Catholic Communities, Religious Hybridizations, and Confessional Plurality in the Ottoman Balkans (17th-18th Centuries)

Speakers: Emese Muntán (Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences), Lena Sadovski (Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Moderator: Ovidiu Olar (Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences)

This talk explores the recently published book Vivevano alla christiana ma malamente. Comunità cattoliche, ibridazioni religiose e pluralità confessionale nei Balcani ottomani (secc. XVII–XVIII) [Roma: Viella, 2026], which examines the distinctive features of Balkan Catholicism, drawing primarily on letters and reports sent to Rome by missionaries and apostolic visitors during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book explores the efforts of the post-Tridentine Church to discipline and standardize the social and spiritual life of Catholics living under the Ottoman rule, particularly by eliminating customs considered “hybrid” because they incorporated elements from other religious traditions or pre-Christian beliefs. These attempts often brought missionaries into conflict with local communities, whose attachment to established customs and practices proved persistent. Rather than simply reflecting resistance to Roman norms, such forms of religious hybridity reveal how local Catholics negotiated their religious identities within a complex and changing confessional landscape.

Silvia Notarfonso received her PhD in Early Modern History from Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest) and the University of Macerata. She is an adjunct professor of History of Globalization in the Early Modern Age at the University of Macerata and a postdoctoral researcher at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici (University of San Marino). She has held research fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies (Boston College) and the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Belgrade), and she currently collaborates with the Archivio Storico – Istituto Luce (Rome).