The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1439) constitute two crucial, yet ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to establish new unity between the Roman and the Eastern Churches. In between these two assemblies, intellectual and religious confrontations between East and West produced original results. With Seljuk and Mamluk Turks increasing military pressure, threatening the Mediterranean, the Apostolic See did not cease implementing new strategies to bring Eastern Christian communities into Latin obedience.
These multi-faceted interventions included diplomacy, missions, and theological and cultural exchange, resulting in a consistent flow of people, texts, and ideas across the Mediterranean. This international symposium brings together scholars from different backgrounds to discuss intellectual relations and cultural interactions between the Papal curia and Christian communities and Churches of the Greek, Armenian, and Syriac East between 1274-1439. Fresh empirical analysis will provide new insights into this phase of East-West relations, offering a major laboratory to explore the actors, mechanisms, tools, ideas, and purposes of overseas cultural contacts.
Subjects
Particular attention will be paid to:
- the actual knowledge and intellectual reception of Eastern lands, cultures, and religions within the papal entourage;
- the flow of people, texts and ideas across cultural, religious, and linguistic boundaries and the corresponding need for cultural adaptation;
- doctrinal and ecclesiological debates, including discussions over the authority of the pope and mutual accusations of heresy;
- the specifics of the Eastern policies of the Holy See after the move to Avignon and during the Great Schism, between the decline of the Mongols and the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
As a result, new light will be shed on the cultural processes through which, at the end of the medieval era, the Papal curia attempted to react to the crisis of universalism by confronting the Christian ‘other’.
Programme :
9h30 : Irene Bueno (Leiden University/EHESS Paris) – Opening and introduction
Chair: Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Leiden University)
Claudine Delacroix-Besnier (Université de Picardie) – John Kantakuzenos and Rome (1355-1375). Papal letters revisited.
Claude Mutafian (Université de Paris Nord) – The Armenian Church and the Papacy during the last century of Cilician Armenia (1275-1375).
Benjamin Weber (Université de Toulouse) – Integrating Ethiopia into the Orbis Christianus: Relations, knowledge and misunderstandings between the Papacy and Ethiopia, 13th-15th century.
11h15 : Coffee break
11h30 – Chair: Ernestine van der Wall (Leiden University)
Herman Teule (University of Nijmegen/University of Louvain) – The Papacy and the oriental Churches: different expectations due to different theological positions.
Irene Bueno (Leiden University/ EHESS Paris) – The “heresies” of Greeks, Jacobites, and Armenians in Guy Terrena’s Summa de haeresibus et eorum confutatione (1338-1342).
12h30 : Lunch
14h00 – Chair: Irene Bueno (Leiden University/EHESS Paris)
Marco Bais (European University of Rome) – The Armenians in La flor des estoires de la terre d’Orient.
Camille Rouxpetel (University of Paris-Sorbonne) – Riccoldo da Monte Croce’s mission towards the Nestorians and the Jacobites (c.1288-1300): defining heresy and inventing the relationship with the Other. From theory to missionary experience.
Kenneth Parker (Royal Holloway, London/Gutenberg Universität, Mainz) – The Mendicant Orders and the Oriental Christians, ca 1328-1365
15h45 : Coffee break
16h15 – Chair: Herman Teule (University of Nijmegen/University of Louvain)
Chris Schabel (University of Cyprus) – Church Councils and the Filioque in Western Theology, 1274-1439
William Duba (Freiburg University) – From Emanations to Energies: The Divine Essence from Paris to the Peloponnese via the Papacy
Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Leiden University) – Concluding remarks
Abstracts : here
Informations pratiques :
8th March 2013
Leiden University
Organizers: Dr. Irene Bueno, Leiden Institute for Religious Studies, Prof. Dr. Heleen Murre-van den Berg, Leiden Institute for Religious Studies
Registration and information, please contact: Dr. Irene Bueno, Leiden Institute for Religious Studies
Venue: University Library, Conference Room (2nd floor, Zuidhal), Witte Singel 27, 2311 BG Leiden
Source de l’information : Universiteit Leiden
L'Agenda des Médiévistes 