Conversion Narratives and the Roman Inquisition in Malta, 1650–1700

This article analyses the conversion narratives which Christian renegades to Islam narrated to the inquisitor on their arrival in Malta in the second half of the seventeenth century. A few of them really believed in their new faith and were declared formal heretics, but the great majority had either been brought up as Muslims since a tender age or else were only suspected of believing that one can save oneself as a Muslim. The inquisitors were very indulgent with them and believed them when they said that they preserved the Christian religion in their hearts and were Muslims only on the outside.     

Women's Devotional Bequests of Textiles in the Late Medieval English Parish Church,c. 1350–1550

This article examines evidence of self‐determination and independent action in the practice, among a significant group of late medieval English women, of donating their own clothing and household linens to parish churches for use in sacred ritual.
The argument is presented that clothworking in a domestic environment was a highly valorised activity closely connected with women, for which the spindle and distaff acted as an index, and that against this background women used textiles as a site for expressing their personal, social and religious concerns.     

A National Saint in a Fascist State: Catherine of Siena,ca 1922–1943

The annual festival of Saint Catherine of Siena is now the focus of a self‐conscious internationalism which celebrates Catherine as both Patron Saint of Italy and Co‐Patron Saint of Europe. When Catherine of Siena was proclaimed Patron Saint of Italy in 1939, however, the annual festival in her honour was quite different in ethos, being a highly patriotic, nationalistic, and even militaristic celebration of Catherine's significance in and for Fascist Italy. The article examines the campaign for Catherine to be proclaimed a “national saint” and “patron of Italy” during the 1920s and 1930s, locating it within the context of the relationship between Catholicism and Fascism in Mussolini's Italy. It also examines the celebration of her annual festival between 1940 and 1943 in the context of Italian participation in the Second World War, until the fall of Mussolini and his regime.