Ragusa and the Beginnings of the Balkan Missions

Abstract

: The significance of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) in the history of the Ottoman Hungary has been blank till the recent past. The rediscovery of the archives of the Republic of Ragusa by the Hungarians expanded the substance of knowledge to a large extent gained from the Roman archives, especially from the archives of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide and the Roman Inquisition. The Republic of Ragusa and the Balkan trade routes played a determining role in the maintenance of Catholic church structures in the European half of the Ottoman Empire. It was the archbishop of Ragusa who first mediated between the Apostolic See and the Balkan missions. The beginning of his role in the Balkan missions can be fully grasped from the documents of the volume that mainly preserved the correspondence of the late sixteenth century and is found in the archives of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide. The report of Archbishop Girolamo Matteucci published in this paper, dated in 1581, is outstanding, with the help of which the outward forms of the Ragusan intellectuals’ missionary zeal in the Balkans during the sixteenth century are palpable. The report of the archbishop relied on the information of Tommaso Nadali, Ragusan physician who was active at the Polish and Ottoman court as well as in the Balkan Peninsula. He became a unique advocate of the papal anti-Ottoman policy at the end of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, Matteucci’s report clearly reveals the struggle of the people of Ragusa against Protestantism in Ottoman Hungary. On the basis of other Ragusan sources as well as the reports of the Protestant reformers, it becomes apparent that the merchants of the city-state were considered to be the most serious enemies of the new Protestant doctrines in the territory of Hungary under Ottoman rule.