Saints, Turks, and Heretics

Abstract

This chapter focuses on conversionary preaching that reflected and promoted early modern Catholicism's innovations and triumphalism. It highlights unusual departures that are best revealed in an untapped cache of over 750 manuscript sermons by Gregorio Boncompagni Corcos. Corcos, a respected conversionary preacher of the late seventeenth century, held his position for nearly forty years and delivered handwritten sermons that introduced unprecedented topics discussing Catholicism's triumphs. The chapter recounts how Corcos formulated influential arguments for the continued importance of sermons to Jews in the Roman devotional landscape, revealing his own personal doubts and insecurities. Corcos's preaching confirms that Judaism directly helped a resurgent early modern Catholicism to define itself, providing a context for the new “others” and new devotional priorities of the early modern period.