Original scientific paper
The Population of Srijem According to Confessional Structure in the Second Half of the Eighteenth and at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, Based on the Data from Canonical Visitations
Dubravka Božić Bogović
; Odsjek za povijest Filozofskog fakulteta Sveučilišta Josipa Jurja Strossmayera, Osijek, Hrvatska
Abstract
Austro-Ottoman wars at the end of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century brought about the changes of political borders by which Srijem (Syrmia) found itself within the Habsburg Monarchy, but also caused sufferings and migrations of the population leading to important demographic changes. From the middle of the 1730s the dynamic demographic recovery of the whole of Srijem may be followed. In the confessional and demographic senses, one especially interesting feature of Srijem is its religious heterogeneity in particular. By the use of methods of historical demography and of statistical methods and techniques for the analyses of the data extant in canonical visitations for the Srijem area in the period under research, the numbers and their change for members of different confessional communities and their spatial disposition are determined, their parish organisation and its changes are analysed, and the similarities and differences between the areas belonging to the dioceses of Srijem and of Pécs and the parishes belonging to each of them are shown. The research shows that during the second half of the eighteenth century the number of Catholics in the whole area grew by approximately 314%, with lesser growth in its eastern part (230%) and greater in its western part (360%). Western Srijem had a greater territory and a greater number of parishes and settlements, and out of the total Catholic population of Srijem in the middle of the eighteenth century it made up approximately 63%. At the beginning of the nineteenth century this proportion increased to approximately 73%. In eastern Srijem the Orthodox population was in the majority, making 60% of the whole population. Such a proportion is visible also on the parish level: half of the parishes had an Orthodox majority, while in the other half (with the exception of Petrovaradin and Hrtkovci) the Orthodox formed a large proportion of the whole population. Western Srijem had a Catholic majority (approximately 60%) and a greater number of parishes in which there lived only a Catholic population – or, alongside them, only a few Orthodox families – and in this area there existed the only homogenous and most numerous Calvinist community in Srijem, the one in Tordinci. The increase in the number of denizens of Catholic confession was accompanied by a rationalisation of parish organisation by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and inter-confessional relations were an object of interest for both the Catholic hierarchy and the parish clergy, who offered the most divergent proposals for the solution of the concrete problems of these relationships.
Keywords
Srijem; canonical visitations; diocese; parish; Catholics; Orthodox; Calvinists; confessional and demographic structure
Hrčak ID:
45745
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2009.
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