The Muslim Body in the Baroque Jesuit Imagination

Jesuits of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries even those living relatively closely to Muslim lands often had no personal knowledge of Muslims, and yet the figure of the Muslim loomed large in the baroque Jesuit imagination. Because Jesuit formation involves the visualization of events and persons never seen, Jesuits of this period were in a special position to construct an imaginary Muslim, which they derived from translations of the Qur'an, from artworks, including book illustrations, and from the patterns and symbolism of Jesuit emblematics. This essay explores how baroque Jesuit visualization of the Muslim body was shaped by these factors, and also by other Europe-wide phenomena such as turcieu literature.