Criminality and Christian Renegades in Three Pliegos Sueltos Poéticos

• In Event: Europe and Other Worlds: Converts, Renegades, Slaves, Native Peoples

Abstract

The voluntary religious conversion of Christian slaves to Islam is a thread unifying several seventeenth-century pliegos sueltos poéticos. These works are formulaic: the protagonist is captured and enslaved by Ottoman Muslim Turks; receives an offer to marry and convert to Islam; and finally recognizes the error of his or her ways and seeks redemption. The texts conclude with miraculous occurrences and divine intervention, as it is imperative that the criminal renegade repent and seek redemption. At the end the renegade either reintegrates into Christian society or suffers the consequences. While the Christian perspective of these romances should provoke sympathy with the plight of Christian captives, instead, it vilifies them because of their conversion to Islam and their subsequent marriages to Muslim Turks. The renegades’ crimes border on the pornographic—their salaciousness designed to increase sales and readership—the most reprehensible crime is conversion.

Author

• Stacey Parker Aronson, University of Minnesota, Morris