2025/05/20 by John-Paul Ghobrial · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Islamic Studies and History #Ottoman Empire History and Society #Ottoman and Turkish Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/stc.2024.40
openalex publication_date 2025/05/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article offers a close reading of a collection of letters written by Capuchin missionaries in the Ottoman empire in the early seventeenth century. It does so with a view towards understanding how the early Capuchins reflected on their position in both local and global contexts. Rather than see these early Capuchin missions as operating ‘in the margins’ – whether by virtue of their presence in the world of Eastern Christianity, or by virtue of their distance from Rome or their own countries of origin – this article starts from a different perspective, that is, by situating these individuals at the heart of the Ottoman communities in which they established themselves. To this end, the article shows how Capuchin missionaries envisioned themselves as participating in a global religious order based in Brittany whilst they sought in their everyday lives to achieve proximity to Ottoman Christians and Muslims. In its attention to questions of distance, mobility and the specificity of place, the article contributes to recent attempts to reimagine the field of ‘global Catholicism’: where is the centre; where are the margins; and who decides which is which?