Slavery and Salvation: Christian Captives, Catholic Missionaries, and Religion in the Early Modern Black Sea

This research project addresses the issue of religion and its many manifestations in lives of Christian slaves and in their interactions with Catholic missionaries and authorities in the Black Sea region in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Focusing on the three key areas of Black Sea slavery, namely Crimea, Georgia, and Istanbul, this project explores the role of religion in slaves’ attempts to exercise agency and claim subjecthood under the conditions of extreme unfreedom. It also examines the implications of the increasing presence of Catholic missionaries in the region for religious and social lives of Christian captives of different confessions. Dominicans, Franciscans, Theatines, and later Jesuits were unique witnesses and participants of this recondite domain of Black Sea slavery by virtue of their mission to tend to spiritual needs of hundreds and thousands of Latin-rite slaves and convert Eastern Christians living in those lands under the Ottoman control. The missionaries produced a rich archive of letters, reports, and other documentation about their complex entanglements with Christian captives which constitutes a major source base for this project.