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‘Having drunk heresy with their (mother’s) milk’: English Protestant converts to Catholicism in Malta, 1600–1798

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2022

Frans Ciappara
Frans Ciappara*
Affiliation:
International Institute of Baroque Studies, Faculty for the Built Environment, University of Malta, Msida MSD 2080, Malta. Email: francis.ciappara@um.edu.mt
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Abstract

This article analyses the conversion of 379 English Protestants to Catholicism in Malta between 1600 and 1798. It explores the motivations behind their recantation, the agents of their conversion and the role of dissimulation in discarding their Protestant faith. It ends with two remarks. First, people in the Mediterranean ‘knew no religious frontiers’.1 Malta, like other Mediterranean territories was a place with a mixed religious profile. Second, though English Protestants considered themselves to be the ‘elect’ and their country the new Israel, the two faiths were not mutually exclusive and could find common ground over the defence of Christendom.

Keywords

Protestantsinquisitionreligious ordersconversiondissimulationChristendom
Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , October 2022 , pp. 182 - 203
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers at British Catholic History, to Prof. Alexandra Walsham, Prof. Linda Colley, Prof. Tony Claydon, Dr Colin Haydon and the editor for their kind suggestions.

References

1 Eric R. Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople. Nation, Identity, and Coexistence in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 112.

2 Don Giuseppe Guicciardo, parish priest of St Paul’s Valletta, to Inquisitor Mgr Giovanni Francesco Stoppani, 1 August 1732. Archives of the Inquisition Malta, Proceedings (hereafter AIM, Proc.) 113B, ff. 478r-9v.

3 Linda Colley, Britons. Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992), 55.

4 Tony Claydon, Europe and the Making of England 1660-1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 219; Tony Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), ch. 4.

5 Colin Haydon, ‘“I love my King and my Country, but a Roman Catholic I hate”: anti-catholicism, xenophobia and national identity in eighteenth-century England’, in Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, eds. Protestantism and National Identity. Britain and Ireland, c. 1650-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 33-52.

6 Frans Ciappara, Society and the Inquisition in Early Modern Malta (Malta: PEG, 2001) and ‘The Roman Inquisition Revisited: The Maltese Tribunal in the Eighteenth Century’, The Catholic Historical Review (hereafter CHR) 103, no. 3 (2017): 437-64.

7 E. William Monter and John Tedeschi, ‘Toward a Statistical Profile of the Italian Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, in Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi, eds. The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe. Studies on Sources and Methods (Dekalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1986), 134.

8 John Bossy, The English Catholic Community 1570-1850 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975), ch. 8. See also Colm Lennon, ‘The Rise of Recusancy among the Dublin Patricians, 1580-1613’, in W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood, eds. The Churches, Ireland and the Irish, Studies in Church History 25 (1989), 123-32.

9 Eamon Duffy, ‘“Over the Wall”: Converts from Popery in Eighteenth-Century England’, The Downside Review 94 (1976): 1-25.

10 Anne Brogini, Malte, Frontière de Chrétienté (1530-1670) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 2006), 428. The same can be observed for Spain. See Bartolomé Bennassar, ‘Un Dialogue Difficile: Les Inquisiteurs et les Marins Protestants de l’Europe du Nord’, in Bartolomé Bennassar, La Vie, la Mort, la Foi (Paris: PUF, 1993), 168.

11 For a general picture, see Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed. Le migrazioni in Europa secc. XVII-XVIII (Florence: Mondadori, 1994) and Laurence Fontaine, ‘Gli studi sulla mobilità in Europa nell’età moderna: Problemi e Prospettive di Ricerca’, Quaderni Storici 93 (1996): 739-56.

12 AIM, Proc. 108A, ff. 315r-20v.

13 Compare Tables 2.3 and 4.2 in Ciappara, Society and The Inquisition, 91, 185.

14 AIM, Proc. 38A, ff. 161r-4v.

15 In 1622 the inquisitor of Pisa described the English and Flemish heretics as ‘untouchables’. The inquisitor at Milan in 1628 regretted that the ‘Lutherans’ circulated freely as merchants and tourists. In 1634 the nuncio at Venice described the great confusion the heretics caused in the city. See Michaela Valente, ‘Un sondaggio sulla prassi cattolica del nicodemismo : ‘Che li scolari tedeschi si debbano tollerare a vivere luteranamente, in secreto però’, in Susanna Peyronel, ed. Cinquant’anni di storiografia italiana sulla Riforma e i movimenti ereticali in Italia 1900-2000 (Turin: Claudiana editrice, 2002), 175-216.

16 National Library Malta, Archives (of the Order of St John) 6529, f. 206v.

17 Lucia Frattarelli Fisher and Stefano Villani, ‘“People of every mixture”: Immigration, Tolerance and Religious Conflicts in Early Modern Livorno’, in Katherine Isaacs, ed. Immigration and Emigration in Historical Perspective (Pisa: Edizione Plus, 2007), 15; Matteo Giunti and Stefano Villani, ‘L’Antico Cimiterio degli Inglesi di Livorno: Dalle Origini al 1900’, Nuovi Studi Livornesi 11 (2004): 35-51.

18 Pauline Croft, ‘Englishmen and the Spanish Inquisition’, The English Historical Review (henceforth EHR) 87 (1972): 249-68. For the duty of Jews to attend sermons in Spain, see Emanuele Colombo, Convertire I musulmani. L’esperienza di un gesuita spagnolo del Seicento (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2007), 65.

19 Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition. An Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 279.

20 For the excuses offered by Admiral Narborough for the several disreputable actions perpetrated by his officers and sailors in 1675, see AIM, Correspondence (hereafter Corr.) 13, f. 123r, Card. Barberini to Mgr Pallavicino, 14 Dec. 1675. See also Anthony Zammit Gabarretta, ‘The Royal Navy and Vittoriosa – Old and New Documents’, Melita Historica 8, no. 1 (1980): 36.

21 For Englishmen on the Grand Tour, see T. Freller, Malta and the Grand Tour (Malta: Midsea Books, 2009).

22 AIM, Corr. 94, f. 143v, Card. Marescotti to Mgr Caracciolo, 26 March 1709.

23 AIM, Corr. 13, f. 3r, Card. Francesco Barbarini to Mgr Pallavivino, 13 Jan. 1674.

24 Ibid., f. 228r, Card. Francesco Barbarini to Mgr Giacomo Cantelmi, 29 Oct., 1678.

25 AIM, Corr. 1, f. 343r, Cardinal Arigone to Mgr Carbonese, 15 Nov. 1608. The order was repeated on 24 Sept. 1610. See AIM, Corr. 2, f. 91r.

26 Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (Vatican), Stanza Storica (hereafter ACDF, St St) II 1 – c, Mgr Stoppani to Card. Ottoboni, 16 July 1735, unnumbered. See also AIM, Corr. 95, ff. 37v-8r, Mgr Stoppani to Card. Ottoboni, 24 Sept. 1735.

27 S. W. C. Pack, Sea Power in the Mediterranean (London: Arthur Barker Ltd., 1971), 26-34.

28 AIM, Corr. 95, f. 31v, Mgr Durini to Card. Ottoboni, 16 July, 1735.

29 The same had happened in 1605 when an English ship arrived in Malta loaded with several commodities so necessary for the upkeep of the island’s fortifications. The inquisitor, Mgr Ettore Diotallevi, would not allow the crew to land unless they converted but he refrained from taking further action when Mendel, the Order’s ambassador at Rome, warned the cardinals that this could be the occasion for English ships to attack the Order’s vessels. See AIM, Corr. 88, f. 96v, Card. Masserano to Mgr Diotallevi, 2 July 1605.

30 AIM, Corr. 18, f. 172r, Card. Marescotti to Mgr Caracciolo, 31 Aug. 1709. On this point, see Stefano Villani, ‘Britain and the Papacy: Diplomacy and Conflict in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century’, in Maria Anronietta Visceglia, ed. Papato e politica internazionale nella prima età moderna (Rome: Viella, 2013), 301-22.

31 AIM, Corr. 18, ff. 141r-2v, Mgr Caracciolo to Card. Masserano, 25 May 1709. See also AIM, Corr. 94, ff. 150r-1r, Card. Messerano to Mgr Caracciolo 6 July 1709.

32 AIM, Proc. 70A, ff. 23r-38v; AIM, Corr. 11, f. 70r, Card. Francesco Barberini to Mgr Casanate, 20 Aug. 1661. For the whole episode, see T. R., A Brief History of the Voyage of Katharine Evans and Sarah Cheevers to the Island of Malta where the Apostle Paul suffered shipwreck. And their cruel sufferings in the Inquisition there, for near four years; occasion’d by the malice of the Monks and Friars against them and how they came to be delivered from thence, and their safe return home to England (London, 1975). For the missionary campaigns of the Quakers in Europe, see also Sünne Juterczenka, ‘Charting the “Progress of Truth”. Quaker Missions and the Topography of Dissent in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Europe’, in Simone Maghenzani and Stefano Villani, eds. British Protestant Missions and the Conversion of Europe, 1600-1900 (New York and London: Routledge, 2021), 78-101.

33 For this charge of forced conversions, see John Coffey, ‘“The Jesuits Have Shed Much Blood for Christ”: Early Modern Protestants and the problem of Catholic Overseas Missions’, in Maghenzani and Villani, eds. British Protestant Missions, 40-41.

34 Irene Fosi, Inquisition, Conversion, and Foreigners in Baroque Rome (Brill: Leiden/Boston, 2011), 193.

35 ACDF St St II 1 – b, Mgr Stoppani to Card. Ottoboni, 18 Aug. 1732, unnumbered.

36 Eliseo Masini, Sacro Arsenale, overo Prattica dell’Officio della S. Inquisizione ampliata (Genoa: Giuseppe Pavoni, 1625), 226. For Masini, see P. Fontana, ‘Masini, Eliseo’, in Adriano Prosperi, ed. Dizionario Storico dell’Inquisizione, 4 vols (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2010) (hereafter DSI), 2:1006.

37 Cited in Albert J. Loomie, ‘Religion and Elizabethan Commerce with Spain’, CHR 50, no. 1 (1964): 36. For Robert Persons, see Stefania Tutino, ‘The Political Thought of Robert Person’s Conference in Continental Context’, Historical Journal (hereafter HJ) 52 (2009): 43-62.

38 AIM, Miscellania (henceforth Misc.) 1, f. 19r. For Deodato Scaglia, see John Tedeschi, ‘The Question of Magic and Witchcraft in Two Inquisitorial Manuals of the Seventeenth Century’, in Tedeschi, The prosecution of Heresy. Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghampton, NY: Centre for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991), 229-58.

39 Eamon Duffy, ‘“Poor Protestant Flies”: Conversions to Catholicism in Early Eighteenth-Century England’, Religious Motivation: Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian, Studies in Church History 15 (1978), 297.

40 AIM, Misc. 3, f. 26v.

41 Data from AIM, Proc. 20A-139.

42 De Boer, ‘Soldati in Terra Straniera : La fede tra inquisizione e ragion di stato’, in Gianvittorio Signorotto and Claudia Di Filippo Bareggi, eds. L’inquisizione in età moderna e il caso Milanese (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009), 423; Vincenzo Lavenia, ‘Un porto nello Stato pontificio. Ancona e il Sant’Uffizio tra il Cinquecento e la Rivoluzione’, in Andrea Cicerchia, Guido Dall’Olio and Matteo Duni, eds. Presritto e Proscritto. Religione e Società nell’Italia Moderna, secc. xvi-xix (Rome: Carocci, 2015), 113.

43 Piero Ventura, L’Arciconfraternita della Spirito Santo dei Napoletani a Roma tra XVI e XVIII Secolo (Rome: ARACNE, 2009).

44 AIM, Proc. 51A, ff. 143r-6v.

45 AIM, Proc. 117B, ff. 520r-5v.

46 AIM, Misc. 2, p. 2. Dario Visintin, L’Attività dell’Inquisiore Fra Giulio Missini (1645-1653): L’Efficienza della Normalità (Pordenone: University of Trieste, 2008), 195.

47 AIM, Proc. 50B, ff. 919r-27v. On this point, see also Paul Cassar, Medical History of Malta (London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1964), 54-5.

48 AIM, Proc. 52A, ff. 316r-25v.

49 AIM, Proc. 58B, ff. 572r-3v.

50 AIM, Misc. 1, f. 61r.

51 AIM, Proc. 102B, f. 739r.

52 AIM, Proc. 48C, ff. 1159r-62v.

53 AIM, Proc. 30B, ff. 399r-408v.

54 For the role of confessors to direct their penitents to the holy office, see Ciappara, Society and the Inquisition, 363-5; Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza. Inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin: Einaudi,1996), 219-43; G. Paolin, ‘Inquisizione e Confessori nel Seicento in Friuli: Analisi di un Rapporto’, in A. Del Col and G. Paolin, eds. Inquisizione Romana in Italia nell’Età Moderna. Archivi, Problemi di Metodo, e Nuove Ricerche (Rome: Archivi di Stato, 1991), 181-2.

55 See, for instance, AIM, Proc. 54A, f. 4r.

56 AIM, Misc. 2, pp. 6-10. For Cardinal Desiderio Scaglia, a Dominican cardinal and member of the supreme congregation of the Roman inquisition, see Tedeschi, ‘The Question of Magic’, 229-61. See also Thomas F. Mayer, The Roman Inquisition. A Papal Bureaucracy and its Laws in the Age of Galileo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 68-71.

57 Archivio Secreto Vaticano, Segreteria di Stato (Malta) 186, ff. 143r-50v.

58 For the English Dominican friar Charles McDermot, see ACDF, St St HH 4 – e, unnumbered.

59 AIM, Proc. 124B, f. 867v.

60 AIM, Proc. 104A, ff. 260r-5v.

61 AIM, Proc. 124A, f. 294r.

62 Fosi, Inquisition, Conversion and Foreigners, 33-42.

63 Sergio Pagano, ‘L’Ospizio dei Convertendi di Roma fra charisma missionario e regolamentazione ecclesiastica (1673-1700)’, Ricerche per la Storia religiosa di Roma 10 (1998): 313-90; Anu Raunio, Conversioni al Cattolicesimo a Roma tra Sei e Settecento. La presenza degli scandinavi nell’Ospizio dei Convertendi (Turku: University of Turku, 2009).

64 Fosi, Inquisition, Conversion and Foreigners, 29.

65 AIM, Proc. 124B, ff. 867r-72v.

66 AIM, Proc. 35A, ff. 220r-3v, 232r-5v.

67 AIM, Proc. 135A, ff. 334r-41v.

68 AIM, Proc. 132A, ff. 87r-94r.

69 He had married Catarina on 14 November 1758. See PA (Vittoriosa), Liber Matrimoniorum IV, f. 28v. Other English Catholics in Malta were William Whiteford, a gunner on the San Vincenzo, who resided at Senglea in 1780 (Curia Episcopalis Melitensae, Acta Originalia 780, ff. 23v-4r), John, vice-pilot of one of the ships of the Order, married at Senglea (1745) (AIM, Proc. 122A, f. 323v) and Daniel, married at Cospicua (1753) (AIM, Proc. 122B, f. 636r).

70 ACDF, St St HH 4 – e, Mgr Gualtieri to Card. Ottoboni, 24 May 1740.

71 Alexandra Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the Culture of Print’, Past and Present 168 (2000): 72-123 at p. 80.

72 An Abridgment of Christian Doctrine With Proofs of Scripture for Points Controverted, Catechistically explained, by Way of Question and Answer (Basle, 1680). Thirty copies of this catechism were sent by the Holy Office to Mgr Inquisitor Gualtieri in 1742. See ACDF, St St HH 4 – e, 30 Aug. 1742.

73 AIM, Proc. 132A, ff. 87r-94v. Alexandra Walsham, ‘Wholesome milk and strong meat: Peter Canisius’s Catechism and the conversion of Protestant Britain’, British Catholic History 32, no. 3 (2015): 1-22. For the case of Richard Getter of London, who was made to see his errors in 1603 through the sacred scripture, see AIM, Proc. 21A, ff. 328r-32v.

74 An Abridgment of Christian Doctrine, 42-3.

75 Ibid., 216.

76 Ibid., 77.

77 That the apostolic gift of miracles ceased after the first century, see D. P. Walker, ‘The Cessation of Miracles’, in Ingrid Merkel and Alan G. Debus, eds. Hermeticism and the Renaissance (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988), 111-24.

78 An Abridgment of Christian Doctrine, 47, 126, 158-9, 208.

79 Masini, Sacro Arsenale, 226-31.

80 AIM, Proc. 21B, ff. 771r-3Av.

81 AIM, Proc. 21A, ff. 303r-4r.

82 AIM, Proc. 55B, f. 572r.

83 AIM, Proc. 111B, f. 624v.

84 AIM, Proc. 45B, f. 1139v.

85 AIM, Proc. 61A, f. 565v.

86 AIM, Proc. 98A, f. 388r.

87 N. Rothman, ‘Becoming Venetian: conversion and transformation in the seventeenth-century Mediterranean’, Mediterranean Historical Review 21 (2006): 39-75.

88 Duffy, ‘“Poor Protestant Flies”’, 298.

89 AIM, Proc. 98B, ff. 426r-31v.

90 AIM, Proc. 59A, ff. 186r-9v.

91 AIM, Corr. 1, f. 127r, Card. Santoro to Mgr. Verallo, 9 March 1602.

92 AIM, Proc. 110A, ff. 132r-5v.

93 AIM, Proc. 21A, ff. 298r-301v, 308r-9v.

94 AIM, Proc. 101B, ff. 317r-22v.

95 AIM, Proc. 55A, ff. 542r-7v.

96 AIM, Proc. 120A, ff. 436r-41v.

97 P. Gewirtz, ‘Victims and Voyeurs: Two Narrative Problems at the Criminal Trial’, in P. Brooks and P. Gewirtz, eds. Law’s Stories: Narratives and Rhetoric in the Law (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), 144.

98 P. Fredriksen, ‘Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self’, Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 33. See also M. García-Arenal, ‘Dreams and Reason: Autobiographies of Converts in Religious Polemics’, in García-Arenal, ed. Conversions Islamiques. Identité religieuses en Islam méditrranéen (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2001), 102.

99 N. Z. Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Oxford: Polity Press, 1987).

100 AIM, Proc. 35A, ff. 232r-5v. For court narratives as reliable historical sources, see Frans Ciappara, ‘Conversion Narratives and the Roman Inquisition in Malta, 1650-1700’, Journal of Religious History 40, no. 4 (2016): 508-11; Linda Colley, Captives. Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (London: Pimlico, 2003), 84-5; James L. Peacock and Dorothy C. Holland, ‘The Narrated Self: Life Stories in Process’, Ethos 21, no. 4 (1993): 367-83.

101 Stefano Villani, ‘Unintentional Dissent. Eating Meat and Religious Identity among British Residents in Early Modern Livorno’, in Katherine Aron-Beller and Christopher Black, eds. The Roman Inquisition: Centre versus Peripheries (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 380.

102 William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy. The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 251.

103 AIM, Proc. 108A, ff. 203r-8v.

104 Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London: Penguin, 1991), 67.

105 AIM, Proc. 106C, ff. 894r-9v. On this point, see Lucia Rostagno, Mi Faccio Turco. Esperienze ed immagini dell’Islam nell’Italia moderna (Roma: Istituto per l’Oriente C. A. Nallino, 1983), passim.

106 AIM, Proc. 48B, f. 759r.

107 Colley, Captives, 69.

108 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London: Collins, 1972).

109 Molly Greene, A Shared World. Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

110 M. D’Angelo, Mercanti Inglesi a Malta, 1800-1825 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990), 56. M. D’Angelo, Mercanti Inglesi a Livorno 1573-1737 (Messina: Istituto di Studi Storici Gaetano Salvemini, 2004).

111 See Frans Ciappara, ‘Integration with Britain in the Eighteenth Century?’, in T. Cortis, Th. Freller, L. Bugeja, eds. Melitensium Amor. Festschrift in honour of Dun Ġwann Azzopardi (Malta: 2002), 237-9.

112 P. Fontana, ‘Protestanti e Inquisitori a Genova tra i Secoli XVI-XVIII. Il Problema della Militia Germanica’, Nuova Rivista Storica 80 (1996): 211-20 ; Mary Louise Pratt, ‘Arts of the contact zone’, Profession 91 (1991):33-40.

113 AIM, Proc. 59A, ff. 162r-85v.

114 For the same situation in Venice, see Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople.

115 S. Peyronel, ‘Frontiere religiose e soldati in antico regime: il caso di Crema nel Seicento’, in C. Donati, ed. Alle frontiere della Lombardia. Politica, guerra e religione nell’età moderna (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2006), 19-40.

116 Peter A. Mazur, Conversion to Catholicism in Early Modern Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 98.

117 Ian Almond, Two Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims marched with Christians across Europe’s Battlegrounds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

118 Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople, 112.

119 Frans Ciappara, ‘“The date palm and the olive tree”: Safeguarding the Catholic Frontier in Malta (c.1595-c.1605)’, in Dionisius A. Agius, ed. Georgio Scala and the Moorish Slaves. The Inquisition Malta 1598 (Malta: Midsea Books, 2013), 253-79.

120 See Tony Claydon’s works: Europe and the Making of England, 187, 219; William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), ch. 4 and ‘The Church of England and the Churches of Europe’, in Grant Tapsell, ed. The Later Stuart Church, 1660-1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), 314-31.

121 Stephen Conway, ‘Christians, Catholics, Protestants: The Religious Links of Britain and Ireland with Continental Europe, c. 1689-1800’, EHR 124, no. 509 (2009), 833-862, at p. 849.

122 Ibid., 862.

123 AIM, Proc. 55A, ff. 504r-9v.

124 AIM, Proc. 98A, ff. 208r-11v.

125 On this, see Jane Wickersham, ‘Results of the Reformation: Ritual, Doctrine and Religious Conversion’, The Seventeenth Century 18, no. 2 (2003): 266-89.

126 For the case of George David, a 33-year-old Protestant from London, see AIM, Proc. 104A, ff. 282r-7v.

127 AIM, Proc. 106A, ff. 29r-34v.

128 AIM, Proc. 117B, ff. 520r-5v.

129 For the same situation in Spain, see Croft, ‘Englishmen and the Spanish Inquisition’, 261.

130 AIM, Corr. 8, f. 59r, Card. Francesco Barberini to Mgr. Gori Pannellini, 30 May 1643. For one more such example, involving William Sweetlock of Hull who came to Malta in 1637, see AIM, Proc. 52B, ff. 791r-8v.

131 ACDF, St St II 1 – b, Mgr Stoppani to Card. Ottoboni, 23 June 1736, unnumbered.

132 AIM, Proc. 124B, f. 938v.

133 AIM, Proc. 37A, ff. 71r-7v.

134 For his Protestant leanings, see Frans Ciappara, Society and the Inquisition, 113.

135 For this Edmund Smith, who was charged of ill-treating English converts to Catholicism and of deterring others from the same course by threats, see L. De Laberti and A. B. Wallis Chapman, ‘English Traders and the Spanish Canary Inquisition in the Canaries during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society’, Third Series 3 (1909): 244-5.

136 AIM, Proc. 124A, ff. 74v-5r.

137 Ibid., ff. 71v-2r.

138 Brian Pullan, ‘A Ship with two rudders: Righetto Marrano and the Inquisition in Venice’, HJ 20 (1977): 25-58.

139 AIM, Proc. 63, ff. 538r-43v.

140 AIM, Proc. 22A, ff. 136r-72v. For similar incidents, see AIM, Proc. 22B, ff. 489r-667v and AIM, Proc. 22C, ff. 789r-936v.

141 AIM, Proc. 23B, ff. 528r-39v.

142 This term refers to the Pharisee Nicodemus, who visited Jesus only in the dead of night. See Carlo Ginzburg, Il nicodemismo. Simulazione e dissimulazione nell’Europa del ’500 (Turin: Biblioteca di Cultura Storica, 1970); J. J. Martin, ‘Nicodemismo’, DSI, 2:1115-6; A. Rotondò, ‘Attegiamenti della vita morale italiana del Cinquecento: La Pratica Nicodemitica’, Rivista Storica Italiana 79 (1967): 991-1030.

143 His wife determined to return to Malta in 1701 and asked Mgr di Messerano for help, lest her children became Protestant, one of them having already done so. See ACDF, St St HH 4 – c, Mgr di Messerano to Card. Marescotti, 22 Oct. 1701.

144 Adriano Prosperi, ‘1548. Il caso Spera: una morte disperata’, in Prosperi, ed., L’eresia del Libro Grande. Storia di Giorgio Siculo e della sua setta (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000), 102-22.

145 AIM, Proc. 96A, ff. 95r-8v.

146 Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1986), 161.

147 For the influence of these two books, see Colley, Britons, 25-9.

148 Daphne Lappa, ‘Religious conversions within the Venetian military milieu (17th and 18th centuries)’, Studi Veneziani 67 (2013): 183-200.