Spirit · The Spiritual Conversations of Giovanni Battista Eliano (1530–1589) and Islam: A Jesuit of Jewish Origin Crossing Religious Boundaries

The general objective (GO) of Spirit is to produce a philological and historical study of the Spiritual Conversations (Muṣāḥaba rūḥāniyya) by Giovanni Battista Eliano (1530–1589), a Jewish convert to Christianity who became a member of the Society of Jesus. The Spiritual Conversations (SC) is a work that simulates a dialogue between two Muslim pilgrims in Mecca on doctrinal questions concerning Islam and the Qur’an. It was produced in Rome in the late sixteenth century and circulated widely across Europe and the Middle East, both in printed and manuscript versions. The sub-objectives of Spirit are: (SO_1) to demonstrate that European textual sources in Arabic are essential for understanding and reconstructing the global cultural and religious impact of the Qur’an; (SO_2) to show the co-produced nature of knowledge about Islam in early modern Europe, which was often created with the support of Muslims, Jews, converts, and Arab Christians, and subsequently disseminated across confessional boundaries in both Europe and the Middle East. Dr Stella will carry out his research at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies (IAJS) at Boston College, at the Department of History, Anthropology, Religions, Art, and Performing Arts (SARAS) at Sapienza University of Rome, and at the Center for Arab Christian Research and Documentation (CEDRAC) of Saint Joseph University of Beirut. The two main research outputs will be: 1) An open-access digital critical edition of the Arabic text of SC, which will include: critical apparatus; source and parallel passages apparatus; index of lemmas, proper names, and places; list of citations (from the Qur’an, Islamic and Christian literature); 2) A final monograph, consisting of a historical essay that will explore the relationship between the textual and intellectual production of SC and its surrounding social, cross-confessional and cross-religious environment.