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Fatima Hatun née Beatrice Michiel : Renegade Women in the Early
Modern Mediterranean
Eric Dursteler
The Medieval History Journal 2009 12: 355
DOI: 10.1177/097194580901200208
The online version of this article can be found at:
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Fatima Hatun née Beatrice Michiel:
Renegade Women in the Early
Modern Mediterranean
Eric Dursteler∗
During the last decades of the sixteenth century, Beatrice Michiel fled an
unhappy marriage in Venice for Constantinople. She converted to Islam,
taking the name of Fatima, remarried, and because of her access to the
imperial harem, played a significant role in Veneto-Ottoman relations in
this troubled period. Beatrice/Fatima’s experience provides a suggestive
window into the often ignored experience of renegade women on the
Mediterranean frontier. While women’s religiosity is usually viewed as
more unwavering than men’s, this case study suggests that while their
motivations may have differed from those of men, women too might convert
without compulsion. This story also provides a window onto ways in which
women were able to subordinate societal and cultural mentalities and
structures through utilising the political, religious and cultural frontiers
of the Mediterranean as a means to prise themselves free from familial and
economic circumstances in which they normally had limited power to act.
In 1559, a ship set sail from Venice directed to the Dalmatian coast. On
board were a mother, Maria Franceschina Zorzi Michiel, and her four
children, including our protagonist, Beatrice, aged 5 or 6 years old at the
time. The family was headed to Budua on the Albanian coast, where their
father and husband, Giacomo Michiel, served as chancellor to the local
Venetian governor. As the ship crossed the Adriatic, it was waylaid by
∗Department of History, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602. E-mail: Eric_
[email protected]
The Medieval History Journal, 12, 2 (2009): 355–382
SAGE Publications J Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/097194580901200208
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corsairs, and Maria and her children taken captive. This was not an unusual event, indeed corsairs and pirates infested Mediterranean sea lanes,
and one of their primary sources of income was ransoming hostages. The
story of the Michiel family, however, would take a series of unexpected
turns that make it, in many ways, an early modern adventure worthy of
any Hollywood historical potboiler.1 It also suggests important insights
into the nexus of religious identity, conversion and gender in the early
modern era, and their relationship to the numerous intersecting boundaries
of the Mediterranean.
Franceschina eventually succeeded in ransoming herself and her two
daughters, and she returned to Venice with them. She was unable to free
her sons, however, and they were sold into slavery, and soon converted
to Islam. The boys became trusted members of the household of the
sultan-in-waiting, Selim II, who invited them to accompany him to
Constantinople when he acceded to throne in 1566. There was a catch,
however; Selim wanted them to serve in his personal harem, which required that they be castrated in a risky operation. Both did so, but only
one brother, now known by his Muslim name of Gazanfer, survived.2
Once in the Ottoman capital, Gazanfer became an ally of the valide
sultana, the Venetian Nurbanu, and advanced rapidly within the inner
imperial circle.3 By 1580, he held simultaneously the two most important
offices within the inner service of the Harem—kapEa asi (chief of the
gate and of the white eunuchs) and Odabaşi (chief of the Privy Chamber).
His office was located at the Gate of Felicity which marked the division
between the outer and the inner palace. Gazanfer was ‘the sole mediator
between the Sultan and the world outside the Palace’; any persons or
communications into the inner sanctum had to pass through his hands,
which gave him tremendous political power.4 During a troubled period
of Ottoman history, Gazanfer held onto power for 30 years in the service
Pedani-Fabris, ‘Veneziani a Costantinopoli’: 68.
Hammer, Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, vol. 2: 199–201.
3
Fleischer, Bureaucrat: 73; Encyclopedia of Islam, ‘Sokullu, Mehmed Pasha’, vol. 9:
710–11, Danişmend, OsmanlE Tarihi Kronolojisi, vol. 3: 2–3.
4
Senato Dispacci, Costantinopoli (SDC), b. 56, cc. 208r–211v, 9 Jan 1602 (MV),
Francesco Contarini to Senate.
1
2
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of three sultans, namely, Selim II (1566–74), Murad III (1574–95) and
Mehmed III (1595–1603).5
While her brother scaled the Ottoman hierarchy, Beatrice returned to
Venice, where some twenty years later she married a certain Angelo di
Bianchi, scion of an elite cittadino originario family with deep roots in
Venice.6 The couple settled in the parish of San Giacomo dall’Orio, where
Beatrice gave birth to two sons in quick succession: Baldissare, who was
born in October 1584 and whose godfathers were two noblemen, Antonio
Morosini and Marin Grimani; and Giacomo, born a few years later.7
Tragedy struck the young family in January 1588, when Angelo died at
the age of 33 following a year-long bout with consumption. Beatrice was
left a widow with two young boys under the age of ten.8
Widows ‘were legion’ in early modern Italy, in part because women
were often significantly younger than their husbands at marriage (though
this clearly was not the case with Beatrice) and, if they survived childbirth,
generally lived longer.9 Venetian society permitted three options for
widows: the convent, remarriage or widowhood. While popolani women
often opted for remarriage, widowhood was somewhat more common
among patrician and cittadini women. Though it might mean the loss of
marital companionship, widowhood was often the more attractive option
as it permitted a woman to take control of her dowry and to achieve a
degree of autonomy and economic independence.10
5
Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire: 244; Fleischer, Bureaucrat: 72;
Hammer, Histoire: 199–201; Pedani-Fabris, I documenti turchi: lxv, lxviii; Peirce, The
Imperial Harem: 12; ‘Kapu Aghasi,’ Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. 4: 570–71; Peachy, A
Year in Selaniki’s History: 241–42; Oberling and Smith, The Food Culture of the Ottoman
Palace: 59; Darling, ‘Rethinking Europe and the Islamic World’: 237; Collegio-Relazioni
(CollRel), b. 5, c. 18r ‘Relazione di Ottaviano Bon’; Kafadar, ‘Les troubles monétaires’:
390–91.
6
Bailo a Costantinopoli (BAC), b. 279, reg. 401, cc. 7v–8v, 13 Apr 1615; BAC, b. 279,
reg. 401, cc. 13r–15r, 17 June 1615; Dolcetti, Il libro d’argento, vol. 1: 26–27; Cicogna,
Delle iscrizioni veneziane, vol. 5: 201; Biblioteca Marciana, It VII 27 (7761), c. 84v,
‘Cronaca di Famiglie Cittadine Originarie Venete.’
7
Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia, Parocchia San Giacomo dall’Orio
Battesimi, r. 2 (1564–1596), 9 Oct 1584.
8
Proveditori alla sanitá-Necrologi, r. 819, 31 Jan 1587 (MV).
9
Baernstein, ‘In Widow’s Habit’: 788; King, Women of the Renaissance: 58.
10
Ambrosini, ‘Penombre femminili’: 307; Bellavitis, ‘Dot et richesse des femmes à
Venise au XVIe siècle’: 91, 96–97; Ruggiero, Boundaries of Eros: 167; Bell, How to Do
It: 353 n. 52.
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While we do not know her motivations, within a year or two of Angelo’s
death, Beatrice opted for remarriage; her new husband was a Venetian
merchant named Zuane Zaghis. She soon gave birth to another child, a
daughter, but already the new marriage was in trouble.11 While we cannot
know the intimate details of their relationship, it is clear that Beatrice
became increasingly uncomfortable with what she perceived as Zaghis’
inappropriate actions in relationship to her financial affairs. She had
brought significant financial resources to her new marriage, including a
6,000 ducat dowry, extensive terra firma land holdings and an annual
200 ducat income from a Venetian office granted to her through her
brother’s intervention.12 To place this in context, in this time, unskilled
labourers earned annually 16–20 ducats, a ship’s master perhaps 100
ducats, a well-off patrician had an annual income of 1,000 ducats and
the very richest noble perhaps 10,000 ducats.13 By the standards of the
day, this was a significant dowry: contemporary patrician dowries ranged
from 1,000–3,000 ducats for the poorest noble families to 20,000 ducats
for the very elite. Cittadino originario dowries averaged 3,000–4,000
ducats. Thus, Beatrice’s dowry, the maximum permitted by law, was
significantly larger than the average.14
In Venice, in contrast to many other parts of Italy and Europe, a dowry
remained the wife’s property and was seen as a form of insurance for
women and children in the event of a husband’s death. Venetian statutes
acknowledged a husband’s right to ‘benefit and administer’ the dowry
over the course of the marriage to meet family financial responsibilities,
however, he was expected to manage it responsibly. In order to ensure
their restitution, dowries over 1,000 ducats had to be registered with the
Avogadori di Comun. At the death of a husband, the dowry was returned
to his wife, and women retained the right to invest and to dispose of their
dowry and other property they brought to the marriage at their discretion.
11
Senato Deliberazioni, Costantinopoli (SDelC), b. 8, 4 Feb 1591 (MV) Baili Lorenzo
Bernardo and Matteo Zane to Senate.
12
SDelC, b. 8, 1 July 1592, Beatrice’s Sons to Senate; SDelC, b. 8, 27 July 1592, In
pregadi; SDelC, b. 8, 9 Sept 1585, Avogaria di Comun to Sopraconsoli; SDelC, b. 8,
1 July 1592, Beatrice’s Sons to Senate.
13
Lane, Venice: 333–34; Pullan, ‘Wage-Earners and the Venetian Economy’: 157–58,
173.
14
Cowan, ‘Rich and Poor Among the Patriciate’: 152–53, 157 and The urban patriciate:
165–67; Bellavitis, ‘La Famiglia <<cittadina>> veneziana’: 52, 64.
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‘A wastrel who consumed or expropriated dotal wealth was subject to
the intervention and disciplinary action of Venetian authorities.’15
In situations such as Beatrice’s, however, there were limited possibilities to end a marriage that had soured. Society generally saw marriage
as a till-death-do-us-part proposition, and this was enshrined in both
ecclesiastical and secular law as well as in cultural practice. There were
ways in early modern Venice for the ‘malmaritate’ to free themselves
from wedlock. Joanne Ferraro has shown that Venetian women in failed
marriages had ‘some latitude’ in deciding to dissolve nuptial ties, either
through ecclesiastical or civic courts.16 The actual cases of annulled or
dissolved marriages in Renaissance Venice are statistically insignificant,
however. There were powerful cultural and institutional disincentives
that strongly discouraged women from resorting to the courts, and any
legal process that was initiated was inevitably drawn out. For most
Venetian women, ending a marriage and liberating themselves from an
unwanted husband simply was not a viable option.
Faced with a marriage that she no longer desired, the aggressive attempts of Zaghis to control her substantial resources and the very real
threat that this posed to her and her sons’ economic future, and with
limited options for dissolving the marriage satisfactorily, Beatrice decided
to take matters into her own hands by fleeing Venice. In late 1591, she
boarded a ship bound for the Ottoman capital and a rendezvous with a
brother she had not seen for over three decades, and her mother, who
had moved to the city a year earlier.17
Upon her arrival, she was met at the port by a large company of Ottoman
officials and was ceremoniously conducted to her brother’s seraglio. As
she was settling into her new surroundings, Beatrice was informed that
her mother had died unexpectedly the day before her arrival.18 This revelation can only have been tremendously disorienting: Beatrice had
15
Queller and Madden, ‘Father of the Bride: Fathers, Daughters, and Dowries in Late
Medieval and Early Renaissance Venice’: 695–97; Ferraro, Marriage Wars in Late
Renaissance Venice: 136–37, 153–54; Bellavitis, ‘Dot et richesse des femmes à Venise au
XVIe siècle’: 91, 96–97 and ‘La Famiglia <<cittadina>> veneziana nel xvi secolo’: 52, 57.
16
Ferraro, ‘The Power to Decide’: 492–95 and Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance
Venice: 13.
17
SDC, b. 51, c. 372r, 29 July 1600, Girolamo Cappello to Senate.
18
Senato Dispacci, Copie moderne (SDCop), r. 8, c. 38, 27 Dec 1591, Lorenzo Bernardo
to Senate; SDC, b. 34, cc. 285r-v, 289r-v, 28 Dec 1591, Lorenzo Bernardo to Senate;
Pedani-Fabris, ‘Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy’: 25.
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expected to find her mother waiting for her and now found herself in an
unfamiliar culture with a brother she barely knew, sequestered in a harem
with no possibility of outside contact. Strongly encouraged by Gazanfer,
within a few short days of her arrival, Beatrice converted to Islam. Her
new name was the most common one taken by female converts, Fatima,
after Muhammad’s daughter.19
It would perhaps be well to pause and consider the nature of Fatima’s
conversion. While there is a long history which views conversion as a
profound, all-encompassing, transformative experience, in Fatima’s case
there is ample evidence that this was a conversion of convenience, more
instrumental than spiritual. In the years following her metamorphosis,
many in the capital—both Muslim and Christian—considered her Muslim
in name only. Rather, it was widely believed that ‘internally she [was]
not a Turk’, that is, that she preserved her Christian identity behind an
artificial mask of Muslimness. One Venetian observer reported that she
was ‘more restricted than other Turkish women and slaves, because they
fear that in her heart of hearts she has not changed religion.’ Another
described her as ‘having a Christian soul’, a language echoed six years
later by a Venetian diplomat, Girolamo Cappello, who described her as
‘most Christian (cristianissimo) of soul, even if she cannot show it externally’.20 Cappello reported in his relazione to the senate that she was
‘believed by her brother and husband to be Christian, and if it were not
for the great love that the kapEa asi has for her, she would endanger
her life.’21
While this tension between the public and the private persona may
strike a modern observer as untenable if not hypocritical, the dichotomy
between an authentic, internal self and the external performance of an
assumed identity was widely practiced in the early modern world.22
Roman Catholics who converted to Protestant sects claimed to preserve
Faroqhi, Subjects of the Sultans: 102.
SDC, b. 37, cc. 278r–v, 7 June 1593, Matteo Zane to Senate; ‘Relazione di Matteo
Zane,’ in Albèri, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti, vol. 3: 437–38; SDC, b. 39, cc. 8v–
10v, 12 Mar 1594, Marco Venier to Senate; SDC, b. 51, cc. 87r–89r, 7 Apr 1600, Girolamo
Capello to Senate.
21
‘Relazione di Girolamo Cappello,’ in Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni di ambasciatori veneti:
417–19.
22
Eire, ‘Calvin and Nicodemism’: 67–69; Biondi, ‘La dissimulazione’: 59; Martin,
‘Renovatio and Reform in Early Modern Italy’: 12–13. Also, Martin, Venice’s Hidden
Enemies: chapter 5.
19
20
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the ‘true faith’ in their hearts.23 Calvin labelled religious dissimulation
nicodemism, and decried Christians ‘who like the Pharisee Nicodemus
in the Gospel of John, were too timorous to show their true beliefs’ and
‘who simulated the practices of other religions to avoid persecution or to
live comfortably’.24
The practice of religious simulation to avoid persecution was not limited
to Reformation Europe, indeed it was widespread in the Mediterranean,
particularly among renegades. For example, a Greek woman who was
forced to convert by her Muslim husband, reassured friends, ‘although
I am supposed to be a Mahometan, yet I remain a Christian in heart, as I was
before, and perform my customary devotions.’25 Christians who appeared
before the Inquisition, almost without exception made two claims: that
they had been coerced to convert and that their conversion was only
surface deep; in their hearts they retained ‘the Holy Christian faith’. As
evidence of this, renegades maintained that while performing the public
rituals of Islam, secretly they continued to observe Christian fasts and
dietary strictures, and women often affirmed that they secretly baptised
children they bore from relationships with Muslim men.
Muslim women who forcibly converted to Christianity, such as the
Moriscas of Spain, often presented a similar facade of conversion, while
continuing to live secretly as Muslims and to raise their children in that
tradition.26 This practice of outward conformity had developed ‘as
Muslims sought to preserve Islam even when living under oppression.’27
Called taqiyya or dissimulation, the practice was based on Quran (XVI:
108), which allows the denial of faith and the dispensing of religious
rites in cases in which the life or property of a Muslim were perceived as
being endangered. Commenting on this surah, the great tenth century
Persian scholar, Muhammad ibn Jarir Al-Tabari, wrote, ‘If anyone is
compelled and professes unbelief with his tongue, while his heart contradicts him, in order to escape his enemies, no blame falls on him, because
God takes his servants as their hearts believe.’ In particular, women,
Wickersham, ‘Results of the Reformation’: 279.
Martin, ‘Salvation and Society’: 228; Eire, ‘Calvin and Nicodemism’: 44–46; Burns,
‘The Politics of Conversion’: 10.
25
Wratislaw, Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw: 89–94.
26
Scaraffia, Rinnegati: 115–20; Rostagno, Mi faccio turco: 52; Bennassar, ‘Conversions,
esclavage et commerce des femmes’: 102–03; Perry, ‘Contested Identities’: 179.
27
Perry, The Handless Maiden: 34.
23
24
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children and the invalid, because of their inherent fragility, were permitted
muwafaka or ‘connivance’.28
Despite black legends to the contrary, the Roman church was more in
line with Islamic practice in that it was generally less troubled by spiritual
dissimulation than Calvin and other reformers. Inquisitorial manuals of
the day explicitly validated this internal–Christian/external–Muslim dichotomy: one held that ‘those who apostatized for fear of death, but who
remained faithful in their hearts, are not properly speaking heretics.’29
Inquisitors saw conversion as a momentary expedient for the survival of
the weak or ignorant who had little interest in religion and thus, their
trials were little more than a ‘bureaucratic practice’. In almost all recorded
cases, the verdicts promulgated by inquisitorial courts granted absolution and freedom: to do anything less would slow ‘the flow of returns to
Christendom’.30
If Fatima’s decision to convert was clearly instrumental, the question
of her motivation remains murkier. The general view in Constantinople
was that she had come to the Ottoman capital in ‘the hope of deriving
great gain, and maybe also from being little contented with her husband.’31
Indeed, the very day she arrived in the city, Bailo Lorenzo Bernardo
wrote that everyone expected that ‘in hopes of acquiring riches she will
lose our most holy faith and her soul.’32 According to this widely shared
viewpoint, Beatrice’s flight was motivated by a combination of marital
dissatisfaction and a desire for economic independence, and indeed,
though she protested otherwise, her actions, including her conversion, may
well have been premeditated.
Beatrice may have been influenced in her decision to convert by the
often more favourable situation of women under Ottoman rule. At first
blush, the idea that a woman might voluntarily chose to abandon Christianity in favour of Islam may seem counter-intuitive, given modern
stereotypes of the status of women under Islam as oppressed and powerless victims. Recent research, however, has shown that Ottoman women
Encyclopedia of Islam, ‘Takiyya’, vol. 10: 134–36.
Audisio, ‘Renégats marseillais’: 46–48; Wickersham, ‘Results of the Reformation’: 280.
30
Rostagno, Mi faccio turco: 19, 23, 34–35; Scaraffia, Rinnegati: 103, 105–07, 109;
Audisio, ‘Renégats marseillais’: 50–51.
31
SDelC, b. 8, Copy of 4 Feb 1591 (MV), Bailo to Senate, in Pregadi to 27 July 1592.
32
SDCop, r. 8, c. 38, 27 Dec 1591, Lorenzo Bernardo to Senate; SDC, b. 34, cc. 289r–v,
28 Dec 1591, Lorenzo Bernardo to Senate.
28
29
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had available to them ‘a wide field of action...despite an inherited gender
system that prescribed women’s subordination to men.’33 Ottoman women
enjoyed legal and cultural prospects greater than those available to many
European women; indeed, the Englishwoman, Lady Elizabeth Craven,
observed that ‘the Turks in their conduct towards our sex are an example
to all other nations.’34 Ottoman girls were considered imperial subjects
at puberty, and both Shari’a law and tradition granted women specific
legal privileges, including the right to control property without male interference and the right to register complaints and to defend their legal prerogatives in a kadi court. Scholars have found that Ottoman women regularly used the court system to defend their rights and in most instances,
kadis upheld them. Indeed, non-Muslim Ottoman women frequently had
recourse to kadi courts because they were perceived as being more sympathetic to women’s issues than were Christian or Jewish courts.35
Ottoman women also had more flexibility in ending unwanted marriages through divorce, separation and annulment; indeed, divorces initiated by women in eighteenth century Istanbul became common enough
to attract concerned comment by social observers. For non-Muslim
Ottoman women whose traditions did not normally permit divorce, conversion to Islam was a relatively easy way to be liberated from an unwanted spouse, and these types of conversions were quite common.36 In
Christian Europe, some official channels to end unwanted marriages did
exist, however, in the end divorce was very rare and difficult to come
by.37 Undoubtedly more common were informal, communal means of
escaping ‘wed-lock’, which might entail the simple, but highly symbolic,
act of removing and returning a wedding ring or the more extreme practice
of Englishmen holding ‘wife sales’, often with their wife’s consent, in
Zilfi, ‘Introduction’: 5.
Nashat, ‘Women in the Middle East, 8000 BCE to 1700 CE’: 245–46.
35
Gerber, ‘Social and Economic Position of Women in an Ottoman City’: 231–33;
Faroqhi, ‘Crisis and Change, 1590–99’, 2: 598–99; Zilfi, ‘We Don’t Get Along’: 269–72;
Nashat, ‘Women in the Middle East 8,000 B.C.E.–C.E. 1800’: 71; Tucker, ‘Rescued from
Obscurity’: 399.
36
Cassia, ‘Religion, politics and ethnicity in Cyprus’: 22–23.
37
Safley, ‘Marital Litigation in the Diocese of Constance’: 71–73; Watt, ‘Divorce in
Early Modern Neuchâtel’: 137–55; Bonfield, ‘Developments in European Family Law’:
108–13; Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe: 72–73; Wiesner-Hanks,
Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World: 78–80.
33
34
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which women were sold for a few guineas or traded for an ox. Though
not legally binding, such actions were often the ‘only form of divorce
available to any but the very rich’.38 Even if obtainable, Christian attitudes
towards divorce often discouraged women: Erasmus wrote ‘what a paltry
thing a woman is if separated from her husband.’39
Another factor that may have influenced Fatima in her decision to
convert was exposure to the tales of celebrated renegades and the hope
that she and her family might benefit materially by her conversion. While
there is much talk of early modern Turkenfurcht,40 this was paralleled by
an ‘Ossessione turca’,41 a fascination with all things Ottoman, and Venice
was the epicentre for information on the Ottoman Empire. Learned treatises,
travellers’ narratives, popular plays, sensational pamphlets, crude illustrations of Ottomans, all were common in the Venetian lagoon.42 The
reading of the relazioni of ambassadors from Constantinople ‘drew
crowds to the Senate’, and these reports, and even the bi-weekly dispatches of Venice’s ambassadors in the Porte, were quickly copied, condensed and circulated into the weekly manuscript avvisi which were
popular in this time. This occurred despite attempts by the Council of
Ten to restrict the flow of sensitive information on ‘things of the world
and especially those of the Turk’.43
Renegades were a commonplace in this literature: famous figures such
as Ibrahim Paşa, Uluj Ali and Cigala were well known in Venice. A very
few women renegades also achieved notoriety, inevitably because of the
sultans they either married or mothered. The most famous was Hürrem
Sultana, known in the West as Roxelana, the wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, whose slave to sultana story captured the imagination of Europeans.
38
Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe: 48–50; Porter, English Society in the 18th
Century: 31.
39
Karant-Nunn, ‘Continuity and Change’: 29.
40
Kissling, ‘Türkenfurcht und Türkenhoffnung’: 1–18.
41
Ricci, Ossessione turca: 389–90.
42
Blanks, ‘Western Views of Islam in the Premodern Period’: 35; Setton, ‘Lutheranism
and the Turkish Peril’: 137, 141; Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk in late sixteenth-century
Venetian portrait books’: 42.
43
Ventura, ‘Scrittori politic e scritture di governo’ vol. 3: 553–54; Valensi, The Birth of
the Despot: 13; Infelise, Prima dei giornali: v, vi, x, 10, 154; Burke, ‘Early Modern
Venice as a Center of Information and Communication’: 392, 397, 403–04; Sforza, ‘Un
libro sfortunato contro i Turchi’: 207–13; Allegri, ‘Venezia e il Veneto dopo Lepanto’ vol. 2:
953–54.
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Travellers, playwrights and diplomats produced numerous descriptions
and dramatic treatments of her life, as well as portraits and popular engravings which imagined the face of a woman probably never seen in
public.44
Though not as notorious, Fatima would certainly have been familiar
with Nurbanu, wife of Roxelana’s son and Suleiman’s heir, Selim II, mother
of Murad III, and a close associate and benefactor of Fatima’s brother,
Gazanfer. Enslaved by Barbarossa as a young girl during the siege of
Corfu in 1537, in her later years, Nurbanu maintained, and Venetian officials perpetuated the claim, that she was of Venetian patrician stock;
among contemporaries she was known as the Venetian sultana. Venetian
ambassadors reported at length on Nurbanu’s political influence, especially during the reign of her son, Murad. She was a key player in the
peace that ended the War of the Holy League in 1573, she ensured the
peaceful ascension of her son to the throne in 1574, she actively worked
to prevent an Ottoman invasion of Crete, and she corresponded directly
with Western rulers, including Catherine de Medici (to whom many contemporaries compared her) and Venice’s doge. Indeed, according to one
scholar, she was ‘the glue that held the empire together’.45 The renown
of Nurbanu during Fatima’s formative young adult years may have
smoothed the path to her own conversion.
In the end, Beatrice’s decision to become Fatima seems clearly to have
been a decision she took herself, a product of rational reflection that fits
well into Dirk Hoerder’s formulation of the motives for early modern
migration: ‘departure decisions’ are made when the perceived ‘conditions
at potential destinations seem better...[and] opportunity costs—loss of
relationships, fear of change and the unknown,...[appear] lower than the
hoped-for-benefits.’46 By relocating to Constantinople, Beatrice put
herself in a position to profit from her brother’s wealth, power and protection, which he had used in the past to her significant benefit. By converting,
44
Encyclopedia of Islam, ‘Khurrem’, vol. 5: 66–67; Sokolnicki, ‘La Sultane Ruthène’:
229–39; Rouillard, The Turk in French History, Thought and Literature: 421–66; Chew,
The Crescent and the Rose: 497–503.
45
Peirce, The Imperial Harem; Encyclopedia of Islam, ‘Nūr Bānū’, vol. 8: 124; Skilliter,
‘The Letters of the Venetian “Sultana” Nur Banu’: 519–27; Dizionario biografico degli
italiani, ‘Baffo, Cecilia’, vol. 5: 161–63; Arbel, ‘Nūr Bānū (c. 1530–1583): A Venetian
Sultana?’: 241–59.
46
Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: 15–16.
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Fatima’s marriage with Zaghis was automatically annulled and she was
freed from an undesirable marriage. She seems to have accepted the external sacrifice of her religion and the abandonment of her home as the
price necessary to defend herself from her grasping second husband, and
as a means to benefit her two sons, whose welfare seems to have been
one of her chief considerations in departing Venice.
For the first year after her arrival in Constantinople, Fatima resided
with her brother in the imperial household, until 1593, when she moved
into another seraglio which her brother had constructed. Because of her
brother’s position, during this time there were numerous Muslim suitors
who sought Fatima’s hand. Gazanfer was eager to wed his sister as a
means of establishing alliances with important individuals and families
in the Porte, a common practice throughout the Mediterranean. One suitor
was a former beylerbeyi of Tripoli, who was already married to the daughter
the late Venetian kapudanpaşa, Venedikli Hasan Paşa. His hope was to
obtain the admiralty through Gazanfer’s support.47 When this fell through,
Gazanfer pushed another candidate, a sipahi who had recently left the
seraglio and was a close friend and client of the Venetian renegade. Fatima,
however, ‘refused him’ and other suitors for over a year and a half. Her
single status could only be temporary, however, as Ottoman society, as
much or more than Venetian, did not admit the possibility of a single
woman. By June, she had wed Ali A a, a protégé of her brother, who as
a result of this most favourable match, advanced through an increasing
series of important offices in the Porte over the next decade.48
For her part, Fatima too began to adapt to life in her new surroundings.
As an aggregated member of the highest Ottoman elite, Fatima spent all
of her days enclosed in either her husband’s, her brother’s or the sultan’s
seraglios. She was not permitted to move freely about the city and could
only leave her velvet prison with chaperones and protection.49 This was
to be expected: Ottoman women of social standing were inevitably kept
segregated. Indeed, one of the West’s most enduring images of Muslim
Pedani-Fabris, ‘Safiye’s Household and Venetian Diplomacy’: 25–26.
SDC, b. 37, cc. 30r-v, 14 Mar 1593, Matteo Zane to Senate; SDC, b. 37, c. 128v,
24 April 1593, Matteo Zane to Senate; SDC, b. 37, cc. 278r-v, 7 June 1593, Matteo Zane
to Senate.
49
‘Relazione di Matteo Zane,’ in Albèri, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti, vol. 3:
437–38; BAC, b. 269, ‘Protocollo,’ cc. 21v–22r, 10 Jan 1594.
47
48
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women’s powerlessness is the harem. This exotic and eroticised vision of
the harem has attracted tremendous voyeuristic curiosity in the West.50
However, this voyeuristic fascination overlooks the much more complex
functioning of this institution. As Leslie Peirce has shown in her important
book, The Imperial Harem, the traditional image of cloistered Ottoman
women as powerless is patently false. Indeed, as the sultans retreated
into the harem in the latter sixteenth century, their mothers (the valide
sultanas), their wives, consorts and sisters, and other elite women were
increasingly influential. Harem women patronised important public
projects and charitable works; they also played an active and decisive
role in affairs of state, including foreign relations. Instead of marginalising them, it was precisely because of their enclosure inside the harem,
which ensured them regular access to the sultan, that royal women possessed significant power in the early modern Ottoman state.51
As a cloistered member of the imperial inner circle, Fatima maintained
regular outside contacts, both in Constantinople and in Venice, and she
was able to use her enclosure and her newly acquired status as a means
of exercising power in ways similar to the women in the imperial harem
described by Peirce.52 Fatima was clearly politically savvy: Venice’s baili,
the most experienced and capable members of its famed diplomatic corps
and no poor judges of diplomatic skills, described her as ‘a woman of
great valour and judgement’, who effectively navigated the corridors of
power in the Porte. Over time, she became conversant in the language
and culture of the court, and for over a decade, she enjoyed unusual access
to the powerful women of the imperial palace and harem. Girolamo
Cappello reported that she had,
...tremendous access to the seraglio and to the queen, where she does not fail
to observe that which touches on the interests of [Venice]. She is very reserved
however in speaking so as not to make herself more suspect, but where she is
able she does not fail to serve and to warn.53
Fay, ‘History: Middle East and North Africa’: 344. See, for example, Coco, Secrets
of the Harem.
51
Peirce, Imperial Harem: 219–28; Tucker, ‘Rescued from Obscurity’: 395; Nashat,
‘Women in the Middle East 8,000 B.C.E.—C.E. 1800’: 70–71; Meriwether and Tucker,
‘Introduction’: 3–4; Thys-Şenocak, Ottoman Women Builders: 55–65.
52
BAC, b. 269, ‘Protocollo,’ cc. 21v–22r, 10 Jan 1594.
53
‘Relazione di Girolamo Cappello,’ Pedani-Fabris, Relazioni: 417–19.
50
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Because of her access to the inner palace and other restricted spaces,
she was able to provide a unique peephole not normally available to
Venice’s male diplomats or their functionaries. In 1594, for instance, she
informed the bailo of Ottoman war discussions gleaned from conversations she heard in the seraglio. She provided information on the sultan’s
fleet, its leadership and potential targets, and reported on Ottoman military
finances, as well as concerns in the Porte that cash flow problems and
the failure to pay the soldiery might lead to uprisings. She also reported
on the political rivalries within the palace, particularly that between the
influential renegade, Kapudanpaşa Cigala, and her brother.54
In 1596, Fatima sent a handwritten note to Marco Venier warning that
the sultana’s kira, Esperanza Malchi, was forcefully trying to convince
the sultan that Venice was assisting the Austrians in their war with the
Ottomans. She wrote:
I do not know what the Jews have found out about [Venice’s actions], but
they agitate greatly the sultana who is full of fire, and from what I have heard
this Jewish woman...says that [the Venetians] are traitors: other particulars
I really do not know, except that she [Esperanza] is making every effort to
damage Venice’s reputation.55
Based on this report, the bailo arranged a secret meeting with an influential woman in the harem. She sat hidden from view in a window
nearby and communicated through her kira. She reported that not only
was Fatima reporting secretly on the affairs inside the seraglio but that
‘she had worked vigorously with the queen in [Venice’s] favour by cutting
off the voice of whomever spoke against [Venice] to her’. This situation
eventually boiled over into a heated argument ‘in front of the sultana’
between Fatima and Esperanza.56
Fatima also pushed her brother to favour Venetian interests more consistently. For years, Venetian baili had tried to enlist Gazanfer’s support,
but were repeatedly rebuffed because he feared that supporting his patria
would compromise him politically. Even an impassioned request from
SDC, b. 39, cc. 282r–v, 20 May 1594, Fatima to Marco Venier.
SDCop, r. 11, cc. 183–85, 1 Nov 1596, Marco Venier to Senate.
56
SDCop, r. 11, cc. 174–83, 5 Dec 1596, Marco Venier to Senate; Pedani-Fabris, ‘Safiye’s
Household and Venetian Diplomacy’: 27.
54
55
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his mother fell on deaf ears.57 However, Fatima—who was reported to
possess ‘supreme authority’ with Gazanfer because ‘he loved her most
cordialissimamente’—was much more successful in influencing her
brother: her self-described technique was to play on his sympathy for
her, particularly her loneliness for her sons, and to appeal to his vanity
by suggesting how favouring Venice would raise his reputation in
Christendom. This proved effective, ‘because these men delight in worldly
recognition (fumo mondano), and they must be humoured.’58 The results
were indisputable: Gazanfer freed Venetian slaves, protected Venetian
merchants, defended the sultan’s Latin-rite Christian subjects, instructed
the baili on navigating the ever-changing political world of the Porte,
and worked behind the scenes to have Venice’s friends in the Ottoman
hierarchy placed in positions of power and its enemies neutralised.59 There
was, to be sure, a strict reciprocity to this relationship: Gazanfer expected Venetian officials to benefit his sister, to support his own political
machinations and to solidify his prestige by providing luxury goods and
foods for the sultan and other dignitaries.60
If Fatima worked to benefit Venice’s interests in the Porte, she was
not averse to using her influence to benefit the social and financial status
of her own family, particularly her sons. Soon after her arrival in
Constantinople, she began sending large sums of money, expensive jewels
and other goods to them, and in 1607, she used a portion of those funds
‘Relazione di Gianfrancesco Morosini,’ in Albèri, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti,
vol. 3: 298–99; SDC, b. 20, cc. 16r–19r, 4 Sept 1584, Gianfrancesco Morosini to Senate;
CollRel, b. 4, cc. 32r-v, ‘Relazione di Lorenzo Bernardo;’ CollRel, b. 4, cc. n.n., ‘Relazione
di Lorenzo Bernardo.’
58
SDC, b. 39, cc. 282r–v, 20 May 1594, Fatima to Bailo; SDC, b. 39, cc. 8v–10v,
12 Mar 1594, Marco Venier to Senate.
59
SDC, b. 35, c. 311v, 12 June 1592, Matteo Zane to Senate; SDC, b. 37, cc. 211r-v, 17
May 1593, Matteo Zane to Senate; SDC, b. 50, cc. 67v–68r, 2 Oct 1599, Girolamo Capello
to Senate; SDC, b. 55, c. 1r, 11 Mar 1602, Agostino Nani to Senate; SDC, b. 50, cc. 238r–
246r, 10 Jan 1599 (MV), Girolamo Capello and Vincenzo Gradenigo to Senate; SDC, b.
39, cc. 40v–42v, 24 Mar 1594, Marco Venier to Senate; SDC, b. 51, cc. 120r–v, 20 Apr
1600. Girolamo Capello to Senate; ‘Relazione di Girolamo Cappello,’ in Pedani-Fabris,
Relazioni: 408, 417–19; SDC, b. 40, cc. 481r–482v, 31 Jan 1594 (MV), Marco Venier to
Senate; SDC, b. 47, cc. 302r–303r, 25 July 1598, Girolamo Capello to Senate.
60
SDC, b. 40, c. 142r, Note of KapEa asi; SDC, b. 33, cc. 42v–42r, 16 Mar 1591,
Girolamo Lippomano to Senate; SDC, b. 52, cc. 296r–297r, 6 Jan 1600 (MV), Agostino
Nani to Senate.
57
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to purchase a house for 2,700 ducats for their benefit.61 She arranged for
two noted patricians to serve as the boys’ wards, for an influential merchant in Venice to oversee the family’s financial holdings and she negotiated important and lucrative Venetian administrative offices for them.62
Fatima’s life changed suddenly and dramatically, in early 1603, when
both her brother and her husband were caught up in a violent military
uprising. This was a moment of profound distress in the Ottoman Empire:
the sultans were engaged in expensive and drawn-out wars on two fronts
in Hungary and Persia, and major revolts in the Danubian principalities
and in Anatolia broke out. These events exacerbated an economy buffeted
by rampant inflation, repeated coin debasements and haemorrhaging imperial coffers due to endemic warfare. At the same time, the empire’s
population had doubled in a century, producing large-scale emigration
and forced dislocations. The sense that political inertia and ineptitude
were only compounding matters seriously threatened the centuries-old
Ottoman dynasty.63
Some of the most disruptive actions were carried out in the capital by
disgruntled members of the sultan’s armies who were outraged over long
campaigns, poor leadership and especially, payments that were in arrears
or devalued. In April 1600, for example, the sipahi rioted over their wages
and turned their fury on Esperanza Malchi and her son, who were violently
murdered and dragged through the streets of the capital. According to
Selaniki, Gazanfer—who with the valide sultana was perceived as the
de facto power behind the throne (he was derisively called sultan
Gazanfer kapEa asi)—only avoided the fury of the mob by promising to
stay out of government affairs.64 His luck ran out, however, three years later.
Notarile-Atti (NotAtti), b. 3383–3384, cc. 193r–196r, 11 May 1607.
SDCop, reg. 10, c. 18, 16 Oct 1593, Matteo Zane to Senate; SDCop, reg. 10, cc. 97–8,
13 Feb 1593, Matteo Zane and Marco Venier to Senate; SDC, b. 37, c. 1r, 12 Mar 1593,
Matteo Zane to Senate; SDC, b.37, cc. 30r-v, 14 Mar 1593, Matteo Zane to Senate; BAC,
b. 279, reg. 401, cc. 7v–8v, 13 Apr 1615. SDelC , b. 8, 4 Feb 1591; SDC, b. 37, c. 1r,
12 Mar 1593, Matteo Zane to Senate; SDC, b. 37, cc. 30r-v, 14 Mar 1593, Matteo Zane to
Senate.
63
Imber, The Ottoman Empire: 66–76; Parker, The General Crisis
of the Sixteenth
.
Century: 1–33; Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire: vol. 1: 170–75; I nalcik, The Ottoman
Empire: 41–52; Faroqhi, ‘Crisis and Change,’ passim; Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats:
141–228; Kafadar, ‘The Ottomans and Europe’ vol. 1: 613.
64
Galante, Esther Kyra d’après de nouveaux documents: 8–16; Mordtmann, ‘Die
jüdischen kira im Serai der Sultane’: 15–17; Pedani-Fabris, ‘Veneziani a Costantinopoli’: 80.
61
62
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Naima records that in early January 1603, a mob of sipahi cavalry
penetrated the palace and demanded an audience with the sultan to
consider ‘the state of the empire, everywhere torn and afflicted with rebellion and insubordination’.65 The soldiers complained to Mehmed about
military setbacks and the failure of his advisors to address these problems,
and charged that he was being deceived by his ministers about the truly
dire situation in his empire. The rebels demanded a number of changes,
including exiling his mother who was seen as usurping his authority.
When Mehmed refused this as an insult to his honour, the soldiers countered with a demand for Gazanfer’s head. The sultan tried to refuse, but
his efforts to save his favourite angered the mob, which demanded either
Gazanfer’s head or the sultan’s throne. Clearly Mehmed had no choice:
Gazanfer was brought into the divan and stripped to the waist. He begged
the sovereign he had known since he was boy for mercy and the sultan
attempted to stay the execution. When the soldiers saw the sultan’s
‘fervent love, [they] refused, sayeng they wold have his head only, and
all the rest of their lives should be spared.’ Mehmed issued the order, and
according to Naima, Gazanfer was executed with ‘a sword the colour of
water and as sharp as fire’. His head rolled to the sultan’s feet, and
Mehmed wept fiercely ‘for having seen murdered before his very eyes
the dearest person that he had in the world.’ In response, the rebellious
soldiers cheered so loudly, it was heard all the way across the Golden
Horn.66
Gazanfer’s death profoundly impacted his wide patronage and kinship
network, particularly his sister and brother-in-law. As an intimate ally
and relative, Ali was in great danger and so, ‘fled desperately with a
single servant’, leaving Fatima behind in his seraglio. For a time, officials
blanketed the city searching for him, but after passions died down, Ali
met secretly with the revolt’s leaders in a mosque and with several wellplaced bribes, convinced them of his innocence. With their protection he
was able to return to his home, but because of the sultan’s animosity,
and without his murdered patron’s protection, he was unable to regain
65
Naima, Annals, . vol. 1: 212–14. On the revolt, see Shaw, History of the Ottoman
Empire, vol. 1: 186; Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: 47.
66
The Travels of John Sanderson in the Levant: 216 n. 1; Naima, Naîmâ Târihi, vol. 1:
317; Burian, The Report of Lello: 12–13; Hammer, Histoire, vol, 2: 303–304; SDC, b. 56,
cc. 208r–211v, 9 Jan 1602 (MV), Francesco Contarini to Senate.
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his former position. Several months later he made the mistake of venturing
from his home late one evening and was arrested and strangled between
the doors of the palace on orders from Mehmed, who believed the rumours
that Ali had squired away vast wealth of his own and of Gazanfer. And
indeed, when Ali’s garden was dug up and his house broken apart, containers of cash, jewels and other goods valued at almost 200,000 ducats
were found.67 The sultan was in desperate need of funds and this fortune
went to cover many immediate imperial expenses. Additionally, Ottoman
documents make clear that under the sultan’s direction, the grand vizier,
Yemişçi Hasan Paşa, immediately began the process of liquidating Ali
A a’s property to provide additional desperately needed capital.68
As these events unfolded, Fatima remained cloistered, no doubt fearing
for her life in the anarchy and upheaval of those days. While one report
stated that she had ‘been blinded without knowing the reason’, this is
uncorroborated and it seems more likely that she was able to avoid retribution.69 Indeed, despite claiming over the years that she desired to
return to Christendom, she made no effort to flee Constantinople. Instead,
she and her son, Giacomo, who had also converted to Islam in 1600,
both remained in the city in anticipation of receiving some significant
reward from the bereaved sultan. And in fact, after the disorder in the
capital had subsided a few months later, in recognition of the loss of
Gazanfer, his friend and advisor, Mehmed gave Giacomo an office with
an income of 50 aspers daily, and he awarded Fatima a house in the
capital so that she could live out her life ‘honourably’.70
With this, Fatima fades from the historical record. We can assume
that with the passing of her brother and the death, several months later,
of Mehmed III, her access to the imperial harem and therefore, her political influence and relevance, came to an end. The Venetian baili who
67
SDC, b. 56, c. 222r, 9 Jan 1602 (MV) Francesco Contarini to Senate; SDC, b. 56, cc.
277r-v, 1 Feb 1602 (MV) Francesco Contarini to Senate; SDC, b. 56, c. 316r, 9 Feb 1602
(MV), Francesco Contarini to Senate; SDC, b. 57, c. 29r, 7 Mar 1603, Francesco Contarini
to Senate; Archivio di stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato, f. 4277, c. 398r, 9 Mar
1603; Pecevi, Pecevi Tarihi, vol. 2: 239–40; Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Segreteria di
stato Venezia, b. 37, c. 95r, 12 Apr 1603, Monsignore Offredo to Cardinal San Giorgio.
68
Orhonlu, Telhîsler, #39, #41, #91.
69
Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Segreteria di stato Venezia, b. 37, c. 95r, 12 Apr 1603,
Monsignore Offredo to Cardinal San Giorgio.
70
SDC, b. 56, cc. 259v–260r, 20 Jan 1602 (MV), Francesco Contarini to Senate; SDC,
b. 57, cc. 156v–157r, 19 Apr 1603, Francesco Contarini to Senate.
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had lauded her so highly during her first decade in Constantinople fall
conspicuously silent about her life after the deaths of Gazanfer and Ali.
Notarial records make occasional reference to Fatima’s management of
her estate in Venice. In 1607, she purchased a house in Venice near the
campo of San Michiel Arcangelo for 2,700 ducats from the nobleman
Antonio Trevisan. Two years later, she directed her commercial agent in
the lagoon to pass management of all her property to Baldissare.71
The last mention we have of Fatima is a brief announcement of her
death in 1613.72 In her will, she left a sizable estate, including her house
in Venice, ‘three pieces of land’ with walls, wells and other structures
and a total of 32 fields near Concordia in Friuli. Since Baldissare had
died without children, and Giacomo remained in Constantinople, her
will awarded her entire estate to three important Venetian religious institutions: the monastery of Santa Croce, the Hospital of the Pietà and the
Convertite.73 This was a common practice among Venetian women. However, Fatima’s choice of beneficiaries is revealing.74 Santa Croce, with
its large convent of Franciscan nuns, was a common recipient of women’s
bequests. The latter two, however, are more interesting. The Hospital of
the Pietà was the oldest and largest Venetian orphanage, charged, as one
contemporary described, with the care of over a thousand ‘unhappy children, cast into whatever situation Divine Providence permitted’ by the
actions of their ‘iniquitous and unhappy mothers’.75 The Convertite, on
the other hand, was specifically dedicated to rescuing fallen women,
particularly prostitutes and courtesans, and maybe even a renegade
woman.76 Perhaps in her last testament, Fatima was able finally to do
penance and to find a degree of peace with her decision to abandon her
home, her young children and her religion for the prestige and fabulous
wealth of the Porte.77
71
NotAtti, b. 3383–3384, cc. 193r–196r, 11 May 1607; BAC, b. 276, reg. 395, cc. 7r-v,
26 Mar 1609.
72
BAC, b. 279, reg. 401, cc. 7v–8v, 13 Apr 1615.
73
BAC, b. 317, cc. 15r–16v, 1 July 1598; NotAtti, b. 8422 I, cc. 39v–49v, 19 May 1616;
NotAtti, b. 8423 III, cc. 343r–348v, 9 Dec 1617.
74
Evangelisti, ‘Wives, Widows, and Brides of Christ’: 246.
75
Corner, Notizie storiche delle chiese e monasteri di Venezia: 162–64, 380–83; Pullan,
Rich and Poor: 207, 259–63, 368–69, 413.
76
McGough, ‘Women, Private Property, and the Limitations of State Authority in Early
Modern Venice’: 33–34; Pullan, Rich and Poor: 258, 377–80, 416–17.
77
SDC, b. 51, cc. 374r–375r, Fatima to Bailo.
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Fatima’s story provides a rare window into a range of broader issues
regarding gender and religious identity in the early modern Mediterranean.
On the simplest level, her story fulfils a compensatory role. While much
has been written about the phenomenon of renegades in the early modern
Mediterranean, women have, for the most part, been overlooked in this
literature. To a degree the invisibility of renegade women is a product of
the documentary challenges scholars face in studying women, who have
been, as Joan Scott has argued, ‘systematically left out of the official
record’.78 This is especially true of renegade scholarship, which is based
almost entirely on inquisitional records in which women are disproportionally under-represented. Fatima’s tale helps to recover the experience
of women renegades and to make them visible by inserting them into the
existing scholarly dialogue. While men’s motivations for conversion were
also varied and complex, they often centred on social and economic
factors associated with the perception that the Ottoman world presented
greater opportunities for social mobility and financial gain.79 In contrast,
Fatima’s motivations fit more into tentative patterns scholars have identified in studying women’s conversions in other contexts.80 Women’s motivations were very often tied up in complex familial situations—problems
with financially grasping or neglectful husbands, with parents trying to
impose undesirable marriages or concerns over issues associated with their
children. Such are, of course, not exclusively women’s issues, nor conversely, were socio-economic or political matters only components in men’s
conversions: conversion is complex, multivalent and motivated by a web
of factors. Indeed, as Fatima’s case indicates, financial factors certainly
played a role in her and other women’s conversions. However, in general,
issues associated with the domestic hearth—marriage, divorce, dowry,
rearing children—figure centrally in women’s conversion experiences.81
Beyond this, Fatima’s case also suggests the need to complicate our
assumptions about early modern women’s religious identity. There is a
Scott, ‘The Problem of Invisibility’: 5.
Dursteler, Venetians in Constantinople: 113; Scaraffia, Rinnegati: 4–5; Bennassar
and Bennassar, Les chrétiens d’Allah: 228–50; Bennassar, ‘Conversion ou reniement’:
1363–64.
80
See, for example, Siebenhüner, ‘Conversion, Mobility and the Roman Inquisition’.
81
For comparisons, see Shatzmiller, ‘Marriage, Family, and the Faith’: 255; Greene, A
Shared World: 93–94; Baer, ‘Islamic Conversion Narratives of Women’: 426–27; Povero,
Missioni in terra di frontiera: 161–62, 303–304.
78
79
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significant body of literature which assumes that women were more deeply
religious than men and therefore, more rooted in and less likely to alter
their religious identities. For example, Goitein’s Geniza study found ‘an
anomaly in the conversion rate of women in comparison to men,’ suggesting that Jewish women were more likely to resist conversion to Islam.
Similar evidence indicates ‘that in comparison to men, Christian women
in Islamic lands...resisted conversion,’ and that late medieval Coptic
women withstood strong pressure to follow their husbands in converting
to Islam.82 In a more distant context, in early modern North America,
women made up an estimated two-thirds of total church membership.83
In the Iberian Peninsula, Mark Meyerson and Mary Elizabeth Perry have
argued that both Jewish and Muslim women were more resistant to conversion because of their ‘acute sense of responsibility for perpetuating...traditions through socializing their children...Baptism signified for
them not just a personal abandonment of [their faiths] but also a negation
of their accustomed maternal role in the lives of their children.’84
As Fatima’s experience suggests, Mediterranean women also opted
for conversion without coercion or compulsion. It seems clear that she
decided to transfer to Constantinople and to convert in order to free herself
from her failed second marriage and as a way to benefit herself and her
sons. Her decision to remain in Constantinople after Gazanfer’s death is
further evidence of the decisive role she took in this process. Her experience matches the findings of other studies which indicate women’s openness
to conversion in certain situations. Rodney Stark has found that women
were disproportionately attracted to Christianity in its first centuries,
while Chiara Povero has shown that Jesuit missionaries working among
the Waldensians had significant success in converting women, even
though they reflexively defined women as ‘cruel and hostile, because they
blocked the conversion of family members’.85 In Reformation Europe,
scholars have found no set pattern for women’s involvement in religious
movements. If noble French women more often preceded their husbands
in conversion, there is no evidence that non-noble urban women were
Shatzmiller, ‘Marriage, Family, and the Faith’: 236–37.
Walter and Davie, ‘The Religiosity of Women in the Modern West’: 642.
84
Meyerson, ‘Aragonese and Catalan Jewish Converts at the Time of the Expulsion’:
138; Perry, ‘Contested Identities’: 179, 181.
85
Stark, The Rise of Christianity: 95–128; Povero, Missioni in terra di frontiera: 304.
82
83
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inclined or coerced to follow the religious decisions of their husbands,
nor indeed did men mimic their wives’ choices.86 In the final analysis, it
is likely that ‘as many women favoured the Reformation as opposed
it.’87 All this suggests that, despite axiomatic assumptions about women’s
religiosity, they were probably no more or less inclined to conversion
than men.
Finally, Fatima’s odyssey provides a window into ways in which women
in the Mediterranean were able to subordinate societal and cultural mentalities and structures. To say women were agents is to say nothing particularly new or insightful. Much work in recent years, by both Ottoman
and European scholars, has illustrated that women were ‘active agents
in their own destinies rather than passive victims’.88 Fatima’s story, however, contributes to this discourse by illuminating the unique modes of
subversion available to women in the particular spatial context of the
Mediterranean. She utilised the intersecting political, religious and cultural frontiers of the Mediterranean as leverage to improve her personal,
social and economic lot, as a means of defending herself and her children
and to free herself from a troubled relationship. The space she and other
women inhabited—the Mediterranean with its islands and peninsulas,
its lengthy coastal areas as well as its hinterlands—these all created a
unique geographical setting of ‘relative proximity...but also clear separation’ or proximate separation. The sea, in other words, served both to
join and to divide its constituent parts. In addition, the intersection of
numerous cultural zones, as well as the presence of all three of the great
monotheistic religions, combined to create a familiar foreignness that
made physical and psychological migration both imaginable and reasonably accessible.89 These boundaries, both physical and cultural, all served
as fulcrums on which women willing to transgress borders might prise
themselves free from complex circumstances and realities in which they
normally had very limited power to act.
86
Roelker, ‘The Appeal of Calvinism to French Noblewomen’: 402; Davis, Society and
Culture in Early Modern France: 81.
87
Karant-Nunn, ‘The Reformation of Women’: 180.
88
Scully, ‘Marriage or a Career?’: 857.
89
Abulafia, ‘What is the Mediterranean?’: 18–19, 26.
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