Project Summary

CONTEXT

In recent years, participation in COST ACTIONS projects – among which we highlight, due to their thematic affinity, «IS LE - Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean (1350-1750)» (Cost Action 18129) and «PIMo - People in Motion: Entangled Histories of Displacement across the Mediterranean (1492-1923)» (Cost Action 18140) – have allowed us to understand the importance of these scientific networks and their potential for developing knowledge.

We are increasingly aware that the study of the Order of the Holy Trinity’s history and assistance action is transversal to several European countries. This religious order was established in the 12th century by St. João da Mata and St. Felix of Valois, in France, with the aim of ransoming Christian captives and providing them with religious support and assistance while prisoners in Muslim lands. The early symbol of this religious order – an angel with crossed arms from whose hands spring two chains connected to two flanking captives, on one side a Christian captive and on the other a Muslim captive – indicates the exchange of captives and a concern with, above all, assistance and prisoner exchange. With the conquest of the North African squares and then, throughout the Early Modern Age (the last ransom of Portuguese captives from Algiers occurred in the early 19th century), the capture of individuals on both sides of the Mediterranean was common practice between the Christian and Muslim kingdoms, with the aim of exchanging captives or profiting with the payment of ransoms. Since the 16th century and given the systematic policy of privateering along the European coasts and Atlantic islands, Algiers became the main centre of captives, where individuals from the various European kingdoms awaited their ransoms and return to their homeland. Countries such as Spain, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, among others, where the Order of the Holy Trinity was (and in some cases is still) present, ransomed captives in a similar way.  The modes of organization and religious adaptation of the order; the relations established with the different crowns; the religious rites; the organization of captive ransoming; the processions of freed captives upon arrival in their countries of origin constitute common facts in studying the history of these nations; common themes that are the basis of this proposal for the creation of a research network.

In addition to the ransom of individuals by payment or by exchange with Muslim captives seized by the Europeans during armed conflicts and by the naval fleets guarding the continental and insular coasts, the religious of the Order of the Holy Trinity, as previously mentioned, provided assistance to captives imprisoned in North Africa. Prevented from mission work, they developed an assistance mission, both religious and illness-related, as evidenced, for example, by the Trinitarian hospital of Algiers in the possession of Spanish religious and the result of successive donations by Portuguese monarchs. Together with the contacts established between the Trinitarians and the North African rulers – the Sultans of Morocco or the Deys of Algiers –, and with the owners of the captives, this assistance work fostered a close relationship, as attested by documentary sources. Knowledge of the Other and their ways of living and surviving in a different world are well documented in the accounts of the rescues organized by the Trinitarian fathers.

The simultaneity in the same territory of populations of diverse origin – the result of these forced migrations along with those who moved freely – forced the rulers of the kingdoms and cities that received them to determine the newcomers' degree of integration and inclusion in the social and productive fabric and to define the policies to be adopted. Relations between the European and North African sovereigns, whether more peaceful or more confrontational, shaped a set of common diplomatic practices and norms. The stipulated peace and trade treaties bear witness to the long history of shared economic exchanges and the commercial, political and military negotiations between the two seacoasts. Gradually, these exchanges wove a network of contacts, mediators and references for credits, exchange and circulation of information. The coexistence of members of different religious confessions and nationalities called into question the legal models and the cultural and social standards of each group, which were forced to share the same urban space, whether they wanted to or not, and reach agreements in order to ensure coexistence. 

The ransom economy is a fundamental theme for the Mediterranean and Atlantic border, in a changing, dynamic, insecure and dangerous world, wherein captives awaited return to their land of origin on the other side of that border or changed political or religious side (the renegades), either to survive or by choice. The study of concrete rescue missions (religious and non-religious) and the analysis of the credit networks and agents involved in the trade of captives takes us beyond the concepts of infidel and enemy, revealing the transversal nature of the interests at stake in the rescue negotiations. The real conflict was not between Christians, Muslims and Jews, but between captives and traders of captives of any origin, in a conflict of interest totally transversal to political and confessional boundaries.