Introduction

INTRODUCTION

In 2001 the Armenians commemorate the fact that 1700 year ago, in 301, their king, Trdat, and with him the entire Armenian population, adopted Christianity. This means that Armenia was the first nation to adopt Chris- tianity as the official religion of their public institutions, more than a decade before Constantine did so in the Roman Empire. Ever since Christianity has been an integral part of the Armenian self-image and identity. This issue of Het Christelijk Oosten intends to show how this identity took shape over the centuries down to the present day.

Besides this religious factor there is an additional element which is crucial for understanding the Armenian identity: due to its geographical position Armenia has always been under extreme pressure from external peoples and religions. The Armenian Church struggled for independence against the Greeks; it was forced to take position vis-à-vis Islam as early as in the sev- enth century; it was subject to aggressive unification attempts from the side of the Roman Church in the Crusader time and in the eighteenth century; it had to come to terms with a long Persian and Ottoman dominion; and it had to establish its independence against the Russian Orthodox Church. In recent times, Communism constituted a serious threat to the activities of the Armenian Church. The central questions here are: how did Armenia and its Church react to these external pressures and why did the Armenian population so tenaciously hold to its traditions?

In this issue, a number of renowned armenologists will discuss these ques- tions from various perspectives. With one exception (Dadoyan's paper on Armenia and the Islam) their contributions focus on the ‘modern’ period, from the seventeenth century onward – that is, the period which in Western Europe is marked by the rise of capitalism and secularism. As Zekiyan con- vincingly showed in the recent monograph, The Armenian Way to Moder- nity, 1 Armenia took part in these developments. When we say that Armenia forms an integral part of the Western, Christian culture, this does not only refer to remoter times when Armenia adopted Christianity, but also to the

1 Boghos L. Zekiyan, The Armenian Way to Modernity (Venice, 1997). 172 INTRODUCTION fact that over the centuries Armenia fully shared in the intellectual develop- ments of the ‘Western’ world.

We might say that Armenia entered the modern period with the introduction of book-printing. The first Armenian printed books appeared in 1511; they were produced in Venice. At that moment the Armenian Church had devel- oped for a period of over a thousand years. It had established its doctrinal posi- tion as a monophysite Church when it refused to accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451); a century later, at the second Council of Dwin (555), it had declared itself an independent, autocephalous national Church. During the Arab domination of Armenia, in the absence of a secular Armenian focus of power, Catholicos Yovhannes Awjnec’i (717-728) obtained jurisdiction over all Armenian interests from the Arab caliphs; from this time onward the Armenian Church developed its characteristic function as the spiritual and sec- ular centre of the Armenians. Until the twelfth century, that is, until the time of the Crusades, the Armenian Church was involved in defining and main- taining its position to chalcedonian, dyophysite Byzantium. In Crusader times the political and religious centre of Armenia shifted from central Armenia towards Cilicia, in Southern Anatolia. This period was characterized by increas- ing religious contacts with Western powers and with the Church of Rome. These contacts resulted in various attempts to come to an ecumenical union. Although these attempts were not free from political motives, the Armenian religious leaders, such as Nerses Shnorhali (1166-1173) and Nerses Lambronac'i (1175-1198) attest a genuine desire for religious unity in their writings. Ecumenic attempts stopped after the final victory of the Mamluks in Cilicia (1375) and the conquest of Constantinople by the Seljuks (1453).

It is in this situation that the Armenians entered the modern world. Politi- cally they came to live under Ottoman or Persian dominion. The only national institution was their Church. However, neither the Armenian people nor its Church turned to isolation. From the sixteenth century onwards a new phenomenon can be noticed among the Armenians: the diaspora situation. Originally as merchants, later as refugees, Armenians established themselves all over the world. They followed the great trading routes; as silk traders they are found in the main ports and commercial cen- tres of Europe: Venice, Livorno, Marseilles, Frankfurt, Moscow and Amster- INTRODUCTION 173 dam. There they took their goods, there they built their churches and there they eagerly took in contemporary cultural trends. It was through diaspora Armenians that the humanistic ideals of Enlightenment were spread all over the nation. If, following Zekiyan, the rise of modern Europe can be defined as an ongoing movement towards ‘secularisation’, towards an emancipation of human activity from the primacy of ethical values, then Armenia has participated in this movement through its diaspora. The development of ‘modern’ Armenia came to an abrupt halt through the genocide which annihilated the Anatolian Armenians in 1915. This genocide lead to the diaspora pattern as we know it now.

The papers in this collection describe and study various types of the Arme- nian diaspora in an effort to show how the Armenians and their Church reacted to their ever changing surroundings. Over the centuries, contacts with Islam have been very frequent. However, historical research has greatly neglected this aspect of Armenian society. Seta Dadoyan is one of the first scholars to approach this field. Her paper gives an overview of Armenian history and interaction with Islam in the pre-modern period. It was from Islamic territory – from Persia –, that the seventeenth-century Armenian merchants came to Europe to form their colonies. In recent years, the structure and organization of the Armenian silk traders’ society in the Persian capital of Isfahan (or New Julfa) have attracted new attention. Vazken Ghougassian wrote a major study on the Armenian Diocese of this city. In his contribution he sketches the background of these merchants and their cultural and religious role in the development of ‘modernity’ among the Armenians.

The relations between Armenia and the Church of Rome have not always been easy, to say the least. Boghos Zekiyan sketches the main contacts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This period is marked by the fruitful cultural emancipation through the so-called Mekhitarists, a Roman Catholic religious order which was established by Mekhitar of Sebaste, a person of exceptional stature. This order, operating from Venice (and later also from Vienna) – the Armenian diaspora –, was instrumental in spreading cultural emancipation among the Armenians. Zekiyan rightly stresses the exceptional ecumenical vision of Mekhitar. At the other end of the spectrum Zekiyan describes the formation of an Armenian Catholic patriarchate in the eight- 174 INTRODUCTION eenth century and the gradually increasing distance between the Armenian Church and the Armenian Catholic Church in the nineteenth century. The eighteenth century also saw organized attempts at a political ‘liberation’ of the Armenians who lived in the Ottoman Empire and under Persian suzerainty in Transcaucasia. Quite naturally the Armenians looked for support from the Russians who had emerged as a new ‘Christian’ power and who themselves clearly were expanding towards the south. Theo van Lint describes a most curi- ous, and as yet unknown, episode in which political and religious motivations are intermingled and which sheds an interesting and unexpected light on the religious motivation of eighteenth-century Armenian nationalism.

It was in the nineteenth century that the Armenian Church came into closer contact with Protestantism through missionary activities largely organized from the United States. The importance of these contacts and their intellec- tual repercussions are sketched by Barbara Merguerian. Drawing on con- temporary sources, which are difficult to access, she points out that the Protestant mission programmes played a major role in the awakening of the Armenian nation in the nineteenth century.

The Armenian genocide halted all development towards modernization and emancipation. It is only now, at the beginning of a new century, that Armenian cultural and religious development makes a new start and tries to link again to trends which were amputated in 1915. As always in Armenian history, an important impetus originates from the diaspora. The main cen- tre of Armenian diaspora is now the USA. In his contribution Dennis Papaz- ian traces the origins of the Armenian diaspora in the United States and describes its current situation as an example of the twentieth-century Armenian cultural position.

Taken together, the contributions in this issue provide an illustration of the continuous formation and tenacity of Armenian culture. As in the past Arme- nians look upon their Church as a major pillar of their identity; as in the past, they pass on impulses and new ideas from and through their diaspora. It is for this reason that one may be confident that the Armenians will be able to con- tinue their Christian tradition successfully.

Jos J.S. Weitenberg