The Holy Land and the Early Modern Reinvention of Catholicism

Examines Catholic engagement in the Holy Land, a place of immense spiritual significance for Christians, Muslims and Jews. It explores its spiritual meaning, early modern pilgrimage, and the Holy Land's emergence as a site of imperial as well as inter-faith contestation in a period of profound religious and political change.

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A shared biblical past has long imbued the Holy Land with special authority as well as a mythic character that has made the region not only the spiritual home for Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but also a source of a living sacred history that informs contemporary realities and religious identities. This book explores the Holy Land as a critical site in which early modern Catholics sought spiritual and political legitimacy during a period of profound and disruptive change. The Ottoman conquest of the region, the division of the Western Church, Catholic reform, the integration of the Mediterranean into global trading networks, and the emergence of new imperial rivalries transformed the Custody of the Holy Land, the venerable Catholic institution that had overseen Western pilgrimage since 1342, into a site of intense intra-Christian conflict by 1517. This contestation underscored the Holy Land's importance as a frontier and center of an embattled Catholic tradition.