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Part 1
Manuscripts
Manuscript art is one of the most unique examples of Armenia’s medieval culture. Due to her turbulent history many of the large Armenian cultural monuments (monasteries, churches, palaces, fortresses, etc.) were destroyed or plundered, and few other examples have reached us in their original forms.
But manuscript art which was portable enough to be smuggled out of harm’s way, has left the world a legacy of some 30,000 known Armenian manuscripts. How many more perished we can only imagine. Within the margins of surviving manuscripts side notes describe the loss of entire libraries of manuscripts at the hands of Seljuks, Mongols and Turkish Ottomans as many as 10,000 at a time.
Large collections of Armenian manuscripts are housed at libraries or museums in Jerusalem, Venice (St. Lazaro Island), New Jhulfa, Moscow, Paris, London and Los Angeles. The largest collection by far is that housed at the Matenadaran (or Manuscriptorium) in Yerevan with almost 17,000 manuscripts in total. Of that more than 13,600 are complete manuscripts, fragments of Armenian manuscripts, Armenian talismans and new manuscripts.
Most of the history of the Armenian people is concentrated in the Matenadaran, beginning from the Hyksos invasion of Egypt in 1600 BC through the genocide in 1915 to the modern era. Each one holds a small part of that history. The oldest written memorials of the Armenian people at the museum are parchment remnants from the 5th-6th centuries, complete manuscripts from the 7th century, and later, fossilized manuscripts and parchment fragments found in caves. The oldest surviving complete Armenian manuscript is a 7th century Gospel copied on parchment.
The manuscripts vary in size and design, from a 5th century ivory bound Gospel, the weighty Homilies of Mush, down to a minute Calendar weighing 19 grams, which can only be read with a magnifying glass. There are luxuriously bound editions of ecclesiastical books, and there are plain looking but priceless editions of songs, chronicles and philosophical treatises.
Another 2,800 manuscripts are in Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Latin, Georgian, Hebrew, Assyrian, Old Slavonic, Ethiopian, and other languages.
A Thirst for Knowledge
The Armenian collection is astounding, encompassing all religious creeds and heresies, philosophy, history, medicine, mathematics, poetry and prose, botany, zoology, astronomy, chemistry, alchemy, geology, music, painting and aeronautics.
There are dictionaries and grammar books, geographical maps and calendars, mathematical formula books, manuals on preparing dyes, inks and parchments. Most famous are astronomical and mathematical works by Anania Shirakatsi, and the Consolation in Fevers by the medieval Armenian physician Mkhitar Heratsi, the Book of Lamentations by Grigor Narekatsi (10th century) and the manuscripts of songs by Sayat Nova; books by Narekatsi and Nerses Shnorhali.
Also included in the vast collection are the works of 5th century world historians and philosophers, Armenian translations of works by Aristotle, Plato and Xenon, translations of books by Galens, Nemesius and Nyssa; and the oldest translations of the works of Homer, Cato, Ovid, Aesop, Olympiodorous and Menander.
There are translations of Italian medieval fables and stories; The Song of Roland, works by Firdowsi, Nizami, Rustaveli, and Fizuli; and poems by Navoi, the Uzbek poet, recorded in 1494, in the poet’s lifetime.
Many original works by Ancient Greek, Assyrian and other scholars and philosophers lost over the centuries are preserved only their Armenian translations. They include such works as The Chronicle by the prominent 4th century Greek historian Eusebius of Caesura; On Nature by the Greek philosopher Xenon the Stoic; the works of Theon of Alexandria and Philo Judaeus; fragments from Botany by Dioscorides; the mathematical work Kitabeh Nejab by Avicenna; and many sections of the History of Alexander the Great by pseudo Callisthenies.
From the beginning of the manuscript tradition, Armenian philosophers, historians and scientists first translated, and then began to write treatises on classical views of the universe. The writings are so sophisticated that they can be used as incidental proof of a much longer empirical tradition in Armenia. Only one hundred years removed from their pagan roots, the authors show a feisty and sometimes contentious view of the way things work.
As early as the 5th-7th centuries, Armenian philosophers and scientists were already describing planets revolving around the sun, remarking on this effect when there was an eclipse of the sun and moon. This is in stark contrast to the way the universe was described in Catholic Europe, and would have branded these Armenian writers as heretics, earning them a place at the stake.
In The Interpretation of the Genesis, Yeghisheh, the 5th century Armenian philosopher and scientists wrote: "When the Moon is in the upper hemisphere, and the Sun is in the lower, that is, when they are both on the same axis, the Sun cannot illuminate the Moon simultaneously and an eclipse of the Moon takes place."
Anani Shirakatsi, a 7th century Armenian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician wrote: "The earth reminds me of an egg. Just as the round yolk is in the middle of the egg, surrounded by egg-white and covered by the shell, so the round Earth is surrounded by air and enveloped on all sides by the sky."
Elsewhere he wrote that every living being is subject to decay, and the seeds of life emerge from decay; the world continues to exist as a result of this contradiction.
And they certainly questioned the feudal system. In The Book of Law, Mkhitar Gosh, a 12th century scholar and writer wrote: "God created human nature to be free; but man is forced by his need for the soil and water to serve masters. And I consider that he is fully justified to be free of his masters and live wherever he likes"
Grigor Tatevatsi, a 14th century Armenian philosopher, wrote: "The mind is a bold and unabashed judge! It does not fear God because it is free; it does not feel shame because it keeps itself hidden; it does not take bribes because it does not need them; it is not ignorant because it always scrutinizes everything. That is why it judges truly and correctly"
And further: "Common people deserve leniency and charity, for they do not commit a crime willfully but because of their poverty. He steals, as the parable tells us, to appease his hungry belly, whereas a prince commits a crime of his own free will for he is in need of nothing, and for that he should be doubly punished."
Heretics in Europe were burned for much less than this, yet Armenian Church tradition which combined religious and lay governing boards was tolerant of questioning views.
As a result, Armenian science and philosophy had evolved to such an extent that it led Europe by several hundred years. Consider the renaissance did not reach England until the mid 16th century, while it began in Armenia in the 5th century.
Perhaps as remarkable as the words they wrote, was the fact that no matter how profound the thought, the writers consistently referred to themselves as "unworthy" and "ignorant". They lived in the most remote corners of old Armenia, though they were the leading thinkers of their time. And they wrote during invasions by Arabs, Seljuks, Mongols and Turks.
A Torturous History
We know of the monastic universities and cultural centers in Medieval Armenia through the manuscripts themselves and the comments written by scribes in their margins. Sadly, we know of these centers through descriptions of how they were destroyed by invaders.
One scribe wrote: "Tamerlane gave an order to seize and destroy a vast number of ancient manuscripts, some of which he carried away to Samarkand."
"In 1179, a library with ten thousand manuscripts was burnt to the ground in the city of Baghaberd by invading Seljuks" another writes.
In 1386, the scribe Hakop described the ordeal endured both by him and his teacher, the philosopher Hovhan Vortnetsi, during the Mongolian invasion: "This manuscript was finished in a bitter sorrowful year"
Invading Mongols captured the Vorotan Fortress, and Vorotnetsi was forced to flee. The scribe Hakop continues. "And I followed him, heavily burdened by a bag containing papers and a copy of the manuscript, ink and pen, reading and writing as much as I could amidst many difficulties and hardships, for whenever I began writing I couldn’t finish"
On the last page there is a drawing which has no relation whatsoever to the subject of the manuscript. An old man wearing a purple mantle is lying on the floor with blood flowing from his chest. Blood stained swords and spears lie by his side. Under the picture is the young scribe’s memorial inscription in which he asks the reader "to remember and pray for my spiritual father and teacher slain by foreign invaders before my very eyes."
The letters are stained with tears and the handwriting is jerky. He continues: "In the last pages of the book there are many errors, and the letters are large and uneven. This is because sorrow is profound and I am the most unworthy of my master’s pupils."
The first line of defense against invaders, many were killed in their cells as they worked, or had to wander for years to foreign countries to try and buy back captured manuscripts. Others were cheated out of promised remuneration a plot of land or an ox and dismissed from the monastery, penniless.
So prized were Armenian manuscripts, invaders went to extremes to obtain them. In one case, when a Persian Shah seized one, he put the offending manuscript in chains.
During the Mongol invasion, manuscripts from the Sanahin and Haghbat monasteries were hidden in gorges and caves in Lori. To make them reveal their hiding place, the Mongols tortured the monks, during which three senior and twelve junior clergymen are reported to have retorted with a line from the Gospel: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."
This incident was not unique in Armenian history. Through the genocide when two starving Armenian refugee women saved the Homilies of Mush, the largest manuscript created, by carrying it on their backs through hostile territory, burying half in Erzerum in order to save part of the priceless treasure (the other half was found and returned to the Matenadaran by a Polish officer in the Russian army) through all of Armenia’s manuscript history, scribes and clergy, peasants and simple folk revered the font of their culture through the care and reverence for their writings.
Manuscripts
Manuscript art is one of the most unique examples of Armenia’s medieval culture. Due to her turbulent history many of the large Armenian cultural monuments (monasteries, churches, palaces, fortresses, etc.) were destroyed or plundered, and few other examples have reached us in their original forms.
But manuscript art which was portable enough to be smuggled out of harm’s way, has left the world a legacy of some 30,000 known Armenian manuscripts. How many more perished we can only imagine. Within the margins of surviving manuscripts side notes describe the loss of entire libraries of manuscripts at the hands of Seljuks, Mongols and Turkish Ottomans as many as 10,000 at a time.
Large collections of Armenian manuscripts are housed at libraries or museums in Jerusalem, Venice (St. Lazaro Island), New Jhulfa, Moscow, Paris, London and Los Angeles. The largest collection by far is that housed at the Matenadaran (or Manuscriptorium) in Yerevan with almost 17,000 manuscripts in total. Of that more than 13,600 are complete manuscripts, fragments of Armenian manuscripts, Armenian talismans and new manuscripts.
Most of the history of the Armenian people is concentrated in the Matenadaran, beginning from the Hyksos invasion of Egypt in 1600 BC through the genocide in 1915 to the modern era. Each one holds a small part of that history. The oldest written memorials of the Armenian people at the museum are parchment remnants from the 5th-6th centuries, complete manuscripts from the 7th century, and later, fossilized manuscripts and parchment fragments found in caves. The oldest surviving complete Armenian manuscript is a 7th century Gospel copied on parchment.
The manuscripts vary in size and design, from a 5th century ivory bound Gospel, the weighty Homilies of Mush, down to a minute Calendar weighing 19 grams, which can only be read with a magnifying glass. There are luxuriously bound editions of ecclesiastical books, and there are plain looking but priceless editions of songs, chronicles and philosophical treatises.
Another 2,800 manuscripts are in Arabic, Farsi, Greek, Latin, Georgian, Hebrew, Assyrian, Old Slavonic, Ethiopian, and other languages.
A Thirst for Knowledge
The Armenian collection is astounding, encompassing all religious creeds and heresies, philosophy, history, medicine, mathematics, poetry and prose, botany, zoology, astronomy, chemistry, alchemy, geology, music, painting and aeronautics.
There are dictionaries and grammar books, geographical maps and calendars, mathematical formula books, manuals on preparing dyes, inks and parchments. Most famous are astronomical and mathematical works by Anania Shirakatsi, and the Consolation in Fevers by the medieval Armenian physician Mkhitar Heratsi, the Book of Lamentations by Grigor Narekatsi (10th century) and the manuscripts of songs by Sayat Nova; books by Narekatsi and Nerses Shnorhali.
Also included in the vast collection are the works of 5th century world historians and philosophers, Armenian translations of works by Aristotle, Plato and Xenon, translations of books by Galens, Nemesius and Nyssa; and the oldest translations of the works of Homer, Cato, Ovid, Aesop, Olympiodorous and Menander.
There are translations of Italian medieval fables and stories; The Song of Roland, works by Firdowsi, Nizami, Rustaveli, and Fizuli; and poems by Navoi, the Uzbek poet, recorded in 1494, in the poet’s lifetime.
Many original works by Ancient Greek, Assyrian and other scholars and philosophers lost over the centuries are preserved only their Armenian translations. They include such works as The Chronicle by the prominent 4th century Greek historian Eusebius of Caesura; On Nature by the Greek philosopher Xenon the Stoic; the works of Theon of Alexandria and Philo Judaeus; fragments from Botany by Dioscorides; the mathematical work Kitabeh Nejab by Avicenna; and many sections of the History of Alexander the Great by pseudo Callisthenies.
From the beginning of the manuscript tradition, Armenian philosophers, historians and scientists first translated, and then began to write treatises on classical views of the universe. The writings are so sophisticated that they can be used as incidental proof of a much longer empirical tradition in Armenia. Only one hundred years removed from their pagan roots, the authors show a feisty and sometimes contentious view of the way things work.
As early as the 5th-7th centuries, Armenian philosophers and scientists were already describing planets revolving around the sun, remarking on this effect when there was an eclipse of the sun and moon. This is in stark contrast to the way the universe was described in Catholic Europe, and would have branded these Armenian writers as heretics, earning them a place at the stake.
In The Interpretation of the Genesis, Yeghisheh, the 5th century Armenian philosopher and scientists wrote: "When the Moon is in the upper hemisphere, and the Sun is in the lower, that is, when they are both on the same axis, the Sun cannot illuminate the Moon simultaneously and an eclipse of the Moon takes place."
Anani Shirakatsi, a 7th century Armenian philosopher, astronomer and mathematician wrote: "The earth reminds me of an egg. Just as the round yolk is in the middle of the egg, surrounded by egg-white and covered by the shell, so the round Earth is surrounded by air and enveloped on all sides by the sky."
Elsewhere he wrote that every living being is subject to decay, and the seeds of life emerge from decay; the world continues to exist as a result of this contradiction.
And they certainly questioned the feudal system. In The Book of Law, Mkhitar Gosh, a 12th century scholar and writer wrote: "God created human nature to be free; but man is forced by his need for the soil and water to serve masters. And I consider that he is fully justified to be free of his masters and live wherever he likes"
Grigor Tatevatsi, a 14th century Armenian philosopher, wrote: "The mind is a bold and unabashed judge! It does not fear God because it is free; it does not feel shame because it keeps itself hidden; it does not take bribes because it does not need them; it is not ignorant because it always scrutinizes everything. That is why it judges truly and correctly"
And further: "Common people deserve leniency and charity, for they do not commit a crime willfully but because of their poverty. He steals, as the parable tells us, to appease his hungry belly, whereas a prince commits a crime of his own free will for he is in need of nothing, and for that he should be doubly punished."
Heretics in Europe were burned for much less than this, yet Armenian Church tradition which combined religious and lay governing boards was tolerant of questioning views.
As a result, Armenian science and philosophy had evolved to such an extent that it led Europe by several hundred years. Consider the renaissance did not reach England until the mid 16th century, while it began in Armenia in the 5th century.
Perhaps as remarkable as the words they wrote, was the fact that no matter how profound the thought, the writers consistently referred to themselves as "unworthy" and "ignorant". They lived in the most remote corners of old Armenia, though they were the leading thinkers of their time. And they wrote during invasions by Arabs, Seljuks, Mongols and Turks.
A Torturous History
We know of the monastic universities and cultural centers in Medieval Armenia through the manuscripts themselves and the comments written by scribes in their margins. Sadly, we know of these centers through descriptions of how they were destroyed by invaders.
One scribe wrote: "Tamerlane gave an order to seize and destroy a vast number of ancient manuscripts, some of which he carried away to Samarkand."
"In 1179, a library with ten thousand manuscripts was burnt to the ground in the city of Baghaberd by invading Seljuks" another writes.
In 1386, the scribe Hakop described the ordeal endured both by him and his teacher, the philosopher Hovhan Vortnetsi, during the Mongolian invasion: "This manuscript was finished in a bitter sorrowful year"
Invading Mongols captured the Vorotan Fortress, and Vorotnetsi was forced to flee. The scribe Hakop continues. "And I followed him, heavily burdened by a bag containing papers and a copy of the manuscript, ink and pen, reading and writing as much as I could amidst many difficulties and hardships, for whenever I began writing I couldn’t finish"
On the last page there is a drawing which has no relation whatsoever to the subject of the manuscript. An old man wearing a purple mantle is lying on the floor with blood flowing from his chest. Blood stained swords and spears lie by his side. Under the picture is the young scribe’s memorial inscription in which he asks the reader "to remember and pray for my spiritual father and teacher slain by foreign invaders before my very eyes."
The letters are stained with tears and the handwriting is jerky. He continues: "In the last pages of the book there are many errors, and the letters are large and uneven. This is because sorrow is profound and I am the most unworthy of my master’s pupils."
The first line of defense against invaders, many were killed in their cells as they worked, or had to wander for years to foreign countries to try and buy back captured manuscripts. Others were cheated out of promised remuneration a plot of land or an ox and dismissed from the monastery, penniless.
So prized were Armenian manuscripts, invaders went to extremes to obtain them. In one case, when a Persian Shah seized one, he put the offending manuscript in chains.
During the Mongol invasion, manuscripts from the Sanahin and Haghbat monasteries were hidden in gorges and caves in Lori. To make them reveal their hiding place, the Mongols tortured the monks, during which three senior and twelve junior clergymen are reported to have retorted with a line from the Gospel: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine."
This incident was not unique in Armenian history. Through the genocide when two starving Armenian refugee women saved the Homilies of Mush, the largest manuscript created, by carrying it on their backs through hostile territory, burying half in Erzerum in order to save part of the priceless treasure (the other half was found and returned to the Matenadaran by a Polish officer in the Russian army) through all of Armenia’s manuscript history, scribes and clergy, peasants and simple folk revered the font of their culture through the care and reverence for their writings.
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