British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
The Eastern Mediterranean in the Thirteenth century:
identities and allegiances
Abstract
Armenia and the Nicene Empire
Robert Thomson
This paper deals primarily with the contacts between the Greeks in Nicea and the Armenians in Cilicia during the period 1204-1261. It summarises the evidence found in Armenian sources of various types concerning the Lascarids, the marriages of Armenians into that family, the religious discussions, the translations of texts, and other aspects of mutual relationships.
During the thirteenth century the interests of Armenian historians and chroniclers turned away from interest in Byzantium, so prominent only a generation earlier, to the more pressing problems of relationships with the surrounding Islamic powers, the Latin principalities, the Papacy, and the Mongols. Consequently, the major historians tend to ignore the Greeks, and even the Latin rulers of Constantinople. Evidence for contacts with Greek culture, however, survives in letters and especially colophons. Ecclesiastical leaders became more and more concerned with their relationship to Rome; this westward looking policy caused problems with traditionally minded Armenians in Greater Armenia. The threat posed by Turks and Mongols in the context of Crusader presence in the Near East led to interesting developments in apocalyptic writing, in which ancient Armenian themes of alliance with Rome were developed to new extremes.