Modern History

The third meeting of the research program “Religious Norms and Practices between East and West” will be an opportunity to examine how relationships between sovereign powers, Churches and communities shaped the practices and the definition of social and political identities in the different regions of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. Our meeting aims to connect the scales of observation and thereby the different actors (political powers, clergy and communities of the faithful) to highlight the practical functioning of societies marked by religious diversity and the forms of political identities they produce. Our approach is part of a comparative perspective, both in terms of periods, in order to examine evolutions and possible breaks, as well as in terms of spaces to better understand the circulation of models between the Latin and the Eastern Christianity, but also between the Churches and the political authorities. The survey will extend from the Eastern regions of the Mediterranean region (Byzantine, Armenian, Latin and Islamic - Mamluk then Ottoman) to the Eastern borders of the Catholic Europe, by way of the Balkan Peninsula. We will consider over a long time the interrelationships between religious communities and political constructions, through a series of representative case studies chosen on different scales.