The Avignon Papacy and Armenia

The project investigates the cultural and diplomatic relations between the papal court and Armenia in the fourteenth century, examining how the intellectual debates occurred within Avignon influenced the outcome of the Papal policy in the East. Focusing on two specific dossiers concerning latin-armenian relations in the given period, the research analyses the complex dynamics of inter-cultural dialogue, the major political and diplomatic lines of the different Popes, the rhetoric of self-representation, and the strategies of religious and political expansion adopted by a chief cultural centre of late medieval Europe such as the Avignon Curia with respect to its main eastern ally.