Muslim Neophytes in Venice: Enslaved and Free People, 1750–1824

This article focuses on continuity in the practice of the conversion of Muslims and its social implications in Venice in the period 1750–1824. Neophytes were people of other religious confessions who converted and were baptized as Catholics. Among neophytes of Muslim origin in Venice at this time were enslaved people, formerly enslaved individuals, and free men and women, as well as others of uncertain status. While the article discerns patterns of continuity in the practice of the conversion of Muslims and the wider experience of enslaved people in Venice, it argues that significant changes occurred after the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797. These developments emerged in response to the shifting political climate and legal reforms of the Napoleonic period (1806–1814) and the post-1814 period in which Venice came under Austrian rule, culminating in a reduction in the number of neophytes and enslaved people in the city. The geographical origins of the neophytes ranged from the Ottoman Empire and its regencies to Eastern Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Atlantic. Sources from Venice’s Pius House of Catechumens reveal the types of work the neophytes performed and indicate how changes in ownership dictated slaves’ or former slaves’ trajectories before their arrival in Venice. The article also highlights how religious conversion from Islam to Catholicism was a watershed moment for individuals, one that had a major bearing on their living and working conditions and, in some cases, their social status.