Ragion di stato e salvezza dell'anima : : il riscatto dei cristiani captivi in Maghreb attraverso le redenzioni mercedarie, 1575-1725 / / Michele Bosco.

• Superior document: Premio Città di Firenze ; 61
• VerfasserIn: Bosco, Michele, 1985-
• Place / Publishing House: Firenze : : Firenze University Press,, 2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Premio Città di Firenze ; 61.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (400 pages) :; digital, PDF file(s).

In the centuries of the modern age, thousands of individuals were captured by pirates in the Mediterranean and reduced to slavery in the land of 'infidels': once they fell prisoner, they were sold, forced to hard labor, rowed in jails or destined for ransom. The redemption of Christians in the land of Islam was dealt with by institutes, city magistrates and religious orders, including the Mercedari. The book reconstructs the history and activity of this Order and other protagonists of that work in the Italian and Iberian area. Thanks to the study of the accounting books of redemptions sent to North Africa between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries, the author shows how even the religious obeyed the directives of political power and how that charitable work ended up bowing to economic and national interests. Michele Bosco is a European PhD in Modern History at the University of Florence and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.