The historian Mihailo Popović shows by his research on medieval churches and monasteries in Montenegro that the interaction of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the Balkans in the past was characterised by coexistence and synergy.

In today's region of Montenegro, which was once the border zone between the influence of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, we find medieval witnesses to religious coexistence and synergy in the form of monuments and artefacts. Mihailo Popović and his colleagues are assigning each church, monastery or even sacred artefact to specific periods and thus identify interactions in Church History. They use their location to depict a Sacred Landscape and to reconstruct the spatial context of the Middle Ages. Instead of conflicts between Catholic and Orthodox entities, common features in their joint history, their monuments and sacred artefacts, shaped by coexistence and synergy on the micro-level, are highlighted.