Narrating Conversion and Subjecthood in the Venetian-Ottoman Borderlands

This chapter addresses the presumed relationship between confessional identity and juridical subjecthood in early modern Venetian narratives of conversion from Islam to Christianity and from Christianity to Islam (and to a lesser extent: conversion to Catholicism from Judaism and Protestantism). It suggests how the process of conversion, and converts' subjectivity itself, were differently articulated in various textual genres, including reports penned by Venetian diplomats in Istanbul about renegades who had 'Turned Turk', inquisitorial depositions by Muslim and Protestant subjects who sought reconciliation with the Church, and converts' baptismal records and matrimonial examinations. The chapter discusses how divergent assumptions about continuity and discontinuity of the convert's intending self relate to contemporary notions of gendered and confessional subjecthood.