Guido Terreni at Avignon and the ‘Heresies’ of the Armenians

Despite the reduction of its sphere of influence, the Avignon papacy never ceased to implement new strategies in order to bring the Eastern Christian communities under Latin control. Theological discussions held at the Apostolic See on the Eastern Churches frequently resulted in anti-heretical treatises and lists of errors: these discussions were aimed at providing Church authorities with the necessary theoretical tools to confront other Churches’ views, but often produced mystifications and misinterpretations. Present at Avignon at the same time as FitzRalph and Barlaam of Seminara, the Carmelite bishop Guido Terreni (also known as Guy de Perpignan) includes a thorough discussion of the “errors” of Greeks, Jacobites, and Armenians in his Summa de haeresibus et earum confutationibus (ca. 1338–1342). This comprehensive and ambitious treatise, aimed at confronting all heresies of the past and present, on the model of Augustine’s De haeresibus, testifies to the misinterpretations and abuses of Eastern doctrines circulating among Western theologians. This article focuses especially on Terreni’s discussion of Armenian “heresies,” examining the different layers of his scarcely known Summa and placing the Carmelite’s contribution into the wider context of the disputes at both the Apostolic See and Cilician Armenia in the first half of the fourteenth century.