ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the collectivistic Catholicism's of Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia from both a historical and a sociological perspective. Its goal is to retrieve the genealogies of collectivistic Catholicism's in three contexts by focusing on their most dominant narratives, by identifying the Church elites that articulated and reinterpreted these narratives, and by indicating the change in their contents with regard to particular historical conditions. The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia caused the material and demographic marginalization of Bosnian Catholicism. The appeal of Croatian national programs within the Bosnian context was enabled by lively trading, educational, and religious connections between the Bosnian Catholics and the Catholics of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia. The socio-economic and political conditions of the Slovenian lands at the time of the Protestant Reformation indicated their proximity to German influence. The view of Croatia as the shield of Christianity was more than a symbolic claim of the threatened Christian nobility.
