WI: Catholic Serbia

Unless it somehow prevents the formation of the HRE.

Also, this could have interesting consequences for Dubrovnik.

Honestly since as said before without the division of Serbia and Croatia by religion you would have a stronger South Slav state that would be a nightmare for both Byzantium and moreso the Bulgarians.

Similar but not the same.
If Serbs are Catholic they'll share both language and religion with Croats. Still, events can lead them to form different states.
Montenegrin and Moldovan nationalities (who share both language and religion with Serbs and Romanians respectivily) are recent creations, even though backed on old states.

Indeed.
We should also consider Bosnia which (pre-Ottoman days) varied between an independent kingdom and a Hungarian vassal banate.
In a sense Bosnia could be considered a Catholic Serbia ;).

We should also note that pre1500s the differences between South Slavic Catholicism and Orthodoxy were minor - sermons and rites were carried out in the same old/middle Serbocroat or Church Slavonic, similar sacraments etc.
 
If the Balkan states are all Catholic, much easier for the Western world to wage war against the Orthodox countries of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Assuming that this TL does occur and Ukraine also becomes Catholic, only Russia and Belarus would be the two remaining Orthodox nations.
 
If the Balkan states are all Catholic, much easier for the Western world to wage war against the Orthodox countries of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Assuming that this TL does occur and Ukraine also becomes Catholic, only Russia and Belarus would be the two remaining Orthodox nations.

Belarus and Ukraine is toast because it is ruled by Poland.
 
Yeah, and with Belarus and Ukraine under the Polish thumb, Russia's isolation becomes decisive. Maybe Russia would look to its new Asiatic allies as replacement.

Wait a minute, Greece is also Orthodox. So would Greece and Russia try to form an alliance against the entire Catholic bloc?
 
Yeah, and with Belarus and Ukraine under the Polish thumb, Russia's isolation becomes decisive. Maybe Russia would look to its new Asiatic allies as replacement.

Wait a minute, Greece is also Orthodox. So would Greece and Russia try to form an alliance against the entire Catholic bloc?

Why would "Russia" even still exist?
 
Serbia actually DID oscillate between Orthodoxy and Catholicism for a while, though not to the same extent as Bosnia, so a Catholic Serbia isn't out of the question.

However, it would not result in either a "Greater Croatia" or a "Greater Serbia". The two states would probably still remain separate for a while; the difference in religion was enough to foster different national identities, even in the middle ages [1], plus there was the whole matter of there being different royal houses in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Zeta/Duklja (early Montenegro), which as we all know is a sure fire way to encourage regionalism.

With a shared religion, though, I do see them uniting much, much earlier, and under potentially very different circumstances due to the butterflies. The unification may be similar to the OTL unifications of Germany and Italy, and just as those countries didn't take the names "Prussia" or "Piedmont" after the states that masterminded them, so would this state not be called "Serbia" or "Croatia".

Slavonia, Slovenia, Slavenia, Sclavonia, Sclavinia, etc... Something along those lines is a much more likely name for a united South-Slav state with a single religion. Hopefully by the present day the idea of anyone identifying as "Serb" or "Croat" would be unthinkable, they would all just be "Slaveni", just as they were originally.

[1] This is in large part because of why the terms "Serb" and "Croat" exist at all. Originally, the South Slavs were just a single group, the Slaveni/Slovani (a name preserved in the OTL name "Slovenia"). Then, between the 7th and 9th centuries, other tribes, both Slavic and not, started moving into the area. The Croats were originally either a Slavic or Iranic tribe (personally I lean more to the Iranic side, but that's neither here nor there) who asserted themselves as rulers in the western part of the Slaveni lands (and, if they were and Iranic group, quickly assimilated by the local Slavs, in a manner similar to the Bulgarians), where proximity to Italy made them lean toward Catholicism. The Serbs originated as a Slavic tribe that initially established themselves in what is now eastern Germany (some still remain there, though their language is now more similar to Polish/Czech and is called "Sorbian" to avoid confusion). They were invited to establish themselves the Balkans by a Byzantine emperor for the purposes of acting as allies in the region, which was consistently beginning to cause problems for the Byzantines. The Serbs established themselves as rulers over the eastern part of Slaveni lands, and having been invited by the Byzantine emperor naturally leaned toward Orthodoxy. That initial tribal difference, as I see it, was as important to the establishment of differing Croat and Serb nationalities over a Slaveni ethnic base as the religious aspect.
 
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