Confessionalization in a Multi-ethnic Empire
Journal: Oxford University Press eBooks
Year: 2017

Abstract This chapter surveys the state’s policy towards non-Orthodox faiths and communities in the eighteenth-century empire, which reflected its overall policy of tolerance of difference. It considers Islam, Buddhism, Lutheranism, Catholicism, and Judaism. In each case the empire tried to identify institutions of connection with religious communities to facilitate communication and control by the imperial center. The various Christian sections already provided some form of religious hierarchy