Wandering Lives: Eastern Christian Pilgrims, Alms collectors and ‘Refugees’ in Early Modern Rome

During the 17th and 18th centuries, Rome was visited by a great number of pilgrims and temporary immigrants, who resorted to the Holy See in order to obtain education and canonical dispensations, resolve cases of conscience, and secure alms and material aid. Eastern Christians were a consistent but hitherto neglected group among these travelers, coming from the European and Asiatic territories of the Ottoman Empire, or even beyond. During their stay in the city, they were hosted in the hospices attached to their “national churches” or took shelter in Rome’s public hospitals and charitable institutions. In order to be welcomed and see their demands met, an increasing number of Eastern Christians confessed the Catholic faith before the Roman Inquisition – this practice concerned not only those visitors who presented themselves as “schismatics” willing to be reconciled, but also some Uniate Catholics who had already converted in their country of origin. Their professions of faith were recorded in special registers that represent a mine of information for the historian: they include the names, patronymics, ages, places of origin and often the personal signatures of nearly 3000 individuals who reached Rome between 1655 and 1807. These records constitute a significant dataset, indicating their annual number, the moments of greatest influx and the communities most represented. By cross-checking the Inquisitorial documentation with other published and unpublished sources, this chapter addresses three key issues. What were the reasons that brought Eastern Christians, mostly clergymen, to Rome? What were the strategies put in place by them in order to ease their reception and possibly transform their temporary stay into a permanent one? How did the Catholic authorities strive to monitor these individuals, characterized by ambiguous confessional identity and whose conversion was always viewed with suspicion?