Chapter 2 traces Albanian history through the Roman and Byzantine periods. The ancestors of contemporary Albanians were well integrated into these empires. The Latin influence on the Albanian language is correspondingly strong. In late antiquity, the Roman empire recruited an important part of its elite from the southwestern Balkans. The arrival of Slavic groups in the Balkans led to the collapse of state administration and the church and thus to a cultural turning point that was much more profound than in Western Europe. It was not until the ninth century that Byzantium was primarily re-Christianized. The Albanians came under the influence of the new Slavic states in the Balkans. Urban communities flourished particularly along the coast. The region was closely intertwined with the Venetian-Adriatic culture, but also with Byzantine civilization. With the decline of Byzantium, the southwestern Balkan region splintered into numerous small dominions. Venice, the Kingdom of Naples and, from the end of the fourteenth century, the Ottomans vied for influence. Albania was one of the first areas in the Balkans conquered by the Ottomans and nowhere was the resistance to the new empire as fierce as in Albania. Georg Kastriota Scanderbeg, who is revered as a national hero today, is symbolic of this resistence.

This chapter explores the Custody of the Holy Land as a legal, spiritual and cultural product of the Holy Land. It explores its roots in Catholic spirituality and pilgrimage, the Holy Land as a shared religious landscape, and the influence of Islamic law/Ottoman governance.