A groundbreaking volume that radically refocuses our study of early modern Catholicism within a wider geographical and cultural context. The intricate relationship between the Roman Church and the Christian East has long been underestimated in shaping early modern Catholicism. Similarly, scholarship on the Inquisition has largely overlooked how it interacted with members of the Eastern branch of Christianity. Yet these groups frequently faced the scrutiny of the judges of the faith, who were, in turn, exposed to alternative disciplinary and doctrinal models that questioned Catholic certainties. This volume delves into the debates surrounding the compatibility of Eastern norms and traditions with the principles of the Counter-Reformation, focusing on Greek, Arab, and Slavic communities, as well as Armenians, Ethiopians, and Syriac Christians from the Ottoman Empire and India, among others. The essays examine topics such as the confessional surveillance of Eastern Christians in Catholic territories and the responses of Roman theologians to thorny questions posed by missionaries around the globe. Through a meticulous study of rich, untapped archival resources in a wide array of languages, this collection reveals how the interaction with Eastern Christianity exposed some of the contradictions and unresolved problems of Tridentine Catholicism, while providing the Inquisition with a set of cultural tools and interpretive lenses that would eventually be applied in the missionary and theological controversies that shook the Catholic world from the seventeenth century onwards.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Re-Orienting the History of Catholic Confessional Control Cesare Santus Section I. The Inquisition and the Christian East: General Perspectives 1. Late Medieval Inquisitors and the Framing of Eastern Christianity: Procedures, Consultations, and Treatises - Irene Bueno 2. The Roman Holy Office and the Christian East: Overview of Sources and New Research Perspectives - Cesare Santus 3. Ancient Controversies and Modern Challenges: The Roman Inquisition and the Eastern Christians in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century - David Armando Section II. The Ritual and Disciplinary Control of Greeks in Italy 4. Greeks as Targets and Agents of the Inquisitions in Italy, 1541-1564 - Sam Kennerley 5. Inquisitorial Trial on the Liturgical Books Used by the Greek Communities in Sicily (1624-1627): A Study on the Origins of the Congregatio particularis super emendatione euchologii Graecorum - José M. Floristán 6. The Inconsistent Observer: The Roman Inquisition and the Greek Community of Paomia (Corsica, Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries) - Jean-Pascal Gay Section III. Questioning Sacraments and Religious Ceremonies in Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Balkans 7.In the Name of the Holy Spirit(s): Contested Baptisms between Catholics and Eastern Orthodox in Seventeenth-Century Northern Ottoman Europe - Emese Muntán 8. Matrimonial Discipline Facing the Challenges of Uniatism: The Case of the Ruthenian Church (Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries) - Laurent Tatarenko 9. Animal Sacrifice and 'Schismatic' Celebrations among Bulgarian Paulicians (Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries) - Silvia Notarfonso Section IV. The Inquisition Overseas: Exercising Authority in an Extra-European Context 10. The Roman Inquisition and the Latin Christians of Constantinople: Commissaries of the Holy Office in the Ottoman Capital, 1558-1569 - Martin Rothkegel 11. Early Modern Christians of St. Thomas at Inquisitorial Crossroads - Antony Mecherry SJ Section V. Inquisitors, Brokers and Consultants: The Role of the Individual in the Bureaucracy of the Holy Office 12. Toward the Union of Brest: Gian Vincenzo Pinelli between Roman Inquisition, Ruthenian-Orthodox and Venetian Greek-Orthodox - Dennj Solera 13. De rebus ad Maronitas et Graecos spectantibus. The Eastern Catholic Churches in Lambertini's Dossiers: A Consultor of the Holy Office - between Inquisitorial Norms and Decrees of the Oriental Synods - Maria Teresa Fattori Index