Abstract:
In order to keep its traditional neutrality in foreign policy and to preserve inner stability after the disastrous earthquake of 1667, the state authorities of the Republic of Dubrovnik controlled the entire public life in this city-state, which was clamped between Ottoman and Venetian possessions on the coast of the south Adriatic. They managed to impose their will on archbishops of the local Church in various aspects of religious life, including the election of public preachers in the city cathedral. Treated as simple officials in service of the government, these clerics (mostly members of various religious orders who came from Italy) played their role according to their employers’ desires, with only formal concern for their flock. However, sermons by their local counterparts, who preached mostly in smaller city churches, left a deeper mark in this highly conservative Catholic milieu. An analysis of their experiences and preserved texts of their sermons offers a new perception of the political, social, linguistic, and even theological culture of late Baroque Dubrovnik, a city whose importance remained incomparable within the Slavonic world in the Mediterranean.
