If the plays discussed in the previous chapter suggest certain strategies for resisting conversion to Islam through their depictions of martyrdom in ancient pagan settings, then Philip Massinger's The Renegado (c.1624) imports these models of resistance into its contemporary North African setting. What may at first appear a disjunctive authorization of seemingly Catholic objects, ceremonies, and figures in a play about Christian-Muslim encounter makes more sense when one considers the empowering template of resistance established by contemporary martyr plays. In the face of Islam – a threat of conversion understood to involve embodied, sexual, and reproductive consequences – Catholicism's material, ritualistic, and embodied forms provided compelling sources of resistance to Turkish torture and sexual violation. While in some ways The Renegado seems to celebrate the saving powers of Pauline faith and spiritual redemption to convert a Muslim princess to Christianity and to redeem Christian men temporarily seduced by Islam, it also inadvertently dramatizes the limitations of Christian spiritual faith and redemption. What is more, The Renegado reveals the gendered implications of Islamic conversion by foregrounding the question of whether male and female Christians are equally eligible for spiritual redemption if contaminated by Muslim sexual contact. Testing the faith of Pauline universalism through differences of gender, the play reveals the female limits of St. Paul's spiritual universalism through a heroine who is evocatively named Paulina.

As part of the recent wave of interest in early modern encounters with Ottoman “Turks” and the religion of Islam, The Renegado has attracted a burst of critical attention.