‘Believe me, these are unknown Indies’,Footnote 1 declared the Jesuit Marino de Bonis (1581–1623) to his superior general Mutio Vitelleschi (1563–1645) in a letter penned on 8 April 1619. Reflecting on the religious, linguistic, and political complexities in Belgrade (present-day Serbia) and its surroundings, De Bonis, like several of his fellow Jesuits, employed this rhetorical device to describe the unfathomable ‘interior Indias’ of Europe.Footnote 2 This phrase, however, was not merely metaphorical—it reflected a broader Catholic missionary consciousness, in which regions such as the Ottoman Balkans, despite their proximity to Rome, were as challenging and unfamiliar as the distant lands of the Americas or Asia. The comparison also underscores a historiographical paradox: while overseas Catholic missions have been central to narratives of Catholic globalization, early modern Ottoman Europe—where multi-normativity, jurisdictional competition, and interconfessional encounters deeply shaped Catholic missionary experiences—remains largely absent from discussions of global Catholicism.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marked an era of profound global integration.Footnote 3 Empires expanded, trade routes developed, and missionary endeavours sought to bring distant corners of the world into a unified Catholic Christian fabric. Yet, this integration was neither seamless nor uniform.Footnote 4 Confessional divisions, geopolitical rivalries, and localized power struggles fragmented the Catholic Church’s global ambitions.Footnote 5 Within this turbulent landscape, Ottoman Europe emerged as a distinctive yet often overlooked site of Catholic missionary activity, where missionaries had to operate within the constraints of Ottoman law, local power structures, and interconfessional rivalries.
The ‘global turn’ in historical scholarship since the late 1990s has reinvigorated interest in the worldwide diffusion of Catholicism, particularly through its missions from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. This shift has led to a rich body of scholarship on Catholic missions in the Americas, South-East Asia, China, and Japan, effectively decentring Europe from discussions of Catholic global expansion.Footnote 6 By focusing on encounters between missionaries and local societies, this scholarship has argued for recognizing the diversity and peculiarity of local Catholicisms that emerged from these interactions as integral parts of the emergent ‘global church’.Footnote 7 This reorientation towards questions of cultural and social history, as well as intercultural exchange, has paved the way for a more actor-centred approach to mission history.Footnote 8 Yet, it has also created a historiographical imbalance: while the study of Catholic missions and local Christianities outside Europe has become central to early modern global Catholicism, regions such as Ottoman Europe have remained largely neglected within this growing international historiography.Footnote 9
Although the diversity of Catholic missionary projects is richly documented for the entire Ottoman world, scholarship has primarily focused on missions to Arabic-, Syriac-, Coptic-, and Armenian-speaking Eastern Christians in the Levant. These studies have shown how the diffusion of Catholicism in the Middle East affected the confessional awareness of the various Eastern Christian Churches and communities under Ottoman rule, and how different intra- and inter-religious encounters influenced Catholicism itself, both locally and globally.Footnote 10 By contrast, the history of Catholic missions in early modern Ottoman Europe—explored by numerous regional historians for over a century and a half—has largely remained confined to the ecclesiastical and social history of the so-called ‘Balkan missions’ and their significance within regional and national histories.Footnote 11 The diversity of languages in which these studies were written, their different historiographical traditions, and, in some cases, their nationalist or confessionalist agendas have significantly limited the integration of this scholarship into broader studies of early modern Catholicism. Despite the more accessible and methodologically innovative contributions of historians such as Antal Molnár and István György Tóth, Catholic missions in Ottoman Europe remain understudied in global mission histories.Footnote 12 While both Molnár’s and Tóth’s work has revealed essential aspects about the ecclesiastical and social history of Catholic missions to the Balkans and tripartite Hungary—concentrating primarily on the activities of religious orders—we still lack a broader understanding of the complex trans-confessional and trans-imperial dynamics that determined the integration of these regions into the larger context of Catholic global evangelization.
Building on these diverse scholarly traditions and seeking to bridge the gaps they leave, this article foregrounds Ottoman Europe as a critical yet overlooked site of Catholic missionary engagement within the global Catholic enterprise. Zooming in on its northern provinces—encompassing the historical regions of Bosnia, Slavonia-Srem,Footnote 13 and the BanatFootnote 14 —this study examines how Catholic missions in seventeenth-century Ottoman Europe were shaped by both Catholic and non-Catholic local actors. In this sense, the following discussion aligns with the works of scholars such as Christian Windler, Cesare Santus, and Felicita Tramontana, who have emphasized the diversity and adaptability of Catholic missions and the role of Catholic missionaries as ‘local actors’.Footnote 15 At the same time, this article moves beyond the traditional Jesuit-centred perspective in global mission studiesFootnote 16 and challenges the prevailing focus on Catholic agency by highlighting the contributions of the Franciscans and non-Catholic actors in shaping Catholic missionary engagement within the Ottoman legal and political landscape.Footnote 17
To this end, the article explores the jurisdictional conflicts and collaborations between the Franciscan friars of Bosnia, the merchants of Ragusa (present-day Dubrovnik), Ottoman officials—particularly judges (kadis)—and the Serbian Orthodox clergy, all of whom played a role in defining the local experience of Catholicism and delimiting papal engagement in the analysed regions. Drawing primarily on Catholic missionary sources, the present study argues that examining Catholic missions in Ottoman Europe through the interconnected lenses of local, regional, and global dynamics—and foregrounding the perspectives of local actors—yields a more nuanced understanding of early modern Catholicism. In doing so, it calls for a reassessment of global Catholicism, advocating for an approach that considers Ottoman Europe not as a marginal periphery, but as a crucial site where global, regional, and local forces intersected to shape Catholic missionary strategies and governance.
Catholic missions in the Ottoman world: Presence and challenges
The global advancement of the Catholic apostolate in the early modern period encountered significant structural constraints and challenges. The entanglement of competing patronage rights—shaped by imperial and commercial interests—alongside the limited financial resources of the papacy, the autonomy and rivalries of religious orders, and the jurisdiction of local officials and established Christian churches, created complex and fragmented missionary landscapes. These dynamics profoundly restricted the papacy’s ability to establish direct control over missions at the local level. However, the nature of these restrictions varied significantly across different regions, shaped by distinct political, legal, and economic structures.
In the Ottoman Empire, these constraints manifested in different forms, since no single imperial policy uniformly governed local Catholic presence or controlled the expansion of the Catholic apostolate. The establishment and regulation of primarily foreign Catholic activity depended largely on the empire’s broader diplomatic engagements with European powers. From the sixteenth century onward, the Ottoman imperial government in Istanbul negotiated ahdnames (capitulations, trading privileges-cum-peace treaties) with various European states, including the Kingdom of France, the Republic of Venice, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Dutch Republic. While primarily facilitating trade, these agreements also laid the groundwork for missionary activity, particularly in the pastoral care and evangelization of Christians in the Levant.
European diplomats advocating for the Latin clergy succeeded in incorporating religious clauses into these capitulations.Footnote 18 As a result, Venice and France emerged as key political agents for Catholic reform initiatives and as protectors of non-Ottoman Catholic traders, pilgrims, and missionaries in the Ottoman Levant.Footnote 19 The capitulations between France and the Ottoman empire—particularly the 1604 agreementFootnote 20 —guaranteed Roman Catholic pilgrims and priests the right to visit the Holy Land under French protection. Leveraging this advantageous diplomatic status, France positioned itself as the protector of all Catholics in the Ottoman Empire, although this role remained largely confined to the Levant. However, Venice remained a competitor for this position, creating a tense scene of inter-imperial rivalry that involved the Habsburgs, the English, and the Dutch.Footnote 21 Simultaneously, conflicts for the custody of the Holy Land persisted among Latin, Orthodox, Armenian, Maronite, and Jacobite religious authorities, each vying for recognition by the Ottoman government as the legitimate guardian.Footnote 22 Thus, the papacy had to navigate a complex environment shaped by inter-imperial rivalries, imperial–papal conflicts, and local jurisdictional conflicts between established Christian churches embedded in and entwined with Ottoman power structures.
Within the larger dynamic of Catholic missions, two distinguishing features of the Ottoman Levant are particularly noteworthy. First, the region hosted a distinct mix of local Christian traditions embedded in the Ottoman imperial fabric. Second, European–Ottoman diplomatic and commercial arrangements enabled the sustained local presence of representatives for major European powers. Scholarship on the Ottoman Levant has extensively demonstrated how these aspects intertwined, constraining papal jurisdiction and shaping Catholic missionary endeavours.Footnote 23 The case of Ottoman Europe provides a valuable opportunity to explore how these features manifested in a markedly different regional context, prompting a rethinking of the broader structural challenges faced by Catholic missionary ambitions.
The Ottoman conquest of South-East Europe—a lengthy process lasting from the mid-fourteenth to the late fifteenth centuries—involved the gradual settlement of Muslim groups from Anatolia and the conversion of segments of the local non-Muslim populations to Islam. These processes, however, were uneven, primarily affecting urban areas.Footnote 24 In many semi-urban and rural regions, the population remained predominantly Christian throughout the period of Ottoman rule. Although the majority were Eastern Orthodox, there were various Catholic groups in parts of Bosnia, Hungary, Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, and Bulgaria, with some Protestant groups present in Hungary.
In the aftermath of the Council of Trent (1545–63) and pressured by the Ottoman incorporation of the southernmost parts of the Kingdom of Hungary (1520s–1590s),Footnote 25 the papacy began to see the potential for missionary work within this religiously diverse and multilingual setting, particularly to provide spiritual care for Catholics who lacked regular access to pastoral care. Roman involvement in the launching of Catholic missions solidified during the pontificate of Pope Paul V (p. 1605–21) with the launching of Jesuit missions,Footnote 26 gaining further momentum after the foundation of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (hereafter, Propaganda Fide) in 1622.Footnote 27 Hence, from the early seventeenth century onwards, Ottoman Europe presented both an enticing and a demanding terrain for Catholic missionary endeavours.
However, unlike overseas missionary fields where Catholicism had to be introduced into non-Christian or non-Roman Catholic religious environments, Ottoman Europe presented a distinct challenge. By the time Catholic missionaries formally entered the region under the authority of the Propaganda Fide, a well-established Catholic presence already existed. This feature distinguished it from the Ottoman Levant, where, until the late sixteenth century, Roman Catholic presence had been largely limited to foreign merchants, pilgrims, consuls, and the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land.Footnote 28 In contrast, several regions of Ottoman Europe had maintained a centuries-long Catholic tradition despite the disruptions brought by Ottoman conquests. Yet, the traditional structures of the Catholic Church had largely been dismantled, leaving the Franciscan friars of Bosnia and the merchants of the Republic of Ragusa as the primary custodians of local Catholicism.Footnote 29
Studies examining the various trajectories of local missionary integration have so far predominantly focused on external missionary agents arriving in new territories. The case of Ottoman Europe, however, highlights a unique challenge: what happens when Catholic actors on the ground, such as the Bosnian Franciscans, possess a long-standing missionary tradition and are deeply embedded in the local fabric that, unlike in European inner missions, was an Ottoman Muslim one? This feature sharply distinguished the Bosnian friars from their fellow Franciscans in the Holy Land, who, besides managing Western pilgrimage and caring for foreign Catholics, did not engage in missionary or pastoral work among local populations until the early seventeenth century. This limited the Holy Land friars’ ability to integrate fully in the local context, despite their decisive involvement in local economic networks – as Felicita Tramontana has recently argued.Footnote 30
The Franciscans settled in Bosnia at the end of the thirteenth century with an inquisitorial mandate to combat ‘Bosnian heresy’ and reform the Bosnian Church, which the papacy viewed as a symbol of resistance against Latin ecclesiastical authority.Footnote 31 Following the establishment of the Bosnian vicariate in 1339/40 (elevated to a province in 1517), the friars solidified their presence. In this period, the papacy changed the order’s inquisitorial assignment into that of a mission to safeguard Catholicism and convert heretics and schismatics. In 1372, Pope Gregory XI granted the Franciscans permission to build monasteries and churches in the vicariate and, due to a shortage of parish priests, they were authorized to administer the sacraments, thereby expanding their local jurisdiction.Footnote 32 With the bishop of Bosnia residing in Hungary since 1252, the friars emerged as the principal representatives of the Catholic Church in Bosnia. Supported by substantial Ragusan patronage, they also became pivotal agents of local social, religious, cultural, and economic transformations by the fifteenth century.Footnote 33
The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in 1463 led to the destruction of several Franciscan monasteries, but over time, the friars integrated in the new Ottoman administrative framework, further strengthening their local embeddedness. Friars recruited from abroad were also gradually replaced by local ones in the vicariate.Footnote 34 However, it must be borne in mind that the process of becoming Ottoman non-Muslim subjects was neither straightforward nor uniform, and conceptualizing the legal status of various Christian communities has been a controversial issue in Ottomanist historiography.Footnote 35 Indeed, as several scholars have shown, the privileges defining and regulating the status of Catholics and Eastern Christians of various denominations were negotiated individually throughout the empire, challenging the notion that Catholic subjects always held a more precarious legal position than their Orthodox counterparts.Footnote 36
The rights of the friars concerning the protection of their safety, property, and freedom of worship and movement were first codified in the ahdname of Milodraž, issued by Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81). These privileges were later confirmed and occasionally expanded in subsequent sultanic decrees (fermans). Similar privileges were granted to the Catholic merchants of the Republic of Ragusa in the ahdname of 1458, in which the sultan guaranteed the city states’ territorial integrity and protected Ragusan trade and the free movement of the merchants within the empire in exchange for a yearly tribute (harac). And while traditionally the Franciscans were considered zimmis (Ottoman non-Muslim subjects) and the Ragusans müstemins (foreign subjects in Ottoman lands), recent research has argued that both groups had an ambiguous legal status, between zimmi and müstemin.Footnote 37 Overall, the Ottoman incorporation of the staggering variety of local Christian communities and ecclesiastical structures required complex and prolonged negotiations, shaped by the specific dynamics of imperial expansion in different periods.
The protracted Ottoman conquests of the Balkans kept triggering waves of population migrations across the peninsula from the end of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century. One of the most important effects of these migrations, particularly in the territories under analysis, was the influx of additional South Slavic-speaking Orthodox and Catholic populations into Slavonia-Srem and the Banat. While these population movements and the gradual incorporation of these lands into the Ottoman imperial domains posed various cultural and societal challenges, they also created opportunities for expansion for several local actors.
Consequently, these developments gave incentives to the Franciscans to move northward and strengthen their presence there, a process endorsed by several missionary authorizations from the papacy during the second half of the sixteenth century.Footnote 38 In parallel, the trading network of Ragusan merchants expanded, significantly shaping the structures of local Catholicism. The religious activities of Ragusan merchants were defined by their right to operate and maintain jurisdiction over the chapels of their trading colonies. These chapels fell under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of Ragusa, who appointed chaplains at the request of the merchants. In the Belgrade colony, however, Ragusan priests were replaced by the Bosnian Franciscans as chaplains from the mid-sixteenth century.Footnote 39 Until the early seventeenth century, Ragusan merchants regularly supported the friars and often intervened on behalf of them and the local Catholics at the imperial court in Istanbul, ensuring the renewal of the sultanic privileges, including measures that prohibited the Serbian Orthodox clergy from levying taxes on Catholics.Footnote 40
From the second half of the sixteenth century, the primary challenger to Franciscan jurisdiction was the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate of Peć (present-day Kosovo), a local Eastern Christian institution restored by the Ottoman government in 1557.Footnote 41 The reinstated patriarchate expanded its jurisdiction in Ottoman South-East Europe, asserting authority over the Ottoman territories in the north-western Balkans and HungaryFootnote 42 through their berats (diplomas of appointment), issued by the central government to Orthodox patriarchs and metropolitans throughout the realm.Footnote 43 These documents granted Orthodox church leaders jurisdiction over their own church affairs and intra-communal matters, including marriage and inheritance issues. Since the territory of the Franciscan province of Bosna Argentina largely overlapped with the area under the control of the Peć Patriarchate, Serbian Orthodox patriarchs and metropolitans sought to assert jurisdiction over the local Catholic population as well, claiming the right to levy taxes from them.
Until the early seventeenth century, the Bosnian Franciscans, Ragusan merchants, and the Serbian Orthodox clergy were the three principal local Christian actors who collaborated and competed for jurisdiction over Catholics. At the same time, the governance of local Catholics was also contingent upon their embeddedness in the Ottoman legal and administrative fabric. In addition to their own religious leaders, Catholics—like other non-Muslim subjects—fell under the jurisdiction of local judges (kadis), who were appointed by the Ottoman central administration in the empire’s various provinces.Footnote 44
By the time Ottoman Europe came under the purview of Rome-directed Catholic missions, multiple and intersecting local jurisdictions had already developed. Consequently, this continuous presence of Catholic and non-Catholic local actors of diverse origins, along with their jurisdictional entanglements and shifting alliances, played a decisive role both in shaping the local experience of Catholicism and the nature and possibilities of papal engagement in this setting.Footnote 45
Shaping Catholicism in Ottoman Europe: Local actors and papal engagement
Established in 1622 as Rome’s response to the patronage rights granted to the Iberian monarchies (patronato real/padroado), the Propaganda Fide aimed to centralize and coordinate Catholic world missions in territories outside the jurisdictions of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns.Footnote 46 By this time, however, the Bosnian Franciscan province had already developed a strong presence in the Balkans, comprising 355 friars, seventeen monasteries, and numerous parishes.Footnote 47 Their extensive personal networks linked them to Vienna, Buda, Istanbul, Ragusa (Dubrovnik), Venice, Rome, and Naples, reinforcing their role as key intermediaries between local Catholics and broader Catholic missionary efforts. A similar dynamic characterized Ragusan merchants, whose trading colonies and chaplaincies played a crucial role in sustaining Catholicism in the region. Their established influence and local embeddedness made them invaluable, yet also challenging assets for the missionary objectives of the papacy.
As Christian Windler has highlighted, even after the establishment of the Propaganda Fide, missionary activities remained largely managed by religious orders, who continuously sought to balance their drive for autonomy with their dependence on different hierarchical structures.Footnote 48 The Bosnian Franciscans exemplified this dynamic, as their sphere of action was circumscribed by their strong local roots and simultaneous integration into both Catholic and Ottoman hierarchies. Despite their entanglement with their Ottoman environment, many friars still regarded the Propaganda Fide as their potential protector, benefactor, and mediator in conflicts, both external and internal. The various strategies they employed to navigate these multilateral relationships demonstrate their adeptness in negotiating and mediating between different structures of authority to maintain and expand their local and regional influence.
This balancing act required the friars to engage strategically with both Rome and Ottoman authorities. Like other religious orders, they resisted full adherence to the Tridentine episcopal model—even when bishops were drawn from their own ranks. Nevertheless, they leveraged their negotiations with the Propaganda Fide to emphasize their commitment to key post-Tridentine reforms, including the promulgation of the Gregorian calendar (1582), enforcement of Tridentine sacramental reforms—particularly regarding marriage—and adherence to the Rituale Romanum (1614).Footnote 49 Simultaneously, they played what I term the ‘Ottoman card’, employing complex rhetorical justifications to influence policies in their favour.
For instance, to minimize episcopal interference in the governance of the province, some friars petitioned the Propaganda Fide to prevent bishops from residing in a monastery for extended periods, instead suggesting that they relocate every two to three months. Otherwise, they warned, after the bishop’s death, Ottoman authorities could exploit the situation to extort money from the monastery.Footnote 50 In another instance, in 1630, the bishop of Bosnia, seeking to weaken the position of secular priests, argued that the friars’ communal lifestyle exempted them from inheritance claims by Ottoman officials—an exemption that the secular clergy would not enjoy.Footnote 51 That same year, the bishop of Makarska (present-day Croatia) enquired whether the superiors of the Bosnian Franciscan province could use the help of local Ottoman authorities to compel those friars living in parishes to return to the monasteries.Footnote 52 Around the same time, five friars signed a letter to the Propaganda Fide, requesting an apostolic visitor to oversee the provincial elections and discipline those friars who were adopting behaviours inconsistent with their religious vocation, such as carrying weapons and riding horsesFootnote 53 —practices that were, paradoxically, among the privileges granted to them under Ottoman rule.
Further complicating the situation, Ottoman authorities themselves became involved in Franciscan affairs, often influencing internal politics within the order. Several sources from the period attest to this problem. In 1626, Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–40) issued a berat upon the request of the naib (deputy judge) of Sarajevo, designating Tommaso Ivković (1573–1633) as provincial of the Bosnian Franciscan province.Footnote 54 Similarly, in 1637, the Bosnian friar Marian Maravić (1600–60) secured the position of provincial with Ottoman intervention, leveraging his close ties with the bey (governor) of Sarajevo, Mehmed Sinanović,Footnote 55 whose brother, Silahdar Mustafa Pasha, was a powerful vizier of Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–40).
While navigating both conflict and cooperation with the Ottomans was a complex reality for the Franciscans, for the papacy, making sense of this relationship was equally challenging. Franciscan reliance on Ottoman authorities is well-documented, yet friars strategically framed themselves as a persecuted group in need of papal support. The motif of suffering under the ‘Ottoman yoke’ was a recurrent theme in their rhetoric, with friars lamenting extortion by Ottoman officials. This narrative was reinforced in missionary reports, shaping scholarly perspectives that often portray Ottoman officials as passive recipients of bribes.Footnote 56 However, this oversimplifies the complex reality in which Ottoman officials, like their Franciscan or Serbian Orthodox counterparts, leveraged their positions to maintain and consolidate economic and political standing.
The strategies employed by Ottoman officials—including levying additional taxes or lending money at high interest rates—were neither arbitrary nor unique to them; rather, they were part of broader trans-imperial political and economic dynamics. Similar financial mechanisms were employed by Catholic missionaries and local Christian actors, who had to navigate the same economic constraints and opportunities within the Ottoman administrative and fiscal landscape.
Amid the financial pressures caused by the Cretan War (1645–69), the Franciscans themselves resorted to ‘alternative’ financial strategies to sustain their operations. They collected various extra taxes from their flocks,Footnote 57 embarked on alms-collecting journeys to Poland, Spain, France, and Lombardy,Footnote 58 relied on institutions such as the Sacro Monte e Banco dei Poveri in Naples, and borrowed money locally from Catholic and Ottoman creditors.Footnote 59 For instance, in 1662, the Franciscan guardian oversaw the renovation of the Church of Saint Nicholas in Visoko (present-day Bosnia) using funds borrowed at usurious interest rates from local Ottoman officials and merchants, thereby placing the monastery in debt.Footnote 60 This case illustrates how both Catholic and Ottoman actors operated within shared economic frameworks, leveraging available financial instruments to consolidate and protect their religious and institutional standing.
Given the scope and nature of the financial interactions between Catholic missionaries and Ottoman authorities, an overly narrow focus on ‘Ottoman greed’ risks obscuring the broader complexities of these relationships. A more nuanced perspective reveals that both Catholic missionaries and Ottoman officials played active roles in shaping the local organization and maintenance of Catholicism in the region.Footnote 61 Besides, the involvement of different segments of the provincial Ottoman administration—judges (kadis), jurists (muftis), and governors (beylerbeys, sancakbeys, and pashas)—was decisive in authorizing the operations of Catholic missionaries, endorsing the renovation or rebuilding of Christian churches, and settling inter-missionary debates and intra- and inter-communal affairs.Footnote 62 Among these officials, Ottoman judges (kadis) were particularly significant.
As central figures in the Ottoman bureaucratic and legal system at the local level, kadis were responsible for a wide range of administrative, judicial, and notarial duties. Their functions extended beyond presiding over legal disputes to include the collection of imperial taxes; the management of customs and other revenues; the maintenance of roads and bridges; and the supervision of religious, social, and economic life in cities. Additionally, they oversaw the administration of religious endowments (waqfs), further reinforcing their influence.Footnote 63 Given the multiplicity of their roles, kadis commanded considerable prestige within their communities, among both Muslims and non-Muslims.
According to traditional historiography, within the Ottoman legal system, non-Muslim subjects had the right to seek adjudication within their own ecclesiastical or communal courts for internal matters such as marriage, divorce, or inheritance, provided these cases did not involve Muslims. At the same time, non-Muslims could also bring their disputes before local Islamic (sharia) courts. However, due to the scarcity of sources, the actual existence and legal autonomy of structured non-Muslim courts in the empire has been questioned in scholarship.Footnote 64
In the context of the Balkans, most documented examples of organized communal courts pertain to the Greek-speaking Orthodox communities in the Aegean islands where Muslims were scarcely present.Footnote 65 Outside of these cases, there is no concrete evidence of formally institutionalized Christian ecclesiastical or communal courts functioning consistently in Ottoman Europe during the period under study. This does not exclude the fact that religious authorities occasionally arbitrated different cases, but these were likely handled on a case-by-case basis and not within a systematically organized judicial framework.
The Bosnian Franciscans regularly emphasized in their correspondence with Rome that they lacked a notarial system and were unable to conduct legal proceedings as desired due to the risks posed by the Ottomans. Their accounts further suggest that, in the absence of formalized communal courts, Christian litigants were often compelled to turn to Ottoman legal structures to resolve disputes.Footnote 66 In this context, Ottoman judges became active and indispensable figures in the daily lives of their Catholic subjects, who often opted to bring cases before them rather than seeking intervention from Catholic religious representatives—even when the latter were present and accessible in a given location. The available documentation reveals a broad range of cases that ended up in sharia courts, including marriage administration and dissolution, disputes over church ownership, the renovation and reconstruction of churches, land conflicts, taxation issues, inter- and intra-missionary disputes, and conflicts over the right to preach or hold religious processions.
Catholics frequently turned to kadis to administer their marriages or divorces, which not only sparked jurisdictional conflicts but also raised legal interpretative challenges.Footnote 67 Claiming that the Tridentine marriage decree Tametsi had been promulgated in Bosnia, the friars contested the validity of marriages solemnized by the kadi, whereas Jesuits upheld their legitimacy and insolubility.Footnote 68 Although some papal decrees invalidated Catholic marriages officiated in kadi courts, requiring them to be conducted by a Catholic priest in the presence of witnesses,Footnote 69 these directives neither diminished the role of Ottoman judges in Catholic communities nor deterred Catholics from appealing to the Ottoman court.
For example, in August 1646, the friars of the convent of OlovoFootnote 70 sought permission from the pasha of Bosnia to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption with the customary grand procession from the convent to the upper church, a public ceremony with preaching in the presence of ‘people of all sects and from different parts of the world’.Footnote 71 Although the guardian had paid 100 scudi to the deputy of the pasha to secure authorization for the event, the judge of Olovo wrote to the deputy instructing him to send someone to prohibit the public procession. In response, the deputy immediately dispatched his delegate, Mustafa Ağa, to enforce the prohibition.Footnote 72
Missionary sources frequently recount instances of alleged abuses of power on the part of different Ottoman officials and such accusations need to be interpreted against the backdrop of larger imperial power dynamics. When assessing the role of Ottoman kadis, it is essential to consider that during the seventeenth century, the Ottoman regional administrative system reached its peak in the Balkan provinces, boasting a fully developed court network with the office of the kadi at its core. From the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century, the kadi’s office became highly coveted, leading to increased pressure for new judicial positions and growing corruption, particularly among lower-rank (toprak) kadis, as reflected in adaletnames (sultanic decrees addressing injustices).Footnote 73 Within this context, Ottoman judges emerged as powerful figures who, in theory, had the authority to overrule decisions issued by other Ottoman officials, as exemplified in the aforementioned case.
Given their judicial influence, missionaries of different backgrounds frequently sought the intervention of kadis to resolve jurisdictional conflicts. The prolonged conflict between the Ragusan and Bosnian merchants and their ecclesiastical beneficiaries—the Jesuits, missionary bishops, and the Bosnian Franciscans—over the jurisdiction of the chapel of Belgrade repeatedly involved the local Ottoman kadi.Footnote 74 From the 1620s onward, the Bosnian Franciscans also regularly appealed to the kadis and other officials to have secular priests removed from the Catholic parishes of Srem. Despite papal admonitions instructing the friars not to appeal to the Islamic courts or acquire offices and parishes through Ottoman intervention,Footnote 75 the Franciscans persisted in these practices.
In the early 1660s, the Franciscan guardian of the monastery of Olovo secured authorization from the kadi and the pasha of Bosnia to assume control of the parish of Bapska (present-day Croatia). Assisted by an armed Janissary escort, the friars forcibly seized the church keys and expelled the secular parish priest. Following the takeover, the friars set up an altar in front of the church for evening prayer, preaching to the assembled faithful that the parish had been granted to them by the Grand Turk, their supreme lord, to whom all the friars and the churches in the land were subject.Footnote 76
These interactions underscore the complex and pragmatic relationships Catholic missionaries forged with Ottoman authorities. Given the absence of uniform imperial policies regulating Catholic missions, cultivating strategic and mutually beneficial ties with local Ottoman officials was fundamental for the effective operation of missionaries and the preservation of Catholic communities. Since the ahdnames given to Catholic powers for the regulation of religious affairs had a limited geographical reach,Footnote 77 these direct contacts were especially critical in regions where Catholic diplomatic representatives were largely absent and thus unable to mediate various matters, as they did in the Levant.
The Bosnian Franciscans, along with individuals connected to them, displayed particular adeptness in manoeuvring within Ottoman administrative structures. An illustrative example is the case of the Bosnian-born secular priest Simone Matković (c. 1575–1639) who had studied in the Bosnian Franciscan monasteries but ultimately did not join the order. In 1622, Matković bombarded the Propaganda Fide with letters, hoping to make a case for his suitability as a missionary bishop. In one such letter, he detailed how, in 1618, he had leveraged his personal connection to the Ottoman governor-general, the pasha of Buda, to ensure that the bishop of Belgrade, the Dalmatian secular priest Petar Katić (c. 1563–1622), could perform his duties without interference. Matković also obtained an order from the pasha allowing the bishop to take possession of the Church of John the Baptist in Belgrade. However, the church was already served by two Bosnian Franciscan friars who contested the bishop’s authority and appealed to the bey of Smederevo (present-day Serbia) to prevent the takeover. The friars reportedly argued that in these parts of the Ottoman Empire the pope held no power—only the sultan. To resolve the dispute, the bishop, the two friars, and Matković turned to the local Ottoman jurist (mufti), who ruled in favour of the bishop, with the entire process presumably costing 100 ducats.Footnote 78 This episode illustrates not only the competing Catholic jurisdictions but also underscores the expertise required to navigate the Ottoman legal system.
Despite the limitations of direct interference, the papacy initially sought to curb the Franciscans’ spiritual monopoly by deploying Jesuit and lay priest missionaries, including the aforementioned Matković, as part of a broader strategy to diversify Catholic influence in different regions. However, rather than fostering a more structured missionary presence, this intervention generated tensions and jurisdictional conflicts among different missionary actors, ultimately putting an end to a long tradition of collaboration between the Franciscan friars of Bosnia and the merchants of Ragusa.
At their inception, the merchants of the Republic of Ragusa played a crucial role in sustaining Catholic missions in Ottoman South-East Europe. Since the subjects of the Republic enjoyed various privileges within the empire, including the right to move freely across the realm, missionaries who were not Ottoman subjects, such as the Jesuits, often travelled with Ragusan caravans disguised as merchants. Ragusan merchants also played an essential role in maintaining the postal service between Rome and the missions and acted as intermediaries between the missionaries arriving from Rome and the local Ottoman authorities, obtaining permissions for them to enter the Ottoman empire.Footnote 79 When the Propaganda Fide was established in 1622, the Ragusan archbishop, merchants, and chaplains became valuable local proxies for the congregation, providing information about major occurrences in the Ottoman Empire. These included updates on the movement of Ottoman armies, the passing of sultans and prominent secular and ecclesiastical figures, and the condition of local Catholic communities.Footnote 80
The cooperation between the merchants and the Bosnian friars started to deteriorate towards the late sixteenth century, coinciding with the establishment of Ragusan Benedictine missions in northern Ottoman Europe. Tensions escalated when Franciscan dominance faced challenges from the emergence of Jesuit missions in the region, supported by Ragusa. Furthermore, after 1622, conflicts intensified with the increasing influence of secular priests backed by the Propaganda Fide. In response, the Franciscans shifted alliances to the growing Bosnian merchant class – with several friars also coming from wealthy Bosnian merchant families. A notable example of this realignment is the case of the aforementioned Bosnian friar, Marian Maravić. In a letter from 29 August 1644, addressed to the Propaganda Fide, the merchant brothers of Maravić collectively pledged financial support to their brother upon his ordination as bishop. They formalized their promise to provide an annual sum of 200 Roman scudi, ensuring this commitment extended beyond their lifetimes by binding their children and heirs to the agreement.Footnote 81
Since the Propaganda Fide had limited financial resources to sustain missionaries in various regions, external patronage remained crucial. In this case, given the scarcity of external benefactors, organized almsgiving networks, and institutional support—particularly when compared to the Levant—the Franciscans had to rely primarily on local revenue streams and patronage. Securing financial backing from local elites, particularly the growing Bosnian merchant class, thus, became essential for their continued operations.Footnote 82 However, this realignment of patronage, occurring within the broader context of local, regional, and imperial commercial rivalries, also fuelled disputes that the Propaganda Fide had to manage remotely.
In response to these conflicts, the papacy implemented a series of direct measures to assert its authority and mitigate tensions. Various decrees were issued to establish the borders of missionary bishoprics and mediate disputes between the Jesuits, secular priests, Ragusan and Bosnian merchants, missionary bishops, and Bosnian Franciscans. Papal visitors were dispatched to inspect the Bosnian Franciscan province, oversee their elections, and settle internal disputes. Additionally, missionaries were summoned to Rome by their superiors to provide detailed explanations of contentious situations; and various dispensations were granted to facilitate their work. These measures, however, provided only temporary solutions. After decades of attempting to navigate jurisdictional conflicts and the Hungarian kings’ right of patronage to appoint bishops for the Balkan territories, the papacy ultimately reaffirmed the hegemony of the Bosnian Franciscans by the mid-seventeenth century, as Antal Molnár’s seminal work has extensively demonstrated.Footnote 83 Yet, this formal recognition did not resolve local jurisdictional struggles. On the contrary, the Franciscans’ dominance remained a contested reality, even within their own ranks.
One instance of these ongoing jurisdictional tensions occurred in 1647, when the bishop of Belgrade, the Bosnian Franciscan Marino Ibrišimović (1600–50), reported to the cardinals of the Propaganda Fide that the pasha of Bosnia had demanded taxes from the Catholics of Slavonia, arguing that they fell under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Bosnia, Marian Maravić, rather than the bishop of Belgrade. This claim sparked a high-stakes conflict, prompting Ibrišimović to seek assistance from the pasha of Kanije (Hun. Kanizsa), who sent 300 horsemen to confront the çavuşes (soldiers) of the pasha of Bosnia, ordering them to kill the bishop of Bosnia should he return to Slavonia.Footnote 84 The internal fractures within the Franciscan order thus added an additional layer of complication to these jurisdictional disputes. By the end of 1662, an internal Franciscan conflict escalated to the point that it had to be resolved at the Bosnian pasha’s court. The Franciscans of the monastery of Velika accused two friars from the Fojnica monastery of diverting the tribute intended for the sultan to the pope.Footnote 85 This case underscores the delicate balance Franciscan friars had to maintain, not only in their relations with Ottoman authorities but also within their own religious community. The Franciscan friars thus found themselves navigating an increasingly convoluted position, acting both as intermediaries between local Catholic communities and the Ottoman authorities and as rivals in a fragmented religious landscape. Their role as protectors of local Catholics required them to preserve their privileges as Ottoman subjects, while simultaneously adapting to shifting alliances, financial dependencies, and legal frameworks. As previously emphasized, these challenges were further exacerbated by the rising influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which, from the second half of the sixteenth century, actively sought to expand its jurisdiction at the Franciscans’ expense.
The Ottoman imperial government in Istanbul, aware of these ongoing tensions, sought to regulate relations between Catholics and Orthodox Christians through official decrees. In 1556, a ferman (sultanic decree) of Sultan Süleyman I (r. 1520–66) was addressed to Mehmed pasha and to the kadi of Sarajevo, forbidding Orthodox patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops from demanding taxes from the Franciscans who lived in the monasteries of Kreševo and Fojnica.Footnote 86 Similarly, in 1578, at the request of the friars, Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–95) issued a decree to the sanjakbeys and kadis of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Klis, and Zvornik, prohibiting Serbian Orthodox monks from exacting church and marriage taxes from Catholics.Footnote 87 Throughout the seventeenth century, the Ottoman government continued to issue similar decrees regulating the relationship between the Serbian Orthodox clergy and the Bosnian Franciscans across the Ottoman-governed eyalets (provinces) of Bosnia, Budin (Hun. Buda), Kanije (Hun. Kanizsa), and Tımışvar/Temeşvar (Ro. Timișoara).
Despite these official protections, the Franciscans frequently complained of continued harassment by Orthodox clergy, who they claimed persisted in levying taxes on Catholic communities, undermining Franciscan autonomy.Footnote 88 According to a 1662 letter signed by the Catholics of Banja Luka (present-day Bosnia) and addressed to the Propaganda Fide, the patriarch of Peć visited Banja Luka with an Ottoman-issued order (presumably a berat) granting him jurisdiction over all of Bosnia and neighbouring provinces. This order allegedly barred Catholic bishops from visiting their dioceses and stipulated that without a licence from the patriarch, Franciscan provincials and guardians could not be elected, nor could priests celebrate Mass or perform marriages. The Franciscans, unable to oppose this ruling outright, claimed they had to pay 8,000 scudi to the Ottoman authorities in both Bosnia and Istanbul. Still burdened by interest payments to Muslim merchants, they petitioned the Propaganda Fide to compel Catholics to contribute to repaying the debt.Footnote 89 Eventually, this dispute was settled in Timișoara, where the pasha of Bosnia, who was also the commander of the imperial army in Transylvania, acted as arbiter.Footnote 90 However, this Orthodox–Catholic rivalry extended beyond clerical struggles for legal and economic prerogatives within the empire.
Much like Ottoman judges, Orthodox priests played an integral role in the daily lives of Catholics throughout early modern Ottoman Europe. Due to the shortage of Catholic priests and the scarcity of churches in certain areas, many Catholics turned to the Orthodox clergy for religious services, particularly for baptisms and marriages.Footnote 91 These interactions created significant challenges for missionaries, as they often led to confusion over sacramental validity and jurisdiction. Consequently, Roman congregations were compelled to continuously adapt, redefine, and reaffirm their stance on these matters, shaping broader Catholic–Orthodox relations in the Ottoman Balkans.
According to missionary reports, local Catholics often sought Orthodox priests to officiate their marriages in order to circumvent Tridentine marriage stipulations.Footnote 92 For instance, a Jesuit report from 1617 described how Catholics in the Timișoara region regarded marriage as terminable, divorcing their spouses and remarrying before an Orthodox priest for a fee.Footnote 93 To discourage Catholics from resorting to the Orthodox clergy, the papacy introduced several concessions, including granting marriage dispensations in cases of consanguinity and affinity and permitting marriages during ecclesiastically prohibited times.Footnote 94 Missionaries throughout Ottoman Europe also reported that in cases of Catholic–Orthodox mixed marriages or when Catholics sought divorce through Orthodox priests, the latter often required the Catholic party—typically women, according to the reports—to renounce their faith first and undergo rebaptism according to the Greek rite.Footnote 95 However, it was not only Orthodox priests who employed conditional baptism and rebaptism; Catholic missionaries themselves also used these practices to affirm the validity of their rites and to delineate their own jurisdictional authority.Footnote 96
Beyond the practical advantages of turning to Orthodox clergy, there were also broader cultural and linguistic factors at play. As emphasized by Jesuit missionaries from the Belgrade and Timișoara missions, Serbian Orthodox priests had a strong appeal among Slavic-speaking Catholics, largely due to linguistic familiarity, frequent social interactions, and the liturgical and theological similarities between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.Footnote 97 While the Jesuits and Bosnian Franciscans could have theoretically capitalized on these commonalities to attract converts,Footnote 98 it was often the Serbian Orthodox clergy who were more adept at leveraging these resemblances to their advantage. The combination of jurisdictional disputes, sacramental competition, and linguistic accessibility meant that Catholic missionaries faced ongoing challenges in maintaining influence over their communities. These conflicts not only shaped missionary strategies but also influenced broader policies concerning Catholic–Orthodox relations in the region.
Papal authorities were unable to intervene directly in Catholic–Orthodox jurisdictional disputes, but they also exercised caution in doctrinal and ritual matters. While the Propaganda Fide frequently accused the Holy Office of being too accommodating toward local religious practices and issuing ambiguous directives that missionaries could misinterpret or manipulate,Footnote 99 in this particular case, both congregations proceeded cautiously when adjudicating specific local disputes, despite missionaries’ persistent appeals.Footnote 100 Accordingly, they advised missionaries to accept Orthodox converts to Catholicism only through a formal renunciation of Orthodoxy and a profession of faith.Footnote 101 In cases of necessity—such as when no Catholic clergy were available—the Holy Office even permitted Orthodox priests to baptize Catholic children, provided that the sacrament was administered with proper matter, form, and intention.Footnote 102 Nevertheless, missionaries, particularly the Bosnian Franciscans, often took matters into their own hands, using every available means to assert confessional and jurisdictional control over local Christian populations.
Conclusion
‘Only the Church of the Papists is catholic and universal, because it is present in every part of the world … The religion of the Rascians and the Greeks is largely confined to the dominions of the Russians and the Turks, but in the lands of Italy, Germany, France, England, Lusitania, Spain, and India, no trace of it can be found.’Footnote 103 Thus spoke the Hungarian Jesuit Mátyás Sámbár in 1661, articulating a vision of Catholic universality that both shaped and was shaped by early modern missionary activity. This assertion of global Catholic presence, however, found diverse and often contested expressions in local contexts.
The missionary activities of the Catholic Church in Ottoman Europe exemplify these complexities. Unlike in the Americas and parts of Asia, where Catholicism was spread through missions to newly encountered non-Christian societies, or in the Ottoman Levant, where the Roman Catholic presence remained limited until the early seventeenth century, Catholicism in Ottoman Europe had deep historical roots. It was not introduced as something foreign but had long been embedded in local traditions, particularly through Franciscan missionary networks that had operated in the region for centuries. However, this Catholic presence was subject to continuous adaptation, shaped by Ottoman governance, local power structures, and jurisdictional negotiations between Catholic and non-Catholic actors.
While Catholic expansion in the Americas and parts of Asia was conducted under the royal patronage of Spain and Portugal,Footnote 104 and in the Ottoman Levant was likewise supported through diplomatic agreements, Ottoman Europe lacked a coherent framework for external Catholic protection, with even Habsburg privileges limited in both scope and reach. In this constellation, establishing connections on various levels—local, regional, and trans-imperial—became especially critical for ensuring the survival and influence of Catholic missions.
Over the past two decades, several scholars have emphasized the significance of examining the Catholic missionary enterprise worldwide not solely through the lens of colonial or papal expansion but also in terms of local contingencies. Building upon this growing body of scholarship, this article has argued that Ottoman Europe provided a distinct religious and social environment for apostolic endeavours within the broader narrative of early modern Catholic evangelization.
Catholic missionary activities in Ottoman Europe were deeply embedded in a complex web of local power structures, economic dependencies, and jurisdictional negotiations. Far from being passive subjects of either Ottoman rule or papal directives, local actors—Bosnian Franciscans, Ragusan and Bosnian merchants, Ottoman officials, and Orthodox clergy—played decisive roles in shaping the practice and governance of Catholicism. Rather than a straightforward narrative of religious expansion or persecution, the reality was one of strategic alliances, pragmatic adaptations, and ongoing conflicts. The papacy’s efforts to assert authority over missionary activities were constrained by financial limitations, shifting local allegiances, and the decentralized nature of Ottoman governance.
Overall, this study underscores the necessity of re-evaluating Catholic missionary history through a more localized and interconnected lens. Ottoman Europe, often sidelined in discussions of early modern Catholic expansion, should instead be recognized as a critical space where Catholicism was negotiated, contested, and reshaped. In this sense, the region provides a vital case study for reassessing the dynamics of religious engagement, jurisdictional complexity, and global missionary strategies in the early modern world.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers and my editor for their meticulous reading and insightful critiques, which have significantly improved the initial draft of this article. I would also like to thank Ovanes Akopyan, Günhan Börekçi, Philippa Ovenden, Maria Gabriella Matarazzo, Megan C. Armstrong, Tijana Krstić, Ovidiu Olar, and Konrad Petrovszky for their comments and collegial support throughout the writing process. Additionally, I acknowledge the use of ChatGPT-3.5 (https://chatgpt.com/, accessed 3 and 4 June 2024) for its assistance in stylistic corrections during the drafting of this article. The tool was employed strictly for enhancing clarity and coherence in the writing, ensuring that the content remains solely my own work.
Financial support
Recipient of an APART-GSK Fellowship (No. 12067) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
Emese Muntán is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Her research explores the religious, cultural, and social history of South-East and Central Europe within the broader context of global early modernity. She is particularly interested in Catholic missions and the complexities of interfaith engagement between Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Islam.
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