Necessary Transgressions: Communicatio in Sacris, Coexistence and Conflicts Among the Eastern Christian Communities

Description

machine transl. of Trasgressioni necessarie: Communicatio in sacris, coesistenza e conflitti tra le comunità cristiane orientali

PDF contains "Directory of cases of communicatio in sacris & Documentary appendix" concatenated to the end.

Communicatio in sacris is the expression by which the Church of Rome sought to define and regulate any form of participation by a Catholic in the liturgical celebrations and sacraments of a non-Catholic cult. Between the 17th and 18th centuries, this phenomenon was particularly prevalent in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Ottoman Empire, following the efforts of European missionaries to convert local Christian communities. This book analyzes the practices included under this label as a starting point for deeper reflection on the process of constructing confessional identities in the Levant in the modern era. In addition to studying the theoretical debate on the issue, the main focus is on reconstructing the different social, political and religious contexts that made communicatio inevitable. Relations between Latins and Greeks are analyzed in the case of the Aegean archipelago of the Cyclades and in the Ionian islands subjected to the Venetian Republic. Clashes between Eastern Christians who converted to Catholicism and those who remained faithful to their Church of origin are studied through the Armenian communities in Constantinople and Eastern Anatolia. The analysis is based on a wide range of sources, produced mainly by the French consular network in the Levant and the Roman congregations of Propaganda Fide and the Holy Office.