Sergio La Porta speaks on challenges to Armenian identity in medieval period
by Taleen Babayan
Published: Saturday January 26, 2013
Members of the Armenian Center Board at Columbia University at Dr. La
Porta’s lecture. Robert V. Kinoian
NEW YORK – Dr. Sergio La Porta delivered an engaging and insightful
lecture about Armenian identity in the Middle Ages.
Hosted by the Armenian Center at Columbia University, the November 30
lecture, titled “Networks of Knowledge: Communication and Identity in
12th-14th century Armenia,” took place at the university’s
distinguished Faculty House.
Warmly welcoming Dr. La Porta back to his alma mater, Mark Momjian,
Chair of the Armenian Center Board at Columbia University, highlighted
Dr. La Porta’s achievements in Middle Eastern studies, including his
undergraduate degree from Columbia College and his Ph.D. at Harvard
University in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations as well as his
subsequent research and teaching positions. Dr. La Porta, a specialist
in medieval Armenia, is currently the Haig and Isabel Berberian
Professor of Armenian Studies at California State University, Fresno.
“The students at Fresno State consistently rank Dr. La Porta as among
their favorite professors,” said Momjian before welcoming Dr. La Porta
to begin his evening’s presentation. “They love the enthusiasm he
brings to his lectures and the way he engages class discussion.”
Providing a historical backdrop of Armenia during the twelfth to
fourteenth centuries, Dr. La Porta touched upon Armenian dispersion
and political fragmentation in the region at that time. Because of
Armenian emigration, other groups of people took the opportunity to
come into the area, resulting in cultural integration among the
Armenians and the neighboring Georgians, Turks and Kurds.
While they were not the dominant culture in the region, Dr. La Porta
pointed out that Armenians were able to both adapt to their changed
environment and create a sense of community to keep the country
together during a time of cultural hybridity, especially one without
the modern technologies that exist today. In reaction to this cultural
hybridity, Dr. La Porta noted that “borders of barriers” were created
that emphasized differences between these groups of people in relation
to racial, economic, religious, and dietary restrictions. “By
denigrating the other, we get a clear distinction between who we are
and who they are,” said Dr. La Porta.
Focusing his attention on the three significant reasons as to why
Armenians were able to maintain their community during this time, Dr.
La Porta said that the trade routes, the development of a cultic
community and the formation of a textual community, were integral to
Armenian cohesion at the time.
The trade routes that passed through Armenia, including the
Mediterranean transit route, the Mongol silk route and the Levantine
route, were important in sharing ideas across Armenia and helping
Armenians create social contact among the scholars, pilgrims,
merchants and soldiers who traveled these routes. The trade routes
also helped bolster the Armenian economy.
“In the thirteenth century we witness increased economic prosperity,”
said Dr. La Porta. “How come at a time when there’s political
fragmentation and destruction, the economic situation doesn’t seem to
be as negatively affected? Part of the reason is you have all this
capital moving through Armenia, which is advantageous for the cities,
especially in eastern Armenia.”
Aside from trade routes, Armenia’s monastic centers also served as a
bridge among the people. During the twelfth to thirteenth centuries,
Cilicia was the center of Armenian intellectual activity, which housed
monastic centers and created an intellectual group coming out of this
region. “Armenians traditionally were not in urban cities,” said Dr.
La Porta. “They preferred hunting and feasting and fighting in the
beautiful countryside that is Armenia and that is where most of their
monasteries were set up. These centers served as important centers of
cultural interaction and definition.”
According to Dr. La Porta, scholars from Greater Armenia traveled to
Cilicia to enhance their education. “These schools become primary
centers of education for the cultural and religious elite of Armenia,”
said Dr. La Porta, noting that there wasn’t a great degree of
centralization among Armenians and each monastery had its own
traditions and its own rules. “A trans-regional connection and a core
curriculum were developed based on books, sacred spaces and on certain
texts, such as the Cappadocian Fathers, Philo and Aristotle.”
The development of a cultic community also helped in forming
connections by certain saints and special sacred areas that held
Armenians together, especially the idea of pilgrimage sites, in
particular, Jerusalem.
“Pilgrimage sites served as points of communication and exchange,”
said Dr. La Porta. “You have Armenians from all over converging on
these holy sites.”
Although Armenians were able to maintain a sense of community under
difficult circumstances, Dr. La Porta pointed out that there were
challenges threatening this unity, in particular from missionaries
during the Middle Ages who traveled the trade routes near Armenia.
Franciscans and Dominicans friars converted tens of thousands of
Armenians to Roman Catholicism during this time and while Armenians
kept their language, those who converted were in communion with Rome
and recognized supremacy of the Pope. In response to these attempts at
conversion, the Armenian Apostolic Church fought against the
Latinization of the Armenian Church and knew the textual community
was, according to Dr. La Porta, “essential for the success of this
response.”
Concluding his educational and compelling presentation, delivered with
enthusiasm and passion, Dr. La Porta remarked that there was “a new
definition of Armenian communal identity through the creation of
shared communal and sacral boundaries and of an intellectual elite
built around a common textual corpus.”
He noted there was a significance beyond this period and the cultural
boundary markers that distinguished Armenians from those around them,
including religion and language, were essential to the construction of
an Armenian `national identity’ in the eighteenth to nineteenth
centuries.
“There are still ways Armenians are able to connect to other Armenians
even though they don’t live in one place,” said Dr. La Porta. “It
makes it capable for us to speak of an Armenian community that extends
from Glendale, California, to Yerevan, Armenia.”
The evening concluded with a question and answer session followed by a
gift presentation – a rare book on Armenian illuminated manuscripts by
Frederic Macler, a pioneer in the field of Armenian Studies – to Dr.
La Porta as a show of gratitude from the Armenian Board at Columbia
University. A reception gave guests the opportunity to ask Dr. La
Porta further questions about his research and Armenian history.
“Coming back to Columbia was a moving experience for me,” said Dr. La
Porta. “My undergraduate experience has been essential for my
continued studies and research. To come back as a professor and speak
to former and current students was absolutely wonderful and brought
back many fond memories.”
The Armenian Board at Columbia University was equally pleased at
having a prolific figure speak about Armenian identity and history on
campus.
“Dr. La Porta’s lecture on the extensive trade and cultural exchanges
involving Armenians in the Middle Ages was a tour de force,” commented
Momjian. “Dr. La Porta is a rising star in the field of Armenian
Studies, and everyone privileged to hear his captivating talk at
Faculty House left asking when he was going to come speak at Columbia
again.”
Echoing Momjian’s sentiments, Dr. Nicole Vartanian, Vice-Chair of the
Armenian Center Board, said Dr. La Porta’s lecture “demonstrated his
breadth and depth as a scholar and educator.”
“His presentation was simultaneously ambitious yet accessible, and the
audience response was effusive. It was a great source of joy for the
Armenian Center to have hosted a room full of engaged attendees–a
range of Armenian and non-Armenian students, alumni, board members,
and community members.”
Students, including Maxwell Rowles and John Doyle-Raso, who are both
candidates in the dual Master’s degree program in International and
World History program at Columbia University and The London School of
Economics, were impressed with the evening’s presentation as well.
“Dr. La Porta’s lecture provided profound insights into Armenian
history and identity from the twelfth to fourteenth century,” said
Rowles. “I particularly appreciated the precision of his approach and
the ways in which he made “old” history fun, new and interesting.
Economics, language, politics, race and religion were all remade and
transformed in Armenia during these years, and I am very grateful to
Professor La Porta for exposing this past to me.”
“I was impressed by Dr. La Porta’s enthusiasm and ability to
communicate a large amount of information so clearly,” said Doyle-Raso
“His expertise is obviously far-reaching – I asked a question that was
outside the scope of the presentation, and he was able to provide an
interesting answer. I hope he will be back to present again.”
Upcoming activity for the Armenian Center at Columbia University
includes a course titled “Memories – The Armenian Genocide” planned
for the spring in Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian
and African studies (MESAAS), which will be taught by Board member Dr.
Armen Masroobian, chair of the Philosophy Department at Southern
Connecticut State University.