Catholics and Sultans

Book excerpt: This book surveys the relations between Catholics outside and inside the Ottoman Empire from 1453 to 1923. After the fall of Constantinople the only large Latin Catholic group to be incorporated into the sultan's domain were the Genoese who lived in Galata, across the Golden Horn from the Byzantine capital. Over the next few decades Turkish armies pushed into the Balkans, overrunning the Catholic population of Albania, Bosnia and Hungary. In the Orient, the sixteenth century saw the Maronites of Lebanon, the Latins of Palestine and most of the Greek islands, which once held Latin Catholic communities, come under Turkish rule. Papal response to the loss of these communities was initially a call to the crusade, but response from West European monarchs was disappointing. Their concerns were closer to home. French interest, however, lay in an alliance with the Turks against the Habsburgs. As a bonus, the Catholics of the Ottoman world received a protector at the Porte in the person of the French ambassador. The book traces the subsequent history of the Latin Catholics and each of the Eastern Catholic churches in the Ottoman Empire until its dissolution in 1923.