Reading Ottoman Banners in the State of the Church

This contribution addresses some studies of Ottoman banners produced in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century State of the Church. The banners discussed were part of a larger European phenomenon of spoils taken during the wars with the Ottoman Empire and then donated to religious sanctuaries as ex-votos. The scientific approach that inspired the interpretation of the banners produced some of the earliest modern works devoted to objects from Islamic lands. Case studies with a particular focus on Ottoman objects held in the Italian cities of Rome, Loreto and Urbino highlight how the expanding familiarity with Oriental languages in Europe helped in the interpretation of Islamic objects and gave them a place that they had never had before in the European geography of knowledge.