During the 17th century, the Jesuits of the Sicilian Province deployed intense missionary action in the Sicilian countryside, which covered more than a hundred localities, including the Greek rite colonies established in the fifteenth century as a consequence of the Arbëreshë diaspora from Albania, as well as the islands of Malta and Pantelleria, where the Arabic language and Islamic religious tradition were still widespread (in Malta also due to the presence of Muslim slaves). However, the Jesuits' "popular", "internal" or "flying missions" went as far as the Cyclades, the so-called archipelagus turbatus in the Aegean Sea, where communicatio in sacris (sharing of rites and preaching) between Orthodox and Latin clergy and laity was inevitable, and increased during Jesuit missions. Indeed, between 1612 and 1644 the Cyclades saw some twenty "spiritual raids" (scorerie spirituali) from Chios, where a stable residence of the Society was established in 1595, also subject to the Sicilian Province. All these islands, including Sicily itself, were part of a common space that could be defined as the "Mediterranean Indies", where religious and cultural métissage, negotiation and conflict constantly overlapped, being part of everyday life and sometimes even sharing the very same missionaries.