ABSTRACT
Contemporary to the growing cooperation between the Italian trading centres, the popes and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, a new intensity in language learning in the Italian cities, monasteries and universities gained momentum. The new trading networks required that merchants (and missionaries) knew languages. Misunderstandings could create dangers and barriers between the peoples. Where artistic exchange and borrowing from “foreign” arts might happen visually and with no words, trading needed language skills. The Vatican became a centre of language-teaching where monks, pilgrims and missionaries from the Christian world gathered. Perhaps, the pilgrim compounds of the Oriental Christians had a leading role. Anne Muller believes that the possibilities for interaction between the Franciscan and Dominican missionaries moving into Armenia and establishing monasteries with Muslims must have been minimal, but that this was not the case with the Arabic- and Armenian-speaking Christians.
