Gregorio XIII e l’Europa orientale: la visita apostolica del vescovo di Stagno Bonifacio de Stefani

In the last decades of the sixteenth century, in the wake of the Council of Trent and the battle of Lepanto, central-eastern Europe suff ered a multiplication of Rome’s eff orts aimed to take down the Ottoman domination over the heterogeneous Danubian-Balkan world to get it back in the spiritual and geopolitical boundaries of Catholic Christianity. In this context, in , Gregory XIII commissioned bishop Bonifacio De Stefani, supported by some Jesuit missionaries, to accomplish an apostolic visit in complex areas such as Dalmatian, Bosnian and Hungarian in order to verify the living conditions of Christians, Catholics and Orthodox, subjects of the sultan and their multiple relations with the Turkish world. Finally, the Pope had requested Destefani to evaluate what possibilities there were to trigger, feed and lead the insurrection of those populations against the Turks.