Abstract
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.
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Notes
John Reeve, ‘Introduction’, in John Reeve, ed., Sacred: Books of the Three Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam (London: The British Library, 2007), pp. 11–12, p. 11.
Nancy Bisaha, ‘Pius II’s Letter to Sultan Mehmed II: A Re-examination’, Crusades, 1 (2002), pp. 183–201;
Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), Ch. 4; Pius II, Commentaries, Margaret Meserve and Marcello Simonetta, eds and trans., 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003 ), I, Introduction, pp. vi–vii.
Serpil Bagci and Zeren Tandini, ‘Art of the Ottoman Court’, in Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600–1600, ed. David J. Roxburgh (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2005), pp. 260–375, p. 264.
Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West ( London: Reaktion, 2000 ), p. 42.
Elizabeth Hallam, ed., Chronicles of the Crusades: Eye-Witness Accounts of the Wars between Christianity and Islam ( London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989 ), p. 325.
Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 ( Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988 ), p. 71.
For a recent overview, see Warren Chernaik, The Merchant of Venice ( Plymouth: Northcote House, 2005 ).
See also James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1996 ).
Barnett D. Ovrut, ‘Edward I and the Expulsion of the Jews’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Ser., 67 (1977), pp. 224–35;
David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), Ch. 3.
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. John Russell Brown (London: Methuen, 1979), Act I, scene iii, lines 59–97. All subsequent references to this edition in parentheses in the text.
For evidence, see R. H. Tawney and Eileen Power, eds, Tudor Economic Documents, 3 vols (London: Longman, 1924), II, section 3. For the most important analysis of the early modern English economy, which points out that credit was as much a social as a financial phenomenon
see Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England ( Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998 ).
For a comprehensive recent history of the Reformation and its progress throughout Europe, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700 ( London: Allen Lane, 2003 ).
Theodorus Bibliander [and Philip Melancthon], Machvmetis Sarracenorvm Principis Vita Ac Doctrina Omnis, Quae & Ishmahelitarum, & Alcoranvm dicitur… (Basle, 1543).
For a discussion of the controversy surrounding the publication of this document, and Luther’s role, see Harry Clark, ‘The Publication of the Koran in Latin: A Reformation Dilemma’, Sixteenth Century Journal XV, no. 1 (1984), pp. 3–12.
David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), Ch. 10;
R. W. Chambers, Thomas More (London: Cape, 1935 ), pp. 243–4, 251–2;
Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More ( London: Chatto and Windus, 1998 ), pp. 299–304.
Anthony Munday and others, Sir Thomas More, eds, Vittorio Gabrieli and Giorgio Melchiori ( Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990 );
William Shakespeare, King Henry VIII, ed. Gordon McMullan ( London: Thomson, 2000 ).
Samuel Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage (London, 1613), p. 89.
Thomas Heywood, The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels (London, 1635), p. 283.
Quoted in Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Oxford: One World, 2000 [3rd edn]), p. 61.
See Desiderus Erasmus, ‘A Most Useful Discussion Concerning Proposals for War Against the Turks’, in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 64, ed. Dominic Baker-Smith (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005 ), pp. 201–66.
A. L. Horniker, ‘William Harborne and the Beginning of Anglo-Turkish Diplomatic and Commercial Relations’, Journal of Modern History, xviii (1946), pp. 289–305, p. 305.
See also the detailed examination of this correspondence in Susan Skilliter, William Harborne and the Trade with Turkey, 1578–1582 ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977 ).
Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or ouer Land, to the moste remote and farthest distant Quarters of the earth… (London, 1589), p. 165. A Declaration of the True Causes of the Great Trovbles, Presvpposed to be Intended Against the Realme of England (Cologne? 1592), p. 49.
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols, trans. Sian Reynolds (London: Collins, 1972), II, p. 799.
Robert Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk (1453–1517) ( Nieuwkoop: B. De Graaf, 1967 ), p. 222.
William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, a New Translation of the B-text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), passus 10, l.344. See also Matthew Dimmock, New Turkes: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England ( Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005 ), pp. 14–16.
Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991 ), p. 51.
See, for example the reaction of James VI of Scotland in his poem, The Lepanto, discussed in Robert Appelbaum, ‘War and Peace in The Lepanto of James VI and I’, Modern Philology, 97 (2000), pp. 333–63.
Braudel, Mediterranean, II, Pt 4. See also the seminal article by Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Battle of Lepanto and its place in Mediterranean History’, Past and Present, 57 (1972), pp. 53–73.
For Moryson, see Andrew Hadfield, ed., Amazons, Savages and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550–1630: An Anthology ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 ), pp. 166–78.
On conversion, see Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Ch. 1;
Daniel J. Vitkus, ed., Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England ( New York: Columbia University Press, 2001 ).
See Claire Jowitt, Voyage Drama and Gender Politics, 1589–1642: Real and Imagined Worlds ( Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003 ), pp. 58–75.
Robert Daborne, A Christian Turn’d Turk, in Three Turk Plays From Early Modern England, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), Sc. 8, l.24 and 1.28.
Robert Wilson, A right excellent and famous Comoedy called the three Ladies of London. Wherein is notablie declared and set foorth, how by the meanes of Lucar, Loue and conscience is so corrupted, that the one is married to Dissimulation, the other fraught with all abhomination… as it hath been publiquely played (London, 1584), sig. F. 1v.
John Foxe, A Sermon preached at the Christening of a certaine Iew, at London, by Iohn Foxe. Conteining an exposition of the xi. Chapter of S. Paul to the Romanes… Translated out of Latin into English by Iames Bell (London, 1578), sig. C. 2r.
Meredith Hanmer, The Baptizing of a Turke. A Sermon preached at the Hospitall of Saint Katherine, adioyning vnto her Maiesties Towre the 2. Of October 1586. At the Baptising of one Chinano a Turke, borne at Negropontus (London, 1586), sig. F. 3v.
This is exemplified in the individual cases recorded in Richard L. Kagan and Abigail Dyer, Inquisitorial Enquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004 ).
Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: In Search of Leo Africanus, A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds (London: Faber, 2006).
The work was translated into English in 1600 by John Pory: Leo Africanus, The History and Description of Africa (1600), ed. Robert Brown, 3 vols ( London: Hakluyt Society, 1896 ).
Colin Kidd, British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800 (Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Perhaps most influential are Edward Said, Orientalism ( London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978 )
and Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture ( London: Routledge, 1994 )
and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s work, particularly ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture ( Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988 ), pp. 271–313.
Important work has been also been done in an early modern context, such as Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 )
Nabil Matar Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)
Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579–1624 ( Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005 )
and most recently Jonathan Burton and Ania Loomba, eds, Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion ( Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 ).
See, for example, the introduction to Brian Cummings, The Literary Culture of the Reformation: Grammar and Grace ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 ).
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Dimmock, M., Hadfield, A. (2008). Introduction: The Devil Citing Scripture: Christian Perceptions of the Religions of the Book. In: Dimmock, M., Hadfield, A. (eds) The Religions of the Book. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582576_1
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