188 | Fleeing “the Vomit of Infidelity”
The mass mobilization of Venetian resources did not fully begin until Bailo
Contarini’s May 29 dispatch recounting his first meeting with Mustafa Efendi
reached Venice at the end of June. Its arrival created a frenzy of activity because
of the threat that the incident posed to Veneto-Ottoman relations. The Signoria
immediately mustered its extensive bureaucracy and charged it with three objec-
tives: first, find the missing women; second, establish what had actually led to
their departure from Milos; and third, resolve the incident as quietly as possible.
Instructions on how to proceed were sent to officials throughout Venice’s Medi-
terranean territories and to Bailo Contarini in Istanbul.
It was only after the women’s arrival in Corfu in mid-July that the politi-
cal ramifications of their flight came into focus. On July 23, several days after
Margherita’s marriage, the head of Venice’s fleet, Zuane Mocenigo, arrived in
the island’s port, which served as his headquarters. He immediately began an
investigation and convened a multiday hearing to scrutinize Maria, her daugh-
ters, and Venetian crew members. First, he attempted to determine whether the
women had been coerced or forced to flee. All who testified concurred that their
flight had been voluntary. Second, he tried to establish what the women had
taken with them from Milos. He ordered their possessions inventoried, which
revealed only personal clothing and a few small trinkets. Dimo Trivoli and Santo
Burlion were also questioned. They supported Maria’s protestations of poverty
and further claimed to have provided Anna and Margherita with jewelry and
clothing. Despite these findings, strong suspicions remained that the women had
brought money, jewels, or other valuables with them and had hidden these away.
The insistent claims of Mustafa Efendi, as well as several reports from Venetian
sources, reinforced these doubts.
Another vital issue in the Venetian inquiry was the women’s religious status.
Maria had remained a fervent Christian throughout her years in Milos, but her
daughters’ situation was more ambiguous. All witnesses acknowledged the girls
had been raised as Muslims. Maria claimed, however, and her daughters verified,
that they had been baptized and had lived secretly as Christians. The question
of whether the girls’ decision to abandon Islam had been voluntary was pivotal:
if they had acted of their own free will, there was a broad consensus that “it was
not in the interests of the Republic’s piety to return them.” While the Venetians
struggled with these issues, Islamic law, as Mustafa Efendi knew well, was clear
about the girls’ religious identities and the status of his marriage to Margherita.
In the case of the two younger girls, as Mustafa argued, Islamic jurists unani-
mously held that children of a mixed marriage were born into their fathers’ reli-
gion. Because the two youngest girls were not adults, he insisted, they were “not
in a state to be able to change religion as they saw fit.” Even if children or minors
renounced Islam formally or, influenced by their non-Muslim mothers, ceased