The Roman Holy Office and the Christian East: Overview of Sources and New Research Perspectives

In this chapter I give an overview of the sources relating to Eastern Christianity in the archives of the Roman Inquisition. For several years, I have been conducting a systematic analysis of these sources, and I present some case studies to illustrate their significance and the importance of the documentation in Oriental languages that can be found there. On the other hand, I argue why it is important even for non-specialists to study the Inquisition’s attitude towards Eastern Christianity, insofar as it represented a challenge to the ecclesiological and disciplinary model of the Counter-Reformation, and by pointing out how the problems and difficulties raised by the spread of Catholicism in the East intersected with other controversies that shook the entire Catholic world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.