Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:43:59.973Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dragomans, tattooists, artisans: Palestinian Christians and their encounters with Catholic Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Jacob Norris
Jacob Norris*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Sussex, Sussex House, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the presence of European Catholic actors in the Ottoman empire dramatically increased, particularly in the Palestinian provinces. The city of Jerusalem and its surrounding hinterland, referred to here by its Arabic name, Jabal al-Quds, witnessed a particularly intensive Catholic presence owing to its sanctified religious status. This article examines the ways in which the local Arabic-speaking Christian population of Jabal al-Quds interacted with these European Catholic actors. It situates these encounters within the wider scholarship on missionary encounters and cross-cultural interactions in the Mediterranean world, arguing that global historians need to pay greater attention to the inequalities embedded in many of these relationships and the frequent episodes of violent conflict they gave rise to. By inverting the standard Western gaze on Jerusalem and looking at these encounters from the inside out, the article seeks to restore local actors as important players within the global Counter-Reformation, albeit within a context of subjugation, conflict, and stymied mobility.

Keywords

Catholicismearly modernencountersOttoman empirePalestine
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 68 - 86
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Felicita Tramontana, Megan Armstrong, and Gerardo Serra for providing valuable feedback on various drafts of this article, as well as my colleagues at the Sussex History Writing Group: Melissa Milewski, Laura Kounine, Anne-Marie Angelo, and Tom Davies. I am also grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Global History for their very helpful comments.

References

1 Archives of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda Fide, Rome, Scritture Riferite nei Congressi (henceforth SCPF, SC), Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 3, fols. 158–9.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Examples include Armstrong, Megan, ‘Spiritual legitimisation? Franciscan competition over the Holy Land (1517–1700)’, in Alison Forrestal and Sean Alexander Smith, eds., The frontiers of mission: perspectives on early modern missionary Catholicism, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 159–179 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Heyberger, Bernard and Verdeil, Chantal, ‘Spirituality and scholarship: the Holy Land in Jesuit eyes (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries)’, in Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ed., New faith in ancient lands: Western missions in the Middle East in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 19–41 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Wharton, Annabel Jane, Selling Jerusalem: relics, replicas, theme parks, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006 Google Scholar , esp. ch. 3.

5 Tramontana, Felicita, Passages of faith: conversion in Palestinian villages (17th century), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

6 Jeremy Adelman, ‘What is global history now?’, https://aeon.co/essays/is-global-history-still-possible-or-has-it-had-its-moment (consulted 5 May 2017).

7 These concerns are addressed at a broader level in a recent discussion piece in this Journal. See Drayton, Richard and Motadel, David, ‘Discussion: the futures of global history’, Journal of Global History, 13, 1, 2018, pp. 1–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

8 For examples of the older, postcolonial approaches to cross-cultural encounters, see Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation, London: Routledge, 1992 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and Mignolo, Walter D., The darker side of the Renaissance: literacy, territoriality, and colonization, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995 Google Scholar .

9 See, for example, Alberts, Tara, Conflict and conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500–1700, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and many of the contributions in Alberts, Tara and Irving, D. R. M., eds., Intercultural exchange in Southeast Asia: history and society in the early modern world, London: I.B. Tauris, 2013 Google Scholar . The emphasis on negotiation and hybridity in the Catholic historiography has recently seeped into scholarship on Protestant missionaries in the early modern period. See, for example, Charles Parker, H., ‘Converting souls across cultural borders: Dutch Calvinism and early modern missionary encounters’, Journal of Global History, 8, 1, 2013, pp. 50–71 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

10 For examples, see Greene, Molly, A shared world: Christians and Muslims in the early modern Mediterranean, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Goffman, Daniel, The Ottoman empire and early modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Contadini, Anna and Norton, Claire, eds., The Renaissance and the Ottoman world, London: Ashgate, 2013 Google Scholar ; Roberts, Sean, Printing a Mediterranean world: Florence, Constantinople, and the renaissance of geography, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Belting, Hans, Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance art and Arab science, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011 Google Scholar ; Goody, Jack, Renaissance: the one or the many?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 Google Scholar ; Casale, Giancarlo, The Ottoman age of exploration, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 Google Scholar .

11 Heyberger describes the period between 1660 and 1730 as the ‘apogee of Catholic missions’ in Ottoman Syria. See Heyberger, Bernard, Les chrétiens du proche-orient au temps de la Réforme Catholique, Rome: École Française de Rome, 1994, p. 300 Google Scholar .

12 Heyberger, Bernard, ‘Chretiens orientaux dans l’Europe Catholique (XIIe–XIIIe siècles)’, in Bernard Heyberger and Chantal Verdeil, eds., Hommes de l’entre deux: parcours individuels et portraits de groupe sur la frontière méditerranéenne, Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2009, pp. 61–94 Google Scholar .

13 SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 3, fols. 158–9.

14 See Norris, Jacob, ‘Exporting the Holy Land: artisans and merchant migrants in Ottoman-Era Bethlehem’, Mashriq and Mahjar: Journal of Middle East Migration Studies, 2, 2013, pp. 14–40 Google Scholar .

15 For the rise in pilgrimage numbers, see Schur, Nathan, ‘Itineraries by pilgrims and travelers as source material for the history of Palestine in the Ottoman period’, in David Kushner, ed., Palestine in the late Ottoman period: political, social, and economic transformation, Leiden: Brill, 1986, p. 382 Google Scholar .

16 The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land was formally established in 1342, but Franciscans date their presence in the region back to the visit of St Francis himself, who is held to have visited Jerusalem in 1219. See Paolo Pieraccini, Cattolici di Terra Santa: 1330–2000, Florence, 2003, pp. 13–20. For St Francis’ visit, see Tolan, John, Saint Francis and the sultan: the curious history of a Christian–Muslim encounter, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 257–293 Google Scholar .

17 See Armstrong, ‘Spiritual legitimisation’.

18 Kildani, Hanna, Modern Christianity in the Holy Land, trans. George Musleh, Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2010, pp. 227–228 Google Scholar .

19 For an overview, see Haddad, Robert M., ‘Conversion of Eastern Orthodox Christians to the Unia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Michael Gervers and Ramzi J. Bikhazi, eds., Conversion and continuity: indigenous Christian communities in Islamic lands, eighth to eighteenth centuries, Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990, pp. 449–459 Google Scholar .

20 Leonhard Lemmens, ed., Acta S. Congregationis de Propaganda Fide pro Terra Sancta, 2 parts, Florence: Quaracchi, 1921–22, Pt I, p. 288.

21 Ibid., p. 338. Felicita Tramontana found the earliest mention of a local Catholic community in Ein Karem to be in 1698, when a Franciscan report to the Propaganda Fide stated that twenty Catholics were living there. See Tramontana, Passages of faith, p. 107.

22 Lemmens, Acta, Pt II, pp. 222–4.

23 Ibid., Pt I, pp. 338–40; Pt II, pp. 223–4.

24 Masters, Bruce, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab world: the roots of sectarianism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 87 Google Scholar .

25 SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 2, fols. 383–4.

26 Ibid.

27 Such practices in Jerusalem and Bethlehem have already been documented in Heyberger, Les chrétiens du proche-orient, p. 461; and Tramontana, Passages of faith, pp. 36–7, 102–3.

28 Archivio Storico della Custodia di Terra Santa, Jerusalem (henceforth ASCTS), Archivi delle parocchie, Bethlehem: S. Caterina, Carteggio Cronologico, letter, 4 June 1754.

29 Ibid.

30 Generally speaking, the Franciscans resident in Jabal al-Quds adopted a more tolerant attitude towards mixed marriages than their superiors in Propaganda Fide in Rome. See Heyberger, Les chrétiens du proche-orient, pp. 385–98.

31 Franciscan records show that no other town in the Custodia di Terra Santa (which included Syria, Mount Lebanon, and Cyprus) had a larger local Latin Catholic population.

32 ASCTS, Sacramenti: Riconciliati e convertiti (3).

33 See Jotischky, Andrew, Crusading and the Crusader states, London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 154–158 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . More generally, the historiography of rural Crusader society now emphasizes Frankish–Arabic cohabitation. See, for example, Ellenblum, Ronnie, Frankish rural settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

34 ASCTS, Archivi delle parocchie, Bethlehem: S. Caterina, Carteggio Cronologico 1 (1637–1827), note by the Franciscan curate, 26 July 1714.

35 His family name, Maamer, has never been part of the tarajmeh clan in Bethlehem.

36 ASCTS, Archivi delle parocchie, Bethlehem: S. Caterina, Carteggio Cronologico, letter, 4 June 1754.

37 Center for Palestinian Heritage, Abu Dis, Palestinian Territories, Jerusalem sharia court sijill (henceforth Sijill) 183, p. 453, 1092 H/1681 CE.

38 Ibid.

39 For 1698, see SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 3, fol. 393. For 1764, see ‘Status Terrae Sanctae a P. guard. Paulo’, in Lemmens, Acta, Pt II, p. 224. For the transfer of Catholics from Bethlehem, see Bellarmino Bagatti, ‘L’industria della madreperla a Betlemme’, in Custodia di Terra Santa 1342–1942, Jerusalem: Tipografia dei Francescani, 1951, p. 138; Lemmens, Acta, Pt II, pp. 139–40; and Tramontana, Passages of faith, pp. 107–8.

40 SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 3, fol. 158.

41 ASCTS, Archivi delle parocchie, Bethlehem: S. Caterina, Registri sacramentali, 1/2: Liber confirmatorum, 25 December 1616.

42 ASCTS, Sacramenti: Riconciliati e convertiti (3), 4 April 1627.

43 See ASCTS, Archivi delle parocchie, Bethlehem: S. Caterina, Registri sacramentali, 1/1: Liber baptizatorum and 1/2: Liber confirmatorum. Elias’ children are always listed as ‘f. Elie Doctoris’ (son of Elias the Doctor); likewise with Butrus and his children.

44 These genealogical records are preserved in the local Bethlehem Latin Parish Records, within the Batarseh family records. The family assumed the Batarseh surname in the eighteenth century; it is a family name that continues to hold a prominent place in Bethlehem today, as reflected in the election of Victor Batarseh as mayor of Bethlehem from 2005 to 2012.

45 Tramontana, Passages of faith, pp. 94–5.

46 ASCTS, Sacramenti: Riconciliati e convertiti (3).

47 See, for example, Kosmopolites, S., A series of letters, addressed to Sir William Fordyce, containing a voyage and journey from England to Smyrna, 2 vols., London: Payne and Son, 1788 Google Scholar , vol. 2, pp. 190–1.

48 Some European travellers’ accounts from the period hint at the licentiousness of local women in their dealings with pilgrims. See, for example, Richard Pococke’s description of Jerusalemite women in A description of the East, and some other countries, vol. II, part I, London: W. Bowyer, 1743, pp. 39–40.

49 SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 12, fols. 89–90.

50 Hogget-Attestato, 1 December 1783, in Andrea Maiarelli, ed., L’Archivio storico della Custodia di Terra Sancta (1230–1970), Milan: Edizioni Terra Santa, 2012, no. 1058.

51 Sijill 166, p. 329, 1076 H/1665 CE.

52 The quote is taken from one of the earliest such references, found in Henry Castela, Le sainct voyage de Hierusalem et Mont Sinay faict en l’an du grand Iubilé 1600, Paris: Laurens Sonnius, 1612, p. 274. A similarly early reference is provided by Nicolas Bénard, who visited the Holy Land in 1617, in Le voyage de Hierusalem et autres lieux de la Terre Saincte, Paris, 1621, p. 122.

53 Hasselquist, Fredrik, Voyages and travels in the Levant in the years 1749, 50, 51, 52, London: Royal Society, 1766, p. 149 Google Scholar .

54 Felix Fabri, cited in Boehm, Barbara Drake and Holcomb, Melanie, Jerusalem, 1000–1400: every people under heaven, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016, p. 14 Google Scholar .

55 Kosmopolites, A series of letters, vol. 2, pp. 190–1.

56 Corneille le Bruyn, A voyage to the Levant: or, travels in the principal parts of Asia Minor, trans. W. J., London: Jacob Tonson, 1702, p. 200.

57 Craig, Leigh Ann, Wandering women and holy matrons: women as pilgrims in the later Middle Ages, Leiden: Brill, 2009, p. 239 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

58 Kosmopolites describes the method of making the cakes in A series of letters, vol. 2, pp. 198–9.

59 Le Bruyn, A voyage to the Levant, pp. 201–2.

60 Lithgow, William, Travels and voyages through Europe, Asia and Africa for nineteen years, London: J. Meuros, 1770, p. 269 Google Scholar .

61 See Bosworth, Clifford Edmund, An intrepid Scot: William Lithgow of Lanark’s travels in the Ottoman lands, North Africa and central Europe, 1609–21, London: Ashgate, 2006, p. 89 Google Scholar .

62 Examples include Santiago de Compostela and Loreto, as noted in Caplan, Jane, ‘Introduction’, in Jane Caplan, ed., Written on the body: the tattoo in European and American history, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000 Google Scholar .

63 See, for example, Le Bruyn, A voyage to the Levant, pp. 201–2. For a broader discussion of the Jerusalem tattoos and their symbolism as a ‘seal’ of the physicality of pilgrimage, see Ousterhout, Robert, ‘Permanent ephemera: the “honourable stigmatisation” of Jerusalem pilgrims’, in Renana Bartal and Hanna Vorholt, eds., Between Jerusalem and Europe: essays in honour of Bianca Kühnel, Leiden: Brill, 2015, pp. 94–111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

64 Coyle, Richard, ‘Rescuing the Holy Land in Friar Jean Boucher’s Bouquet sacré composé des plus belles fleurs de la Terre Sainte ’, in Judy A. Hayden and Nabil Matar, eds., Through the eyes of the beholder: the Holy Land, 1517–1713, Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 98–100 Google Scholar .

65 A dispute in the Jerusalem sharia court in 1679 determined the rate of jizya per person in Bethlehem to be 4.5 kurush (piastres). See Sijill 181, p. 100, 1090 H/1679 CE.

66 For these two particular examples, see Croft, Robin, ‘The veneration of relics at Glastonbury Abbey in the Middle Ages’, in Diego Rinallo, Linda Scott, and Pauline Maclaran, eds., Consumption and spirituality, London: Routledge, 2013, pp. 119–131 Google Scholar ; and Kaufman, Suzanne, Consuming visions: mass culture and the Lourdes shrine, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005 Google Scholar .

67 For a discussion of the Muslim context, see Moufahim, Mona, ‘Religious gift-giving: an ethnographic account of a Muslim pilgrimage’, Marketing Theory, 13, 4, 2013, pp. 421–441 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

68 Sandys, George, Sandys travels: containing a history of the original and present state of the Turkish empire, London: Philip Chetwin, 1670, p. 141 Google Scholar ;

Bénard, Le voyage de Hierusalem, p. 122.

69 Mariti, Giovanni, Viaggi per l’isola di Cipro e per la Sorìa e Palestina, fatti da Giovanni Mariti fiorentino dall’anno 1760 al 1768, vol. 3, Florence: Stamperia di S.A.R., 1770 Google Scholar , p. 44.

70 Le Bruyn, A voyage to the Levant, p. 202; Lithgow, Travels and voyages, p. 269.

71 SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 3, fol. 158.

72 Başbakanlik Arşivleri (Office of the Prime Minister, Ottoman Archives), Istanbul, Maliyeden Müdevver Defter, no. 03643, p. 39.

73 Ibid. In total there were 10 rosary makers out of the 144 tax-paying males in Bethlehem.

74 For lists of Catholics in Bethlehem registered by the Franciscans who do not appear in the jizya survey, see ASCTS, Sacramenti: Riconciliati e convertiti (3). See also the aforementioned letter of 1681 found in SCPF, SC, Terra Santa, vol. 2, fols. 383–4.

75 See Heyberger, Les chrétiens du proche-orient, p. 48.

76 Peri, Oded, ‘The Christian population of Jerusalem in the late seventeenth century: aspects of demography, economy and society’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 39, 4, 1996, pp. 404–406 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

77 Kosmopolites, A series of letters, vol. 2, pp. 190–1.

78 Lemmens, Acta, Part I, p. 78.

79 Mariti, Viaggi, vol. 3, p. 44.

80 Webb, Diana, Pilgrims and pilgrimage in the medieval west, London: I. B. Tauris, 2001, p. 126 Google Scholar .

81 See Wharton, Selling Jerusalem, pp. 120–5.

82 A particularly detailed inventory of the Holy Land convents from the 1630s includes donations from the Patriarch of Venice and the Grand Duke of Tuscany. See SCPF, SC, Terra Santa, vol. 1, fols. 112–15.

83 A point made in Silvia Evangelisti, ‘Monastic poverty and material culture in early modern Italian convents’, Historical Journal, 47, 2004, pp. 1–20.

84 See for example Hills, Helen, ‘The housing of institutional architecture: searching for a domestic holy in post-Tridentine Italian convents’, in Sandra Cavallo and Silvia Evangelisti, eds., Domestic institutional interiors in early modern Europe, London: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 119–150 Google Scholar .

85 Armstrong, Megan, ‘Journeying to an antique Christian past: Holy Land pilgrimage narratives in the era of the Reformation’, in Jane Grogan, ed., Reading the Ancient Near East in early modern Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming Google Scholar . My thanks to Megan for sharing this with me.

86 ASCTS, Archivi delle parocchie, Bethlehem: S. Caterina, Carteggio tematico 10/6, ‘Nota delli argenti e apparati nascosti in Betteleme vicino la Stampa dei curati’, 1773.

87 SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 1, fols. 112–15.

88 Firman of 1 December 1720, in Maiarelli, L’Archivio, firman no. 818.

89 Ibid., firman no. 819.

90 Firman of 17 October 1773, in ibid., firman no. 1067.

91 Firman of 12 August 1790, in ibid., firman no. 1127.

92 Sijill 104, p. 257, 1030 H/1620 CE.

93 A strikingly similar case is recorded in Sijill 167, p. 110, 1075 H/1664 CE.

94 Michel Nau, Voyage nouveau de la Terre-Sainte, Paris, 1679, p. 397.

95 For the annual jizya rate, see Sijill 181, p. 100, 1090 H/1679 CE. The conversion rate to the scudo is based on the assumption that a scudo was equivalent in value to a Venetian ducat, whose conversion rate of 1.5 Ottoman kurush is cited in Dror Ze’evi, An Ottoman century: the district of Jerusalem in the 1600s, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996, p. 144.

96 Most local artisans sold the devotional objects they made via the Franciscans, who undoubtedly marked up the prices.

97 Hasselquist, Voyages, p. 217.

98 Mariti, Viaggi, vol. 4, Florence: Stamperia di S.A.R., 1770, p. 29.

99 The San Bonaventura church in Rome appears a number of times in Propaganda Fide documents describing the circulation of such objects (usually referred to as ‘santuarii’). See, for example, SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 5, fols. 313–64. A letter from 1688 indicates that the Franciscan Convento della Pace in Genoa also served such a purpose. See ibid., vol. 3, fol. 142. Mariti’s emphasis on routes to Germany via Venice, meanwhile, are also supported in Propaganda Fide correspondence. In one example from 1695, a German priest carrying ‘santuarii’ from the Holy Land is reported to have been robbed in Cyprus en route to Venice. See ibid., vol. 3, fols. 256–8.

100 For examples, see Suraiya Faroqhi, Travel and artisans in the Ottoman empire: employment and mobility in the early modern era, London: I. B. Tauris, 2014; and Nir Shafir, ‘The road from Damascus: circulation and the redefinition of Islam in the Ottoman empire, 1620–1720’, PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 2016.

101 Murqus’ letter makes reference to the Ottoman administration’s reluctance to grant travel permits. For a wider discussion on the difficulties of obtaining such permits, see Faroqhi, Travel and artisans, p. 208.

102 SCPF, SC, Terra Santa e Cipro, vol. 3, fol. 158.

103 Ibid.

104 Hasselquist, Voyages, pp. 148–9.

105 See, for example, Hogget-Attestato, 27 October 1733, in Maiarelli, L’Archivio, no. 895.

106 Hogget-Attestato, 7 January 1743, in ibid., no. 934.

107 Mariti, Viaggi, vol. 4, pp. 31–3.

108 Ibid.

109 See, for example, Pococke, A description of the East, p. 40.

110 As discussed in Grehan, James, Twilight of the saints: everyday religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

111 To take the example of replica church models carved by artisans in Jabal al-Quds, Michele Piccirillo has provided a detailed inventory of their circulation around museums and stately homes all over Europe. See Piccirillo, Michele, La nuova Gerusalemme: artigianato Palestinese al servizio dei luoghi santi, Bergamo: Edizioni Custodia di Terra Santa, 2007 Google Scholar .

112 Summarized in Gerritsen, Anne, ‘From long-distance trade to the global lives of things: writing the history of early modern trade and material culture’, Journal of Early Modern History, 20, 6, 2016, pp. 526–544 Google Scholar .

113 See Evangelisti, Silvia, ‘Material culture’, in Alexandra Bamji, Geert H Janssen, and Mary Laven, eds., The Ashgate research companion to the Counter-Reformation, Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, p. 404 Google Scholar .

114 Norris, ‘Exporting the Holy Land’.

115 Adelman, ‘What is global history now?’.

116 Piccirillo, La nuova Gerusalemme, p. 36.