Although the study of early modern inquisitions has flourished in the last few decades, expanding our knowledge of how inquisitorial processes forged in western Europe were exported and adapted to other regions of the world (including Goa, Peru, and Mexico), the focus of these studies tends to remain the impact of inquisitions on groups deemed “heretical” (including Protestants) or those suspected of apostasy as conversos, “New Christians,” and Moriscos. Published as part of the series “Catholicisms, c.1450-c.1800,” this volume of carefully curated essays expands our knowledge into a largely-overlooked arena of inquisitorial activity: the influence of inquisitorial institutions and techniques on interactions between the Latin Catholic church and Eastern Christian communities in Italy, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and contexts outside of Europe.
The editors’ introduction identifies several persistent gaps in the scholarship of global Catholicism in the early modern period: scholars tend to focus on Catholicism in western Europe, the Americas, and East Asia, while casually mentioning or completely overlooking Eastern Christian groups who entered into full communion with the Roman Catholic church while maintaining the devotional and liturgical traditions of various Eastern Christian churches. Similarly, while much ink has been spilled in debates on the influence of western “heretics” and Protestants on the (re)definition of Latin Catholicism, much less attention has been paid to the influence of centuries of dialogue between Eastern and Western Christian theologians, church hierarchies, missionaries, and devotees on the development of rites and beliefs, including important discussions on marriage practices for the laity (and in some instances clergy). This is particularly true for studies of early modern inquisitions: the scholarly focus remains on Jews, conversos, Moriscos, Protestants and even indigenous peoples, rather than Eastern-rite converts. Exceptions include explorations of the materials found in the archives of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which have yielded important insights into the process by which the Holy Office resolved “theoretical and practical problems posed by the spread of Catholicism in the Middle East” (9). For example, the Roman Inquisition scrutinized “interconfessional relations” as part of missionary ambitions and controversies in Persia, the Ottoman Empire, China, and India while practicing surveillance on Eastern Christians dwelling in Rome (10). The editors also point to the pivotal role played by Giulio Antonio Santori (1532-1600) who compiled materials on Eastern Christians and promoted the use of Nicholas Eymerich’s Directorium Inquisitorum, promoting the printed edition of it in 1585 (19). Crucially too, questions about the Christian East intersected with other concerns challenging the Catholic world in the early modern period, ranging from the imposition or adaptation of rites and observances, syncretic practices, jurisdictional conflicts and hierarchies of obedience (20-21).
Perhaps partly because contributors were asked to explore the connections between individual inquisitorial trials and the ways in which Eastern Christianity was constructed and disciplined from a Catholic Reformation perspective, the editors note that in many of the volume’s case studies, “a denunciation or spontaneous appearance of an Eastern Christian before the Inquisition could trigger broader theoretical reflections about the legitimacy and orthodoxy of the traditional practices and beliefs of the Eastern Churches” (11). This finding is somewhat unsurprising, given that many regional medieval inquests into heresy and local religious observances were sparked by the “discovery” of a suspect individual (or cluster of individuals) denounced to a bishop, judge delegate, or “inquisitor” as suspected of heretical or criminously sinful behaviors. In fact, although the volume focuses on the activities of the early modern Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman inquisitions, lines of continuity certainly remained between later medieval and early modern inquisitorial writings and practices (as demonstrated by the reprinting of Eymerich’s treatise). Irene Bueno draws attention to this fact, stressing that mendicant missionaries who held offices as medieval inquisitors, although their remit was largely confined to Latin Christians and conversos rather than Eastern Christians, were also concerned with constructing Eastern Christians as “heretics” and/or “schismatics” in doctrine and rites in both inquisitorial manuals and theological treatises. One is reminded of the Franciscan missionary William of Rubruck’s horror at the “deviant” rites practiced by Nestorians and Armenians in the camp of the Mongol khan Möngke.
By contrast, Cesare Santus envisages a marked shift away from this approach with the Councils of Florence (1431-1445) and Trent (1545-1563). In response to challenges posed by the spread of Catholicism to the East, the Roman Inquisition alternated between investigation and toleration in cases involving Ethiopian, Armenian, and Chaldean Christians living in or visiting Rome, although Santus alludes also to cases involving Eastern Christians put on trial for converting to Islam (59). Moreover, the Roman Inquisition served as an important hub for queries on various practical matters pertaining to regions where Eastern Christians and Latin Christians had long coexisted, but where formal observance of Eastern rites now conflicted with the “Tridentine ecclesiological and disciplinary model” (60). Often, this process generated queries as to which profession of faith would be required in various regions, which ironically necessitated the employment of Eastern Christians as interpreters by the Roman curia (63). Although the reach of the Roman Inquisition was sharply reduced by the nineteenth century, becoming effectively restricted to the Papal States, David Armando notes that its claims to global doctrinal and disciplinary authority were theoretically extended even to countries where Eastern Christians or Muslims were the majority, such as the territories of the Ottoman Empire. Some cases involved mixed baptisms and/or marriages, funerals, and the provision of the sacraments, but also doctrine. Importantly, matters of “interreligious and interconfessional relations” (93) were often shaped by contemporary political struggles, particularly in the case of the Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Ruthenian churches.
Another cluster of essays focuses on various inquisitions’ attempts to control and discipline Greek Christians dwelling in the Mediterranean islands, southern Italy, and the Venetian Republic, a section which might have benefitted from at least a nod to the long and occasionally vexed relationship between Latin and Greek-rite communities in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, and elsewhere (the legation of Cardinal Pelagius of Albano comes immediately to mind). Sam Kennerley argues that despite Leo X’s forbidding Latin authorities from meddling with the customs of Greek communities after the union between Greek and Latin churches at the Council of Florence (1439), Greeks living in these regions were increasingly targeted by the Inquisition, particularly after the Council of Trent (1563). The Inquisition’s efforts were supported by the Greek Catholic Dionisio Zanettini, who denounced fellow Greeks for “Lutheran” beliefs; other Greeks, including Francesco Porto and Iannis Kasimatis, appear to have embraced Calvinism, signified by their rejection of icons (131).
José Floristán describes how inquests into errors supposedly contained in books utilized by Italo-Albanian and Italo-Greek communities in the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily (politically and militarily loyal to the Crown of Aragon and observing the union decreed by the Council of Florence) nonetheless resulted in a special commission being formulated to hammer out new doctrinal and ritual requirements for Greek-rite communities, including the revision of liturgical books. Jean-Pascal Gay provides a fascinating case study of the “inconsistent” role played by the Roman Inquisition and its “administrative ignorance” (215) in the oversight of the professed beliefs and rites of exiled Greek Maniots (re)settled by the Genoese in Paomia in Corsica. Most conflicts arose in the matters of ordination of priests, communion in utraque specie, and the oversight of penance and burial practices, and from concern that the Greek-rite community might contaminate nearby Corsican Latin Christian communities (195, 211). Gay concludes that this “inconsistency offered opportunities to local actors to either use the Inquisition or avoid its intervention” (217), a finding that certainly holds true for other regions and time periods.
This concern for correct observance in religious ceremonies and sacraments, particularly the practices of (re)baptism and marriage, was extended to Latin and Eastern Christian communities (including the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate) in the Balkans and Eastern Europe (then under the influence of the Ottoman Empire), regions where Latin Christians were missionaries or where communities such as the Orthodox metropolis of Kyiv had only recently come under the jurisdiction of the Roman church. Emese Muntán and Laurent Tatarenko argue that the emphasis of post-Tridentine clergy on “reformed sacramental practice” was stimulated by an increasing awareness of non-Catholic sacramental theologies and practices, such as the marriage of secular clergy in some Eastern churches, including the Ruthenian Unionate church (224-225, 247). A fascinating chapter by Silvia Notarfonso analyzes the response of missionaries of the curial department of Propaganda Fide who attempted to discipline the descendants of dualist Paulicians, then living in Ottoman Bulgaria and therefore capable of appealing to Ottoman kadi courts, by reporting and then seeking to accommodate the practice of certain funeral customs shared by local Catholic, Orthodox, and Romane congregations. However, these same missionaries faced a challenge posed by local Paulician communities who claimed their willingness to recognize papal authority and yet, according to reports sent to Rome by local missionaries, were riddled with various errors. These included the practice of kurban (animal sacrifice) at funerals, which some missionaries sought to reframe as an act of charity intended to honor God and the Saints, while other authorities denounced it as a pagan ritual (277-228).
Taking part in a larger trend in the study of global inquisition in areas outside of Europe proper, several essays examine attempts by Roman and Portuguese Inquisitions to extend their jurisdiction into new colonial territories in the East Indies and into the Ottoman Empire. Martin Rothkegel uses the fascinating case of the attempted infiltration of inquisitorial agents into the “safe haven” (301) of Ottoman-ruled Constantinople (home to many Moriscos and Jewish conversos fleeing the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions) with the goal of tracking down the religious dissident Jacobus Palaeologus, activity which soon broadened to disciplining Latin Christians residing in the Genoese colonies of Pera and Chios. Ironically, Jacobus’s own theological views seem designed to resolve problems posed by coexistence with and potential conversion to Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Antony Mecherry, SJ illustrates how the Portuguese Inquisition’s agents tried to disassociate the Eastern Christians of Malabar from the traditional practices of the Malabar church, supremely adapted to local cultures, and their allegiance to metropolitans from Mesopotamia. Interestingly, the forum-shopping and appeals system so typical of medieval inquisitions carried on into the early modern period: “Nestorian” prelates travelled to Rome and appealed to the papal curia against the activities of the Portuguese church and local inquisition in Goa. Similarly, the practice of accommodatio (particularly for Syriac as a liturgical language and the Chaldean rite) exercised by the Jesuits in Malabar alternated with more forcible attempts to align Thomas Christians with Latin Christian practices (16, 333).
The volume’s final two essays assess the impact of the Union of Brest (1595-1596) and the organization of the Eastern Catholic churches in the eighteenth century. Dennj Solera brings to life the activities of Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, a humanist scholar who mediated between Rome and the Polish-Lithuanian Orthodox, although, tellingly, Pinelli’s intellectual networks intersected with and were exploited by the Roman Inquisition to attempt to control the Greek Orthodox living in Venice (suspected of opposing the union of the two churches). Maria Teresa Fattori examines the crucial role played by Prospero Lambertini, consultant to the Holy Office and future pope Benedict XIV. Lambertini carefully studied materials left by predecessors in evaluating the union of Eastern Christian communities with Rome and compiling dossiers on the Melkite, Maronite, Coptic, Ruthenian, and Malabar churches, which would inform his discipline of the Eastern rites as pope, including his condemnation of Malabar rites, and a “coherent strategy that linked together Roman approaches to the Jews, the Eastern Catholic Churches, and the New World neophytes” (17, 392, 401).
A valuable reexamination of the relationship of the Latin Catholic church to Eastern Christians (both unionate and non-unionate), Inquisition and the Christian East sheds light on an important topic for historians of religion, colonization, and inquisition, and seems eminently suited for graduate courses on these topics. If inquisition and the construction of “heresy” indelibly shaped concepts of Latin orthodoxy in the medieval and early modern period, the same could and should be said for Latin Christian engagement with Eastern Christians and other religions.