4 - An Exotic Migrant, Despina Basaraba Networks a New Life in Papal Rome circa 1600

Summary

Abstract: A well-born, but orphaned, young Greek woman from Constantinople, Despina Basaraba, migrated to Rome in 1598 with her French renegade husband and their three-year old son. With some social capital, but limited material resources and few contacts in the very foreign city, Despina, with her family, set about networking to build a new life. She cultivated ties with women of modest and higher social ranks and won the official patronage of the pope and the personal charity of his household steward. A trial record of Despina's prosecution five years later for presumption of adultery lets us reconstruct in rare detail everyday connections, special alliances, and the occasional use of writing in face-to-face relationships. The story documents her gendered vulnerabilities, but also her resilient social agency.

Keywords: women; identities; social agency; patronage; adultery; Mediterranean, Italy

Despina Basaraba was one of many early modern Mediterranean women who left home and, by choice or by force, went to make a new life in an unfamiliar and sometimes distant place. In 1598, Despina, a Greek Christian from Constantinople (Istanbul), arrived in Rome with her husband, Giovanni Paris, a French surgeon formerly enslaved in the Levant, and their threeyear old son, Giovanni Battista. The small family had traveled over 1,300 kilometers between two cosmopolitan but very different cities, from the Ottoman imperial capital to Catholicism's center in Italy. The migrants brought some social credit and portable material assets but had no livelihood and minimal connections in Rome. From the detailed records of a Roman criminal trial in 1603, this essay reconstructs Despina's story, as the exotic migrant built and used a web of social relationships and alliances to make a way for herself and her family in a new city. Put more broadly, I use a microhistorical narrative to lay out varied common strategies for early modern women's social action. Deftly deploying what resources she had, Despina initiated a family tie with a previously unknown kinswoman, cultivated substantial male patronage, served as a godmother, and improvised ad hoc links with female servants, artisans’ wives, and gentlewomen. Such relationships brought Despina notable success for several years, but later catapulted her into sore distress. These crucial everyday negotiations and connections, especially for women, seldom surface in the records.