The proposed paper explores the strategies of delineation and enforcement of imperial practices and policies seeking to regulate inter-confessional relations and the status of Orthodox Christians in the early-modern Ottoman Empire. I focus on how the Ottoman concept of âyîn denoting (in this particular context) Orthodox Christian rite was used in the Ottoman patriarchal decrees of appointment [berât] as a discursive tool delineating confessional boundaries, enforcing the behaviors and practices associated with a certain rite, and modifying the social order by defining certain practices as becoming or unbecoming of a Christian rite. While contents and boundaries of the Christian rite drew from many sources of knowledge – from Islamic law to imperial Ahd-names to the understanding of what is and is not considered a sin in Christianity - I argue that âyîn, rather than being a rigid theological or ideological category, was a flexible political category that was instrumentalized by various groups to react to, interact with, and counteract the realities of the time they observed. Thus, positing a certain behavior/practice as being against the Christian rite was often born out of historical context, imperial anxieties, and necessities to control the imperial subjects. These anxieties and the responses they necessitated were then dressed in a confessional or Christian “jacket” to attribute urgency to certain practices by presenting them as innately Christian and to legitimize the prohibition of undesirable practices among the Ottoman subjects by presenting them as unbecoming of a good Christian. I also analyze, the imperial decrees issued in response to patriarchal berâts to demonstrate how âyîn was further instrumentalized to tie the image of a faithful Christian to that of a loyal Ottoman subject by suggesting that failure to uphold one of the categories/identities led to inevitable failure in endorsing the other. Thus, the paper contributes to the understanding of the interconnections between the characteristics pertaining to a good Ottoman subject and to a good Christian and how both affiliations were cultivated by the imperial authorities and Orthodox patriarchs alike through the use of confessional categories as political rhetorical tools.