Redefining Centrality

I was most intrigued by Natalie Zevon Davis' account of Leo Africanus in Rome and her description of cultural exchanges within the city. It seemed that as Rome attempted to claim new peripheral lands and kingdoms for Christendom the Romans were incorporating different cultural practices in interesting ways. Obviously all outsiders and prisoners of Rome were to become Catholic, but Christian authorities did not simply ignore the cultural practices, religions and languages of the Muslims and Jews in Rome. This, of course, serves a strategic purpose; the Pope and his advisors needed to know about other cultures, kingdoms and empires in order to gain power over them, but the types of information the authorities required allowed for former Muslim and Jewish prisoners to serve a defined purpose in Rome. By writing about Africa and creating a trilingual dictionary, Leo Africanus enfolded aspects of others cultures into Roman culture. It's not that the Romans were tolerate of other cultures, but their inquiry into other worlds made it so that some hybridity of cultures was allowed--through language for instance. I found it interesting that, despite his important scholarly role, Leo Africanus could not be considered a top advisor because of his cultural background. The central power, Rome, is incorporating aspects of peripheral cultures into their culture but only by allowing them to diffuse into the dominant culture.