In the last stages of my PhD in History, I became increasingly interested in the complex and diverse cultural and religious landscape of early modern Mediterranean cities. My proposed research project at the BSR focused on Ancona, a city that I investigated extensively for my PhD on early modern quarantine stations. The project initially focused on cross-cultural encounters and urban space within Ancona, during the eighteenth century. Positioned on the opposite shore to the Balkans, Ancona, a historically important trading post of the Papal State on the Adriatic Sea, has been defined by the historian Jean Delumeau as ‘a bridge between East and West’. The city's social structure reflected this assertion as in the early modern period the city was populated by several foreign communities of merchants, including Ottomans, Greeks and Jews.
I originally aimed at analysing three key urban institutions within the diverse and cross-cultural environment of the city: the lazzaretto (a permanent preventative quarantine station for goods and travellers coming from the Ottoman Levant), the fondaco (merchant's lodging house and goods warehouse) and the ghetto. In addition, the project also aimed at investigating the presence of non-Catholic burial grounds within the city or in its vicinity. Indeed, while researching the presence of non-Catholic burial grounds inside quarantine stations across the Mediterranean, I started to wonder how religious minorities (Jews, Muslims, Protestants and other non-Catholic confessions) managed funerary rituals in the Catholic context of Italian cities. In the early modern period, religious minorities, from permanent ones to more transient groups, had to follow specific rules in staging their funerary rituals and burial practices: canon law forbade the mixing of members of different confessions and religions during rituals and prohibited the burial of non-Catholics, heretics and excommunicated subjects in consecrated cemeteries and churches. While at the BSR, I decided to focus my research solely on this aspect and across the Italian peninsula, thanks to the BSR's assistance in gaining access to the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede in the Vatican. The archive holds documents produced by the Holy Office, and letters sent by the Inquisition from different cities of the Mediterranean area, providing an overview of the issue of non-Catholic burial practices and rituals in different cities of the peninsula. The holdings of the BSR library were also significant in developing my research on secondary literature which was also enhanced thanks to access to other institutions in Rome such as the Biblioteca Hertziana, the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea.
My stay at the BSR was essential for the development of my current postdoctoral project on Death and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Italy. My current research aims at investigating issues of non-Catholic burials and funerals to understand the relationship between the dominant Catholic society and religious minorities, from permanent communities to transient ones, including travellers and slaves. The experience as a Rome Awardee was invaluable and has enriched me both as a researcher and as a person, thanks to the multidisciplinary environment and close contact with other scholars and artists.
