The Habsburg Monarchy often presented itself as a Catholic polity. Scholars have challenged this characterization with reference to the periodically significant Protestant and in some respects also Jewish representation. Eastern Christians are mentioned less frequently, even though they constituted the largest non-Catholic element in the late Habsburg Monarchy and amounted to almost 19 percent of the empire's total population in 1900.
The current study tries to both remedy this neglect and break new conceptual ground by combining the fields of Habsburg studies and Eastern Christian studies. The anthology has its origins in a 2009 conference held in Alberta and is divided into three major sections. The first section contains only one chapter, but Paul Robert Magocsi's overview of the historical development of Eastern-rite churches under Habsburg rule serves as the indispensable backbone of otherwise often disparate contributions. The second section comprises four more narrowly delineated investigations of concrete historical developments, whereas the fives chapters of the final section examine Eastern Christian sacral cultures. There is no attempt at an overarching conclusion for the entire volume.
In his introductory overview, Paul Robert Magocsi describes the theological, cultural, and historical diversity of the populations affiliated with Eastern rites in Habsburg lands. Most important was the dividing line between Orthodoxy and Greek Catholicism, with the latter deriving from various agreements subordinating formerly Orthodox religious bodies to the supremacy of the pope. These unions took place at different times and under differing political circumstances. Quite generally, the incorporation of Eastern Christians into Habsburg lands was a drawn-out process, which began with the inclusion of small Orthodox communities in the Hungarian periphery after 1526 and did not reach its conclusion until the occupation of Bosnia in 1878. Along the way, the final removal of the Ottomans from Hungarian territory together with the incorporation of Transylvania added sizable Eastern-rite populations at the turn of the eighteenth century, as did the acquisition of Galicia and Bukovina at the end of that century.
Following this general outline, the second section of the book commences with two analyses of the competition between Greek Catholicism and Orthodoxy in eighteenth-century Transylvania. Sever Cristian Oancea shows the at times conflicting attempts by central and local authorities to influence the religious affiliation of Romanian peasants, who struggled to grasp the difference between Uniate and non-Uniate theology, in the Saxon autonomous district. Ciprian Ghişa confirms the continuities in daily practice for Uniate churchgoers and highlights the importance of the Eastern rite for religious as well as ethnic identity among Transylvania's Romanians. These conditions supported the remarkable resurgence of Orthodoxy and the resultant change in the numerical balance between Uniates and non-Uniates in the mid-1700s, which was followed by acerbic polemics between the two confessional bodies. Thereafter, Marija Petrović shifts the focus to the extensive reforms in the Serbian dominated Orthodox Metropolitanate of Karlovci initiated especially by Maria Theresa. An interesting facet is added by Joel Brady's final contribution to this section, which documents the interactions between Ukrainians in their Habsburg homelands and their American places of emigration. Most significantly, he highlights the transatlantic transfer of American conversion movements to Orthodoxy through letters and publications as well as through returned emigrants.
As Paul Robert Magocsi stated in his historical overview, Eastern Christians may not have played a strong political role in the Habsburg Monarchy, but they had a lasting impact on its cultural landscape. It is this cultural impact that is studied in the final section of the book, which also provides numerous black and white images of the objects examined. Bernadett Puskás analyzes sacral paintings in the Greek Catholic eparchy of Mukachevo. Located at the intersection of Ukrainian/Rusyn, Slovak, and Hungarian influences, this originally Byzantine-dominated artistic sphere subsequently received significant impulses from the Baroque movement that transfused the Habsburg Monarchy. Roksolana Kosiv explores the often neglected world of sacred and secular banners among Ukrainians in Galicia. Andriy Zayarnyuk, for his part, shows the impact of competing national movements on the architecture of nineteenth and early twentieth century Lviv/Lwów/Lemberg, where Polish and Ukrainian architects drew on historical and folk-culture elements in their attempts to imbue the city with the desired national ambience. Olesya Semchyshyn-Huzner examines the works of Galician painter Modest Sosensko, who merged modernist and historical Byzantine-Rus approaches in his monumentalist contributions to early twentieth century Ukrainian sacral art. Finally, Natalia Dmytryshyn analyzes Galician sacral needlework at the turn of the twentieth century and its search for an authentic expression within a Ukrainian national canon.
Eastern Christians in the Habsburg Monarchy leaves an ambivalent impression. The anthology shows its origins in conference proceedings; it is a collage of select facets without an overarching narrative or conclusion. The strong emphasis on works of art, whose analysis fills 60 percent of the combined text, makes much of the volume a study of art history. General history fills no more than 100 pages, which cannot begin to do justice to the many divergent expressions of Eastern-rite life under Habsburg rule. Readers expecting to receive an encompassing overview of the Eastern Christian experience in this part of the world will be disappointed.
Instead, the readers can expect well-researched glimpses of Eastern Christian life in the Danube Monarchy. In combination, these glimpses show the transitional nature of art and society at the intersection of larger cultural realms. At the symbolic center of this cultural world stands the Greek Catholic Church, with its often ambiguous position between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy and its unique expression of the cultural and religious hybridity that has characterized the region for many centuries. In this manner, the otherwise often disparate contributions regain a unifying theme after all.
