Matthew Dimmock

Converting and not converting 'Strangers' in Early Modern London

The baptism of strangers in early modern England is often imagined as a “protocolonial” enterprise. This article explores the structure, contexts, and language of a number of “stranger” baptisms in this period to challenge such a reading. The improvisatory nature of these baptisms, a consequence of the lack of a specific service until 1662, is explored, with particular attention paid to language and structure, and the role of a Calvinist-influenced conception of religious and cultural difference. The article is also concerned with subaltern voices and silence. It concludes with a close examination of the circumstance of the baptizing of a “Turk” (initially named Chinano, then William) in London in 1586, considering the unique structure created for this specific occasion, and arguing that the occasion depends upon Chinano’s articulation of the reasons for his conversion before the community of believers to which he seeks access.

‘A Human Head to the Neck of a Horse’: Hybridity, Monstrosity and Early Christian Conceptions of Muhammad and Islam

The early modern interaction of the three Abrahamic religions, termed by the Qur’ān the ‘Peoples of the Book’, varies considerably in different geographical contexts. Islamic law provided freedom for Jews and Christians to practice their religion within the Ottoman Empire, a freedom that — although by no means unqualified — was rarely enjoyed by Jews and Muslims in Christian lands. A vast multiethnic and multireligious entity, the Ottoman polity conspicuously welcomed those Sephardic Jews dispossessed in Spain in 1492 and later, and was largely unconcerned with differentiating those ‘Franks’ that sought trading privileges in Istanbul (compare Imber’s comments on p. 61).1

Introduction: The Devil Citing Scripture: Christian Perceptions of the Religions of the Book

Christian authors in early modern Europe knew that, whatever their hostilities, there was common ground between the three religions, or peoples, of the book (from the Arabic Ahl al-Kitab).1 Pope Pius II, dismayed at the advances made by the Ottoman Emperor, Mehmed II, and his triumph in wresting Constantinople from Christian control, wrote to his great rival in 1461, either naively or deviously, asking him if he wished to convert to Christianity.2 The move was a surprise as Pius had expressed nothing but hostile contempt for Islam before this letter, as he was to do after it. He had referred to Mehmed as a ‘cruel and bloody butcher’ and ‘the most repulsive beast’.3 In a recent re-examination of the text and its context, Nancy Bisaha argues that, although the reasons for the letter may never emerge, its purpose may have been ‘a bluff, designed to convince Western readers of either the pope’s despair over their apathy or the imminent danger to Christian rulers if Mehmed ceased to be an enemy of the faith.’4 Certainly, it was not designed to be read by a Muslim audience. Nevertheless, the existence of the letter is significant as it shows how an argument had to be made explaining the connections between the faiths and articulating their common culture.

Crusading Piracy? The Curious Case of the Spanish in the Channel, 1590–95

1590 was a year of portentous visions over the English Channel. Not only were reports circulating in London that mariners from the Low Countries had found the sea ‘the couler of blood’, but English sailors on her Majesty’s ship Vangard reported how: in an euening about setting time of the watch, all the men in the ship at the rising of the Moone, did discerne in the aire ouer the Moone the shape of a man, with a croun on his head and the king of Spaines armes plainly displaide, which continued visibly to bee seene for some small space, and soone after it was as a thing ouerthrown and vanished away, and seemed to them as though it were falling.1 These are only two examples of ‘sundry such sights’ that have ‘lately beene seene vpon the coast of France’, which, when soberly considered by those ‘of good iudgement […] presageth, the ruine and confusion of those unholy leaguers, vpholden by the Pope and the king of Spaine.’2