MA PURE VI È QUESTA STRADA DI MEZZO. ΧΡΙΣΤΙΑΝΟΙ ΤΟΥ ΑΝΑΤΟΛΙΚΟΥ ΔΟΓΜΑΤΟΣ ΣΤΗΝ ΠΟΛΗ ΤΗΣ ΒΕΝΕΤΙΚΗΣ ΚΕΡΚΥΡΑΣ: ΜΙΑ ΘΡΗΣΚΕΥΤΙΚΟΤΗΤΑ ΤΗΣ ΜΕΘΟΡΙΟΥ (16ος-18ος ΑΙ.)

Abstract

What did it mean to be Greek-Orthodox in the pre-modern world? Was this a uniform and compact category across Greek-Orthodox populations? Or, could it take on different, local contents? In other words, was there more than one way of being Greek-Orthodox? To give an example, how would an Ottoman Orthodox Christian, who spoke Greek, was dressed in the Ottoman style and recognised as head of his religious community the patriarch of Constantinople, see those Greci in the Venetian city of Corfu, speaking often Italian, wearing their European clothes and their wigs, living in a westernised urban environment, and having a religious leader officially detached from the Patriarchate and placed under the jurisdiction of the local Venetian government?

The article explores these questions by focusing on Venetian Corfu and the Greek-Orthodox Christians that lived there. Drawing on written and visual sources, and treating Greek-Orthodox religiosity as an analytical category whose social, political and cultural contingencies are to be unraveled, it traces two versions of Greek-Orthodox Christianity: one that was influenced to a significant extent by Catholic practices; and another that was closer to the Ottoman tradition. It thus argues that in the pre-modern world there were different versions of Greek-Orthodox Christianity determined on a local level and entrenched in different political and cultural entities. In doing so it recasts local religiosity in Venetian Corfu as one of the many cases of early modern local piety that, especially since the 16th century, sprouted globally through the interaction of Catholics and non-Catholics and entailed a culture of accommodation challenging the orthodoxies of confessional Europe.