I confini della salvezza: schiavitù, conversione e libertà nella Roma di età moderna, by Serena Di Nepi

Serena Di Nepi’s book (the title of which translates as ‘The Boundaries of Salvation: Slavery, Conversion and Freedom in Early Modern Rome’) identifies and explores important new aspects of the problem of slavery and conversion in Rome from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. The focus is on the special Roman mechanism of emancipation and citizenship that was available to enslaved people once they had undergone conversion in the conservatories of Campidoglio. This mechanism started in 1566, when Pope Pius V published Dignum et Rationi, which resumed an ancient Roman custom that had been established by the Edict of Caracalla. The enslaved could plead on their knees for their emancipation in a public ceremony and a notary, after evaluating the individual’s conversion and his behaviour as a Catholic, had the option of not only freeing the slave but also giving him citizenship. For this reason, captives and slaves from the Mediterranean tried to escape and reach Rome, a cosmopolitan city offering potential freedom. Using a rich array of documentation (the restitutiones ad libertatem as well as sources from the Holy Office and Propaganda Fide), Di Nepi explores on one hand the manumission of 917 former slaves between 1617 and 1797 in Rome, while also considering the conversion of slaves and people of colour far from Rome (in Malta, the Congo and Korea) but living under Roman Catholic rules. Di Nepi makes clear that these were very different histories, and the book deals with minority religious groups, slaves, people of colour and conversion. The author, however, makes brilliant connections across time and space, between religion and slavery and between Rome and the wider world.