Introducing the volume to come, this chapter explains the need for new approaches to the study of literary and cultural interactions in the Roman empire that cross linguistic, cultural and religious boundaries. It begins with a brief overview of the diversity of cross-cultural interactions that can be traced, on and off the page, between different individuals and communities in the second century CE. It analyses current and innovative methodologies for studying ‘intertextuality’ in different disciplines, including approaches that amplify gaps or silences, as well as instances of dialogue/cross-fertilisation. It then stresses three ways in which the volume particularly aims to contribute: firstly, by including technical, documentary, epigraphic and oral material in its wide-ranging study of ‘literary’ interactivity; secondly, by stressing the relationship between textual interaction, cultural practices and material aspects of empire; thirdly, by working out from intertextuality to interdiscursivity, shining a spotlight on the migration of ideas as well specific interactions. The introduction ends with a case study – the story of Arion and the dolphin, retold by many ancient authors – that exemplifies the processes of cross-cultural travel and transmission in the ancient world and also the challenges that scholars face in tracing and interpreting such cross-cultural interactions.

After exploring Eliano’s participation in the burning of the Talmud in Rome in 1553, the introduction outlines the book’s central argument regarding the entanglement of Eliano’s Jewish past and Catholic identity. By exploring Eliano’s Jewishness, which I define as the burden that his Jewish past continued to bear on the formulation of his Catholic identity, I argue that Eliano’s missionary efforts allow us to unpack how sincere converts approached their new religious identities in an age of heightened anxiety regarding religious conversion. By thinking of Eliano as a palimpsest of religious identity formation – someone whose Jewish past continued to play a foundational role in the way he became and existed as a Catholic – the book contributes to our historiographical understanding of the role of the individual in constructing collective identities in the early modern Mediterranean and how individuals were agents of collective change. His story likewise illuminates how Catholic missionary activity was also a field in which missionaries used their efforts to promote the apostolic mission of the Catholic Church to construct fuller senses of themselves and secure their place as Catholics.

This short epilogue revisits the major themes of the book. Rather than delving back into Eliano’s life, this epilogue uses the plaque that was placed in the cobblestones of Campo de’ Fiori in Rome in 2011 to commemorate the burning of the Talmud – in which Eliano participated – in 1553. Inscribed on the plaque are “the pages burn, but the letters fly” and “invoke peace for whoever laments your burning.” These quotes capture the essence of the futility of erasure and desires to ignore the burden that the past bears on the present. But these quotes also point to the very real ways in which the human experience transcends Eliano and the religio-cultural landscape of the early modern Mediterranean. This epilogue invites the reader to think more broadly about identity construction and individuals’ role in it through their interactions with one another. Just as Eliano constructed his sense of self by performing his Catholicness in light of his Jewishness in the theater of the everyday, so too do we confront difference, reconcile pasts and presents, attempt to construct better senses of ourselves, and come to terms with where we fit in the world.