Book Review: Antal Molnár, “Confessionalization on the Frontier. The Balkan Catholics between Roman Reform and Ottoman Reality” (Rome: Viella, 2019)

Abstract

In rather original manner, this book deals with Catholic confessionalization in the Balkans, a topic that has benefited from limited attention in extant literature. The choice of subject seems to have been stimulated by the fact that the Catholics, despite being the smallest religious community in the Balkans, were beyond doubt the most significant, a view supported by their commercial and diplomatic contacts with the west and by the strength and liveliness of their cultural expression in the region. As the book deals with confessional minorities, such as the Catholics in the Balkans, it primarily refers to mechanisms of confession-building often initiated by the Holy See, but implemented locally by various agents, such as secular elites, secular clergy and religious orders. In terms of its chronologic span, the book mostly deals with developments in religious life during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because strategies of confessionalization came to a halt in this region during the eighteenth century, as convincingly demonstrated in chapter nine. In terms of its geographical span, partly following in the footsteps of Fernand Braudel, the study focuses on the whole of the Balkan peninsula, with the exception of Greece, but including Ottoman Hungary as a part of the Ottoman Balkans, proposing a broader understanding of the region. Thus, the book succeeds in transcending national frameworks and evolves towards a macro-regional analysis.