted illuminations of several saints (Fig. 7.4). The Agnus Dei bears the image of Saint Carlo Borromeo, canonized in 1610 under the same pope. No fewer than 38 individual relic labels are affixed to the reliquary, which serve to frame the relics and visually connect the Agnus Dei disk, the relics, and the illuminated images. Monograms of Christ and Mary – ‘IHS’ and ‘MRA’ – serve a similar framing function, and might also have recalled the forms of textual prayer

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that sometimes circulated with Agnus Dei when worn upon the body. The Agnus Dei disk, the images, the textual elements, and the more prominent relics are framed with a brocade-work border, as is the reliquary as a whole. The brocade work draws on pre-contact artisanal traditions reconfigured for a colonial audience. The decorative illumination, including the highly visible and unusually prominent lettering of the relic labels, was the work of the Lagarto family of scribes, writing masters, and illuminators active in Puebla and Mexico City in the early colonial period.61 Combining relics and Agnus Dei with local materials and handwork, the reliquary is connected to sacred sites and holy bodies in Europe while materially and manually rooted in colonial New Spain. In new locations as at sea, in movement and at rest, Agnus Dei inhabited a sacred economy accessed through embodied performance: adornment, oral prayer, processions, and other gestures of hand and body. As Agnus Dei travelled the globe, they maintained core elements of their Roman identity, namely as markers of salvation, conversion, and baptism. At the same time, their activation in local settings harnessed the power of Agnus Dei to the contingent circumstances of time and place, with little or no connection to Rome. Their strongest ties were often with other things. The journeys of Agnus Dei show how Christian objects followed a geography of motion that oscillated between fixed sites, becoming both marked by those sites and inscribed with displacement and movement.

Works cited Abbreviations Canisius Epp. = Beati Petri Canisii Societatis Jesu, epistolae et acta. 8 vols. Freiburg im Bresgau: Herder, 1896–1923. DI = Documenta Indica. Ed. J. Wicki. 18 vols. Rome: Monumentum/Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1948–1988. LQ = Litterae Quadrimestres ex universis praeter Indiam et Brasiliam locis … Romam missae. 7 vols. Madrid-Rome: Avrial-[Monumentum Historicum Societatis Iesu], 1894–1932. M Bras. = Monumenta Brasiliae. 5 vols. Rome: Monumentum Historicum Societatis Iesu 1956–1968.

61 On the Lagarto, see Tovar de Teresa, El arte de los Lagarto, esp. 178–89.

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M Mex. = Monumenta Mexicana. 8 vols. Rome: Monumentum/Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1956–1991. M Per. = Monumenta Peruana. 8 vols. Rome: Monumentum/Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1954–1986. MI Epp. = S. Ignatii de Loyola epistolae et instructiones. 12 vols. Madrid: Lopez del Horno, 1903–1911. MNF = Monumenta Novae Franciae. 9 vols. Rome-Montréal: Monumentum/ Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu-Éditions Bellarmin, 1967–2003.

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Sebastiani, Pietro de’. Discorso de’ sagri Agnus Dei. Rome: Moneta, 1683. Secord, James A. “Knowledge in Transit.” Isis 95 (2004): 654–72. Smith, Julia M.H. “Portable Christianity. Relics in the Medieval West (c. 700–1200).” Proceedings of the British Academy 181 (2012): 143–67. Storni, Hugo. “Documentos del P. Francisco de Agnulo S.I. 1561–1575.” Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu 40 (1971): 147–52. Tempère, Delphine. Vivre et mourir sur les navires du Siècle d’Or. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2009. ———. “Marins et missionnaires face aux dangers des navigations océaniques au XVIIe siècle: Catastrophes, recours matériels et médiations spirituelles.” e-Spania 12 (December 2011). doi: 10.4000/e-spania.20832 ———. “Conversion, évangélisation et miracles sur les océans. La vie religieuse en mer au XVIIe siècle à travers l’œuvre des missionnaires jésuites.” Nouveaux chrétiens, nouvelles chrétientés dans les Amériques: XVIe-XIXe siècles, edited by Pierre Ragon, 313–28. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Ouest, 2014. Torres Jiménez, Raquel. “Ecce Agnus Dei qui tollit peccata mundi. Sobre los símbolos de Jesucristo en la Edad Media.” Hispania Sacra 65 (2013): 49–93. Tovar de Teresa, Guillermo. Un rescate de la fantasía: el arte de los Logarto, iluminadores novohispanos de los siglos XVI y XVII. Mexico City and Madrid: El Equilibrista, Turner, 1988. Tramontana, Felicita. “‘Per ornamento e servizio di questi Santi Luoghi’: l’arrivée des objets de dévotion dans les sanctuaries de Terre Sainte (XVIIe siècle).” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 183 (2018): 227–45. Vélez, Karin. The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto. Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018. Vu Thanh, Hélène. “L’économie des objets de dévotion en terres de mission: l’exemple du Japon (1549–1614).” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 183 (2018): 207–25. Vunk, Aldur. “Medieval Pilgrimages and Material Culture: Is the Image of Agnus Dei on the Risti Church Bell the Earliest Evidence of Roman Pilgrimages from Estonia?” Muinasaja Teadus 27 (2018): 127–42. Zchomelidse, Nino. “Liminal Phenomena: Framing Medieval Cult Images with Relics and Words.” Viator 47 (2016): 243–96. Zecchino, Mario Rosario. “Gli Agnus Dei di cera e le loro inedite matrici.” Historia Mundi 8 (2019): 204–33. Županov, Ines G. “Relics Management: Building a Spiritual Empire in Asia (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries).” In The Nomadic Object: The Challenge of World for Early Modern Religious Art, edited by Christine Göttler and Mia Mochizuki, 448–79. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

8. Getting to the Holy Land: Franciscan Journeys and Mediterranean Mobility Felicita Tramontana*

Abstract This chapter studies the networks that connected the Franciscan province of the Holy Land to continental Europe. These networks – originally created to facilitate the transfer of alms to Jerusalem – ensured the movement of money, people, and objects between Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. The chapter analyzes this circulation in its various facets: the paths followed by people and objects, the means of transport, the role played by institutions in making movement possible. Taking the analysis of the friars’ itineraries to Jerusalem and the Middle East as its point of departure, the chapter reassesses the role played by early modern networks in facilitating mobility across the Mediterranean and in integrating short-and long-distance movements. Keywords: networks; early modern Mediterranean; transport; alms collecting; religion

Since the 1970s, early modern mobility has been the subject of numerous works that have questioned the so-called ‘mobility transition.’ This paradigm, proposed by geographers such as Wilbur Zelinsky, identifies a divide between a supposedly static and immobile early modern society and a highly mobile, post-nineteenth-century one. According to this theory, the ‘modernization’ of the nineteenth century led to a dramatic change in mobility patterns, turning migration into a mass phenomenon.1 Zelinsky’s * This research has been funded by the European Union Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions, Grant Agreement: 657118. 1 Zelinsky, “Hypothesis of the Mobility Transition,” 219–49.

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch08

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idea has been amply debated and, indeed, contested by historians. The image of static pre-modern societies has been convincingly shown to be far from the truth. Even discounting those who are highly mobile by definition, such as refugees, in the early modern world most people’s existence was marked by one form of mobility or another.2 Zelinsky’s critics have had a much harder time addressing the second part of his paradigm. Although the link with ‘modernization’ has been successfully criticized, the dramatic rise in migration rates, especially from the mid-nineteenth century, is not in question.3 In fact, Leo Lucassen’s recent attempt at quantifying early modern migration, while reaffirming the highly mobile nature of early modern Europe, has conf irmed that there was indeed a signif icant increase in migration rates in the nineteenth century. 4 The construction of railways and the greater efficiency of seaborne commerce – involving the use of the steam engine and the emergence of ocean liners – boosted the speed, regularity, and predictability of transportation; lowered costs and risks; and in so doing facilitated and increased movement, especially across great distances. In short, the ‘transport revolution,’ by changing the way people moved, paved the way to a dramatic growth in mobility.5 Indeed, it would be fair to say that, throughout the centuries, infrastructures and the physical and institutional conditions of movement have determined the extent of mobility, its patterns, the destinations involved, and the actual decision to move or migrate. Our understanding of these infrastructures is, therefore, as Stephen Greenblatt has reminded us, of paramount importance for any attempt to comprehend the fundamental dynamics underlying mobility in a specific epoch.6 This chapter aims to address these concerns by analyzing the journeys undertaken in the seventeenth century by Franciscan friars heading toward the convents of the Custodia Terræ Sanctæ (Custody of the Holy Land). This is the name taken by the Franciscan Province of the Holy Land, founded in 2 See for example Moch, Moving Europeans; Tilly, “Migration in Modern European History.” On European migration, see also Canny, ed., Europeans on the Move. On migration in world history: Lucassen, Lucassen, and Manning, eds., Migration History in World History. 3 Lucassen and Lucassen, “The mobility transition revisited,” 249. 4 Lucassen and Lucassen, “The mobility transition revisited,” 347–77. 5 Lucassen, “The mobility transition revisited;” Moch, Moving Europeans, 12. On “infrastructural public works projects” and mobility, see Sebouh Aslanian’s contribution in the present volume. 6 On infrastructure and mobility, see Xiang and Lindquist, “Migration Infrastructure,” and Sebouh Aslanian’s contribution in the present volume. Greenblatt, “Mobility Studies Manifesto,” 250.

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1217 by Francis of Assisi.7 In the seventeenth century, its headquarters were the convent of St. Saviour in Jerusalem, where the friars’ principal tasks were protecting sacred sites and assisting Catholic pilgrims. Through the centuries, their presence in the eastern Mediterranean led to the development of a network through which alms, information, and the friars themselves arrived in Jerusalem. In a similar fashion to the migration networks conceptualized by present-day sociologists, the network of the Custody of the Holy Land facilitated mobility by providing travellers with accommodation, funds, and letters of recommendation, helping them to arrange their journey and ultimately reducing the risks and costs of mobility.8 Taking the above considerations as a point of departure, this chapter contributes to the study of early modern mobility by exploring the infrastructures and mechanisms that facilitated movement and their role in shaping the trajectories of individuals. In order to do so, it focuses on journeys and itineraries. The traditional focus of migration studies on origin and destination rather than on the journey itself has served to obscure the general characteristics of early modern mobility and its functioning, regardless of the length of a journey, motivation, or destination. In recent years, greater attention has been paid to physical infrastructures and especially roads, yet we still have only a limited understanding of the institutional structures and factors that shaped and facilitated people’s movement and of the ‘mechanics of mobility’ in a broader sense.9 Moreover, despite the holistic perspective and the emphasis on connectedness between different scales fostered by the rise of the concept of translocality within different disciplines and by a lively historiographical debate, many concrete aspects of the relationship between local, regional, and global mobility in the early modern world still need to be comprehensively addressed.10 What continuities, if any, were 7 Frazee, Catholics and Sultans, 60; Pieraccini, Cattolici di Terra Santa, 13–20; Heyberger, Chrétiens du Proche-Orient; Van Eck, Holy Land. When first established, the Franciscan Province of the Holy Land included Cyprus, Anatolia, Greece, and the Middle East. 8 Tramontana, “Migration across the Early Modern Mediterranean.” On migration networks, see Boyd and Nowak, “Social Networks;” Bauer and Zimmermann, “Network Migration;” McCarthy, Global Clan. On missionary networks, see Clossey, Salvation and Globalization; Harris, “Confession-building, long-distance networks;” Castelnau-L’Estoile et al., Missions d’évangelisation, and Paul Nelles’s contribution in the present volume. 9 See for example, Guldi, Roads to Power; Torre, Per vie di terra; Livet, Histoire des routes; Tigrino and Torre, “Strade in età moderna.” 10 See for example Ghobrial, “Global History and Microhistory;” idem, “Secret Life of Elias of Babylon:” De Vito and Gerritsen, “Micro-Spatial Histories of Labour;” Revel, Giochi di scala; Clemente, “Micro e macro;” Marcocci, “Catholic Missions.” On the use of the concept of translocality, see Greiner and Sakdapolrak, “Translocality,” 376 and Freitag and Von Oppe, eds., Translocality.

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there between long- and short-distance movements? And, more broadly, how exactly did people move in the early modern period? What mechanisms allowed and facilitated mobility regardless of the motivations involved and the length of the trip? How did these mechanisms influence an individual’s trajectory? Taking the analysis of the friars’ itineraries toward Jerusalem as its point of departure, the chapter reconstructs their reliance on merchant networks, and more broadly the structures that allowed Franciscans to move, and pinpoints some of the factors that shaped their trajectories of travel. This analysis will pave the way to more general considerations regarding the characteristics and the functioning of geographical mobility in the period under consideration. More specifically, the chapter will help to define the role played by early modern networks in facilitating mobility across the Mediterranean. Works on the topic have described how people, objects, and information flowed through merchant, missionary, and refugee networks.11 While addressing the use of networks by external actors, the case study elaborates upon this perspective, first by suggesting that early modern mobility was made possible by the overlapping of different networks. Second, it highlights the continuities between short-and long-distance movements and the role of the network – with its capacity to combine the global and the local – in integrating them. While shedding light on the “infrastructure” that made mobility possible, the analysis of the numerous pathways followed by the friars also raises questions regarding the factors that shaped individual itineraries and the friars’ agency itself. Predominantly explored in relation to the decision to migrate or not, the latter has only recently been investigated in the context of migrants’ trajectories.12 Relying on the idea that agency is not simply about choice but rather about understanding decision-making, opportunities, structures, and the room for manoeuvre enjoyed by the travellers, this chapter shows how the friars’ choices and paths were influenced by the actual infrastructures that allowed them to move, combined with the 11 O’Reilly, “Movements of People;” Meadows, “Engineering Exile.” On the role of networks in refugees’ migration, see Grell, Brethren in Christ. On merchant networks: Markovits, Global World of Indian Merchants; idem, “Trading Networks;” Zahadieh, Capital and the Colonies; Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers; Aslanian, Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. For a critical approach to the use of networks as historical actors, see Hancock, “The Trouble with Networks.” See also the Introduction to the present volume. 12 Mallett and Hagen-Zanker, “Forced Migration.” On agency and structure in migration studies, see Bakewell, “Some Reflections on Structure and Agency;” Mainwaring, “Migrant Agency;” Hoerder, Cultures in Contact, 15–21.

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characteristics of early modern mobility: the lack of regular transport and the unpredictability of early modern journeys.13 The chapter is organized as follows. After presenting the network of the Custody of the Holy Land and the sources (section one), it reconstructs the pathways followed by the Franciscans and their use of trade networks (section two). In exploring the factors that shaped the friars’ itineraries, the third section sheds light on some characteristics of seventeenth-century geographical mobility: namely, the lack of regular transport and the unpredictability of travel. The fourth section, which takes the description of the local and global dimensions of the Franciscans’ network as its point of departure, explores the continuities between long- and short-distance mobility. In conclusion, I discuss the wider significance of the case under consideration for the reconstruction of the characteristics and practices that shaped early modern mobility.

Studying early modern mobility through economic records This chapter is a preliminary attempt at reconstructing early modern mobility through the lists of revenues and expenditures of certain commissariats of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land on the Italian peninsula, with a focus on the expenses pertaining to friars’ journeys. Since collecting alms was difficult in Muslim lands, the funds needed for the maintenance of sacred sites in the eastern Mediterranean and for the friars themselves were collected elsewhere. With this end in mind, the Franciscans established a commissariat of the Custody of the Holy Land within each Franciscan province. In addition to collecting alms, the commissariats organized transportation to Jerusalem, sending one of their friars on the long, dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. Besides arranging travel for their own members, the commissariats also looked after other friars who stopped off in the area on their way to Jerusalem or on their return, or indeed while visiting other Franciscan convents. This led to the development of a network through which the friars moved from one commissariat to another, as if along a chain, toward their ultimate destination. Besides the costs of their stay, the commissariats covered the expenses of the friars’ journeys to the next stop and the costs of transport, and in addition gave them some provisione, that is, money and food to be used during the trip.

13 See on the topic Anderson and Ruhs, “Researching Illegality and Labour Migration,” 178.

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Following a decree issued by Propaganda Fide in 1654, such outlays – together with other expenditure and income – were recorded in lists to be sent to the Congregation on an annual basis.14 These lists are invaluable for reconstructing seventeenth-century mobility in numerous ways. First of all, they furnish important information on some concrete aspects of mobility – such as modes of transport, its cost and availability, the price of clothes and food required by travellers, and the cost of quarantine. What renders these lists even more valuable is the fact that they account for friars’ movements both in the area immediately surrounding the commissariats and across greater distances. They therefore allow us to gather and connect information on land and maritime transport, local and global mobility, and a wide variety of modes of transport ranging from mules to Atlantic ships. Furthermore, for each of the friars who were taken care of, the commissariats record their origin, their final destination, and some of the intermediate stops. By combining data of the different commissariats, it is possible to reconstruct in broad outline the paths followed by friars and their cargoes, linking short- and long-distance journeys. The commissariats of the Custody of the Holy Land were scattered over many locations, but those whose lists of expenses are most relevant to the aims of this research were based in the important harbour cities of Genoa, Messina, Livorno, and on the island of Malta. Information furnished by the reports to the Propaganda Fide is supplemented by other documents issued by the Custodia Terrae Sanctae, namely the Registri delle Condotte.15 In these registers, begun in 1615, the Franciscans recorded all funds that reached Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Custody, with the name and origin of those who carried them. The entries also list the alms entrusted to the “couriers” during their stopovers on the way to Jerusalem. For example, Franciscans coming from Spain who broke their journey in Messina were usually given the alms collected locally in the Sicilian city, and sometimes with those coming from neighbouring provinces such as Naples. The documents thus furnish important information on the friars’ local networks across the global “chain.” Despite numerous instructions from the Propaganda Fide to file reports, not all the commissariats submitted reports to Rome. This was especially true 14 Rome, Archivio storico della Congregazione de Propaganda Fide, (hereafter ACPF) SC (Scritture riferite ai congressi), Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa). Founded in 1622, the Congregazione de Propaganda Fide was the Roman congregation that oversaw Catholic missionary activity in all places where there was not an established Church hierarchy. 15 Archivio storico della Custodia di Terra Santa, Gerusalemme, Procura Generale, Registri delle Condotte, vol. I, (1615–1720).

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in the second half of the seventeenth century, the period under consideration here. The only available reports for Malta, for example, are dated 1655–1657 and 1658–59.16 Documents for Genoa and Livorno are more numerous, though still far from complete. Furthermore, the reconstruction of mobility paths is also affected by discrepancies in the way information was recorded and by various lacunae in the sources. Some lists of expenses mention the origin of the friars who arrived at a given commissariat but not the intermediate stops. Despite this caveat, the data paints a valuable picture of the dynamics underlying the friars’ mobility across global, regional, and local levels.

Trade networks toward the Holy Land The data extracted from the account books depict a flow of Franciscans crossing the Mediterranean in different directions, from one harbour to the next. What were the infrastructures that allowed the friars to move? And what was the role played by networks? The Custody’s network provided accommodation and covered costs, but to arrange the friars’ trips toward Jerusalem, it had to rely on existing maritime transport. During the Middle Ages, transport toward Jerusalem was mostly organized from Venice. From its wharves, ad hoc convoys of navi pellegrine (pilgrims’ ships) left the port anywhere from two to four times a year when pilgrimage toward the Holy Land was at its height. The ships stopped in the Venetian entrepôts in the eastern Mediterranean up to Cyprus and from there went on to the port of Jaffa, the closest port to Jerusalem. Besides the journey by sea, the price paid by the pilgrims included the taxes due to the Ottoman authorities to disembark and the cost of transport from Jaffa to Jerusalem. The Venetian state monitored this highly lucrative traffic, mostly organized by businessmen, ensuring that passengers received fair treatment and were charged reasonable prices. Even though it was possible to embark toward Jerusalem from other Italian ports, none were able to offer the same level of guarantees and protection as Venice.17 As a consequence, the latter became a central hub for pilgrims headed for Jerusalem from all over Europe. Despite the Senate’s attempts to keep pilgrim transport separate, pilgrims also travelled on merchant ships. During the sixteenth century, this traffic declined just as Holy Land pilgrimage itself 16 Both in ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa). 17 Yerasimos, Voyageurs dans l’Empire Ottoman; Ashtor, “Venezia e il pellegrinaggio.”

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did. It was the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1571, however, that marked the end of Venice’s central role in organizing trips to the Holy Land. From that moment on, pilgrims and travellers, Franciscans included, organized themselves, relying for the most part on existing trade networks. Towards the end of the century, important changes in Mediterranean trade further affected travel to the eastern Mediterranean. The arrival of Dutch and English ships in the 1590s led to an age of polycentrism.18 It also laid the ground for the consolidation of Livorno as a central hub half a century later when the city became a major broker between Atlantic and Mediterranean trade networks.19 The friars’ itineraries reflect these changes. The arrival of Northern ships did not alter the role of Italian ports as intermediaries to the Levant. While English and Dutch newcomers sailed in their own ships, they continued to use Italian ports and warehouses. Consequently, friars coming from places as various as France, Flanders, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Portugal, and, as we shall see, overseas territories passed through Italian ports. From there, they would make connections for the Levant. Shipping services were an important source of profit, especially for Dutch and English ships.20 While moored in a port to obtain provisions, sell merchandise, or acquire new commercial wares, trading vessels would take on board passengers. Although Venice remained an important departure point, the sources reveal various itineraries and multiple potential trajectories. This is consistent with the patterns of the trade routes that crossed the Mediterranean in the seventeenth century. Given its role as a central hub, Livorno became the most popular stop for friars headed to the Levant and back. It was possible to reach a port in the eastern Mediterranean or North Africa without further stops. Among the most common pathways was one route that connected Livorno to Alexandria, from where the friars would continue their journey, sometimes through Cyprus. Another route connected Livorno to Cyprus directly. Despite its conquest by the Ottomans, the island remained an important stop in the eastern Mediterranean, especially for French ships.21 It was well-connected to ports along the Syro-Palestinian littoral. Besides Livorno, another popular stop for friars on their way to Jerusalem was Genoa. The city was well-connected, particularly to Spanish ports 18 Tazzara, Free Port of Livorno. On the “northern invasion,” see Fusaro, Political Economies of Empire; Greene, “Beyond the northern invasion.” On commercial networks in the seventeenthcentury Mediterranean, see Fusaro, “Cooperating mercantile networks.” 19 Tazzara, Free Port of Livorno, 167. 20 Ibid., 73. 21 Ghezzi, Livorno, 192.

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such as Alicante and Cadiz.22 In 1696, Father Antonio Miranda, returning to the Canary Islands, boarded a ship from Genoa to Cadiz,23 which was an important stopover for Atlantic maritime traffic, in particular the Dutch ships connecting Amsterdam to Smyrna. 24 Spanish Franciscans often stopped in Messina and Naples, ports of the Spanish vice-royalty in southern Italy. Finally, given the growing importance of Marseille for French trade in the eastern Mediterranean, friars often travelled on the French ships that connected Marseille to Syria via Malta.25 The port of Jaffa, well-connected to Alexandria and Cyprus through local trade routes, remained an important debarkation point for travellers and pilgrims. Yet it was often not the first port on the Syro-Palestinian littoral where the friars made landfall. With only a small French merchant community in the town of Rama, Jerusalem and the area around it was of scant consequence for international trade and lay outside the major trade routes. The friars would more easily find a connection to harbours located further north, such as Alexandretta (Iskenderun in modern-day Turkey) and Sayda (Sidon) and from there reach Jaffa by boat. Being the place of residence of a French consul, Sayda was the most important harbour for French trade. Alexandretta was the port that served Aleppo, therefore unsurprisingly it is the most frequently mentioned Palestinian port in the records of the commissariats of Genoa and Livorno.26 Analysis of the friars’ itineraries highlights that, despite their variety, they all consisted of many stops and relied on the use and combination of different trade networks. It also brings out the role played by these institutions in facilitating mobility by revealing the existence of separate networks with different functions that intersected with one another. There was first the Franciscan network that provided money and accommodation, and then the trade networks (French, British, Dutch, and so on), which provided transport. The Franciscans were obviously members of the former but relied on the latter for transport. Diplomatic and other networks were also involved, for example when issuing patents to travellers or assisting in emergencies. The structure created by the overlapping networks facilitated and influenced 22 A free port for merchandise was declared in Genoa in 1609. On Genoa, see Kirk, “Genoa and Livorno,” idem, Genoa and the Sea. 23 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Genova, 1696–97. 24 Ghezzi, Livorno, 45. 25 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Malta, 1658–59. 26 Masters, Origins, 16–17. On Palestinian ports in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see also Cohen, “Ottoman Rule,” 163–75. On the connection between Livorno and Alexandretta, see Ghezzi, Livorno, 180.

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the friars’ mobility in many ways. Preferred stopping points were those harbours in which there was a house of the Custody’s network where the friars could find food and lodging as well as rest and collect other sources of alms to be transported to Jerusalem. Furthermore, the dependency on trade networks placed significant constraints on the movement of the friars. When examined in the context of current research on networks and early modern mobility, the evidence offered here emphasizes the use of trade networks by external actors.27 Further, it suggests that early modern mobility was sustained by numerous, overlapping networks. These had different functions, followed different routes, and were used and combined by people on the move according to their own specific requirements. Facilitating human mobility was not a primary goal for any of these networks. Yet in very concrete ways they provided the infrastructures that made human mobility possible.

The characteristics of seventeenth-century mobility The infrastructure provided by existing networks was not the only factor that shaped the friars’ trajectories. Indeed, the sheer variety and complexity of their itineraries raise further questions regarding the factors that shaped their journeys and influenced their decision-making. Recent scholarship has convincingly argued that during the course of a migrant’s journey, decisions continuously evolve.28 This is particularly true for the early modern period, a time in which journeys had to be constantly negotiated and decisions continuously modified. The analysis of the factors that shaped friars’ itineraries points to some characteristics of early modern mobility: its unpredictability and the lack of regular transport. The central role played by the latter in travellers’ decision-making is well illustrated by the friars’ use of the harbour of Livorno. Because of its role as broker between Atlantic and Mediterranean trading networks, Livorno, and to a certain extent Genoa, were the most obvious stopovers for friars arriving from Atlantic regions – Portugal, Flanders, and so on – and from several Spanish ports. However, in other instances the choice to embark/disembark in Livorno was not so obvious. Among the friars who stopped in the port, especially on their way back from Jerusalem, many were from localities with good connections with the Levant, such as Venice, Messina, and Naples. Why then would these travellers use Livorno? 27 See further the Introduction to the present volume on this point. 28 Mallett and Hagen-Zanker, “Forced Migration,” 341–42.

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In order to answer this question, it might be useful to look more closely at the lists of expenses of the commissariat of the Sicilian city of Messina for the year 1657–1658. In the course of that year, some 41 friars passed through on their way to Jerusalem (25) or returning home (16). The difference in number suggests that friars – both local and from other places – made ample use of the harbour on their way to Jerusalem, but not so much on their way back. Moreover, the fact that only two of those who returned from the Levant were quarantined in Messina suggests that in most cases this was not the first stop in an Italian port, as people and ships arriving from Ottoman territories were usually forced to fulfil a quarantine period in the port where they docked.29 The data available for Livorno for the 1660s confirms the picture depicted above. In this period, Sicilian friars travelled to Jerusalem directly from Messina, or at least did not use the harbour of Livorno. Nonetheless, on their return, some stopped off in Livorno, with an increase in their numbers toward the 1670s. Once in Livorno, they would look for a connection to Sicily. On 18 October 1670, for example, Fra Angelo di Sambuca from the Province of Val di Mazzara (Sicily) arrived in Livorno where he took a vessel to Palermo.30 The larger number of Sicilian friars who arrived in Livorno on their way back from Jerusalem is probably due to the greater frequency of the connections between the city and the eastern Mediterranean. According to research undertaken on the arrivals of ships from the Levant to Livorno, it is possible to discern a slight increase in their numbers during the months of October and February. However, overall, arrivals were scattered across the year and were by no means regular.31 The same applies to road transports at that time. It is only with the improvement in the road systems and the advent of stagecoaches that transportation modalities were coordinated according to regularly scheduled times of departure and arrival. The uncertainty deriving from the lack of regularly scheduled transport might have led Sicilian friars on their way back from Jerusalem to take the first available ship heading towards Europe, which was most frequently for Livorno, and from there find a passage to their own province. Friars from other parts of Italy may well have come to much the same conclusions, to judge by the remarkably 29 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Messina, 1657–58. During the seventeenth century, European authorities compelled peoples, goods, and ships that arrived from the Ottoman Empire to fulfil a quarantine period. This was due to the increasing enforcement of measures to contain the spread of the plague in European states that had no parallel in Ottoman lands. See Osheim, “Plague and Foreign Threats.” 30 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Toscana, 1670–72. 31 Ghezzi, Livorno, 45.

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high number of those who were quarantined in the Tuscan port, even when compared to Genoa. The same reasons also explain why, on their way to the Levant, friars from various localities in search of a suitable ship to the Levant would go to Livorno. This hypothesis is confirmed by the travel diary of Carlo Camucio. A future bishop of Tolmezzo (Italy), Camucio set out in 1752 on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. From Tolmezzo, in the north-eastern part of Italy, he went first to Venice, spending two weeks there while he made the final arrangements for his journey. The initial plan was probably to embark in the lagoon city. When it became clear, however, that this would not be possible, he was advised by local Franciscans to go to Livorno, where ships bound for the Levant were more frequent. He therefore went to Tuscany, with two Franciscan fathers from the province of Austria.32 The good connections between Livorno and most ports in the region – be they large (such as Naples and Messina) or small – no doubt explains Livorno’s role as the most frequent stopover in friars’ trajectories, even within the Italian peninsula.33 In a broader perspective, these examples suggest that the lack of scheduled, regular transport shaped the contours of early modern itineraries, boosting the use of ports that were along the main trade routes. First, it meant that travellers would favour those harbours where catching a vessel towards the chosen destination was more probable. Second, it forced them to take whatever connections were available, even though they may have not been the most convenient or direct. This is well conveyed by the words of Carlo Camucio, encountered above, on his way back from Jerusalem, in 1753: “there [in Cyprus] I will seize the first chance [to sail] either to Venice or Livorno, and if God blesses my return as he did my going, I will certainly be home by Easter.”34 Camucio’s projections, however, proved wrong, as in the end he returned to Europe through the port of Marseille. The availability of transport, though important, was not the only factor that shaped early modern journeys. Other considerations may have come into play, such as cost, comfort, and the speed of the ship. Transoceanic journeys were commonly undertaken on Atlantic vessels. As the distances to be covered decreased, the variety of ships employed increased. In the Mediterranean, apart from Atlantic vessels, galleys and French ships were also commonly used. The latter were smaller and less comfortable than Atlantic vessels, which were also more stable in adverse weather conditions due to their size. However, French ships were faster and therefore preferred 32 See Cedarmas, Per la cruna del mondo, 245–47. 33 Tazzara, Free Port of Livorno, 184. 34 Quoted in Cedarmas, Per la cruna del mondo, 251.

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by some travellers.35 Galleys were low, flat ships that were mainly propelled by rowing. Traditionally employed in the Mediterranean for warfare, in the seventeenth century such use was in decline. Due to their smaller hulls, they had limited capacity in terms of the crew and cargo that could be carried and were less stable in case of high winds. Along with galleys, feluccas were also commonly used for local short-distance transport. These were wooden sailing boats – commonly employed between Naples and Rome or Naples and Messina – and were the cheapest means of maritime transport. Unfortunately, we learn little or nothing from the sources regarding the role that the relative comfort, cost, and speed of the transport may have played in the friars’ choices and their use of trade networks. Analysis of their itineraries does, however, highlight the importance of other pragmatic considerations. Working on the travels of Catholic missionaries to China, Eugenio Menegon has convincingly argued that they preferred Spanish ships and avoided those with flags belonging to Protestant countries.36 In fact, both the lists of expenses and the Registri delle Condotte show that the friars often embarked on French vessels to go from Italian ports (Genoa and Livorno) to the Levant and, significantly, still more often during the last part of the journey to harbours near Jerusalem.37 This, however, may have been due less to religious considerations than to the growing importance of French trade with the Levant, especially Palestine, in that same period. Indeed, the friars also frequently took the numerous English and Dutch ships that connected Italian ports with the Atlantic harbours, north Africa, and Anatolia. In 1676, for example, Giovanni di Chañizzares, the guardian of Constantinople, arrived in Livorno on an English ship.38 It cannot be excluded that, given the opportunity, the friars chose French vessels over Dutch or English ones for religious reasons. However, it is safer to assume that the main factor that shaped the choice of vessel was the availability of ships in the harbour. Whereas French ships could commonly be found for the Levant, in other cases, such as when heading towards Cadiz, the choice may have been more limited. Finally, the routes followed by the friars and their stopovers were also determined by the sheer unpredictability of early modern mobility. Travellers had to cope not only with adverse weather conditions but also with outbreaks of plague and the attacks of pirates and corsairs. The latter infested the early 35 Ghezzi, Livorno, 39. On the level of comfort of the journey on galleys and Venetian ships, see Arbel, “Daily Life on Board.” 36 Menegon, “La Cina, l’Italia e Milano,” 268. 37 See for example ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Malta, 1655–57. 38 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Livorno, 1676–77.

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modern Mediterranean, and when they attacked a ship or a coastal town they would capture the inhabitants and sell them as slaves.39 Captivity and slavery were a common threat to all who crossed the Mediterranean, and religious people were no exception. The sources mention some friars who, after being captured on their way to or from Jerusalem, were enslaved and brought to the Barbary Regencies, where they would remain until ransomed. This was the case with friar Antonio from the province of Bosnia. Captured, taken to Tunis, and detained there until ransomed, he f inally reached Livorno on an English vessel in 1679. 40 An outbreak of the plague could also play havoc with the friars’ itineraries. In this respect, the journey of Father Giovanni Chañizzares is particularly revealing. Being commissary of Constantinople, Father Chañizzares was called to Rome for urgent business on behalf of the Custody. He reached Livorno on an English vessel in April 1676 after a four-month trip. However, once in Livorno, the ship was not allowed to enter the port on suspicion of being infected by the plague. He therefore ended up in Malta, where he spent his quarantine, and from there went on to Marseille. 41 The friars’ itineraries show that early modern travel was unpredictably shaped by events such as the outbreak of epidemics, pirate attacks, and so on. Travellers were also confronted with multiple potential routes and other variables in the overall process of decision-making. As a result, throughout the course of the journey, routes changed unpredictably, and decisions evolved continuously. This applies not only to regional but also to global and local mobility. In fact, although up until now I have mainly focused on the circulation of people at a regional level, the Franciscan network also had important global and local dimensions.

A global network? Connecting the local and the global Many recent studies have highlighted the global dimension of the Franciscan order. The bull of foundation ordered the friars to go ‘as pilgrims and strangers in this world’ (peregrini et advenae), and from the thirteenth century onwards, the Franciscans travelled well beyond the borders of Europe, reaching East Asia and, in the fourteenth century, Southeast Asia.42 In the sixteenth century, 39 Hershenzon, The Captive Sea; Tarruell, “La captivité chrétienne.” 40 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Toscana, 1679. 41 Ibid. 42 William of Rubruck, “Journey;” McClure, Franciscan Invention.

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furthermore, they were the first order to be established in the Americas.43 Leaving aside the missions, another aspect that bolstered the global dimension of the order was its role as protector of the Holy Sites in the Levant. Since the establishment of the Custody of the Holy Land, such a role had granted the Franciscans a special position within the Catholic world. Throughout the following centuries, as devotion toward the Holy Sepulchre reached beyond the borders of Europe, the Custody of the Holy Land itself became a global institution. This is reflected in seventeenth-century documents, which record movements along the network of alms and friars from the Franciscans’ provinces in the Spanish and Portuguese overseas territories.44 Trade routes have connected Europe, Asia, and Africa since antiquity. Nonetheless, following geographical expansion, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries experienced a steady increase in global trade. This and the establishment of trading posts in Asia and Africa greatly contributed to the rise of global mobility, which involved a growing number of merchants and missionaries. In the Mediterranean, moreover, the arrival of ships from northern Europe facilitated connections to overseas territories via Atlantic entrepôts. The increased intercontinental connections that characterized the century and Livorno’s central role in connecting local and regional trade networks with global ones are reflected in the lists of expenses of the commissariats and, in particular, those of the Tuscan city itself. These record the arrival of many Franciscans from the “Eastern and Western Indies” heading for Jerusalem or Rome. In March 1668, for example, the Franciscan commissary of the Holy Land in the Eastern Indies arrived in Livorno on his way to Rome. Three months later he was once again in Livorno, on his way back, heading to Lisbon via Genoa. In 1676, another commissary from the Eastern Indies, Ambrogio dell’Assunzione, stopped in Livorno on his way to Lisbon. 45 In Portugal, it would be easier for them to catch a vessel to their province: in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between ten and twenty ships left the Portuguese coasts for Goa each year. 46 By the same token, alms and friars from the Spanish overseas territories would stop first in Madrid before arriving in an Italian port. The analysis of the paths followed by the friars sheds light on the global dimension of the Custody’s 43 McClure, Franciscan Invention; Melvin, Building Colonial Cities. 44 On the Custody and South America see García Barriuso, España en la historia de Tierra Santa; and on the arrival in Jerusalem of devotional objects from the overseas Spanish and Portuguese territories, see Tramontana, “‘Per ornamento e servizio’.” On the global circulation of devotional objects, see Paul Nelles’s chapter on Agnus Dei in this volume. 45 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Livorno, 1667–68 and 1676–77. 46 Boxer, From Lisbon to Goa, 64–65. Phillips “Growth and Composition of Trade,” 54, n. 41.

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network and confirms that transoceanic mobility consisted of many stops and relied on the use of multiple networks every bit as much as the forms of regional mobility analyzed above. 47 Despite this global dimension, the network of the Custody of the Holy Land was also strongly rooted locally and largely revolved around the shortand medium-distance movement of people and goods. The documents issued by all the commissariats testify to a remarkable movement of friars toward port cities and other localities in the area, both by sea and by land. Despite Livorno’s growing role as a hub, these documents highlight the existence of an intense traffic between medium and small-size ports in the Italian peninsula: for example, between Naples, Civitavecchia near Rome, and Messina, and between the latter and other harbours in Sicily such as Syracuse and Palermo. Sometimes these were stops in larger itineraries. In other cases, though, they were linked to the gathering of alms to be sent on to Jerusalem from other commissariats. Part of the short-distance mobility was also prompted by the friars begging and by the collection of alms for the Holy Sepulchre. A large share of the local circulation depicted by the commissariats is related to the transport of goods rather than to the movement of people. First, a large percentage of the alms collected for the Custody of the Holy Land were in goods, which had to be transported. Secondly, the commissariats used the money received to buy things needed in the Levant, such as textiles, paper, and utensils. In July 1659, for example, the commissariats of Naples reported the expenses involved in the transporting of wool from Foggia, in Apulia, a distance of some 176 kilometres. 48 Wool was one of the goods most frequently sent to Jerusalem, together with other textiles. Similarly, reports from Messina often mention the costs incurred in collecting and transporting alms from the villages of the eastern side of Sicily and the Val di Noto. Goods were either carried by mule or by someone paid by the friars to carry the objects “on his shoulders.”49 The available sources on the global and local circulation of alms and friars show that the infrastructure that enabled and constrained the friars’ traffic through the Custody’s network had both a local and a global extension. They also reveal the existence of continuities between long- and short-distance mobility and the network’s capacity to integrate these dimensions. In fact, the Franciscan network can be seen as an example of a matrix combining 47 Menegon, “La Cina, l’Italia e Milano.” 48 ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Regno di Napoli, 1658. 49 See ACPF, SC, Terra Santa, Miscellanea 1 (Conti di Terra Santa), Regno di Sicilia, 1657 and 1659–60.

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“micro” and “macro” circulation, with larger mobility patterns, for example from the Spanish colonies or from Flanders to Jerusalem, made up of a sum of shorter ones. The sum of these shorter ones depended to some extent on the availability of the modes of transport and on the destination.

Conclusion Research on migration has shown that, much as today, the reasons that drove people to leave their homes in the early modern period varied enormously, as did their destinations and the duration of their migrations. The analysis of Franciscan journeys to Ottoman Palestine suggests that early modern mobility was facilitated by various overlapping networks. In the specific case, the network of the Custody of the Holy Land directly organized Franciscan mobility, paying for travel and offering shelter, while external trade networks provided friars with the means of transport that enabled them to reach their chosen destination. The use of multiple networks is not only relevant to the friars. The movement of refugees and migrants towards the Atlantic area, for example, was mediated by personal, religious, political, trade, and diplomatic networks alike. The infrastructure created by the overlapping networks not only facilitated but also directed early modern mobility, most notably in accordance with existing trade routes. Other factors also shaped individual trajectories and early modern travellers’ decision-making. Among them was the central role played by the lack of regular and scheduled transport and the unpredictability of means of conveyance. Adverse weather conditions, the attacks of corsairs or brigands, and disease all affected individual journeys. As a consequence, the routes taken by people on the move varied widely and were characterized, especially at the regional level, by a high degree of uncertainty as to the stopovers and the precise routes to be followed. The case study also shows the influence of increasing global interactions and of changes in Mediterranean and global trade, such as the establishment of the English and Dutch chartered companies and new trade routes. The relationship between these structural factors and individual agency, however, is a dynamic one. If on the one hand the infrastructure provided by trade networks fostered the friars’ use of the harbours that were most important for international trade, individual decisions nonetheless served to reinforce the importance of major harbours to the detriment of smaller and local ones.50 50 See Sewell, “A Theory of Structure.”

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Finally, the Franciscan case highlights the existence of a continuum between short- and long-distance movement and the networks’ capacity to integrate these with larger mobility patterns, such as the paths followed by goods from the Spanish colonies to Jerusalem. The combinations of pathways were potentially infinite. Each of these small segments of mobility, as the Franciscan documents suggest, had its specificities with regard to costs and modes of transport. The research suggests that mobility in the seventeenth century was constituted by a combination of smaller segments or units of mobility linking one place to the other, and that this was made possible by an infrastructure of overlapping networks that facilitated circulation and were used and combined by people on the move in a highly contingent manner.

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Castelnau-L’Estoile, Charlotte de, Marie-Lucie Copete, Aliocha Maldavsky, and Ines G. Županov, eds., Missions d’évangelisation et circulation des savoirs, XVIe-XVIIIe siècles. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2011. Cedarmas, Adonella. Per la cruna del mondo. Carlo Camucio e Moisé Vita Cafsuto, due pellegrini nella Terra Santa del Settecento. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006. Clemente, Alida. “Micro e macro tra narrativismo postmoderno e scelta razionale: il problema della agency e la storia economica come scienza sociale.” In Quantità/qualità: La storia tra sguardi micro e generalizzazioni, edited by Daniele Andreozzi, 35–56. Palermo: New Digital Press, 2017. Clossey, Luke. Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Cohen, Amnon. “Ottoman Rule and the Re-Emergence of the Coast of Palestine (17th–18th Centuries).” Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerannée 39 (1985): 163–75. De Vito, Christian G., and Anne Gerritsen. “Micro-Spatial Histories of Labour: Towards a New Global History.” In Micro-Spatial Histories of Global Labour, edited by Christian G. De Vito and Anne Gerritsen, 1–28. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Frazee, Charles. Catholics and Sultans: The Church and the Ottoman Empire 1453–1923. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Freitag, Ulrike, and Achim Von Oppe, eds. Translocality: The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Fusaro, Maria. “Cooperating Mercantile Networks in the Early Modern Mediterranean.” Economic History Review 65, no. 2 (2012): 701–18. ———. Political Economies of Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Decline of Venice and the Rise of England, 1450–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. García Barriuso, Patrocinio. España en la historia de Tierra Santa: obra pía española a la sombra de un regio patronato. Vol. 1: Siglos XIV, XV, XVI, y XVII. Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1992). Ghezzi, Renato. Livorno e il mondo islamico nel XVII secolo: naviglio e commercio di importazione. Bari: Cacucci, 2007. Ghobrial, John-Paul A. “The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the Uses of Global Microhistory.” Past & Present 222, no. 1 (2014): 51–93. ———, ed. “Global History and Microhistory.” Special issue, Past & Present 242 (Supplement 14) (2019). Greenblatt, Stephen. “A Mobility Studies Manifesto.” In Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 250–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Greene, Molly. “Beyond the Northern Invasion: The Mediterranean in the Seventeenth Century,” Past & Present 174, no. 1 (2002): 42–71.

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About the author Felicita Tramontana is associate professor at the Roma Tre University. Her research focuses on early modern Palestine, missions, and mobility. She is the author of Passages of Faith: Conversion in Palestinian Villages (17th Century) (2014) and Una terra di intersezioni. Storia e istituzioni della Palestina di età moderna (2015).

9. From Mount Lebanon to the Little Mount in Madras: Mobility and Catholic-Armenian Alms-Collecting Networks During the Eighteenth Century Sebouh David Aslanian*1

Abstract Relying on heretofore untapped archival documentation stored in multiple archives, this chapter provides a “global micro-history” of a remarkably mobile Catholic Armenian alms collector named Father Andreas Ouzounean from Mount Lebanon to ask larger questions about the very nature of early modern mobility in general and about eighteenth-century religious fundraising networks in particular. The chapter follows Father Andreas’s fundraising voyages from Lebanon to Moscow, Lvov, Vienna, Trieste, Rome, Malta, Istanbul, Isfahan, Baghdad, Basra, and especially to Madras and Calcutta and argues that the mobility of such itinerant men and their success as alms collectors were very much predicated on early modern “infrastructural public works projects” and the effective use of special certificates and credit instruments such as bills of exchange and respondentia loans. Keywords: Eastern Christianity; alms collecting; bills of exchange; communication; transport

* I would like to thank Houri Berberian, Cesare Santus, Daniel Ohanian, and Khachig Tölölyan for comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I am also grateful to their eminences Gabriel Mouradian and Mikael Mouradian for facilitating my research trip to Bzommar in the summer of 2019 and Ms. Vanda Asadourian for help in making archival materials accessible to me. My special thanks also extend to Cynthia Cazanjian Hajjar and Madonna Aoun for their generosity in making my memorable trip to Beirut possible.

Nelles, P. and Rosa Salzberg (eds.), Connected Mobilities in the Early Modern World: The Practice and Experience of Movement. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 doi 10.5117/9789463729239_ch09

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Recounting an Armenian fund-raising voyage to Madras in India in 1784–1785, Father Poghos Mēhērean wrote the following description of an alms collector who met a watery end in the Indian Ocean: At that time, a Lebanese friar named Father T‘umas, who was away from his congregation, resided there [i.e., in Madras]. After leaving his congregation, this [monk] had received a kondak [a kind of certificate or bull issued by a recognized church authority] from bishop Petros in Merdin [today’s Mardin in eastern Turkey] to go to India for begging and having begged for eight years in the Indies had left for other parts to do the same. When he had collected 15,000 rupees from begging, he went back to Merdin, and from there to Amid [Diyarbakir] and thence to Lebanon, and from there to Basra where he boarded the ship again for India and threw himself into the sea and perished.1

The hapless Lebanese monk father T‘umas, or Thomas, was a member of a little-studied Catholic Armenian religious order known as the Antonean [Անտոնեան] or Antonine Congregation founded in Aleppo in 1707 and later transferred to the Keserwan region in Mount Lebanon. The person describing Father Thomas’s peripatetic life, Poghos Mēhērean, belonged to a parallel Armenian Catholic order known as the Mkhit‘arist Congregation, founded in Istanbul in 1701 but transplanted to Venice in 1715. Both individuals overlapped briefly as guests of the same wealthy Catholic Armenian merchant benefactor Agha Mikael Babumeants‘ in 1785 in the area in Madras known as Little Mount while on a mission to raise funds for their religious brethren in the West.2 Both relied on similar networks of mobility and alms collecting that extended from Armenian diasporic centres in Venice and the Levant to locations in India and beyond. Poghos Mēhērean and Father Thomas are but two missionaries out of more than a dozen Armenian priests who flocked eastwards to India in search of alms 1 Mēhērean, “Patmut’iwn varuts’,” 48. See also the reference to this Father Thomas in Mēhērean, “Chanaparhordut‘iwn H. Poghosi Mēhērean ĕnd hayr Nikoghayus Buzayan ‘i Madras hami tearn 1785” [The Travels of F. Poghos Mēhērean with Father Nicholas Buzayean to Madras in the year 1785], Venice, Archivio San Lazzaro (hereafter ASL), No. 117, Biographies and travel accounts of Mkhitarist fathers, no. 2, fols 24–25. The endings of Armenian last names have been transliterated using the Library of Congress rules of transliteration with the suffix “ean” instead of the conventional “ian” used by most Armenians. Thus, Mēhērean instead of Meherian. The same transliteration rules have been followed for all other transliterations, except for modern surnames commonly spelled with “ian.” 2 His name is often spelled “Baboom” in contemporary European documents.

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and charity in the early modern period.3 They are part of a larger wave of mobile Eastern Christian monks, recently studied by John-Paul Ghobrial, Cesare Santus, and Bernard Heyberger, who plied the seas and roads of the early modern world raising funds for their orders through the celebration of mass and other means. In light of the gradual eclipse of Eastern Christianity in the lands of its birth, the revival of scholarly interest in the experience of Eastern Christian missionaries over the last decade or so should not come as a surprise.4 This scholarship promises to address issues germane to the newly emergent varieties of writing global and world history and thus has import beyond the particular histories of these missionary orders.5 The bulk of this scholarship has shed light on the travel and mobility of missionaries from the Levant to the West across early modern Catholic lands in Europe. Some, like the intrepid Elias of Babylon, whose peregrinations have been scrutinized by John-Paul Ghobrial, pushed further by journeying to the New World.6 Others trickled east to India, attracted by its legendary wealth, but to date we know next to nothing about these travellers to the East. How did these missionaries ply their trade? What type of networks did they rely upon to travel across such long distances, often in foreign lands where they did not speak the local languages? What sorts of paperwork, including credit instruments, did they need to carry with them to facilitate their movement across water and land? What might scholars of the new “mobility studies” 3 At least eight separate alms-collecting trips to India by Catholic Armenian priests are recorded by 1787, four from Mount Lebanon and four from Venice and Trieste. The Mkhit‘arist priest, Father Sukias Aghamalean, who went to India twice (1771–1774 and 1786–1788) to arrange for the transfer of money from two separate Indo-Armenian wills to Venice, writes in a letter from 1787: “…during these years, Catholic priests from our nation have sojourned to this land one after another, of whom I am the most recent. Four were from [Mount] Lebanon…” [այսոսիկ ամս յաճախեցան գալ յերկիրս կաթօլիկ քահանայք յազգէս զկնի միմեանց. յորոց վերջինն եղէ ես։ Չորք ՚ի լիբանանու …]. See ASL, “Letter of Sukias Aghamalean to Abbot Stepannos Melk’onean from Calcutta, September 20, 1787.” The Armenian Apostolic/Gregorian Church also sent alms collectors from Holy Ējmiatsin and from the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to the subcontinent on a regular basis. 4 See Murre-van den Berg, “Unexpected Popularity.” 5 Western scholarship on Eastern Christian relations with Europe is arguably traceable to the classic work of Heyberger, Les chrétiens du proche-Orient, but has regained momentum recently with the publication of a new spate of studies with a global historical focus on mobility and alms collection. See Heyberger, “Migration;” idem, “Chrétiens orientaux,” and “A Border Crossing.” Also relevant are Ghobrial, “Secret Life of Elias;” idem, “Migration from Within;” and Santus, “Wandering Lives.” 6 Ghobrial, “Secret Life of Elias;” Aslanian, “‘Many Have Come Here’;” and idem, “‘Quintessential Locus’.”

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Map 9.1 The voyages of Father Andreas to Armenian religious centers. Map credit: Gerry Krieg.

learn from paying attention to these heretofore unknown or marginal voices from the global past?7 These are some of the questions that this study seeks to address. Relying on heretofore untapped archival documentation stored in a Catholic Armenian convent in the mountains north of Beirut and in other collections, this chapter provides a “global microhistory” of one remarkably mobile Armenian alms collector from the Levantine city of Aintab named Father Andreas Karabet Ouzounean (b. 1731, Aintab; d. 1819, Bzommar) to ask larger questions about the very nature of early modern mobility in general and about eighteenth-century fund-raising networks in particular.8 The chapter follows Father Andreas’s itinerant life as a seasoned alms collector first for the Antonine congregation in Kreïm (Mount Lebanon) and Rome, then in the late 1770s for the off-shoot congregation of Bzommar also in Mount Lebanon. Through letters stored in archives at the Bzommar convent 7 For mobility studies, see Roche, Humeurs vagabondes; Greenblatt, ed., Cultural Mobility; and Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry. See also Idel, “Mobility, Individuals and Groups;” Cresswell, On the Move. On the contemporary proliferation of works in “mobility studies,” see the critical assessment in Glick Schiller and Salazar, “Regimes of Mobility.” 8 For recent work on global microhistory, see the essays in Ghobrial, ed., “Global History and Microhistory,” and Bertrand and Calafat, eds., “Micro-analyse et histoire globale.” My own contributions to this field are Aslanian et al., “AHR Conversation: How Size Matters;” Aslanian, “Une vie sur plusieurs continents;” and idem, “‘Quintessisential Locus’.”

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in Lebanon, it tracks his fund-raising voyages from Lebanon to Moscow, Lvov, Vienna, Trieste, Rome, Malta, Istanbul, Isfahan, Baghdad, Basra, and especially to Madras and Calcutta (see Map 9.1 for Father Andreas’s complex itineraries). The chapter will argue that the mobility of such itinerant men and their success as alms collectors were predicated on what I have elsewhere called the development of early modern “infrastructural public works projects” and especially on the circulation across these networks of special types of paper instruments such as letters of recommendation, certificates of Catholicity, letters of credit and bills of exchange, and certificates for alms collecting.9 A brief backdrop on the emergence of Catholic Armenian religious orders and of the Mkhit‘arist, Antonine, and Bzommar congregations will help set our microhistorical analysis of Father Andreas’s mobility in context.

The age of confessionalization and the rise of Catholic Armenian congregations The first half of the eighteenth century in Armenian history represents a threshold moment when three parallel Roman Catholic congregations emerged within the Armenian diaspora. Together, the Mkhit‘arist congregation in Venice (1701), the Antonine Congregation in Kreïm (1721) in Mount Lebanon, and the Armenian Catholic Catholicosate in Bzommar (1749), also in Mount Lebanon, accomplished a remarkable feat. They came to preside over a network of widely scattered convents with mobile missionaries circulating throughout many of the nodes comprising the early modern global Armenian diaspora.10 By maintaining much of the traditional liturgy of the Armenian church, whose history can be traced to the early fourth century C.E., while at the same time recognizing the primacy of the pope in Rome, these three orders posed a significant challenge to the hegemonic hold of the anti-Chalcedonian Armenian national church headquartered in Ējmiatsin in today’s Republic of Armenia and contributed, in their different ways, to the eighteenth century “revival” of Armenian cultural life. The near-simultaneous emergence of these congregations during roughly the same 50-year period at the beginning of the eighteenth century owes much to a religio-political process known as “confessionalization,” a term coined by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling to describe and analyze 9 See chapters 2 and 3 of Aslanian, Early Modernity and Mobility. 10 Ibid., chapter 3.

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the rise and politicization of religious piety and religious revival.11 One of the consequences of confessionalization in Europe was the re-organization of Catholic missionary zeal and the “globalization” of its proselytization efforts through the coordination of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, commonly known as the Propaganda Fide, beginning in 1622. By the 1680s, the missionaries dispatched by the Propaganda to the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran had begun making inroads among local Armenian populations.12 As a result of educational and other opportunities provided by these missionaries, a significant number of Armenians left their mother church and converted to Roman Catholicism. The founders of the three congregations under discussion were among these converts. The activities of the missionaries also prompted a significant pushback from the Armenian church hierarchy and led to the increased sharpening of confessional boundaries between the Armenian and Roman Catholic churches. The consequent religious bifurcation was such that whatever confessional ambiguity and doctrinal overlap might have existed between the two churches had largely disappeared by the early eighteenth century, when a mutual ban was imposed on communicatio in sacris, or the sharing of religious services in common between the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian Catholics and the Apostolics, who controlled the institutions of the Armenian patriarchate centred in Istanbul.13 The three Catholic Armenian congregations were conceived in this “age of confessionalization.” The Mkhit‘arists were the first on the scene. Their founder Manuk Petrosean from Sebastea or Sivas (later known as Abbot Mkhit‘ar) converted to Catholicism in Aleppo after interacting with Catholic missionaries there and also in the eastern edge of Ottoman Asia Minor in the mid-1690s. Mkhit‘ar founded his order in the Ottoman capital in 1701. When Istanbul became a seething cauldron of anti-Catholic persecutions, Mkhit‘ar fled with his disciples to the Peloponnese and eventually in 1715 to Venice where he was granted the lagoon island of San Lazzaro two years later.14 Like the Mkhit‘arists, the origins of the Antonines (named after the fourth-century Egyptian ascetic monk, Saint Anthony) go back to 1707 in Aleppo when four Armenian brothers converted to Catholicism and 11 On the confessionalization thesis, see Lotz-Heumann, “Confessionalization;” Brady, “Confessionalization;” Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation;” and idem, “Pressures Towards Confessionalization?” 12 Richard, “Missionaires français;” Santus, “Conflicting Views;” Bayburtyan, “XVII darum arevelyan;” idem, “Nor Jughayi haykakan.” 13 Santus, Trasgressioni necessarie, 11; Abagian, “La questione,” 139. 14 For background on the Mkhit’arists, see Aslanian, “The Great Schism.”

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sought refuge from persecution by migrating to the predominantly Maronite region of Keserwan, in Mount Lebanon. There they were granted numerous privileges including land and permission to build the convent of Jesus the All Saviour in Kreïm in 1721.15 Their order was given a new impetus with the arrival in Kreïm of Abraham Petros Artsivean (1679–1749), a Catholic Armenian bishop. Artsivean was recognized by the Propaganda Fide as the first “Patriarch” or Catholicos of the Catholic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1741. His followers who made up the Antonine order built another convent at Beit-Khachebaou (also in Keserwan) in 1753, and a third in Rome in 1762 named after Gregory the Illuminator, the fourth-century missionary who converted Armenia to Christianity and became the country’s patron saint.16 The Bzommar congregation was an offshoot of the Antonine order and originated in 1749 following the death that same year of Artsivean when some of his followers decided to relocate the centre of the Catholicosate of the Armenian Catholics from Kreïm to the neighbouring Maronite village of Bzommar. Once built, the convent of the Virgin Mary of the Assumption became the official centre of Armenian Catholicism.17 All three Catholic Armenian congregations embraced a similar strategy of revenue generation to support their fledgling convents and to provide educational and training facilities to their missionaries and young novices. In the absence of state patronage and under conditions of diaspora life, revenue creation meant dispatching their monks abroad on fund-raising missions. Alms collecting required a good deal of travel, often across enormous distances. For many Eastern Christian churches and monastic orders, the figure of the alms collector was vital for their economic welfare and for survival. Commenting on monasteries and hermitages in the Mount Athos region, Joseph Georgirenes, a Greek archbishop residing in London in the seventeenth century, noted that alms collecting was a vital part of the religious 15 The history of the Antonines remains largely obscure. The best works on one of the order’s principal architects, Abraham Petros Artsivean, are Atanasian, Vark‘ Abraham Petros I; and Uluhogian, “Abraham Petros Ardzivian.” See also Petrovicz, “Origine dei monaci Antoniani;” Serabian (Srapean), “Himnarkutiwn Antonean miabanutean;” and Yardemian, “Antonean hay miabanut‘iwnĕ.” For the broader historical backdrop of the order’s relocation to Mount Lebanon in the early 1720s, see Jeranian, “Catholic Armenian-Maronite Relations.” I thank Ara Sanjian and Vahe Sahakyan for sharing copies of Jeranian’s 1971 M.A. thesis, American University of Beirut, of which the published article is a slightly abridged version. 16 Iskandar, La nouvelle Cilicie, 63. 17 For histories of the Bzommar convent, see Terzian, Le Patriarcat; and idem, Zmmaru hay vankĕ.

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economy of Eastern Christian religious centres, usually used to subvent the payment of the head tax (“harach”/kharaj) to Ottoman authorities in addition to meeting other necessary needs. So that every year they select some of their caloirs to go abroad, and beg the Charity of Christian People, towards the relief of the respective Monastry [sic]. And these are always by two and two together. And the Monastries agree beforehand to what particular places they will send their respective Emissaries, who continue ordinarily two or three years in their perambulation.18

What Georgirenes wrote about Mount Athos and its monastic centres in the seventeenth century also holds for the three Armenian Catholic orders during the eighteenth century. There too, alms collecting played a significant role in generating revenue. The Mkhitarists’ main source of revenue came from the initial grant of the island of San Lazzaro by the Venetian Senate in 1717, and afterwards from the sale of their highly coveted printed books as well as the donations and patronage of wealthy Armenian merchants in Istanbul and Ottoman Anatolia. In the second half of the eighteenth century, much of this revenue was generated by sending Mkhit‘arist monks to the wealthy Armenian diaspora settlements in India where a small but very affluent community of Armenian merchants had settled, many of them hailing from the trading outpost of New Julfa on the outskirts of Safavid Isfahan.19 Mkhit‘arist monks travelled to India either as alms collectors, as in the case of Nicholas Buzayan and Poghos Mēhērean whose travelogue to India was quoted above, or as mobile salesmen of printed Armenian books published by their congregation, as in the case of two other members of the congregation, Fathers Sukias Aghamalean and Manuel Ēmirzean, who blazed a path to India in 1769–1773 and laid the basis for later missions. In a similar fashion, both the Antonines and their offshoot order in Bzommar benefited enormously from the support, which included financial assistance and land grants, of Maronites in the region of Keserwan in Mount Lebanon.20 The Antonines also raised funds by periodically sending their 18 Georgirenes, Description, 99; emphasis added. For a brief discussion, see Ghobrial, “Migration from Within,” 162 and 168; and idem, “Moving Stories.” 19 For New Julfa and its trade, see Herzig, “Armenian Merchants,” 244–56; and Khach‘ikyan, Nor Jughayi; and Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean. 20 Jeranian, “Catholic Armenian-Maronite Relations,” 54–65, and Raphael, Role of the Maronites, 41–49.

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own missionaries on long alms-collecting voyages that required movement across the frontiers and borders of early modern Eurasia. As we shall see below, the mobility of these alms collectors was by no means an easy feat. It was predicated on multiple factors. Chief among them was the existence of infrastructural public works projects across most early modern states and empires. Infrastructure building through the creation or renovation of roads, caravan routes, and inns and the multiplication of shipping lanes across the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean were noticeable developments in the early modern world.21 Together they facilitated the movement not only of long-distant merchants and their commodities but of many other social actors. Among these were alms collectors such as Father Andreas Karapet Ouzounean. Despite his decades of movement across oceans and deserts, hardly anything has been written on the life of this unknown wandering monk. Who was Father Andreas Ouzounean, and how did he manage to cross so many frontiers and borders?

A microhistory of a mobile alms collector: Father Andreas Ouzounean (1731–1819) In the course of his peripatetic travels around the world to collect alms, Father Andreas wrote dozens of letters to his superiors. Nonetheless, much of his early life remains virtually unknown to us. According to one document, Andreas Ouzounean was born in Aintab in 1731 and passed away in Bzommar in 1819.22 He served as a Catholic Armenian monk of the Antonine order until his mid-40s. Father Andreas appears to have been one of his congregation’s most seasoned alms collectors. He was on the road as early as the mid-1750s, collecting alms among his brethren in Ottoman Anatolia, including in Tokat, Amid (Diyarbakir), and Istanbul, usually travelling in the company of a fellow monk and alms collector and sending missives to his superiors reporting on his successes and failures.23 Fortunately for us, the archives 21 See chapter 2 of Aslanian, Early Modernity and Mobility. 22 Orjanean, Aybbenakan anuanats‘, no pagination. I am grateful to Gevork Ter-Vardanian for bringing this source to my attention. 23 The Antonine archives seem to contain no letters from Father Andreas from the 1750s. However, his missions to Tokat, Amid (Diyarbakir), and Istanbul are mentioned in the correspondence of others. See Letter of Abbot General, Father Raphael Tumayan in Kreïm to Fathers Thaddeus Golotean and Howakim in Istanbul, 25 August 1755, Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 41–42 (correspondence from 1718–1756). “Հայր անդրէասն տարի մի եղեւ որ գնացեալէ յամթայ

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of his congregation are remarkably well-ordered and preserved. They were initially stored at the Antonine convent of Saint Gregory the Illuminator in the Vatican until 1871 when, fearing persecution or confiscation from the authorities at the Vatican, they were secretly removed for safe keeping to Istanbul’s Ortaköy neighbourhood where the order had a small church and library.24 After the order was disbanded in the early twentieth century, goods and moveable property were transferred to the sister congregation of Bzommar high in the mountains north of Beirut. The archives and manuscripts were included in this transfer, and on 12 March 1925, 266 neatly organized boxes stuffed with correspondence (some dating back to the early 1700s) travelled to Bzommar.25 One of the earliest letters written by Father Andreas is dated 15 May 1767. Written from Moscow and addressed to the superior of the order in Rome, Father Gregory “Nipote” Nersisean, the letter is unusually important because it provides vital information on Father Andreas’s long-distance voyages: Let the following brief account of our state of being be known to your eminence. In accordance to the order of his lordship and Holiness, the Catholicos [i.e., the primate], and with his kondak written in Armenian, Arabic, and Latin, as well as another Latin certificate with an Armenian seal of Father Raphael, your vicar and the superior of the Jesus the All Saviour provided by the Holy vicar of the Pope, Arnoldus Bossi, who had come to visit us in Lebanon, I the worthless Father Andreas along with the honourable father Abraham [Pirimean] came to Baghdad to collect alms from [our fellow] faithful. There, it was agreed upon that it would be best if one of us went to the lands of the Indies while the other travelled to Persia and the realm of Moscow. Praise be to God and thanks to your prayers, I, Father Andreas, came here to the land of Moscow by travelling ի թոքաթ Լ [30] ղուրուշ փոլոսայ ողարկեց վերանիս տվեցինք.” “It has been a year since Father

Andreas has gone from Amit [sic] to Tokat; he sent us a polissa in our name for thirty ghurush, which we submitted.” For polissa documents, see the discussion below in this chapter. 24 For an account of the permanent dissolution of the Antonine order’s convent in Rome, see Ormanian, Azgapatum, § 2832 and § 2848 or pages 4311–4312 and 4350–4351. Ormanian was himself a member of the order until he returned to the fold of the Armenian church, even becoming the Patriarch in Istanbul towards the end of his life. According to him, he personally oversaw the transfer of the order’s assets, including its “library and archives” to Istanbul beginning in 1871 after the Antonine convent of Saint Gregory the Illuminator was closed down in 1871. See § 2848 or page 4351. 25 On the actual date of the transfer, see Atanasian, Vark‘ Abraham-Petros, 9. See also the brief mention in Terzian, Zmmaru hay vankĕ, 21 and 116. The archives have received scant if any attention by scholars.

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through Persia. God be willing, in a short while I will go to Poland and thence to the lands of the Germans (nemtsē). If at all possible, please send to us, for assistance, either brother T‘uma or a priest, so I may carry out my ministry with God’s help. Moreover, if there are such persons there with whom you can send a letter or bill of exchange (polizza) of several hundred ghurush in my name, that is five hundred or six hundred ghurush, please do so, so that I may present this bill in Germany.26

A little over a month later, our ever-mobile alms collector is heard from a place he identifies as Nizhna(y) (Նիժնայ) which is probably a reference to Низьки́ й за́ мок (Nizhki zamok) or the “low castle,” now a suburb of the city of Lvov, or Lviv in present-day Ukraine, then part of the kingdom of Poland.27 The following day, Andreas was at the centre of Lvov, where a sizeable Armenian emigre population had settled after their coerced migration from their homeland in the thirteenth century.28 By the time Andreas reached Lvov, the city had been an Armenian Catholic episcopal seat for well over a hundred years and boasted an Armenian population, mostly Catholic converts, numbering several thousand. It was thus an ideal place to collect alms for a Catholic Armenian monk. On 26 June, Father Andreas writes again to his superior in Rome: Let me notify you a little of our condition. Last year I had written to you that with a kondak given to me by the most blessed Mikayel Catholicos for the purpose of collecting alms as well as with the kondak by Arnoldus Bossy and the letter of request from Father Raphael, [I left our] convent on account of collecting alms … I have now reached Poland [ilakhats erkir] at the [seat] of the Archbishop of the Catholic Armenians, that is at the city of Lvov, where until now I have raised two hundred gold [coins]. I wish to go to the country of the Germans but have heard that the Maronites coming from Lebanon have collected alms through deceitful means (խափէութեամբ ողորմութիւն ժողովեալ են) in Poland as well, and it is also known to your lordship that the Holy Congregation has erected barriers to prevent them from collecting [alms] and their superiors from giving them letters (եւս յայտ է որ ս[ուր]բ ժողովէն առքելմունք եղավ որ 26 Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 47–48 (correspondence from 1767–1770), folder Father Andreas Ouzounean, 1767, #4. 27 I thank Merujan Karapetyan for help in tracking down this location. 28 On the Armenian presence in medieval and early modern Lvov, see Nadel-Golobič, “Armenians and Jews,” and Maksoudian, “Armenian Communities.”

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ոչ ժողովէն եւ ոչ գիր տան իւրեանց). [Therefore,] I, Father Andreas, …

presently request from your lordship to command me to do as you please, and I shall carry it out.29

It is clear from this letter that alms collecting was not what it was in the previous century, when monks like Father Andreas could leave Lebanon to wander the streets and countryside of Europe begging for donations without experiencing too many obstacles regarding certif ication and paperwork. Although “letters of Catholicity” issued by the papal curia and letters of recommendation were issued to Eastern Christians in the seventeenth century before they travelled to Catholic Europe, relatively little regulation or control would appear to have been exercised by authorities in Rome. This was certainly the case for an Armenian bishop named Thomas Vanandets‘i who raised funds to finance an Armenian printing press in Amsterdam between 1695 and 1708.30 Difficult as travel in the service of alms collecting may have been, however, it was relatively smooth and easy compared to the controls placed on the movement of alms collectors in the eighteenth century, when there was a relative surge of Maronite alms collectors, some of whom treated alms collecting as a venture for personal gain. This, along with a greater incidence of religious dissimulators and impostors across Europe, compelled both state and religious authorities to clamp down on the movement of individuals deemed suspicious or undesirable.31 Consider, for instance, the example of an unusually crafty and deceitful Maronite priest named Sergius Gamerius discussed in the travel account of the French consul in Aleppo, Laurent d’Arvieux. Despite being unqualified to the office of priesthood, Gamerius managed to have himself appointed bishop in Aleppo and soon afterwards set his sights on travelling to Europe to raise alms and enrich himself and his family. According to d’Arvieux, soon, he took the road to Europe to accomplish there his goals on which he counted to establish his family. France became his cash cow (sa vache à lait). He knew so well how to feign and display the poverty of his patriarch 29 Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 47–48 (correspondence from 1767–1770), folder Father Andreas Ouzounean, 1767, #4. 30 For Thomas Vanandets’i’s mobility across Europe and the south Caucasus and his alms collecting and printing, see Aslanian, “‘Quintessential Locus’.” 31 For religious dissimulation and early modern impostors, see Zagorin, Ways of Lying, and Eliav-Feldon, Renaissance Impostors. See also Aslanian, “‘Many Have Come Here’.”

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and the Christians of Mount Lebanon and other places in the country that he collected huge sums; moreover, he made several trips there and always very usefully.32

In the case of the Syriac Catholic priest from Mardin (in today’s eastern Turkey) named Athanasius Safar, alms collecting in the Spanish Americas also paid off handsomely, resulting in a whopping sum of 46,000 pieces of eight.33 We know from the work of Bernard Heyberger that suspicions of dissimulation among Eastern Christians and Maronites crested dramatically in the mid-eighteenth century, with the result that prior certification was required of Eastern Christians who wished to collect alms in Europe. Discussing such ordinances, Heyberger writes, In 1753, an off icial text published in France aiming precisely at “the Maronite and other Eastern Christians” obliged them to come into the country complete with certificates provided by the consul of the French nation and legalized by the aldermen and delegates of the Trade in Marseille on pain of imprisonment and being treated as tramps and disreputable people.34

Certification may not have been as rigidly applied in the century before, but it was certainly around. According to Cesare Santus, already in the seventeenth century Eastern Christians were required to show licences to collect alms as well as certificates of Catholicity and letters of recommendation. Such papers were either issued at the alms collector’s point of origin in the East (a local European consul or missionary) or acquired in Europe from the papal curia. Without this kind of paperwork, it was difficult not only to ask for alms but also to travel or receive accommodation.35 The reasons behind such certification and regulation had to do with what d’Arvieux called “feigning” (se contrefaire) and dissimulation on the one hand, and the difficulties authorities encountered in managing cases of imposture on the other. In fact, beginning in the 1670s, Catholic authorities in Rome and elsewhere attempted with ever-increasing energy to halt the alms-collecting tours of Eastern Christians, especially those whose orthodoxy was suspect, granting licences grudgingly and only after conducting a rigorous investigation into 32 Arvieux, Mémoires, 369. See also Heyberger, “Migration,” 26. 33 Heyberger, “Migration,” 26; and idem, “Chrétiens orientaux,” 63. 34 Heyberger, “Migration,” 28. 35 Santus, “Wandering Lives.”

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the merits of each itinerant priest.36 State authorities also attempted to regulate the alms-collecting activities of Eastern Christians. For instance, in his study of the Syriac missionary and alms collector Ilias al-Mausuli of Mosul, Ghobrial notes how Eastern Christian alms collectors in the New World were already “on the radar” of Spanish authorities. They were indeed singled out for their “unacceptable behaviour” (malos modos) in a chapter on alms collecting in the Laws of the Indies of 1681. Furthermore, a prohibition on the alms-collecting activities of Greeks and Armenians was also pronounced in a Spanish Royal decree of 1675.37 In response to Father Andreas’s request for a fresh set of certificates or kondaks enabling him to continue his alms-collecting journeys in Europe, Gregory Nipote Nersessian, Abbot General of the Antonine order and head of the Antonine church in Rome, issued a new batch of certificates, again in three languages (Armenian, Arabic, and Latin), in 1769. In line with the general certification protocols established by the Roman Catholic authorities at the time, these certificates have a “wafer seal” at the bottom right corner, bestowing on Father Andreas the right “to circulate to numerous cities to the threshold of those who are compassionate in order to replenish the privations and needs of the ascetic monks belonging to the order of the great Abbot Saint Anthony.”38 The certificate also names the congregation’s convent of Saint Gregory the Illuminator in Rome, which it mentions had fallen into debt at the time. In a most important turn of phrase, Bishop Gregory Nipote states that “we have given him this certificate with the purpose of removing all suspicions [about the bearer’s identity and intentions], for his companion, the honourable Father Abraham was dispatched [elsewhere] on account of which the [bearer of this certificate] was sent alone.”39 The clause was necessary because the norm at the time was for alms collectors to travel in pairs, making a solitary beggar suspect. Alms collectors were expected to “perambulate always by two and two together.”40 The Latin version of this certificate, which was probably of more use to Father Andreas, reiterated the same point and outlined in clear strokes Father Andreas’s mission as an alms collector: 36 Santus, “Wandering Lives,” has an excellent discussion. 37 Ghobrial, “Secret Life of Elias,” 63. 38 Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 47–48 (correspondence from 1767–1770), folder of Gregory Nipote Nersesian, 1769: “շրջիլ ՚ի դրունս ողորմածայ առ ՚ի լնուլ զպակասութիւնս եւ կարօտութիւնս ճգնազեաց կրօնաւորացն Սրբոյն Անդօնի մեծի Աբբային . For a passing reference to these seals, see Ghobrial, “Moving Stories,” 269. 39 Ibid: “տուաք նմա զայս վկայականս՝ առ ՚ի բառնալ զամենայն երկբայութիւնս .” 40 Georgirenes, Description, 99.

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I, Father Gregory Nipote … abbot of the Catholic Armenian monks and Superior General of the monastery of Saint Gregory the Illuminator at the sacrosanct basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican at Rome testify and witness: That this blessed Padre Don Andreas Usunius, a professed monk of our religion, was sent by his superiors and by us to beseech the piety and clemency of the faithful in Christ … Wherefore we humbly ask … the faithful in Christ, not to disdain kindly taking in this man sent by us, and to aid us as much as possible with a generous hand, who have determined for the sake of piety in greatest necessity, for the love of Christ, whom we all will always humbly beg to open the treasury of his pity to you our benefactors. Moreover, lest it ever happen that the mention of the name of Father Abraham in many letters cause a delay for someone, we testify and witness that the same man has been separated from him and sent into another place by his superiors for another necessary business of the same religion. In faith of all of which we have given our present letters of recommendation signed by the hand of us and the secretary, and certified with the seal of our monastery, in Rome at the monastery of Saint Gregory the Illuminator in 1769 on the fourth day of March. 41

As the certificate took pains to explain, Father Andreas carried with him other paperwork containing references to Father Abraham who was no longer at his side. Father Andreas was in Trieste and Vienna from April to July 1769, where he continued to raise alms. In 1770, he turned up in Baghdad before returning to Rome. By mid-January 1772 he was in Malta, probably lodging at a Roman Catholic convent on the island. In a letter, he informed his superior that he intended to stay on the island for an additional month and a half, after which he planned to travel to Spain, possibly in the company of a Spanish monk. In this connection, he requested that Father Gregorio “Nipote” appeal to the general superior of the Franciscan order in Rome “and acquire a certificate giving me permission to carry with me crosses and rosaries as I wander 41 Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 47–48 (correspondence from 1767–1770), folder of Gregory Nipote Nersesian, 1769: I am grateful to Hannah Rich for providing me with the translation from Latin.

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throughout the kingdom of Spain. For only they [i.e., the Franciscans] carry with them crosses and rosaries from Jerusalem to Spain and do not allow others to do the same, and for that reason, a letter is required so no one says anything.”42 He also asks his superior to request that the certificate clearly state that the crate of Jerusalem crosses and rosaries are not for sale but to be given out as gifts, “so that whoever gives alms, I shall gift them either a rosary or cross in return.”43 The mention here of crosses and rosaries (tēsbih) from Jerusalem is a reference to a widely practised custom among the Franciscans of the “Custody of the Holy Land” to send holy souvenirs from Jerusalem, crafted by Palestinian Christian artisans, to their benefactors in Europe. A European traveller to the Holy Land, Frederich Hasselquist, for instance, noted in his travel account that the Franciscan Convent in Bethlehem held 15,000 piasters worth of such souvenirs at around the same time as Father Andreas’s missive and that these souvenirs “were sent to all the Catholic countries of Europe and above all to Spain and Portugal.”44 Nothing is known about Father Andreas’s whereabouts in the immediate wake of this letter from Malta. His trail of letters in the Antonine archives falls silent for several years. Did he receive the crate of little crosses and rosaries prepared in Jerusalem to take with him to Spain? Were his voyages in the Iberian Peninsula and possibly beyond profitable, if he did indeed go equipped with a certificate from the Franciscans in Rome? We may never know for certain. The archival boxes in the mountains north of Beirut contain no folders from him until five or six years later. The next time we hear from him is in 1779 when he is in Aleppo. The gap in the documentary trail and the “torn fabric” that is Father Andreas’s history in the early 1770s, along with the telltale clues in the documents when they eventually resume, leave us no choice but to resort to speculation. 45 It seems that sometime in the late 1770s, several important shifts occurred in Father Andreas’s life. First, he seems to have changed his fund-raising 42 Letter by Fathers Andreas Ouzounean to Gregory Nipote Nersisean, 17 January 1772, folder “Andreas Ouzounean, 1772/2,” in Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 49–50 (correspondence from 1771–1776). 43 Ibid., “Let him write it in such a way that these crosses and rosaries in one small crate or case are not for sale but for the purpose of being given out as presents, so that whoever gives [me] alms I in turn will give them either a cross or a rosary.” 44 Hasselquist, Voyages, 217. See also, Norris, “Exporting the Holy Land,” 20; idem, “Dragomans, tattooists;” and Girard and Tramontana, “Fabrication des objets de dévotion.” I thank Felicita Tramontana for the references to Norris’s essays. See also the stimulating discussion by Felicita Tramontana (“Getting to the Holy Land”) in this volume. On the mobility of devotional objects from Rome to the New World, see the chapter by Paul Nelles in this collection. 45 On history as a “torn fabric,” see Guha, “Chandra’s Death,” 138.

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tactics. Instead of wandering from city to city, region to region, somewhat forlorn and hoping to raise funds through alms collecting among the ordinary faithful, he seems to have carried out research for potential targets of opportunity. He was already on to this different and more successful fund-raising method as early as the mid-1760s when he was in Baghdad with his companion Father Abraham Pirimean, contemplating a voyage to India. For instance, in a missive to his superior dated 5 February 1766, he writes, “moreover if you were to ask about our well-being, we are both alive until this point, a thousand thanks be to God; but as far as alms are concerned, [let it be known to you] that there are no persons here rich enough to distribute alms generously, and the ones who are wealthy are heretics (են հեռետիկոսք).”46 He then reports that the two Catholic Armenian merchants with whom he and his companion were lodging were once very well off but had fallen on hard times. Nonetheless, he requests the Abbot General Nersessian to dispatch special letters of blessing to both of them in the event that their fortunes improve, and they decide to make a generous benefaction.47 In another letter also from Baghdad dated 16 September 1770, Father Andreas sends to his superior in Rome a detailed list of individuals in Basra who had given alms and asks the Abbot General to send each of them individualized letters.48 Such references only reinforce this chapter’s central contention that mobile alms collectors such as Father Andreas relied on paperwork to facilitate both their fund-raising and their movement. The second shift in Father Andreas’s life came beginning in 1779, when instead of alms collecting through begging, passing out Jerusalem crosses, or celebrating mass, as he was doing in Russia, Poland, Vienna, Malta, and possibly in Spain, he changed tactics and seems to have systematically targeted wealthier clients. As we shall see, he was selling prayers, in the form of indulgences, or celebrations of mass for the salvation of souls from purgatory. Third, and in line with the first two changes, Father Andreas appears to have expanded his “catchment area” from the Russian empire, 46 Letter by Fathers Andreas Ouzounean and Abraham Pirimean to Gregory Nipote Nersisean, 5 February 1766, folder “Zanazan Hark‘, 1766/9” (Various fathers) in Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 45–46 (correspondence from 1763–1766). Members of the Armenian Apostolic Church were regarded by some Armenian Catholics as “heretics” on account of their theological doctrines and refusal to submit to the Church of Rome. 47 Excerpts from this letter are quoted, though not without some deviation from the original in Sayeghian, “Patmakan Aknark mĕ,” 60–61. 48 Letter by Fathers Andreas Ouzounean to Gregory Nipote Nersisean, 16 September 1770, folder “Andreas Ouzounean, 1770/3,” in Bzommar, Antonine Archives, Box 47–48 (correspondence from 1767–1770).

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the Mediterranean, and Catholic Europe in the West, to the Indian Ocean and its wealthy Armenian communities in the port cities of the East. This shift eventually turned out to bring a huge windfall for Father Andreas and the congregation he served. Sometime in this shadowy corner of his life, Father Andreas also shifted his loyalties from the Antonine order to the sister congregation at Bzommar with its base at the Convent of the Virgin Mary in the mountains of Keserwan. We do not know when or why he ceased to be an Antonine monk, but the fact that, beginning in 1779 at the latest, his papers appear almost exclusively in the parallel archives of the Bzommar Congregation suggests that he was a member of that order from that time onward if not earlier. It could be that his reputation as an intrepid and trustworthy alms collector came to the attention of the Catholicos of Catholic Armenians at the time and led to his appointment as a legate or personal representative of the Catholicos. A special ledger book of masses performed by Father Andreas, known in the Catholic Church as a Diarium Missarum or a Liber Missarum, and stored in the Bzommar Archives, gives us a clear idea of its owner’s movement across the diaspora. 49 Our alms-collecting monk diligently records when masses were performed, where, at whose request, or for whose soul. In the process of maintaining his ledger, he also tracks his own movements. The ledger begins with his arrival in Aleppo in 1779. In the year 1779 on 28 April, in Aleppo (Halab) in the city of Peria [Berea], I Ter Andreas Vardapet Ouzounean lodged at the home of [my] Brothers and stayed there until September 19. This booklet will display whatever mass I have said, recording what I performed and what I still owe. I will say six hundred masses for my father’s soul, and my brothers gave me a hundred and fifty ghurush to say masses for the soul of the deceased Paron Karapet Ouzounean.50

In 1780, Father Andreas was in Mardin, a city in today’s southeastern Turkey with an important Catholic Armenian community and Episcopal See dating back to 1708 as well as a sizable Syriac-Christian population.51 In June 1782, he was in Baghdad where he recorded saying mass “for the soul of my father 49 I am thankful to Cesare Santus for information on the genre of Diarium Missarum or Liber Missarum. 50 “Liber Missarum” (unpaginated) in Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “GrigorPetros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799,” Bzommar, Lebanon: “զորինչ պատարագ ասի տէֆտերըս այս ցուցանէ պարտքըս եւ ասացըս .” 51 On Mardin as an episcopal see, see Agheksandrian, Hamarot patmut‘iwn, 6–9.

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Karapet” as well as his brothers Abraham, Hovanness, and Movses. In September he was in Mosul, where he celebrated more masses until he returned to Mardin on 19 March 1783, then to Aleppo in May. By August of 1784, Father Andreas had already left Aleppo behind and travelled to the Persian Gulf port of Basra. The masses he records for the souls of his brothers Johannes, Abraham, and Moses were all celebrated in the city’s Carmelite convent. At this point, there is a one-year gap in the ledger. The very next page begins in February of 1786. Father Andreas was in the port city of Surat in Northwestern India where, on the 27th of the month, he celebrated mass for the soul of a certain Paron Poghos Abrahamean and another celebration for other souls in purgatory. On 1 May, he celebrated mass in a church in Bombay and noted that he arrived “here on April 15 in a ship from the port [of Surat].” He celebrated mass for a certain Paron Toma on 19 June. “On July 1, I boarded ship in Bombay and arrived in the city of Pondicherry on the 25th on Tuesday.” On the very next day, 26 July, “I arrived in the city of Madras where I remained ill for 16 days and did not say mass in Madras.”52

Little Mount in Madras and the establishment of a seminary in Mount Lebanon Great is India, the Mecca of all in need, A Journey to India is incumbent upon any man who has acquired adequate knowledge and skill.53

Father Andreas’s frequent trips around Madras and in other parts of India were motivated by his mission to secure a large donation from a wealthy merchant named Agha Mikael Tēr-Hovannesean Babumeants‘ (commonly known in Madras as “Miguel Johannes”), whose family had migrated to southern India from New Julfa (Isfahan), likely in the middle of the eighteenth century. By the mid-1780s, Agha Mikael was one of only two or three Catholic members of Madras’s 200-strong Armenian community. Wealthy and a fervent supporter of Catholic Armenian causes, Agha Mikael acquired a reputation as a generous benefactor. In fact, one of his two residences in Madras’s Little Mount district, near the shrine and church dedicated by the 52 “Liber Missarum.” 53 Seventeenth-century Persian verse quoted in Subrahmanyam, “Iranians Abroad,” 340.

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Portuguese in 1551 to the Apostle Saint Thomas, often served as a guesthouse for visiting Catholic Armenian monks from the West. It was in this residence that the Antonine monk and fellow alms collector Father T‘uma, whose sad demise at sea we noted at the beginning of this essay, had lodged in 1785. Before even meeting Father T‘uma, Agha Mikael had probably heard of the Bzommar Congregation in Mount Lebanon through an official letter sent from its spiritual head. Indeed, in a kondak and letter of blessing of May 1784 from the patriarch of the Catholic Armenians, Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV (r. 1780–1788), sent from his seat at the Convent of the Holy Virgin in Bzommar, had asked Armenian Catholics “residing in the city of Basra and in the lands of the Indies” for alms, especially for the construction of a seminary (dpravank) on the premises of the convent. Earlier in May of 1776, the Catholicos had sent Father Andreas and a companion to Rome to petition the Propaganda Fide for financial assistance in building the seminary in Bzommar.54 When that attempt failed, the Catholicos appealed to his wealthy co-religionists in the East with his kondak beseeching them “not to restrain yourself in giving alms generously.55 Agha Mikael appears to have first heard of Bzommar’s dire need for funds to pay for the building of a seminary through Father T‘uma. By 1785, the Madras-based merchant had informed the Catholicos in Bzommar of his willingness to donate funds. In a letter to the Catholicos written from Basra at the end of July 1785, Father Andreas, travelling in the company of a certain Tēr Gēorg, informs the pontiff that the two monks had earlier received a letter from his eminence that “a certain Mikael Tēr-Hovannesian [i.e., Agha Mikael], on account of having heard your name and learned about the condition of our place [at Bzommar] from Tēr T‘uma, has expressed an interest in giving alms to our convent and to pay for the celebration of masses.”56 Apparently, the sums Agha Mikael had promised were substantial. Father Andreas writes that he had learned that Agha Mikael had also requested that “we appoint a trustworthy representative (vekil) from among us in the city of Basra, who henceforth, from year to year, could transfer to us whatever 54 See Terzian, Le Patriarcat, 138–39 and 150–51 for the document relating to the petition. See also chapter 6 of idem, Zmmaru hay vankĕ, for an excellent discussion of the seminary and its history as well as the contributions to Hushamatean Zmmaṙu; and Boyadjian, “Tprevank’is barerar”. 55 “Kondak of Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV, May 1784,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwpelean, 1779–1799,” Bzommar, Lebanon. 56 “Letter of Fathers Andreas and Ter Gevorg July 31, 1785,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799:” “վասն որոյ ողորմութիւն եւ պատարագուց տալն վասն մեր վանուցն համար իմացանք.”

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Mikael Agha sends for our convent.”57 Father Andreas’s trip from Aleppo to Baghdad and Basra with fellow alms collector and legate, Tēr Gēorg, was thus undertaken to ensure that the convent of Bzommar had appointed a proper representative in Basra. The two men most likely joined a caravan of around 1,500 camels and departed Aleppo across the perilous stretch of desert from Syria to Iraq and down along the Euphrates to Basra.58 By the second half of the eighteenth century, this particular caravan route was “considered to be the safest, cheapest … and among the largest and best organized in Asia.”59 According to Thabit A.J. Abdullah, there were two such annual merchant caravans, thus facilitating the greater mobility of goods and men and offering some latitude of choice for departure times to passengers needing the safety and security of travelling through the desert with others. Having spent a “full two months” travelling across the desert and “suffering many difficulties from the scorching sun, the heat of the winds, the severe thirst, fetid water, and the extremely abominable nature of the air, so much so that our clothes never dried once from our sweating night and day,” our two alms collectors finally “reached Basra with difficulties and lodged at the caravanserai of the Padres where they gave us a room and welcomed us with great honour.”60 The caravanserai mentioned here is the house or inn next to the Carmelite church in Aleppo first established in 1624 or 1625.61 Of course, for many voyagers braving the uncertain desert crossing from either Aleppo in the northwest or Baghdad in the north (where Father Andreas and his alms-collecting companions had in the past lodged with the local Carmelite mission), the church and guesthouse of the Carmelites served as a hostal offering lodging, food, and pleasant company before the rest of the journey by ship to Surat or Bombay on the west coast of India en route to Madras or Pondicherry 57 Ibid: “նա եւս խնդրելն ՚ի մէնջ զոմն հաւատարիմ վէքիլ մի կացուցանել մեզ ի պասրայ քաղաքի .” 58 For the average size of caravans between Aleppo and Basra in this period, see Abdullah, Merchants, Mamluks, 78. 59 Ibid., 77. 60 “Letter of Fathers Andreas and Tēr Gēorg July 31, 1785,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799:” “շատ նեղութիւնք կրեցինք ի տապոյ արեգական . ի ջերմութենէ հողմոյն . սաստիկ ծարաւութենէ. ջրոյն հոտածութենէ. եւ եղանակին սաստիկ գարշելութենէ.” 61 Very little has been written on the Carmelite mission in Basra. For the dates of the mission’s establishment, see Chick, Chronicle, 1: 275. See also Matthee, “Chronicle,” 304. The “Khan” that Father Andreas and his companion mention might be a reference to a “house” belonging to the Carmelites and adjoining their church commonly referred to as a caravanserai. See Chick, Chronicle, 2: 1214. On the Carmelite mission in Isfahan and New Julfa, see Windler, “Between Convent and Courtly Life.”

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on the east coast. Inns, caravanserais, and other resting places, especially along death-defying stretches of desert or desolate landscapes, were part of the early modern infrastructural changes across Eurasia that made the circulation of men like our Father Andreas possible. After resting at the Carmelite guesthouse, Father Andreas and his companion did the requisite research and before too long appointed a man named Petros Agha Bangali, who, they reminded their superior in the mountains in Lebanon, was the son of Stepan Agha of Bengal. This choice, following an earlier appointment of a representative in Aleppo, probably did not come as a surprise to the Catholicos. For a diaspora as small in numbers as the Armenians, tightly knit through ‘multiplex’ networks and ties cross-cutting confessional and geographic divides, the appointed representative and his father would surely have been known to the spiritual leader of the Armenian Catholics. They were, after all, wealthy Catholic Armenians from Calcutta by way of Julfa. Stepan, the father of the appointed representative, had spent a good deal of time in the 1760s and 1770s in Basra. In 1770, he had lodged three Mkhit‘arist monks en route to India to raise funds by collecting alms and through sale of their convent’s famed printed Armenian books.62 Father Andreas informed his superior that one of the reasons why he and his companion were given such a hearty welcome in Basra was because a monk identif ied by Father Andreas as Padre Volchentsius (պատրի Վոլջէնցիոս) or Padre Fulgenzio, superior of the Carmelite mission in Baghdad, knew Andreas from a prior visit to the city.63 Moreover, Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV’s letter to the mission in Basra alerting them that the two monks from Bzommar were on their way, and presumably requesting hospitality for them, had been received by Padre Fulgenzio prior to the monks’ arrival. The letter also states that Father T‘uma, the Antonine monk who had been alms collecting for years in India, had sent some 7,200 rupees from Calcutta through Petros Agha Bangali, the newly appointed 62 Stepanos Hazarmalean lodged the two Catholic Armenian priests (Sukias Aghamalean and Manuel Emirzean) at his home and furnished them with important letters of recommendation to associates in India in 1770. See Aslanian, Early Modernity and Mobility, chapter 2. See also “letter by Stepanos Hazarmalean to Abbot Stepanos Melkonian, May 16, 1770,” Archives of the San Lazzaro degli Armeni. According to Sayeghian, Stepanos passed away in Basra in 1784. Sayeghian, “Patmakan hamaṙod teghekut‘iwnner,” 30–32. 63 This person is surely “Padre Superiore F. Fulgenzio di S.M. da Cologna,” the superior of the Carmelite mission in Baghdad who came out to greet the Italian scholar and voyager Domenico Sestini during his visit to Baghdad in 1781. See Sestini, Viaggio, 174. I owe this source to Cesare Santus. See also Badger, Nestorians, 159.

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representative of the Bzommar convent. The money was to be distributed to three Catholic convents under the jurisdiction of the Catholicos. From pious donors in India, T’uma had also sent gifts in the form of a chalice, a staff, two goblets, and a tray, all made of silver, as well as a tablecloth made from decorated Indian textiles. The need to appoint “trustworthy representatives” or vekils in central locations such as Basra and Aleppo raises an important aspect in the study of both mobility and alms collecting in the early modern period, a point to which I shall soon return. Sometime at the end of July 1786, the two alms collectors appear to have safely arrived in Madras by ship from Basra.64 More than likely, our Lebanese travellers took passage on one of the many “country ships” (owned by private merchants, including some Armenians from India) engaged in the port-to-port trade of the Indian Ocean that voyaged with each monsoon between the west coast of India and the Persian Gulf emporium of Basra. It was not long before they were lodging at Agha Mikael’s guesthouse near the Little Mount in Madras. As was customary with other Catholic Armenian monks arriving in India from the West, Fathers Andreas and Tēr Gēorg were, in short order, introduced to Madras’s other wealthy Catholic Armenian, Edward Raphael Gharameants‘, one of the founding partners of India’s first joint-stock bank and an intimate friend of Agha Mikael.65 “The two emissaries your holiness sent, Father Andreas the archimandrite and Father Gēorg, have arrived here with us, and we have welcomed them with affection,” wrote Edward Raphael in his missive to the Catholicos in Bzommar of 14 October 1786. “They read [aloud] your esteemed one’s kondak of blessing and brought to our attention that they had travelled here to secure donations from us for the new building that you seek to erect for a seminary.” Edward Raphael had already committed a large fortune a short while earlier to two other Catholic Armenian monks belonging to the order of the Mkhit‘arists in Venice and Trieste.66 Consequently, he pledged to donate only 2,000 rupees to the convent in Bzommar with the proviso 64 “Letter Agha Mikael Babumeants‘ to Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV, September 7, 1786,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799. This information is corroborated with the entry in Father Andreas’s Diarium Missarum discussed above that provides the date of his arrival in Madras as 26 July 1786. 65 On Edward Raphael’s role as a founding partner of the Carnatic Bank of India, see Love, Vestiges of Old Madras, 423. 66 This fund led to the establishment of Venice’s Collegio Armeno Moorat-Raphael during the nineteenth century. For a history of this act of benevolence and alms donation, see the four-volume work by Teodorian, Patmut‘iwn Muratean ew Haykazean Varzharanats, especially vol. 1.

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that the monks purchase either a vineyard or a mulberry orchard and use the income to supplement the financial needs of the convent. In return, he requested that every year on the day of the feast of the Assumption the monks celebrate a full mass, with the liturgy, in memory of his newly deceased mother, Anna.67 As for the seminary, Agha Mikael agreed to pay the full costs of tuition and stipend for six students on an annual basis. In a letter dated 7 September 1786, he informed the Catholicos of the arrival of his emissaries two months earlier and that they had conveyed the Catholicos’s plans to build a seminary for young novices. “Let the Omnipotent God bring it to fruition,” he wrote, adding that “on my part and with God’s help, I shall do everything in my power to help you with your needs.” He also stated that he was giving Father Andreas 5,000 rupees of which 700 should be given to the ascetic monks of the All Saviour’s convent in Bzommar. The remaining 4,300 rupees were to be spent in “purchasing a fruitful and profitable piece of land and from the proceeds of this land a weekly prayer to be said for all time for my [soul].”68 The generous patron also gifted a ring with a blue sapphire stone on it “worth 300 rupees” for the Catholicos’s use. Several years later, Agha Mikael fulfilled his promise. He drafted a legal document spelling out his commitment to help pay for a seminary in the mountains of Lebanon.69 The catalyst for preparing this notarized document was Father Andreas’s visit to Madras in 1791, his second or third separate trip there in less than six years. I Mikael Tēr Hovan Babumeants‘ as well as my heirs pledge to give annually through the English [East India] Company six hundred rupees to the seat of the Catholicos of the Armenian Catholics established by the holy throne of Rome at the Holy Mother of God convent in Lebanon at Keserwan which is at Bzommar. May the latter be always and forever intercessor and protector of me and my family. The above 600 rupees is for the living and educational expenses of six boys [i.e. religious novices], so that the Catholicosate may always have in its seminary these six boys. 67 “Letter of Edward Raphael Gharameants’ to Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV, October 14, 1786,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799.” 68 “Letter Agha Mikael Babumeants‘ to Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV, September 7, 1786,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799.” 69 While Agha Mikael’s donation was for the scholarship and stipend of six students at the seminary, the construction of the building appears to have been paid for by fund-raising in Ottoman Anatolia and by a donation from a certain Agha Tumajean in Tokat. See Terzian Zmmaru hay vankĕ, 1749–1949, 48–49.

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I established the income for these six boys at the time of the Catholicos, his Holiness Gregory Petros V, and in the presence of the honourable archimandrite, Father Andreas Ouzounian….70

In return for his generous patronage, the donor requested from the new Catholicos, Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean (r. 1788-1812), that upon graduating from the seminary each of the six students, whether a deacon or a secular priest, either celebrate one mass a year for his soul or arrange for such a mass to be celebrated. Agha Mikael passed on in Madras at the age of 56 on 20 March 1793.71 Per the request in his will, he was “decently buried in a plain way and at a moderate expense at San Thomé in the Cathedral Church at the discretion of my Executors hereunder named.”72 His well-preserved tombstone is located towards the front of the cathedral near the altar. Its ornate classical Armenian inscription was written for him at least a decade prior to his death by his friend, the Mkhit‘arist Father, Petros Jughayets‘i Martikēnts‘ who had arrived in Madras, probably as an alms collector, in the 1770s and passed away in the early 1780s.73 As he had vowed earlier, Agha Mikael lists the monks in “Mount Libanum” [sic] as his primary heirs in his will. Paragraphs five and six are directly relevant to the monks of Bzommar and bear testimony to Father Andreas Ouzounean’s life as a mobile alms collector of many decades: In the fifth place, my Small dwelling House and a Small house close to the Latin Church, the foundation whereof is said to be newly built after its buildings in a good manner, these two houses I leave for the Patriarch of Mount Libanum the Incomes thereof to be perpetually enjoy[ed]. Moreover, I have credited in the Ledger two Thousand Pagodas in the name of the Patriarchate besides that four thousand Pagodas also to be given which are six thousand Pagodas for the relief of the School of the 70 “Pledge of Agha Mikael Tēr Hovhannesean Babumeants‘ dated September 29, 1791,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799:” “ ՚ի յաթոռն հայոց ուղղափառաց կաթողիկոս հաստատեցեալ ի սրբազան գահէն Հռօմու .” Several drafts of this paper have been preserved with virtually identical contents. A transcription of the full document is available in Terzian, Le Patriarcat, 151–52. 71 The date of death is listed in the Latin inscription beneath the Classical Armenian one on Agha Mikael’s tombstone inside the Portuguese Cathedral of San Thome in Madras. 72 Last will and testament of Miguel Johannes Babum of Madras, dated 10 March 1793 in “Madras wills and Inventories,” British Library, India Office Records, L/AG/34/29/195, 1793, fol. 135. 73 This monk’s last name as Martikēnts‘ is provided in “Mkhit‘arean amboghj hark‘,” 218.

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Patriarchate of Mount Libanum and four thousand Pagodas to be given Separately to the Patriarchate for Charity. In the fifth [sic, read sixth] place to the Convent of Mekitar and to the Convent of Tharest [Trieste] so as it being of the Society of Mekitar and the Convent of Mardin of our nation likewise to the Convent of Keseraits [Keserwan, Bzommar?] one thousand Pagodas to be given to each Masses to be perpetually said for my soul.74

As we shall see below, the proceeds of Agha Mikael’s donation were probably transferred from the Little Mount to Mount Lebanon through at least three circuits of hundis, or bills of exchange: 1) Madras to Basra, 2) Basra to Aleppo, and 3) Aleppo to Mount Lebanon. At each of these nodes in the circuit of exchange, appointed representatives or vekils were necessary to enable the mobility of credit and funds from one geographic region to another. Like the nearby archives storing the paperwork that has enabled us to reconstruct its history, the seminary that Agha Mikael helped maintain is a material object bearing witness to the connected worlds of the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. It still stands today, over 3,000 feet above the Mediterranean Sea, and as recently as 1949 mass was reported to have been said in memory of its benefactor in India.75 The building is also a sign and monument to the decades of itinerant alms collecting that Father Andreas Ouzounean dedicated to the service of his religious brethren in Mount Lebanon.

Financial paperwork and mobilizing credit across the early modern world Thus far, I have argued that the mobility of early modern travellers, whether from Europe or Asia, was facilitated by a combination of infrastructural public works projects and certification in the form of paperwork establishing their bona fides. In the case of Father Andreas Ouzounean and other Eastern Christian alms collectors, mobility was predicated upon having a network of caravans, shipping lanes, and inns connecting Mount Lebanon to Europe in the West and the Indian Ocean and India in the East. Moreover, alms collectors like Father Ouzounean carried with them multiple certificates or licences with “wafer seals” that provided access to the profitable world 74 Ibid., fols 135–36. 75 Terzian, Zmmaru hay vankĕ, 50.

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of long-distance fund-raising. We can therefore ask what kinds of paper instruments were required to transfer the funds collected to a monastery high in the mountains above the Mediterranean. Alms collectors such as Father Andreas did not travel across barren seas and inhospitable deserts with crates of silver in their possession. Here, the alms collector’s dilemma was not altogether different from that of the long-distant merchant from whom he often collected donations. In a world teeming with pirates, brigands, thieves, and rapacious customs officials, a merchant or alms collector who carried large amounts of liquid money would have been either insane or foolhardy. The transfer of funds required the use of a variety of commercial paper instruments, the most common and safest of which was the standard letter of credit or exchange. This was known among the Armenians operating in the Ottoman Empire and the Mediterranean under a variety of names such as barat or temesuk, or more frequently as letters of polizza or polissa (polizzayagir). For Armenians in the Indian Ocean world of their global diaspora, the terms hundi or hndvi (both derivative of the South Asian bill of exchange or “bill of payment” known as hundi) were commonly used. In all cases, merchants and alms collectors alike used paper instruments. They deposited the silver or other currency in their possession with a trustworthy merchant or banker in one city and received a bill or receipt in return, payable at around eight to ten percent interest, to a designated person or representative (vekil) in another location after a period of time, usually six months. The actual bill or polizza/ polissa or hundi would then be mailed by post to the designated vekil in the place where the alms collector wanted his convent’s representative to cash the funds. After the polizza, polissa, or hundi was presented to the banker’s appointed person, the funds would be reimbursed, together with the interest owed on the initial sum.76 Thus, in a letter dated 31 December 1785 sent from Calcutta by Father Andreas’s fellow monk, Bartholomeus Vardapet P‘irimean, who had also travelled to India to raise funds, we learn that the hapless alms collector, Father T‘uma, had made use of hundi to transfer funds he had collected

76 The classic study of the European bill of exchange is De Roover, “Business of Exchange.” See also Le Goff, “Perfecting of the Financial System.” For a detailed treatment of the mechanics of the European bill of exchange, see Boyer-Xambeu, Deleplace, and Gillard, Private Money and Public Currencies, 30–31; Trivellato, “Credit, Honor;” Trivellato, Promise and Peril of Credit; and Denzel, “European Bill of Exchange.” The best studies of the instrument among Armenians are Herzig, “Armenian Merchants,” 244–56; Khach‘ikyan, Nor Jughayi, 168–89; and Aghasian and Kévonian, “Armenian Merchant Network,” 74–94.

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in Madras and other places to Mount Lebanon.77 Father Bartholomeus explains to the Catholicos in Bzommar that he had received a letter from Father T‘uma with important information: The hndvi that I [Father T‘uma] sent to Petros Ghukas78 [Petros son of Stepan Hazarmalean?] was for seven thousand two hundred and eighty Ottoman ghurush (րօմի ղուրուշ). I also wrote a letter with the hndvi so that he may [know how to] distribute the sum [specified] in the hndvi. Perhaps he has not received the letter I sent him. Being near death, I am [now] leaving on my journey. Let me notify your lordship that of the above-mentioned sum of money in the hndvi, two thousand Ottoman ghurush are for our Catholicosate [i.e., the Bzommar Holy Virgin Convent] and the sum of two thousand Ottoman ghurush should be allocated to our All-Saviour’s convent [of Kreïm] and so on.79 Apart from the [items] noted above, there is one chest of silverware [with] Khachik Ghukas. All the items in this chest were given as a gift of remembrance by Agha Tēr Mikayel Yohanian [sic], the merchant in Madras, to the Spiritual Father [Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV] or to our Catholicosate [i.e., the Holy Virgin Convent in Bzommar] … Each one of the above-mentioned convents or churches owe in return eight hundred celebrations of mass.80

No mention is made here of the interest rate charged for transferring the funds. Based on the prevailing interest rates on hundis of this type at the 77 The classic study of the hundi remains Habib, “System of Bills of Exchange;” see also idem, “Usury in Medieval India;” and Prakash, “Cashless Payment.” For a reference to the hundi as a “bill of payment,” see Perlin, Invisible City. 78 This Petros son of Ghukas is identified as Petros Ghukasean, an Armenian resident merchant in Basra. See Sayeghean, “Patmakan hamarot,” 30–32. It is likely that Petros Bangali was expected to deliver father T’oma’s hundi to Petros Ghukas, at a time when there was no formal representative for Bzommar in Basra and was subsequently appointed as the representative himself. 79 It is interesting to note that Father Andreas’s 1785 letter from Basra (quoted above) mentions that the donations from Agha Mikayel were to be allocated to three convents without naming them. According to this letter, two of the three convents mentioned (Bzommar convent and convent in Kreïm) are specified as receiving two thousand ghurush each, which leaves 3,280 gurush to the unspecif ied third convent. More than likely, this third convent was the Saint Gregory the Illuminator convent in Rome. The uneven distribution of the sum makes more sense in light of the fact that the silverware in a chest (worth a considerable sum in itself) was entirely set aside for Bzommar. 80 “Letter of Bartholomeus Pirimean to Catholicos Barsegh Petros IV, December 31, 1785,” Archives of the Bzommar Congregation, Box “Grigor-Petros V K‘iwp‘elean, 1779–1799,” Bzommar, Lebanon.

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time, we may assume that the sum of 7,200 ghurush probably netted a profit of 720 ghurush, or ten percent, by the time it arrived in Basra with Petros, son of Stephan. There the hundi was probably cashed by being presented to an Indian sarrāf or banker and loaned out again on another hundi or even polizza payable to the newly appointed representative or vekil in Aleppo, a certain khwāja Hovsep.81 From that point onwards, we do not know if another polizza was prepared between Aleppo and a location closer to Bzommar. The most important take away from this discussion is that setting up trusted representatives or vekils in central locations such as Basra and Aleppo was not an easy or simple task, and it was as vital in facilitating the peripatetic lives of alms collectors as it was for long-distance merchants. Without such vekils, and in the absence of paperwork like hundis or polizzas, early modern mobility would scarcely be possible, for there would be no transfer of funds across long stretches of sea or desert. In the case of Father Andreas’s last important trip to India, this kind of legwork took time to establish but was crucial in the construction and maintenance of the seminary. Interestingly, Jewish alms collectors in the eastern Mediterranean recently studied by Matthias Lehmann relied on the same types of instruments used by men like Father Andreas. Thus, alluding to “emissaries” sent by a Jewish benevolent union in Istanbul to collect funds during roughly the same time as Father Andreas and across some of the same geographic space, Lehmann elucidates on the function of this instrument: When the Istanbul Officials wanted to transfer funds – money collected by emissaries, the proceeds from endowments, donations from other communities – they usually availed themselves of bills of exchange (called polisa in the Hebrew and Ladino documents), which circulated between the various cities of the Ottoman Empire as well as abroad.82

In addition to the safe but relatively low-yield method of transferring funds via polissas or hundis, there was the high-interest though risky respondentia loans known as avagagir (աւագագիր) or bi jukam avaks (բի ջուքամ աւագ) in the Indian Ocean arena. For merchants accustomed to taking calculated risks, respondentias yielding up to 30 or 35 per cent return on sums invested

81 The name of the Aleppo representative appointed by Fathers Andreas and Ter-Gevork is given in the margins of the latters’ letter from Basra dated late July 1785. 82 Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land, 67.

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were not uncommon in the ports of the Indian Ocean.83 They were less commonly used by alms collectors and their patrons, for whom a loss could be devastating. Let us consider a concrete example from Father Andreas’s erstwhile travelling companion and fellow alms collector Abraham P‘irimean, who had parted ways with Andreas in Baghdad and travelled straight to India in the late 1760s to pursue fund-raising in Calcutta and Chinsura. In a letter written from Calcutta in 1769, P‘irimean recounts how he had succeeded in raising 1,000 rupees by saying prayers or celebrating mass for the soul of a Catholic Armenian merchant Leo, son of Sarhad of the Sceriman or Shahrimanian family. Apparently, Mr. Leo had arranged for his thousand rupees to travel to Lebanon by loaning it on a risky, high-interest-bearing respondentia loan. Since the Father Superior in the Kreïm convent, Athanasius P‘irimean (most likely, the correspondent’s brother) was unaware of how this Indian custom of money transfer functioned, Father Abraham felt compelled to provide the following illuminating explanation on this instrument: I shall add this much [here] concerning the [individual] called Mister Leon Sarhatean … He came to Calcutta these days from Chichra [Chinsura], and we had a conversation. Following this, he willy-nilly promised to send a thousand rupees to Stepan Agha in Basra by giving him an avak. That is, he would give a thousand rupees to a certain merchant [literally a mister, պարոնի ումեք] with the following agreement: If the ship should arrive in Basra bi jukam, that is without damage, the borrower of the money would give 30 or 35 rupees on the hundred as interest or profit. However, if the ship were to be damaged, sink, or be taken by pirates or robbers, then the borrower of the money would not pay anything back and the whole of the loss would be on the lender of the money. Our master [Leon di Sarhat] has given this money in this manner. On account of which, (if the Lord wills it) after the ship arrives safely, the thousand rupees given [on loan] from here shall be [paid], along with the interest, one thousand three hundred and fifty rupees. When those one thousand three hundred and fifty rupees reach you there, take it and purchase a place and some orchards for mulberries or grapes or even one of the orchards in front [of our convent]…84 83 See the useful discussion of this instrument in Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies, 278–82. 84 Bzommar, Antonine Archives, box 47–48 “Letters of Abraham P‘irimean, 1769/5,” letter from Calcutta to Father Ambrosius P‘irimean in Kreïm (Mount Lebanon) on February 20, 1769.

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Conclusion, or how the early modern world was not a traveller’s ‘oyster’ How does it feel, how does it feel? To be without a home Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone Bob Dylan, “Like a Rolling Stone”

Over the last few years, historians and world historians in particular have paid increasing attention to the figure of the mobile individual (or group) as a quintessential subject of global historical analysis. Whether it is “people on the move, globetrotters, gens de passage,” these border-crossing subjects have become not only figures of celebration but also a privileged lens through which the new global history has more and more come to be written.85 This focus on the mobile figure has led one observer to remark, with a certain degree of caution, that “global histories have elevated mobility to the throne.”86 Warning against the “fetishization of mobility,” Sebastian Conrad has indeed contended that mobility in all its varieties has not only become “the hallmark” but in some cases “the equivalent of global history.”87 To some extent, the preoccupation with mobility should not blindside anyone. Recent decades, after all, have witnessed a tremendous global refugee crisis and the migration of millions of refugees from the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa across international boundaries at great risk to life and limb. At the same time, some of the same neoliberal policies that have caused millions to leave their homes and risk the hazards of seas and deserts to cross into safer or economically more secure regions have allowed a privileged class of global jet-setters to travel across the world with great ease and increasing comfort in pursuit of pleasure or investment opportunities. Both types of “border-crossers” – and many others – are figures of twenty-first-century globalization. Given Benedetto Croce’s widely cited dictum that “all history is contemporary history,” the recent fixation of global historians on mobility is hardly unexpected. At the same time, some global historians have elaborated what has been called “a facile celebration of cosmopolitanism” and early modern mobility.88 85 Ghobrial, “Moving Stories,” 245. 86 Conrad, What is Global History?, 64. 87 Ibid., 225. 88 Ghobrial, “Moving Stories,” 250.

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In a recent essay, John-Paul Ghobrial has challenged us to eschew what he calls “simplistic ideas about the ease of mobility in the past” and to focus instead on mobility as “a process that had its own agents, opponents and beneficiaries.” Ghobrial is not alone in sounding his concern over simplistic accounts of how early modern individuals moved across worlds and boundaries. Indeed, the most talented historian of things global, mobile, and early modern – Sanjay Subrahmanyam – has also noted this sanguine view of early modern mobility among some scholars who see early modern subjects as moving around the globe carefree and with ease. In Three Ways to be Alien, Subrahmanyam concludes with a welcome caution against uncomplicated readings of early modern mobility. Writing about empire as a broad template in which mobility occurred, he writes: Yet, we cannot assume that such an expansion in terms of horizons meant that those who inhabited this world made a smooth and rapid transformation from being merely rooted inhabitants of Bijapur, Sussex, or Venice, to being cosmopolitans, and thus citizens of the world. In a sense, therefore, this work has been about friction and discomfort, at both the existential and the conceptual levels. It has turned out that the three principal actors whom we have looked at here… but also a whole host of other actors who dealt with them, did not assume with any level of complacency that the world was somehow their oyster. Further, it can be shown that they would have been rather foolish to assume an attitude of complacency in the face of circumstances that were in reality difficult if not altogether intractable.89

Relying on heretofore untapped archival documentation, this chapter has provided a microhistorical reading of an unusual type of early modern subject: an Eastern Christian alms collector whose itineraries took him across and around many ‘worlds.’ Focusing on the voyages of the Armenian Catholic monk Father Andreas Ouzounean, the chapter has illuminated the complex nature of travel and mobility across the early modern world. We may conclude by reiterating that the early modern world was nobody’s ‘oyster.’ Travellers of whatever stripe could not simply do as they liked. Whether rich or poor, alms collector or wealthy merchant, all early modern subjects on the move travelled in the company of a portfolio of paper tools that facilitated their own physical and financial movement across geographic space. The case study of our tireless alms collector has demonstrated that Father Andreas’s 89 Subrahmanyam, Three Ways to be Alien, 173.

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wanderings around Asia and Europe were fraught with dangers and difficulties. Paperwork, together with infrastructural networks and a host of contacts and trusted representatives in distant locations, contributed to making their journeys across cultures and worlds possible, if not necessarily easy.

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About the author Sebouh David Aslanian is professor of history and Richard Hovannisian Chair of Modern Armenian History at the University of California Los Angeles. He is the author of the award-winning work From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (2014) and is completing a book on early modern Armenian mobility and print culture for Yale University Press.

Index acrobats 12–14 Agnus Dei 28, 186–209; containers to carry 193, 195, 200–202; manufacture of 191–92, 198; as protection against dangers of travel 202–5. See also devotional objects Aleppo 162, 223, 242, 254, 257, 262, 265 alms collectors 16, 28, 219–20, 229–30, 243–55, 259–62 ambassadors see diplomats Antwerp 139 Armenians 20, 28, 237–69 artisans 115, 124, 128, 208–9 artists 27, 114, 124 avvisi see newsletters baptism 188–90 baggage 69 Baghdad 246, 253, 258 banks and banking see credit Basel 125 Basra 253, 256–59, 266 Beirut 240, 246 beggars 16, 250 bills of exchange see credit; paperwork Bologna 118, 120–21, 126–28 Bonardo, Vincenzo 188–90 books 48, 69, 88, 117–18, 120 borders 16–18, 71, 113–14, 117–18, 129, 160, 177–78 Bzommar, Mount Lebanon 240, 241, 243, 246, 254, 256, 259, 264 bureaucracy 19, 20, 23. See also paperwork Calcutta 258, 263, 266 Candia (Crete) 51–52, 55 Cape of Good Hope 203 caravans see transport caravanserai see infrastructure Carena, Cesare 116–18 Castiglione, Baldassare 14 circulation 25, 88, 135, 164, 202. See also mobility cities 7, 15; gates and walls 11, 18. See also infrastructure civility 14 clothing 15, 159, 161, 200, 207 coaches see transport Cologne 139 colonialism and colonization 21, 22, 57 commercial goods (commodities) 23, 25, 128, 163–75. See also trade communication 7, 22, 66, 76–79, 142; multilingual 22, 41–59, 122; oral 42–59, 135 confessionalization see religious difference Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide) 121, 123, 220, 242, 256 Constantinople see Istanbul

conversion 17, 28, 114, 118, 121–23, 129, 189–90, 205–6 Corfu 173–75 cosmopolitanism 15 couriers 138; and health 93–94 credit 20, 128, 241, 259, 262, 265–66. See also paperwork Cresswell, Tim 11 Cuenca 89–90, 93, 97 customs stations see infrastructure dancing 13–14 deception see dissimulation Della Rovere, Francesco Maria II, Duke of Urbino 147–48 devotional objects 28, 127, 199–200, 230, 252. See also Agnus Dei diaries see travel writing diasporas 21, 241 diplomats 16, 45 disguise see dissimulation dissimulation 15, 47, 58, 114, 118, 124–27, 248 drinking 54 Dubrovnik see Ragusa epidemics see plague feitoria (factories) 21. See also infrastructure Ferrara 118, 127 fondaci 18, 21, 139, 168, 172. See also infrastructure food and diet 55, 95, 127, 166 Franciscans 24, 28; and the Custody of the Holy Land 215–32 Fróis, Luís 200 Fugger, collection of newsletters 135, 139, 142 gates see cities gender 18, 74, 94, 98–99 Geneva 56 Genoa 222–24 gesture 13–15, 51–52, 57 Goa 203, 205, 229 Grand Tour 24, 26, 43–44, 63–80, 126 Graziosi, Grazioso 147–49 Greenblatt, Stephen 8 Gregory XIII (pope) 191, 193, 196, 198 Gregory XV (pope) 115, 116, 126 Hall, Joseph 43–44 health 27, 87–105, 157–82; and climate 95–96. See also medical practitioners; patients Holy Land 24, 52–53, 56, 58, 215–32 homesickness 77, 81 hospitality see infrastructure

278  identity documents see paperwork indulgences 194, 196, 199, 253 information 134, 144, 153; mobility of 11, 19, 21, 23, 88, 102, 217; and travel 43, 46 infrastructure 7, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 64–66, 79–80, 167–70, 216–17, 245, 257, 262; accommodation, inns and lodging 17, 18, 27, 49, 55, 66, 71, 72, 89, 100–105, 126–27, 159; caravanserai 167, 257–58; customs and customs stations 18, 164, 169, 172, 175; lazzaretti 27, 157–78; ports 11, 157–78, 221–23; roads and streets 15–16, 17, 64, 68, 73, 104, 138; waterways 17, 67; warehouses 18, 165, 169. See also cities; transport Ingoli, Francesco 123–24 Inquisition: Roman (Holy Office) 27, 113–29; Spanish 27, 89 intermediaries 17, 22, 52–53, 98, 198–99 interpreters 49, 52–53, 59, 206. See also translation Ireland 42, 52, 57–58 Isfahan see New Julfa Istanbul (Constantinople) 42, 137, 145, 146, 158, 177, 242, 244, 265 itinerancy 16, 88, 101–3, 240–41 Jerusalem see Holy Land Jesuits 28, 196–207 Jews 21, 56, 57 Kreïm, Mount Lebanon 240, 241, 243, 264, 266 La Obispa, Ana de la Casa (healer) 90, 92–93, 97–98, 100 Lagarto, Andrés 208; workshop 209 landscape 26, 70, 74 language 74, 122; language learning 26, 41–59. See also communication lazzaretti see infrastructure Leipzig 47, 56 letters 22–23, 28, 65–66, 76–81, 88, 125–26, 245–52; of credit see paperwork; of recommendation 78, 217, 241, 248, 251 Lisbon 198–200, 203, 229 Livorno 224–26 London 46–47 Lvov (Lviv) 247 lying see dissimulation Madras 238, 255–56, 259–61, 264 Magni, Valeriano 121–22 Malta 220, 228, 251 Mardin 238, 249, 254, 262 Marseille 223, 228 material culture 25, 78–79, 196. See also mobility of objects medical practitioners 27, 88–105, 119 merchants 16, 18, 20–24, 27, 28, 66, 72, 114–16, 124–29, 160–78, 218, 229, 244–45, 255–59, 263, 266. See also commerce; trade

meshwork 10, 24 Messina 225, 230 Mexico see New Spain Mexico City 209 migration 10, 16, 22, 215, 218; forced 9, 22 Milan 19, 115, 125 missionaries 16, 23, 28, 123, 239. See also Jesuits mobility: control of 7, 17, 18, 19, 27, 114, 123–28, 164–65; cost of 52, 55, 67, 70, 73, 77, 217, 220; embodied 12–15, 64, 95–97, 99, 209 (see also dance; gesture; walking); global and transnational 19, 20–22, 28, 142, 153, 196–200, 201–9, 217–18, 230, 267–69; and gender 18, 74, 93, 97, 98–99; and immobility 25–26, 28, 188, 209; local and regional 16–19, 27, 88, 99–100, 105, 217, 230 (see also itinerancy); new mobilities paradigm 8, 64, 215–16, 239–40; of medical specimens 93–94; of money see credit; paperwork; of objects 25, 27, 28, 78–79, 186–88; and portability 93–94, 186, 200–201; rural 18, 27, 89; scales of 10, 11, 16, 26, 27; sensory experience of 9, 24, 64–65, 165; sources and methodologies for study of 9, 16, 24, 64–66, 89, 113–14, 134; urban 9, 15, 18. See also infrastructure; transport Moryson, Fynes 15, 24, 26, 41–59 Moscow 28, 246 Mosul 255 mountains 68, 69, 73–74, 75 Mountjoy, Lord 46–47 networks 20–23, 28, 137–38, 153, 218; religious 28, 197, 228–32; commercial 20–23, 28, 186–87, 221–24, 229–32 New Julfa 21, 244, 255 New Spain 198, 201, 205–9 news 78, 133–56; translation of 28, 140–44; -writers (scribes and copyists) 16, 28, 144–49 newsletters: handwritten 28, 133–56; printed 137, 142–43, 146 Ottoman Empire 27, 51–53, 158–59, 166–67, 171–72, 175–78, 222, 242, 244–45, 263 Ouzounean, Andreas 28, 245–59 Padua 48, 121–23 Papal States 27, 113–29 paperwork 19, 20, 22–23, 115, 123, 125, 126, 142, 239, 253, 268–69; alms certificates 28, 238, 241, 246, 249–52, 262; bills of exchange and letters of credit 20, 28, 241, 247, 262–66; health passes 19, 27, 162–63; passports and identity documents 19, 22, 78, 250; safe conduct passes 125. See also bureaucracy; letters passports see paperwork patients 16, 27, 88–105

279

Index

pedestrians see walking Peru 196, 199 Perugia 120–21 Philippine Islands 196 pilgrims and pilgrimage 16, 23–24, 157–60, 193–96, 206, 221; badges and medals 193–95 pirates 171, 227 Pius V (pope) 190–92, 204 plague 19, 27, 115, 157–78, 228 Poland 50, 158, 247 ports see infrastructure postal networks 7, 22, 28, 64, 67, 71, 72, 76, 77, 80; and transmission of news 137–39 printers 142 printing press 7, 135, 153 Protestants 24, 27, 55, 114–16, 118, 125–29. See also religious difference Puebla, Mexico 207, 209 quarantine 19, 21, 158–78. See also lazzaretti; plague Ra’d, Aleppo merchant 162–66 Ragusa (Dubrovnik) 19, 160–62, 175–77 refugees 9, 218, 231, 267. See also migration relics 186–87, 195–96, 199–205; and reliquaries 190–91, 195, 201, 207–9 religious difference 17, 27, 56, 114, 119, 241–42 roads see infrastructure robbery 58, 138, 199, 266 Rodriga, Daniel 167–68 Rome 15, 28, 55, 64, 71, 79, 128, 139, 188–93; Convent of Gregory the Illuminator 243, 246; Vatican Palace 188. See also Papal States safe conduct passes see paperwork sailors 58, 203 Salucci, Alessandro 11–12 Santiago de Compostela 194, 206 sea travel see transport, maritime Seville 198 servants 51, 55, 76, 91, 94, 104 ships see transport Siena 119–20 Simēon, Armenian pilgrim 157–60 Sixtus V (pope) 189, 198 slaves and slavery 9, 20, 228

soldiers 115, 117 souvenirs 69, 186 see also pilgrims’ badges and medals Split (Spalato) 158–60, 166–73 students 16, 23, 24, 27, 114, 118–124. See also universities swearing 54 textiles 128, 161, 165, 230 Toledo 89–90 tourists see Grand Tour trade 7, 18, 20–21, 27, 88, 128, 160, 157–78; networks 20–21. See also commerce; merchants translation 42, 47, 59, 135–36; of newsletters 139–44. See also interpreters transport 16, 17, 63–76, 79–80, 99, 216; barges 67–68, 70; caravans 158, 170, 257; coaches and carriages 15, 17, 26, 47, 68–70, 73, 75; horses and mules 11, 15, 55, 66–67, 69, 70, 72, 97, 98, 158; ships 11, 68, 162–63, 221–27, and dangers of travel aboard 21, 28, 68, 74, 202–5. See also infrastructure; walking travel: companions 97–99, 244, 250; dangers of 52–53, 58, 64, 74, 75–76; theory of 43, 58; -writing 9, 16, 24, 26, 42–43, 50, 64–66, 79–80, 119. See also Grand Tour; mobility Trieste 251, 262 Tuccaro, Arcangelo 12–13 Turkey see Ottoman Empire Tuscany 48–49 universities 46–48, 51, 118–22. See also students vagabonds 16, 250. See also itinerancy Valignano, Alessandro 200 Venice 15, 18, 19, 52, 53, 54, 76, 139–40, 162–66, 221–22 Veronica, Veil of 194–95 Vienna 137, 149, 251 walking 15, 94, 97–100, 105 walls see cities, infrastructure war 117, 138–39, 166 weather 69, 75–76, 226 Wittenberg 47 Zakynthos (Zante) 173–75