ABSTRACT
By analyzing the methods and goals underlying the Italian catechumen houses, this chapter seeks to cast light on a little-known but revealing corner of that vast enterprise. It explores the models of conversion, to understand the character and practices of the institutions and, by developing two illustrative cases, to interpret how family ties functioned as perhaps the most vital conduit in negotiating conversions. Indeed the late fifteenth-century expulsions of the Jews from Spain and Portugal brought an enormous migration into Italy, France and Germany, precipitating renewed attention to Jews in these countries and, inevitably, renewed concern for their conversion. Through his autobiographical conversion narrative, Ignatius describes his own model conversion as a gradual and stepwise progress over the course of two decades, punctuated by dramatic decisions occasioned by readings and spiritual conversation. Early modern participants in the market for catechumens were well equipped with skepticism, and willing to ascribe motivations for conversion to societal inducements and to non-'religious' categories.
