Aurélien Girard is Senior Lecturer at Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, member of CERHIC. He specialised in the multifaceted history of Eastern Christians (16th-19th c.) and the history of European orientalism. His last publications include ‘Was an Eastern scholar necessarily a cultural broker in early-modern academic Europe? Faustus Naironus (1628-1711), the Christian East, and Oriental studies,’ in Nick Hardy and Dmitri Levitin (eds), Faith and History: Confessionalisation and Erudition in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Cesare Santus is Senior (Tenure Track) Assistant Professor at the University of Trieste. His research focuses on the doctrinal and judicial control exercised by the Roman Inquisition over Eastern Christianity, both in the Ottoman Empire and Italy. His last publications include Trasgressioni necessarie. (Rome: EFR, 2019) and "Wandering Lives: Eastern Christian Pilgrims, Alms-collectors and ‘Refugees’ in Early Modern Rome”, in E. Michelson, M. Coneys Wainwright (eds), A Companion to Religious Minorities in Early Modern Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 237-271. Vassa Kontouma is the Dean of the Religious Sciences Section, EPHE Paris. Her most recent research focuses on the circulation of Orthodox books, ecclesiastical scholarly networks and the theology of the sacraments (15th-17th c.), as well as the phenomenon of popular theology in its late expressions (18th-19th c.). Her last publications include ‘Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Greek Reception of Aquinas,’ in M. Levering, M. Plested (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 313-328. Karène Sanchez Summerer is Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Groningen University. Her research considers the interactions between European linguistic and cultural policies and the Arab communities (1860-1948) in the Levant, missionaries' modalities and impact and Arab Catholic communities in Palestine. She recently published with K. Papastathis, Contemporary Levant, special issue, ‘Eastern Christianity in Syria and Palestine and European Cultural Diplomacy (1860-1948). A Connected History,’ vol. 6, issue 1, 2021.

In these enthralling essays, Bernard Heyberger, with elegance and clarity, has unravelled many Middle Eastern knots and evoked some of the more fascinating connections and exchanges that have characterized the world of the Mediterranean.

• List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on the EditorsList of Abbreviations and AcronymsNote on Transliteration Note on the Text Foreword by Heather Sharkey Introduction by Aurélien Girard, Cesare Santus and Karène Sanchez-Summerer Part I Mobility, Networks and Protection1. Eastern Christians in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Catholic Europe2. The Wasted Career of an Eastern Clergyman in Italy: Timothy Karnuk (Timoteo Agnellini), Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mardin 3. Security and Insecurity: Syrian Christians in the Mediterranean (Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) 4. A Border-Crossing Ottoman Christian at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century: Ḥannā Diyāb of Aleppo and His Account of His Travel to Paris 5. The Migration of Middle Eastern Christians and European Protection: A Long History Part II Building Confessional identities: Entangled Histories6. The Westernisation and Confessionalisation of Christians in the Middle East: An ‘Entangled History’ (‘Histoire Croisée’) 7. Polemic Dialogues between Christians and Muslims in the Seventeenth Century 8. From Religious to Secular Imagery? The Rise of the Image among Christians in Syria and Lebanon in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries 9. Individualism and Political Modernity: Devout Catholic Women in Aleppo and Mount Lebanon between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries 10. Saint Charbel Makhlouf, or the Consecration of Maronite Identity Epilogue by John-Paul Ghobrial Complete Bibliography of Bernard Heyberger’s Publications Bibliography Tabula Gratulatoria Index