The Authority of the Church in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Catholic Literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The Catholic Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to extensive religious and cultural activity among Catholics in Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina. The initiators of these actions were the clergy, primarily the Franciscans of the Bosna Srebrena province. A significant aspect of their work was the publication of religious literature, with the issue of Church authority being one of its central themes. The first part of this paper aims to examine the representation of the Church and its authority in literature derived from Latin and Italian sources. The second part addresses the distinct characteristics of Bosnian-Herzegovinian Catholicism in the early modern period. Given that these particularities are especially evident in the way Church authority functioned, this raises the question of coherence between the concept of Church authority as articulated in religious literature and its practical implementation.