Troublesome Travelling Churchmen

Abstract

The appointment of chaplains to the English communities living in Ottoman lands proved to be a tricky business.² They enjoyed only uncertain authority, a problem compounded by the delay in receiving orders of dubious enforceability from the Company in London, and by the unlicensed and riotous habits of the European community. Indeed, their greatest challenge was resistance from the expatriates themselves. For many English merchants, the attractions of living in foreign cities included not only the opportunity to make a great deal of money, but also the chance to behave in ways that might have come under prohibitive scrutiny in London. The attentions of a church official would hardly be welcome to those Sanderson considered devils, madmen and whoremongers.

I assuer you heare [in Istanbul] ar a jolly sett of divers devells, fooles, maddmen, antiques, monsters, beasts, whoremongers. And a whore should have bine at [supper] in mans apparrell, but was sent out of the rome because a cuckould of this damned crue could not brooke her company.

John Sanderson, 1600¹