Una lettera dall'altro mondo. Anticristo e immagini dell'Islam tra Venezia e il Bosforo

The Letter of the Grand Master of the Hospitallers of Rhodes is an apocalyptic text that narrates the birth of a monstrous child in a city of the East, whom the text identifies with the Antichrist. The Letter is only one of the many short prophecies that, between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, flooded Europe arousing the most diverse reactions, mostly of fear but also of expectation and, in some cases, of hope. Its durability, from the beginning of the 14th to the end of the 18th century, and the variety of its reception are, however, exceptional. This essay reconstructs an episode of this circulation, when the monstrous child takes on the features of a key figure in the relations between Europe and the Ottoman Empire : Alvise Gritti, the son of the Doge of Venice and right-hand man of the Ottoman Sultan. Members of Gritti’s entourage use the text to legitimize his maneuvers to offer Holy Roman Emperor Charles V the title of heir to the Eastern Roman Empire usurped by the Sultan Süleymān.