Avignon, the Armenians, and the Primacy of the Pope

In the early fourteenth century, the councils of Sis (1307) and Adana (1316) confirmed the formal union between the Armenian and Latin Church. Yet, the Armenian Church’s agreement with the Latin West came about as a result of politico-military requirements and thus constituted the temporary result of an ambiguous approach by Armenian rulers and ecclesiastical elite to the Latin Church. Though their concurrence centered on the recognition of the pope’s primateship and on the attempt to overcome greater elements of discord, it was nevertheless marked by the survival of doctrinal and liturgical particularities. The Apostolic See looked at the Armenians with increasing suspicion, which resulted in the attempt to reinforce their affiliation to the Latin tradition in a number of forms. This paper focuses on the production of polemical treatises regarding the Armenians by authors related with the Avignon papal curia, comparing the Directorium ad passagium faciendum, the Summa de haeresibus et earum confutationibus by Guido Terreni, the 117 errors booklet by Nerses Balientz and the Summa de quaestionibus Armenorum by Richard FitzRalph. The paper aims to place these writings in the wider context of the Oriental policies of the Avignon Papacy, shedding light on their connections with debates about the crusade and with the wider program of Latinization designed by the Apostolic See in the Near East.