A Jewish Jesuit in the Eastern Mediterranean: Early Modern Conversion, Mission and the Construction of Identity by Robert John Clines (review)

Reviewed by: A Jewish Jesuit in the Eastern Mediterranean: Early Modern Conversion, Mission and the Construction of Identity by Robert John Clines Bernard Heyberger A Jewish Jesuit in the Eastern Mediterranean: Early Modern Conversion, Mission and the Construction of Identity. By Robert John Clines. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. ix, 268. 108. 00. ISBN 978-1-108-48534-0. ) This study is devoted to the fascinating figure of Giovanni Battista Eliano (1530–89), a Jesuit born in Rome into a Jewish family. His father was a merchant, End Page 418 while his mother was the daughter of Elijah Levita, a prolific scholar, well known for his collaboration with numerous Christian scholars. In 1537, the young boy moved to Venice and grew up there under the custody of this grandfather. Around 1545, he moved with his parents to Constantinople, then to Cairo, where the family settled permanently. These travels allowed him to acquire an understanding of various Levantine social contexts, and to learn Arabic, later two major assets for his career as a Jesuit missionary. 1548 he entered into a period of personal crisis, with the revelation of the conversion of his older brother to Catholicism in Venice, and the death of grandfather Elijah. Having returned to Venice in order to study to become a rabbi, he began to frequent his brother and his Catholic friends. In September 1551, he broke up with the rabbis, and was baptized. He entered the Society of Jesus, becoming the only Jesuit converted from Judaism in the early modern period. In 1553, as a novice, he participated to the burning of the Talmud on a square in the center of Rome. The book opens with this event, which introduces "a series of questions about the nature of conversion as a lived experience" (3). The locution "Jewish Jesuit" in the form of an oxymoron in the title refers to the leitmotiv of Clines's study, as Eliano during all the remaining years of his life, never came to an end of being a Jew. Until his autobiography written a few months before his death (1588), he still continued to turn back to the fact of his Jewish origin and education, to take advantage of it or to justify himself against suspicions or accusations. Whereas, in the Mediterranean context, in that time, writing was often used by an individual to hide his true identity, or even to impersonate a false one, Eliano on the contrary writes to specify and deepen his own personality, to reconcile his Jewish past with his Christian present. As a Jesuit, Eliano wrote on himself drawing from the specific Jesuit cultural repertoire. Writing was a mandatory practice within the Society of Jesus, with the objective of a sharper introspection of the writer's self and simultaneously, his compliance with the necessity of conforming himself to the rules and ethics of the institution. Clines had access to an extensive corpus of sources, mainly correspondence and an autobiography, although sometimes too brief, constraining him to guess what could have been the state of mind and the feelings of Eliano. In a first stage of his belonging to the Society of Jesus, Eliano must have felt himself welcomed. Ignatius of Loyola had an affinity for Jewish converts (conversos), and admitted them into his inner circle. There was a preponderance of conversos at the head of the Society after Ignatius' death (1556). On the other hand, Eliano's skills in Hebrew and Arabic were valued and could be harnessed in the service of evangelizing, which happened in 1561, when he was appointed for a mission to the Copts, in Egypt. However, relying on his experience to serve Catholicism proved to be a paradoxical and dangerous entangled stance. During his stay in Cairo, his Jewish past would catch up with him. Like every community which has lost a member converted to another faith, that of Cairo's Jews could never accept the sincerity of this conversion, and ascribed it to material interest and moral weakness. Eliano finally was seized and led to the cadi, with an accusation of having converted End Page 419 to Catholicism to escape a debt, or even of having converted to Islam prior. . .