«Che sia questa povereta liberata, giaché il suo honore resta per sempre carcerato»: la violenza sessuale contro le schiave ebree in età moderna

Abstract

This article focuses on the sexual violence inflicted on Jewish women who were enslaved by Tuscan corsairs in the seventeenth century. It analyzes two case studies of documented rapes: one involving state-owned enslaved women and the other pertaining to a privately-held domestic slave. Through these cases, the article elucidates t he particular disadvantages that enslaved female Jews faced, as members of a triply marginalized group: enslaved, female, and members of a religious minority within the larger disenfranchised population in the Catholic-ruled regions of the Mediterranean, most of whom were Muslim. Finally, the article illuminates the harsh realities of sexual abuse at the hands of private slaveowners, which attest to the persistence of late medieval patterns well into the height of the post-Tridentine era.