Home > News > Online seminar (May 26, 2025) - Paris, Venice, Rome, and Constantinople in conflict: who protects the Catholic churches of Smyrna in the seventeenth century?
Online seminar (May 26, 2025) - Paris, Venice, Rome, and Constantinople in conflict: who protects the Catholic churches of Smyrna in the seventeenth century?
As the final session of the series Litigating in Early Modern Europe: Sharing New Research / Procédures et tribunaux dans l’Europe moderne : nouvelles recherches, this seminar explores a lesser-known dimension of the history of Catholicism in the eastern Mediterranean: the Franco-Italian rivalry over the protection of churches and the administration of Catholic parishes within Ottoman territories.
The shifting dynamics of the Venetian-Ottoman wars (1645–1718), which progressively enhanced French influence at the expense of Venice, reveal the intricate entanglement of political, religious, architectural, and urban factors across the Aegean. Owing to its strategic location and significant Catholic population, Smyrna (Izmir) offers an exceptional case study of these rivalries.
Drawing on the rich holdings of the Propaganda Fide Archives in the Vatican, this paper examines the tensions between the Franciscan Observants (Friars Minor of the Observance, zoccolanti in Italian), supported by Venice, and the Capuchins under French protection in Smyrna, within a broader framework of constant negotiation with Rome and Constantinople.
Throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, the competing claims of the Capuchins and the Observants, the mediation efforts of the Jesuits (also under French protection), and the oscillating positions of Roman authorities (at times favoring the Venetians) created a fragile and intricate web of relationships.
Exploiting the ambiguity of parish boundaries, Catholic parishioners frequently engaged in disputes with ecclesiastical authorities and among themselves, readily shifting allegiance from one church to another to influence the management of civil affairs, particularly in matters of family law.
Known in ecclesiastical records as the causa smyrnensis, this dispute offers a critical lens through which to examine the mechanisms of adaptation, appropriation, and resistance to Roman authority in a peripheral province of the Church under Ottoman rule, shedding light on the complexity of interconfessional relations in the early modern Mediterranean.
26/05/2025, from 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM (Rome time), online.
For more information and to register, please visit: https://www.efrome.it/la-recherche/seminaires/prochains-seminaires/paris-venise-rome-et-constantinople-en-conflit-qui-protege-les-eglises-catholiques-de-smyrne-au-xviiesiecle
Please note that the seminar will be held in French.
Published on: May 14 2025
