ABSTRACT
The most serious case of internal destabilization occurred in the Kingdom of Naples. In Naples, the chronic problem of administrative corruption was once again exposed by a particularly conscientious royal visitor in 1607-10. The conversion of Puglia began in 1542, when the men of Giovinazzo sent an order for some paintings through a merchant in Barletta to Venice; and it was completed during the half-century thereafter, when most local artists went to study in Naples or Rome. The masters of the Knights of Malta were still elected without regard for nationality, but they hired Italians to build their fortresses and design their cities; and they sent to Rome for Tridentine pastors qualified 'to give sermons, to supervise other spiritual activities and to instruct the youth'. Nevertheless, most Jews, before as after the Tridentine Reformation, were forced to live in ghettos on the model of the one established in Venice in 1516.
