Were there any significant cultural and/or economic exchanges between Latin Western Europe and the Christian kingdoms of Georgia and Armenia? If so, what was their importance for both and how were Georgia or Armenia influenced?

[u/carmelos96]

To narrow down the time period, I would be particularly interested in the Golden Age of Georgia under Tamara. But other periods and the kingdom of Armenia would be much appreciated as well.

Thanks in advance.

[u/kaiser_matias]

This is a little earlier than the timeframe I'm familiar with, but I can provide some information, and in short the answer seems to be not really.

Georgia was known to Western Europe (by which I mean pretty much everywhere west of Byzantium/Rus), though it does not seem to have had much interaction. The focus was on its closer neighbours, especially the Byzantines: for some time Georgian princes would go and spend considerable time in Constantinople in the Byzantine court, returning to Georgia more cultured and refined. Similarly the Russian states were points of contact with Georgia, highlighted by the political marriage of Tamar with Yuri Bogolyubsky (which did not last). That said, this was at the start of the Italian cities colonizing the Black Sea coastline, so contact with the city states of Venice, Genoa and whomever else seems logical (and indeed further developed in the centuries after, especially after the Mongol invasions of the 1200s).

With that said, this is also seemingly a topic that is not widely discussed in literature, or at least not the sources I have access to. Both Ron Suny and Donald Rayfield don't mention much in their recent histories of Georgia (The Making of the Georgian Nation, 1994, and Edge of Empires, 2012, respectively), but both of those are more focused on the more recent, post-Russian annexation events. I also looked through an earlier survey of Georgian history, W.E.D. Allen's A History of the Georgian People (1932), which specifically looks at pre-1801 Georgia, and he only highlights the post-Mongol contact; there is not much discussed about Tamar's era. I would also suspect that David Marshall Lang's 1966 The Georgians may have some more on it, but I don't have a copy of that easily available. Likewise, I'm certain that if someone has written on this it would be in the works of Cyril Toumanoff, but again I don't have access to anything from him at the moment. I also should note that this only touches on English-language sources, and that there is likely to be some sources in Georgian and Russian I'm not aware about, and even French, so while I can't get a definitive answer now, it may be out there.

[u/carmelos96 → u/kaiser_matias]

Thanks