Dominicans and East Christians: Missionary Method and Specific Skills (13th-14th centuries)
Résumé
In the 13th century, the booming missionary movement in Orient led the Dominicans to define the
necessary skills for their envangelisation movement. The letters written by Prior Philip – who was in
charge of the Dominican province in Holy Land – are testimony of the first efforts made by the
Dominicans in the area. During the Second Council of Lyon (1274), the elements that could allow for the
return of the Greeks in the Roman Catholic faith were discussed, a few years after the fall of the Latin
Empire of Constantinople. The return was deemed indispensable for the success of a crusade meant to
recapture Jerusalem. The former master general of the Order of Preachers, Humbert of Romans,
developed in his Opusculum Tripartitum, the conditions that were necessary for the reductio Graecorum,
among which were the skills required for the missionaries. Fourteen years later, Dominican Preacher
Riccoldo da Monte Croce, sent among the Maronites, the Jacobites and the Nestorians in Nivine and
Baghdad, enables one to measure to what extent the missionary theory was implemented.