Trasgressioni necessarie : communicatio in sacris, collaborazioni e conflitti tra le comunità cristiane orientali (Levante e Impero ottomano, XVII-XVIII secolo)

Communicatio in sacris is the expression employed by the Roman Church to define (and simultaneously restrict) all kind of participation of a Catholic to the liturgical celebrations and sacraments of a non-Catholic worship. During the 17th and 18th century, this practice was particularly widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean and in the Ottoman Empire, because of the traditional coexistence between Greeks and Latins but also as a result of the success of the missionaries in the conversion of Eastern Christians settled there. My work aims at using the concrete practices included under this label as a starting point and as an interpretive key for a deeper reflection on the process of confession building in the Early Modern Levant. In addition to the study of the theoretical (theological-canonical) debate on the issue, the thesis focuses mainly on the reconstruction of the different social, political and religious contexts that produced the communicatio and made it «necessary». The relationship between «Latin Catholics» and «Greek-Orthodox» is examined both for the case of the Aegean Cyclades and of the Ionian islands subject to the domination of Venice; the clashes between the Oriental Christians who converted to Catholicism and those who remained faithful to their Church are instead considered through the study of the Armenian communities of Constantinople and Eastern Anatolia. The overall analysis is based on a wide range of sources, particularly on the inventory of the cases of communicatio found in the archives of the Holy Office and of Propaganda, as well as on the documentation produced by the French consular networks.