Latin Church in the Middle East

Latin Church in the Middle East
Latin Church in the Middle East
	Dioceses of the Latin Church in the Middle East
Countries and regions	Cyprus; Israel; Jordan; Lebanon; Syria; Turkey (Hatay Province) Broader definition Egypt ; Greece ; Iraq ; Cyrenaica (Libya) ; Turkey ;
Demonym	Latin Catholics, Levantines
Languages	Ladino, Turkish, Domari
Time Zones	UTC+02:00 (EET) ( Cyprus)
Largest cities	Damascus; Amman; Aleppo; Beirut; Gaza; Jerusalem; Tel Aviv;

The

colonial period

.

Depending on the specific area in question, due to their cultural heritage descending from Catholics who lived under the

Arabic: شوام; French: Levantins; Italian: Levantini; Greek: Φραγκολεβαντίνοι Frankolevantini; Turkish: Levantenler or Tatlısu Frenkleri) after Frankokratia

.

A distinctive era of influence occurred during the

Christians in the Middle East, Latin Catholics have both a history and a present of persecution

.

History

Levantines were mostly of

Iskenderun, etc., where the colonies of Genoese and Venetian merchants existed) in present-day Turkey

.

The majority are either the descendants of traders from the

Eastern Christians

who had resided there for centuries.

Levant

When the

Italian or Greek

) who had assimilated and adopted local dress and customs.

Today, a small percentage of Lebanon's small group of Latin Catholics are of at least partial French/Italian descent.^[1]^[2]

Cyprus

The Catholic community of

Cyprus (Latinoi, Λατίνοι) consists one of the three recognized religious minorities of Cyprus, together with the Armenians and Maronites, according to the 1960 constitution.^[3]

Turkey

About 35,000 Levantines live in Turkey.^[4]

The name Italo-Levantine is specifically applied to people of

Mediterranean coast (the Levant, particularly in present-day Lebanon and Israel) dating back to the period of the Crusades and the Byzantine Empire. A small group came from Crimea and from the Genoese colonies in the Black Sea, after the Fall of Constantinople

in 1453.

The majority of the Levantines in modern Turkey are the descendants of traders/colonists from the Italian maritime republics of the Mediterranean (especially Genoa and Venice) and France, who obtained special rights and privileges called the Capitulations from the Ottoman sultans in the 16th century.^[5]

There are two large communities of Italian Levantines: one in Istanbul and the other in İzmir. At the end of the 19th century there were nearly 6,000 Levantines of Italian roots in İzmir.^[6] They came mainly from the nearby Genoese island of Chios in the Aegean Sea.^[7]

The community had more than 15,000 members during Atatürk's presidency in the 1920s and 1930s, but today is reduced to only a few hundreds, according to Italian Levantine writer Giovanni Scognamillo.^[8]

They continue to live in Istanbul (mostly in the districts of Karaköy, Beyoğlu and Nişantaşı), and İzmir (mostly in the districts of Karşıyaka, Bornova and Buca.)

The largest Catholic church in Turkey is the Church of St. Anthony of Padua on İstiklal Avenue in the Beyoğlu (Pera) district of Istanbul, which was constructed between 1906 and 1912 by the Italian Levantine community.

They have been influential in creating and reviving a tradition of

Catholic

community are Levantines.

Notable people

Notable people of the Italian Levantine community in Turkey include:

Sir Alfred Biliotti, who joined the British foreign service and eventually rose to become one of its most distinguished consular officers in the late 19th century. Biliotti was also an accomplished archaeologist who conducted important excavations at sites in the Aegean and Anatolia.
Livio Missir di Lusignano. Historian. His masterpiece is Les anciennes familles italiennes de Turquie.
Giuseppe Donizetti, musicist. He was Instructor General of the Imperial Ottoman Music at the court of Sultan Mahmud II.^[10]
Giovanni Scognamillo, writer. He composed "Memorie di Beyoğlu di un Levantino" in 1989.^[11]