The Space of Power. State Consolidation by Means of Religious Policy in the Danube Principalities in the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries

Abstract

This article shows the close link between religious policy, especially that of the confessional option, and the politicization of space in the building processes of territorial states. The study focuses on the two Danube Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which implemented their state building owing to three decisive steps: i) the jurisdictional option in favour of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople; ii) the territorial and social implementation of the Byzantine Orthodox faith by institutional infrastructure and monastic reform; iii) the Orthodox enculturation of the two Wallachian principalities.The main goal of this chapter is to show how cultural and historical phenomena transform the abstract geographical space into the political space of a state.