The Yugoslav Concordat: Pacem in Discordia or the Yugoslav "Kulturkampf"

The monograph analyses the social, legal, religious, national, and political aspects of the relations between the Catholic Church and the state authorities in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia in the interwar period. The Concordat – the agreement between the Holy See and the state – was the key legal act in this field. In the Yugoslav context this agreement involves certain specifics that encompass and explicitly demonstrate all of the most pressing problems that the Kingdom faced at the level of domestic and foreign policy. The relations between the representatives of the Catholic and Serbian Orthodox Church in Yugoslavia, the Holy See, the political parties, and the state leadership are described through the negotiations, signing, and confirmation of the Concordat in the Assembly as well as its renouncement. In this context the accessible relevant archive sources have been examined in the Vatican Archives, the Historical Archives of the Secretariat of State (Second Section), the Archives of Yugoslavia, the Archives of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, the Archdiocesan Archives in Ljubljana, the Regional Archives in Nova Gorica, the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia, the Archdiocesan Archives in Maribor, and the Historical Archives in Celje.