ABSTRACT
The chapter analyzes the process of adaptation of the Catholic missionaries of Izimir in the city’s multi-religious environment through two processes: the missionaries’ laissez-faire tendency in lieu of the aggressiveness in fighting heresy proper of other missions and the internal competition of the Catholic religious orders in the city on the basis of their European country of origin. The missionaries are caught in both their daily dealings with individuals and groups of different religions and with the precarious internal balance of the Catholic community. The chapter supports the concept of a ‘functional tolerance’ of the missionaries, not necessarily based on the belief in its ethical value. Blocked in an environment they could not modify through evangelization, missionaries accepted the status quo for functionally working in it. The effort to normalize the parish institution in the Ottoman Empire was hampered by the fragmentation of the Catholic parishioners into ‘nations’ that – together with the economic precariousness Izmir’s parish churches – elevated to the highest degree the contentiousness of the Catholic religious orders settled in the city. Documentary source of this chapter are the letters of the missionaries to the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in Rome (1683–1724).
