Print Capital, Corporate Identity, and the Democratization of Discourse in Early Modern Armenian Society

PRINT CAPITAL, CORPORATE IDENTITY, AND THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF DISCOURSE IN EARLY MODERN ARMENIAN SOCIETY

Historical Introduction

The period under consideration, spanning the 16th-18th centuries, was one of significant change in most parts of the world, in most spheres of life, and in most social strata. In particular, it initiated a more sustained spectrum of contacts integrating geographically distant regions of the earth into what was to become the globalized network of today. This process was facilitated by oceanic optics that led West European maritime powers to establish trade colonies which gradually evolved into imperial projects abroad supported by mercantilist economics at home, protecting domestic markets from competition. A parallel outcome was a renewed focus on mission, spurred on by the debates between Catholicism and the Protestant Reformation, which extended far beyond the borders of Europe. In counterpoint with this, the era was also marked by techno- logical advance and greater secularization of discourse in the context of the Enlightenment. At the same time, it witnessed the growth of three new Islamicate empires, Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul with their attendant repercussions for the tenor of life on the old hemisphere. These dynamic developments form an important frame of reference for the inception of Armenian printing, as all of them directly or indirectly impacted its course as a new means of communication engaging the literate strata of society in dialogue over the most pressing issues of the day. Though the latter were traditionally represented by the old clerical and aristocratic elite, now they were joined by the merchant middle class, who began to play a much more crucial, variegated role in this period. More- over, as the Early Modern period stands between the medieval and the modern, in terms of Armenian statehood, it occupies the gap between the fall of the Cilician kingdom and the establishment of the First Republic in 1918 and thereby raises a series of questions regarding how to define the Armenian collective and how to come to terms with the major trans- formations the Armenian polity experienced over this timeframe. The impact of these was an increasing diversification of the body politic both on the Armenian Plateau and in the dispersed communities outside it, each undergoing a different process of change at a different pace.

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The 16th century witnessed several major military, economic, religious, and cultural metamorphoses on the Plateau, which continued more rap- idly over the next two centuries, undermining ethnic cohesion among the underdeveloped agricultural and small town artisan population. The expan- sionist policies of the Ottomans and Safavids exacerbated Leng Timur’s disruption of the traditional homeland at the turn of the 15th century, as they clashed over establishing firm international borders on the most advantageous terms. This further loosened the tie to the land of the local Armenian communities already undermined by the loss of semi-independent status on the part of most of the Armenian nobility in the previous century, who had long functioned as focus of unity. Moreover, the tax regime often drove indigenous Christian peasants to appeal for relief to moneylenders, only to be compelled to abandon their plots to the high rates of interest and move to the city in search of employment. Other householders, seeking to forestall destitution, would leave their family in the village and depart alone to the city. Martyrologies and other sources also inform us of the greater incidence of Armenian assimilation to Islam either through financial inducements, the desire to escape legal penalties, under physical duress or peer pressure1. Concomitant with this, in certain regions such as Cilicia, the Armenian population lost fluency in its dialect and became Turkophone2. In consequence, in the Ottoman sphere in particular, the overall impression is of Armenian distinctiveness being undermined according to several key indices.

1. Early Modern Armenian Diasporas

These demographic displacements signal the phenomenon of diaspora, which, as we shall see, contemporaries often viewed as a uniform condi- tion, but which, in light of Cohen’s recent sociological study, should more properly be subdivided according to a variety of criteria. The classic victim diaspora is widespread in the Turko-Persian wars of the 16th century, which result in the uprooting of so many Armenian border com- munities3, along with several examples of diasporas of forced deportation

1 For these phenomena, see MANANDEAN – ACAREAN, Hayoc‘ nor vkaner¢. Apart from those, there are cases of part-Christian part-Muslim communities in Mardin and Hromkla. 2 The church began printing books in that medium for pastoral purposes, continuing as earlier tradition in manuscript form. In contrast, Mxit‘ar Sebastac‘i published the first volume of his modern Armenian (asxarhabar) grammar in that medium as a means of introducing them to the new idiom. See OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 272-273. 3 COHEN, Global Diasporas, p. 31-55.

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(such as the famous case of New Julfa [1604] and the Russian relocation of the Armenian community of the Crimea to the new settlement of Nor Naxijevan near Rostov in 17804). A third type is the labor diaspora of economic migrants, such as those referred to above, who gravitate from the countryside to the large cities, esp. Constantinople and Smyrna, in search of more lucrative employment, a process still featuring in the Armenian economic landscape of the Soviet and current post-Soviet periods5. The fourth main class is then that of trade diasporas with contours integrated into the emergent world economy6. Thus, Armenian merchant colonies in this period began to reconfigure in response to market forces, exploiting the advances in oceanic communication to lay the foundations for a network that was to stretch from India and the East Indies to France and Holland and, taking advantage of Russian possession of the Volga in the 1550s, added a stable Northern extension to the pre- existing East-West axis through the Baltic to reach buyers in the southern ports of the North Sea. Hence, in terms of profile, operation, and self- reflection, these four diasporas diverge from one another significantly in ways which were not clearly perceived at the time, but which are vital for our purposes.

2. Successive Armenian Literary Media

Armenia enjoyed a rich oral culture before the creation of an indigenous alphabet in the fifth century CE7. Over the ensuing centuries a complex interchange developed between the two media as oral epic, lament, and other poetic genres impacted the development of a new literate tradition informed by foreign models that composed and transmitted works in manuscript form primarily in association with the institution of the monastery, which Armenian captures perfectly in the term matenagrut‘iwn8. Although initially limited to clerical and aristocratic circles, writing gradually became more diffused by the Cilician period as a new diversified secular literate class emerged that for various reasons needed to maintain written records9.

4 Ibidem, p. 44. 5 Ibidem, p. 57-81 and BARSOUMIAN, Eastern Question, p. 190-191. 6 COHEN, Global Diasporas, p. 83-104. 7 BOYCE, Parthian gosan. 8 LORD, Singer of Tales, p. 124-138. 9 A powerful example of the former situation is pilgrim inscriptions from Sinai, of which two have plausibly been ascribed to a 7th century prince and bishop of Siwnik‘. See STONE, Armenian Inscriptions. For the tradition of writing among physicians, see COWE, ‘On Nature’ by Isox/Iso‘, p. 100-102, 129-131. The scribal preparation of diplomatic

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This process gained new momentum from the 16th century onwards with the Armenians’ embrace of print technology10. This third literary medium emerged as more uniform, accurate, flexible, and affordably priced than the second and more durable than the first. Moreover, not only did it afford a more effective means of propagating the traditional religious fields of liturgy, theology, and education, but began to serve as a vehicle to improve communication among the expanding merchant middle class, catering to their needs and tastes and at the same time molding their collective identity, in part by integrating them increasingly into the modes of thought and intellectual, social, and cultural debates characteristic of the early modern era ongoing in the broader milieu in which many of those Armenian merchants lived and worked and where the books were published. Book circulation then resulted in those ideas being disseminated to their communities throughout Eurasia as well as South and East Asia thereby advancing the modernist project and promoting civil society. Consequently, while all three media coexisted in this timeframe, their comparative authority, utility, and distribution was being majorly rea- ligned. As a result, by the mid-19th century print had established itself as the most viable mode of literary transmission, completely marginalizing the role of manuscript production11.

3. Migrants as a Theme of Poetry

One of the characteristics of oral poetry is its setting and function within a particular social ambience. The widespread phenomenon of economic migration, Cohen’s labor diaspora, acted as a powerful impulse in generating songs of pandxtut‘iwn (being severed from the home environ- ment12) reaffirming the strength of family bonds as well as expressing the kin’s forebodings regarding the physical dangers and emotional anxieties awaiting the breadwinner once separated from the warm, supportive family environment13. Moreover, even in the city, these displaced men

documents in the Cilician chancellery may have been responsible for the introduction of a new form of script (notrgir), on which see STONE – KOUYMJIAN – LEHMANN, Album of Armenian Palaeography, p. 73-75. 10 For the broader social interaction of those three media of communication, see EISEN- STEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 332. 11 Ibidem, p. 342. For a particular example of the phenomenon, see COWE, Spiritual Healings for Physical Ailments. 12 The term is of uncertain origin. See ACARYAN, Hayeren armatakan bararan, p. 20-21. 13 MKRTC‘YAN, Hay zo¥ovrdakan pandxtut‘yan erger, p. 18-21. These poems do not refer to one’s native region, country, or larger Armenian collective.

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represented an aggregate of individuals only loosely bound by church affiliation. This seems to be the matrix of the popular song Krunk [Crane] of the 16th or early 17th century in which the migrant worker asks the bird for news of his dear ones back home14. Often the songs formed a sort of folk drama, which would play out over the last days prior to the cara- van’s departure15. Although Mkrtic‘ Na¥as, the 15th century poet-hierarch of Amid, who had himself experienced the ardures of living abroad, sought to Christianize and universalize the theme of separation in several of his poems to signify humanity’s exile from paradise and yearning for return, other clergy in the traditional mold continued to employ the genre as a vehicle for articulating their sense of loneliness and alienation from foreign climes16. A good example is provided by Simeon Lehac‘i (1584- post 1636), whose narrative of a pilgrimage to various holy sites in 1609 includes several examples of extempore panduxt compositions as a spon- taneous expression of his existential situation at various junctures along the route17.

4. The Dynamic Contours of the Armenian Trade Diaspora and Printing

Contrary to the unregulated influx of migrant laborers, many Armenian trade diasporas, such as Lviv, had been created at the initiative of local dynasts, inviting Armenian merchants to join their cosmopolitan trade communities and multiply trade revenues18. Usually, they inhabited their own quarter of town, serviced by their own church and artisan body. Moreover, they comprised a diversity of Armenian matrices (Agulis, Nax- cawan, Van, Constantinople, etc.) and consequently had to bridge the resulting divergence of dialect in an affirmation of their corporate iden- tity19. They also required a degree of cooperation to survive in such a competitive environment, as indicated by the communal spot they maintained at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Moreover, in contrast to the identification of Armenians as a religio-confessional minority in Otto- man jurisprudence, as we shall observe, in the circles of their European co-religionists they were distinguished rather by their ethnic affinity.

14 See NAZARYAN, Krunk erge, p. 70. 15 Ibidem, p. 13-22. 16 MKRTIC‘ NALAS, Mkrtic‘ Na¥as, p. 165-182. 17 For an example, see SIMEON LEHAC‘I, Travel Accounts, p. 269-270. 18 GALSTYAN, Haykakan ga¥t‘avayreri arajac‘um¢, p. 87. 19 This is evidenced by Francisco Rivola’s dictionary (Milan, 1623; Paris, 1633), which cites entries from both Eastern and Western Armenian dialect groups. See OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 17, 20-21.

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Consequently, as the merchants espouse a modernist project, so their self- reference differs enormously from the alienation of the panduxt physically from home and psychologically from his host environment. In contrast, they interpenetrated significantly with Europeans in their communities and came to know the various nations’ distinctive traits along with their characteristic weights, measures, and currencies, as amply indicated by a publication of the late 17th century from Amsterdam20. The development of printing, as Eisenstein indicates, occurred not in politically dominant cities, but rather those preeminent in commerce, thus establishing a fundamental connection between publishing and merchant capital21. Hence, as Venice held the primacy among such commercial centers in the 16th century, it is logical that it also attained the status of print capital and secondly that, granted its longstanding Armenian asso- ciations22, it should serve as the locus for the first volumes to appear in that language in 1512. The city’s continuing importance for Armenian printing was sustained by the new Ottoman route for transporting raw Persian silk, which flourished into the early 18th century, first overland via Tabriz-Julfa-Aleppo-Smyrna and then by boat to Venice, thus linking the Most Serene Republic with the Armenian financial center of Julfa on the Arax. The transportation of the latter’s population to the Safavid capital in 1604 rendered the suburb of New Julfa the new Armenian trading hub, where the first printing house in the Near East was set up by Xac‘atur Kesarac‘i in 1638. Impressed by the level of contemporary education and print innovation he witnessed on a mission to Lviv23, the bishop determined to replicate this at home, preparing a number of high-ranking clergy to sustain the project in Europe over the next decades24. When Holland gained the mercantile advantage in the 17th century by dint of its success in long-distance oceanic trade, it is natural that Amsterdam came to dominate the printing industry and hence attracted an Armenian merchant community25, which in turn hosted a number of presses that functioned over the decades 1660-1717. Similarly, the latter shared affinities with others in Livorno (1670-170126) and Marseilles

20 On this fascinating work, see KÉVONIAN, Marchands arméniens. 21 EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 337. 22 ALISAN, Hay-Venet, p. 207-221. 23 For the printed volumes in question, see OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 16-17. 24 PEHLIVANIAN, Mesrop’s Heirs, p. 65-66. 25 ROBBINS, Global Problems, p. 82; EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 110. 26 The Armenian community there developed in the 17th century. Its press was mainly active in the years 1669-1672 before moving to Marseilles. See PANESSA, Gli Armeni a Livorno, p. 17-26, 116-117.

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(1672-168627), which also formed part of the international Armenian trade network at this time. The collapse of the Persian silk market in the aftermath of the Afghan Revolt of 1722, likewise brought this chapter in Armenian printing to a close, shifting the center of gravity east to Constantinople. As Britain gradually asserted itself as the major economic power of the 18th century, pre-existing Armenian merchant communities in the East of India, one of the most lucrative spheres of its incipient empire, expanded and established presses in Madras (1772) and Calcutta (179628). In parallel with this, Russia’s incorporation into the expanding world trade system in the wake of Peter the Great’s economic and infrastructural reforms facilitated the creation of Armenian presses in St. Petersburg (1781) and Astrakhan (1796). Similarly, if merchants were the financiers of book production from its inception, they were also the main distributors, as there are multiple references to printed volumes, like other commodities, being shipped to ports like Smyrna for onward conveyance29. Moreover, as we shall now see, they involved themselves increasingly in the related activities of printing, reading, and finally authoring the materials destined to appear in print.

5. The Merchants’ Role in Early Armenian Print Praxis

Indeed, there are indications that the originator of Armenian printing in Venice, Yakob Me¥apart, may have been a layman himself and possibly also a merchant. In this regard, it is significant that he does not identify himself by a clerical title, which would be highly irregular if he had been a member of the clergy. Similarly, in such a case, one would have expected him to act at the behest of a hierarch, not on his own recogni- zance. Finally, with the exception of the missal, the contents of the works he published were not the sort of mainstream liturgical materials the church would sponsor, but included many features more characteristic of the superstition for which merchants were known30. The Urbat‘agirk‘

27 The city gained in significance from the 16th century onwards, becoming France’s prime military port on the Mediterranean in the 18th. The Armenian community there was founded in the 17th, Cardinal Richelieu and Colbert assisting them to set up trading posts. See ABRAHAMYAN, Hamarot urvagic, p. 155. Its press was active in the years 1672-1695 before moving to Constantinople. See KÉVORKIAN, Catalogue des “incunables” arméniens, p. 67-79. 28 ROBBINS, Global Problems, p. 83. 29 For the conveyance of books, see KÉVORKIAN, Catalogue des “incunables” armé- niens, p. 11-12. 30 GHOUGASSIAN, Quest for Enlightenment, p. 247, 249.

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(lit. Friday Book) embraces prayers against the evil eye, the A¥t‘ark‘ focuses on how to calculate horoscopes, the Parzatumar (explanation of the calendar) incorporates a dream manual, and the Ta¥aran (songbook) intersperses religious lyrics with ‘fleshly’ (i.e. secular) compositions31. That the master printer soon went out of business is also typical of the financing problems encountered by many start-ups at that time32. Since Armenian printing in the initial period did not become a commercial success on the European model, publishing largely remained a clerical enterprise, either employing foreign printing houses, or commissioning foreign experts to produce Armenian type and then manage the process of typesetting and proof reading with a few dpirk‘. Nevertheless, over time lay participation advanced from mere patronage of a book project already underway to commissioning works and having their own works published, capital thus encroaching on the prerogative of ecclesiastical rank. Some of the most effective concerns like the St. Ejmiacin and St. Sargis Press in Amsterdam (1660s-1710s) embodied the structure of the extended family informing Armenian trade practice generally33, some members in holy orders operating the press, while their merchant rela- tives provided the seed money for the undertaking. Later representatives of the merchant middle class with an entrepreneurial flair did assume the risk of opening a printing establishment, such as Gaspar (1686) and Nahapet Agulec‘i (1687) in Venice, Arak‘el Nurijanean (1756) in Amster- dam and, of course, Sahamir Sahamirean in Madras (1772-mid 80s), but all apart from the last were short-lived34. The merchant communities also constituted a ready readership for the books coming off the press granted their high literacy and numeracy skills. As they became integrated into the incipient world economic system, so they began to adopt more standardized norms into their own praxis. Thus Indian numerals, which reached Italy via Arabic interme- diaries in the early 13th century were now disseminated in Armenian society through the print medium, replacing the numerical use of the Armenian alphabet in formal arithmetic35. Similarly, they appropriated

31 For further details on these first publications, see MAHÉ, Catalogue des “incunables” arméniens, p. x-xii. 32 EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 337. 33 On the Nurijanean family’s printing activities, see GRIGOREAN, Nor niwt‘er. 34 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 97-101, 438, 489-493, 502-503, 521-527, 541-543. 35 The first work of this kind, published in 1666, indicates its intended readership is youths and men who have not received a proper education. The second, published in 1675, is a translation rendered into the vernacular primarily for merchants, as is another of 1788. A fourth published in 1711 also highlights its utility for merchants engaged in

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the Gregorian (‘Roman’) calendar instead of the older Julian one still employed by the Armenian Church to order the liturgical year until November 6, 192336. A knowledge of Italian would also be of service to merchants conducting trade in several of the port cities37, while their frequent journeys and voyages render them the most likely constituency to benefit from the petitions for the protection of travellers, which per- meate the regularly reprinted prayer rolls (hmayil38). Moreover, their cosmopolitan lifestyle typified by international contacts would predispose them to seek out manuals of European etiquette on table manners and proper relations toward servants39. Indeed, if one discounts liturgical and technical theological volumes, they may be viewed as the prime recipient of much of the rest of the output treating geography40, practical meteor- ology41, popular piety and ethics, drawing up wills42, as well as Middle Eastern tales43 and songbooks44. Merchants recognized the significance of the book as a cultural artifact and intermittently complain about so few being available in Armenian45. Additionally, a number of volumes

buying and selling. See OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 43, 73, 188, 529-530, 605-606. 36 On this, see, for example, the brief exposition in simple language compiled by Mxit‘ar Sebastac‘i in 1733 and published in Venice in 1748. On the title page it is noted that most Armenians already follow the Gregorian form. See OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 388-389. 37 The first Armenian-Italian primer was printed in Marseilles in 1675, while a more detailed grammar was produced by the Mxitarist monk Gabriel Awetik‘ean and published in Venice in 1792. For details, see OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 73, 657-658. 38 The transition from manuscript to printed prayer rolls is quite significant. Several printings occurred in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, mainly in Constantinople. For details, see ibidem, p. 176-177, 215-216, 224, 227, 259-260, 266, 270, 277, 281-282, 288, 307. 39 See, for example, Petros Kostantinopolsec‘i’s Polite Manners of 1787, on which, see ibidem, p. 596. 40 This applies first and foremost to the world map of 1695 and its key published in the following year, the asxarhac‘oyc‘ [geography] then attributed to Xorenac‘i, as well as Lukas Incicean’s scholarly geography of the world of 1791. See OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 116, 121-122, 338, 648. 41 For the principles of natural sciences, see ibidem, p. 718, and, for geometry, p. 663, 690-692. 42 Ibidem, p. 395-396. 43 Representative of this trend is a book published in Constantinople in 1709 containing the City of Bronze (an episode from the 1001 Nights collection), the Maiden and the Youth, the Wisdom of Xikar, and the Tale of King P‘ahlul, on which see ibidem, p. 177-178. 44 The colophon of a songbook printed in Venice in 1681 emphasizes the appeal to merchants of this kind of text uniting both sacred and secular works in one volume. See ibidem, p. 85-86. 45 For the reference to the paucity of Armenian publications in a colophon of 1676, see ibidem, p. 75. Another colophon of 1699 describes Armenian merchants as lovers of

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were published expressly to cater to the needs of merchants. These include an almanack produced in Marseilles in 1676, and another in Venice in 1800, as well as a complete trade manual in Calcutta in 1797 translated from an English original46. The print format adopted also suggests accommodation to this demographic and their conditions of life. Books, particularly in the 16th- 17th centuries, are eminently portable and small in size, implementing the innovative Venetian printer Aldus Manutius’ octavo format, with accessible subject matter presented in a simple style as utility items. Moreover, initially the contents is also brief (scarcely 100 pages), often abridge- ments47, and even when their volume begins to expand, the titles continue to employ diminutive designations (tetrak, grguk, etc.) presumably as a sales pitch to attract potential readers easily frightened by what was perceived as serious, in-depth coverage of a topic (as they had many other practical issues to occupy their thoughts).

6. Printing and the Expansion of Literacy

At the same time, the profusion of alphabetic primers indicates the desire to diversify the literate community. This naturally relates to the expansion of schools, but some titles actually go out of their way to specify their utility for men who have not yet received an education (1666). Moreover, a primer of 1662 from Amsterdam also envisages use by women and girls, anticipating the opening of the first Armenian girls’ school in the 1790s48. Similarly, the Armenian print medium is already sufficiently egalitarian to bear the work of three female author-translator- compilers in Venice and St. Petersburg in the 18th century. The first of these is Mariam K‘arak‘asean of Constantinople who published a religious

reading (ibidem, p. 131). One should also note the focus of an 18th century Dutch paint- ing of an Armenian merchant of Amsterdam on his reading a book, on which see ULUHOGIAN – ZEKIYAN – KARAPETIAN, Armenia: Imprints of a Civilization, p. 212. 46 For details, see OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 75-76, 732-733, 749. It is ironic that, whereas in the 17th century representatives of the English East India Company were keen to investigate the Armenians’ successful business practices, this manual translated from English highlights the Armenians’ incorporation within the colonial structure. 47 This also applies to Xac‘atur Erzrumec‘i’s philosophical abridgement and Yovhannes Mrk‘uz’s abbreviated grammar of 1711, and Mxit‘ar Sebastac‘i’s condensed calendar of 1748, on which, see ibidem, p. 186-187, 189-190, 388-389. 48 In his impassioned plea for girls’ education in the 1840s the writer and educator Mesrop T‘a¬iadean emphasized women’s role in promoting the cause of nationalism. See T‘ALIADYAN, Grakan Zarangut‘yun, p. 265-292.

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tract entitled Eye of the Soul in Venice in 1728, followed by an abbreviated Armenian translation of Xac‘atur Erzrumec‘i’s Latin treatise General Theology, which appeared in 173649. She was succeeded by Anna Dilanc‘ean, daughter of Grigor Agha Safrazean and wife of Agha Minas Dilanc‘eanc‘, who translated the work Principles of Civil Studies from Russian and published it in St. Petersburg in 1785. It is noteworthy that she comments in her colophon on her lack of training in writing skills50. The third writer is K¥eopatra Sarafean, daughter of Movses Sarafean, who published an Armenian-Russian dictionary entitled Key to Knowledge in 1788 in the same city that she financed herself51. In their translation endeavors they thus paralleled the activities of their male counterparts like Gabriel Hamazaspean of Erevan who rendered a collection of philosophical works by Marcus Aurelius from Spanish under the general title Golden Book and Melifluous Letters, which he published in Venice in 1738 at his own expense52. In his colophon he informs readers that in order to find his translation base he visited many bookstores and sought the advice of many intellectuals. Eventually he managed to track it down in Florence among a set of books left by Cozimo de’ Medici.

7. Print Language

Granted printing’s growing importance, the issue of the language employed and the selection of register gain in prominence, as Anderson has underscored, in terms particularly of the potential creation of new standardized forms53. Most Armenian publications reflect a simple form of classical Armenian, the idiom for which the alphabet had been introduced, which, though it had ceased to be a medium for oral communication some centuries earlier, remained the predominant vehicle for written expression. Moreover, when we compare Armenian’s limited distribution with Latin’s international standing throughout Europe in the religious and scholarly spheres, it is clear that any publication in that idiom would automatically create a sense of rapport among readers. Printing in Armenian in contrast to Turkish and various oral dialects thus reinforced a sense of unitary high culture. Nevertheless, materials intended primarily for a merchant readership, starting with the twin

49 See OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 277 and 331-332. 50 Ibidem, p. 576. 51 Ibidem, p. 619-621. 52 Ibidem, p. 347-350. 53 ANDERSON, Imagined Communities, p. 68-82.

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volumes on calendar issues, worldly wisdom, and arithmetic produced in Marseilles in 1675 are composed in a form of the vernacular referred to as k‘a¥ak‘ac‘i (lit. civil), particularly employed in cosmopolitan merchant communities, above the diversity of the main dialectal groups “to remove grounds for laziness or criticism54.” This step introduced as a means of democratizing the act of reading, communicating practical information to sections of the population that had not enjoyed a classical education, later intensified in the 1790s with the introduction of periodi- cals. Ultimately, it opened a trajectory toward the formation of a new literary standard of the language by the second half of the 19th century that gained widespread currency through newspaper circulation55.

8. Printing and Armenian Merchants’ Global Network

The fact of Armenian merchant communities’ expansion across the globe constituted another ground for the growth of printing as a conveni- ent means of reaching the largest potential readership. Thus the author Yovhannes Kostandinupolsec‘i comments rhetorically on the publication of one of his works in Venice in 1680: Because of its abundance, our nation has multiplied and exists scattered over the whole world (sp‘rec‘eal goy i ¢ndhanur asxarh), whom the words of my mouth cannot reach to fulfill my desire. Hence I thought to compose this brief little book (zgrguks zays karcarot) judiciously and publish it so that hereby everyone might acquire knowledge of the truth he himself thirsts for56.

Readers’ diffusion also influenced the subjects selected for publication, among which the most important example is obviously the world map produced in Amsterdam in 1695 with an accompanying key by Lukas Vanandec‘i the following year. There, in highlighting the advan- tages European nations have gained from cartography in world travel by land and sea, the publisher presents this as a standard for Armenians to emulate57. In another work he already envisages them as fully active in Frankistan (Western Europe), Hindustan (the Indian subcontinent), Iran, and Byzantium (the Ottoman Empire58).

54 For a description, see NICHANIAN, Âges et usages, p. 272-276. See also OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 74. 55 PEHLIVANIAN, Mesrop’s Heirs, p. 84-86. 56 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 83. 57 Ibidem, p. 121-122. 58 Ibidem, p. 132.

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9. Synchronous Imagined Community of Readers

The merchant communities also increasingly inhabited a new time- space continuum featuring a much higher degree of dynamism and change. If not exactly a microcosm of the Armenian polity, they included representatives from diverse origins, on whom they depended for communal survival. Moreover, they had a keen awareness of the global business network they constituted, articulated in several texts, congruent with Gellner’s model of nationalist ideology emerging in diasporic group set- tings, though the distances involved in the Armenian case far exceed the norms that author envisages. Formally a holdover from the older art of manuscript copying, in the hands of Armenian printers the colophon assumed the new function of establishing a different form of ethnic cohesion with readers through myths of common origin from Hayk, eponymous progenitor of the Armenians. In so doing, as Eisenstein and Anderson have shown, it fostered an imagined sense of affiliation with a set of synchronous readers in geographical dispersion across 17th century Armenian diasporic life in cosmopolitan entrepôts over the Eurasian hemisphere, forging a novel inclusiveness among the merchant class as an ethnic group. The latter differed strikingly from the localized loyalties to family and town or village traditionally expressed in songs of migration (pandxtut‘iwn) we considered above. Although the above term is sometimes found in colophons, it does not connotate the sense of disorientation, loss of rights, and yearning for the family circle endemic to that largely oral genre, since many of the merchant communities at the time enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, lucrative privileges, and the support of authorities local and state-wide for their ability to stimulate trade and boost the economy, filling a clear niche in the socio-economic structure. Similarly, the printer-dpir Lukas Vanandec‘i arguably in part fulfills the role Gellner assigns to diaspora intellectuals originally designated for a career in the church, whose interests become diverted in foreign urban milieus so that they become spokesmen for nationalist ideology59. Emblem- atic of this process is Vanandec‘i’s appeal to ‘readers descended from Hayk’ (ar haykaser ¢nt‘erc‘o¥s) in which he argues that at least as merchants Armenians appear among Asian and Eastern nations as “glorious and resourceful, for they are accepted by all nations and loved by not a few. They continually travel over the whole world, treading every land under foot.” Significantly, it is precisely the image of family that he

59 GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism, p. 60. An excellent later example of this type of transitional intellectual is Xac‘atur Abovean (1809-1848).

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employs as a segueway to the Armenian ethnos, bulding on the semantic fluidity of the Armenian term azg60: “seeing our Aramian nation every- where adorned with strategies, enriched with possessions, and embel- lished in its way of life, we count ourselves blessed on account of the bliss and radiance of our nation61.” The tone in which this is portrayed is also worthy of note, voicing enormous pride in Armenian self-confidence and commercial success. Moreover, we observe a particular rhetoric and related lexicon employed in printers’ colophons, which serves to reinforce bonds of affiliation and allegiance between readers on the basis of common origin and shared history. Several of these collective terms are found occasionally in Armenian writers of the 10th-13th centuries, but now enter into everyday discourse. Many derive from the root azn denoting kinship or adherence to one type, e.g. merazneay “belonging to our kin,” hamazneay “relating to all the kin,” and more particularly a group of lexemes linking the refer- ent to the traditional group progenitor, the patriarch Hayk (hayk-azn, hayk-azun, hayk-azneay, hayk-akan62). This figure was less prominent in mainstream classical Armenian literature under Christian and biblical inspiration in favor of his descendant/relative T‘orgom who appears in the genealogy of Noah in Gen 10: 2-3. The primary source treating Hayk is of course Movses Xorenac‘i in whose oeuvre most of the above lexemes emerge for the first time63. Also intriguing is the presence of new almost interchangeable synonyms like aram-azneay and aram-ean again significantly less common in classical discourse64, which identify the community with the later hero Aram who was traditionally regarded as the source of their external designation as Armen-ians65, thus rendering them heirs to both traditions (Hayk-ian and Armen-ian), as befitted their hybrid status as Armenians in a predominantly non-Armenian ambience.

60 For etymology and usage, see ACARYAN, Hayeren armatakan bararan, p. 84-85. 61 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 122. 62 See, for example, ibidem, p. 149. 63 MOVSES XORENAC‘I, Patmut‘iwn Hayoc‘, p. 32-37, 107-111. 64 A clear indication of this is the terms’ complete absence from Nor bargirk‘ haykazean lezui, the standard reference work in the field. 65 Thus Lazar Jahkec‘i states that Aram expanded the borders of Armenia through his bravery until every nation called the ‘Hay’ nation ‘Armen’ from his own name (LAZAR JAHKEC‘I, Draxt c‘ankali, p. 544). Already in the mid-15th century the term azg Aramean (Aramian nation) is found (MKRTIC‘ NALAS, Mkrtic‘ Na¥as, p. 196). The tradition is also witnessed in Jewish and Syrian Christian biblical exegesis. See also the final section of Minas Amdec‘i’s Genealogy of the Kings of Armenia (OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 331). Note that the operative term ‘genealogy’ derives from the 1695 publication of Xorenac‘i’s history, emphasizing the importance of lineage in dynasties.

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10. Historical Writing and Armenian Genealogy

The printers’ appeal to traditions of shared origin with their readers was reinforced by some of the texts published, which called attention to Armenian history, geography, and the previous paraphernalia of statehood. It is hardly surprising that the most prominent author in this con- stellation is once more Xorenac‘i, whose history and the geography (asxarhac‘oyc‘) then attributed to him were reprinted several times in the 17th-18th century. Significantly, the printer indicates the relative scarcity of manuscript copies of the work outside monastic libraries. Hence, the publication was effected on the basis of a single exemplar66. His narrative, the main receptacle of Armenian lore regarding the figures Hayk and Aram evoked above, as well as the most detailed account of Armenian history to the end of the Arsacid dynasty, appeared from the same print shop in 1695. In this regard, it is worth noting the precise rubric by which the printers introduced the work to their readership, as “The Genealogy of the Japhethian House... and fundamental history of the first patriarchs (nahapet), kings, princes, naxarars, and ecclesiastical patriarchs (hayrapet) of the Aramian nation,” identifying the collective with its secular and religious elite67. The approach illustrates Smith’s model of the ‘Eastern’ approach to nationalism in highlighting narratives of the ethnie’s shared history and cultural affinities.

11. Ecclesiastical and Liturgical Printing

Unlike the powerful interests of scribal guilds in the Ottoman Empire seeking to maintain their monopoly on transmission of the written word that constrained sultan Selim to outlaw printing in 1515 by a ban that remained in effect till the end of the 18th century, Armenian manuscript copying had largely been the preserve of the monastic scriptorium. However, the disruption of communal life on the Armenian plateau by Ottoman-Safavid warfare had led to the pillage of monasteries and deca- dence of spiritual life, so that the hierarchy from the catholicos down were keen to avail themselves of the benefits of the press, which included greater quantity, more uniform standards, and relatively lower price68.

66 For the printer’s comment, see OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 117 and, for how it exemplifies print praxis at the time, see EISENSTEIN, Printing Revo- lution, p. 350. 67 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 166. 68 Thus the colophon of a Breviary of 1662 states the product is “conveniently priced and accessible to all” (OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 41), while other books were distributed free of charge (ibidem, p. 40).

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Moreover, the foundation of new churches to serve the expanding network of merchant colonies increased the need for liturgical books69. Print was also to play a major role in the dissemination of Catholic doctrine and practice among Armenians in the Early Modern period. Already the adventurer Schiltberger’s memoirs indicate the close rapport he felt with the Armenian Catholics of Naxcawan during his service to Leng Timur70. Now the reaction within Catholicism to the Protestant Reformation inculcated a new zeal for mission towards the Christians of the Near East to reaffirm the universality of Rome’s jurisdiction by drawing the eastern churches into ecclesial union. As a growing political, economic, and cultural power in Europe with the largest population, France wished to advance its commercial objectives in the Near East through the mediation of well-disposed Christian satellites in the region, particularly Catholic co-religionists71. On its incorporation into the Ottoman Empire (1516), Aleppo became the prime transit center Persian silk to the Mediterranean until the decline in production after the Afghan Revolt (1722) and the site of several European representations, of which the French was one of the first in 1562. This brought them in contact with Armenian merchants from Julfa on the River Arax, who played a major role in trade from Iran, from which they accumulated great wealth72. Merchants and missionaries have often been partners along the same trade routes. Consequently, under Richelieu, France gradually arro- gated from Rome the direction of the Counter-Reformation mission to the Near East in the 1620s and Aleppo joined Constantinople73 as a primary location for Armenian conversion to the Catholic faith and the establishing of a uniate Armenan church in communion with Rome74. At the same time, the advance of nationalism in France was already straining the bonds of religious affiliation on occasion, as evidenced by the salutary case of the Armenian merchant E¥ia Karnec‘i75.

69 MAHÉ, Catalogue des “incunables” arméniens, p. xx-xxv. 70 SCHILTBERGER, Bondage and Travels. 71 For a variety of initiatives to align Armenians with French interests, see ETMEKJIAN, French Influence, p. 58-63. 72 Julfa and the neighboring cities of Naxcawan and Agulis thrived on the Persian silk trade during the 16th century when much of Greater Armenia was devastated by Safavid- Ottoman border disputes. The wealth of their merchants is foregrounded by their patronage of manuscripts at that time. 73 The French Capuchin order erected a school there in 1679. 74 New Julfa constituted a third important center of missionary activity. 75 This figure embraced Catholicism at the intervention of French missionaries in Iran, only to be betrayed by them to the Russians as a spy to protect one of their fellow nationals. See ABRAHAMYAN, Hamarot urvagic.

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One of the Armenian converts to Catholicism was the nineteen-year- old Mxit‘ar Sebastac‘i, subsequent founder of the monastic congregation that bears his name. Persecuted by the Armenian Apostolic patriarch in Constantinople, the Mxit‘arist community moved first to the Morea, then under Venetian rule, and finally to Venice itself, where the order became established in 1717. Another convert was bishop Abraham Arci- wean who was consecrated in Aleppo as first catholicos-patriarch of the Armenian Catholic Church in 1740, before later moving his seat to Lebanon. Despite the rite’s approval by Rome, it remained illegal under Ottoman law until, again with French backing, the entity finally gained recognition as a separate millet on April 17, 1834. This process and the French initiative in its gestation are important for introducing the first lasting fissure in the Ottoman construct of Armenian collective identity as a confessional minority by dividing the Armenian polity into two factions over the matter of creed. Gradually religion was to become more a matter of personal conviction than the sole criterion for community affiliation76. These missionary developments naturally provoked tensions within the Armenian Apostolic community, which came to a head during the turbu- lent patriarchate of Awetik‘ Ewdokac‘i (1702-03: 1704-06). Inevitably each side appealed to the power of the press to defend their own position and impugn the opposition before the widest sophisticated urban reader- ship77. Thus printing replaced the medieval forum of the formal theological debate by affording each of the communities a voice to propagate their views, especially their contested perspectives on Armenian history, and brought their debate directly to the literate Armenian classes, enhancing the process of civil society. In this war of words the Vatican employed the services of the Urban Press of the Propaganda (Societas de Propaganda Fide) in Rome, which was active in publishing popular works of Catholic piety such as Thomas à Kempis’ Imitatio Christi, liturgical texts like the Armenian version of the Roman Missal, and prohibitions on communion with heretics and schismatics78. In addition, it disseminated several tomes by the Jesuit missionary Jacques Villotte who had worked intensively with Armenian communities, including a Catholic profession of faith, and treatise in

76 The religious division in Armenian society compelled the secular elite to find another ideology round which to unite, that of Romantic nationalism, as championed in poems like “E¥bayr emk‘ mek‘ [We Are Brothers].” See PESIKT‘ASLEAN, Mkrtic‘ Pesik- taslyan Ta¥er, p. 27-28. 77 KÉVORKIAN, Documents d’archives français. 78 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 135, 157.

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defense of the Roman doctrine of purgatory, as well as a Latin-Armenian dictionary for use in training future missionaries79. This was supplemented by publications of the St. Ejmiacin and St. Sargis press in Con- stantinople (1696-1718), which published a series of similar works on piety and religious truth, some of which had been translated by Armenian Catholic priests like Yovhannes Holov and Petros Tiflisec‘i80. Venetian presses were also active in promoting Catholic doctrine, combining recent materials like sermons of Fr. Xac‘atur Erzrumec‘i with expositions of the faith by schoolmen like Petros Aragonac‘i and Bartolomeo of Bologna who were responsible for founding the Armenian Unitores congregation affiliated with the Dominican order in 14th century81. The Armenian Apostolic response was swift, usually through the services of the Marzvanec‘i and Astuacatur Kostandnupolsec‘i presses, a Roman primer on Christian education of 1709 being parried by a similar work of the philosopher-theologian Yovhannes Mrk‘uz of New Julfa in 171382. The election of the commanding spiritual figure Yovhannes Kolot (1715-41) to the patriarchate, succeeded by his pupil Yakob Nalean (1741-49: 1752-64), ensured continuity of community direction and lead- ership83. They too balanced 14th century anti-Catholic rebuttals like Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i’s Book of Questions (1720, 1729) with more contemporary approaches84. Nalean himself authored a set of apologetic works like the Rock of Faith (1733) and Torch of Truth (1756). Around the turn of the 18th century, Constantinople also emerged as the center of Armenian printing, a move facilitated by the loosening of scribal opposition to the new technology in Ottoman society. The number of lay printers significantly expanded together with the volume of printing and larger printruns. Consequently, the growth of Armenian booksellers in the city from the 1730s added another dimension to the smooth function- ing of the book trade, improving distribution and reader access to the product85.

79 Ibidem, p. 179-180, 197, 209. 80 These were edited by the Armenian Catholic bishop of Constantinople and Mxit‘ar Sebastac‘i before his enforced exile from the city in 1701. 81 COWE, Church and Diaspora, p. 417-423. 82 The New Julfa press during its brief period of reopening (1687-88) foregrounded religious questions tackled by contemporary theologians of their own community. See OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 106, 107, 108-109. 83 On these, see in more detail, BAMBUK‘CEAN, Yovhannes patriark‘ Kolot. 84 On Tat‘ewac‘i’s reception of certain Latin approaches, while opposing characteristi- cally Western doctrines, see COWE, Church and Diaspora, p. 428-429. 85 Over the 18th century some 20 presses operated in the Ottoman capital, producing c. 300 titles. For further details, see PEHLIVANIAN, Mesrop’s Heirs, p. 77-80.

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The impact of the Armenian Apostolic hierarchy was particularly noticeable in sponsoring religious and ethical works. Moreover, as the clergy constituted the traditional educated elite, and the network of church schools was under their jurisdiction, it is natural that they would be involved in producing textbooks of various kinds for that market. In addition, the printshops published materials from the Armenian supreme catholicate in Ejmiacin until the latter established a press of its own in 1771. The upper echelons of the church would have received their formation in monasteries with a curriculum largely developed in the Middle Ages and featuring the twin authorities of the Bible and patristic scholars that were still commented upon within the classical parameters86. Hence their worldview was more shaped by the codex and the copying process rather than the new possibilities of print culture87. Granted this background, it is hardly surprising that their interests focused less on politics, and that in their treatment of the latter sphere their approach should exhibit a tone of prayerful expectancy rather than one validating human initiative and autonomy of action88. However, political quietism may not only have been a matter of clerical calling, but a factor in ensuring maintenance of the status quo in an Islamic context where the hierarchy was acknowledged as the primary representative of the Armenian people. Meanwhile, the patriarch’s prerogative of censoring Armenian books published in the Ottoman Empire during this period acted as a further inhibitor to avant- garde perspectives entering circulation89. Although historiography is not an ecclesiastical discipline per se, it is true that most of the early and medieval Armenian historians were bish- ops or vardapets. However, as the majority of the patrons for such works had been of princely or royal descent, the loss of Armenian statehood in the 14th century together with the demise of most of the traditional aristocratic houses in the 15th had led to a decline in largescale historical

86 An excellent example of the practice is Simeon Erewanc‘i’s commentary on the ‘external’ writings of Greek philosophers in MS 1934 (dated 1792-93) of the Matenadaran Institute of Manuscripts in Erevan. 87 For the transition between the medieval scholar primarily focusing on one text at a time versus the diversity of printed books now consulted together, see EISENSTEIN, Print- ing Revolution, p. 48-49. 88 In keeping with this, the 17th century poet Martiros Lrimec‘i seeks vengeance on Armenian enemies by indirect means, appealing to divine intervention, on which, see BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin-hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢, p. 35. 89 As a result, Armenian printing does not carry the outspoken attacks on secular and ecclesiastical elites that appear in Western Europe. See EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 357.

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writing and study, being supplanted by records of regional or local events in chronicles and scribal colophons90. A major exception to this trend is represented by Vardan Ba¥isec‘i, a vardapet at the monastic school of Amrdolu near Bitlis, who made a special collection of historical works, arranging for the copying of exemplars not available to him and devoting care to the repair of older manuscripts in the process of decay. As the patriarch Yovhannes Kolot had studied with him, he sought to implement those policies in Constantinople. This initiative led to the printing of much of the early Armenian historical literature there over the course of the 18th century of importance for both ethnic and religious purposes, sup- plementing the Amsterdam edition of Xorenac‘i: Agathangelos (1709- 10), Zenob Glak (1719), P‘awstos Buzand (1728), the Life of Nerses the Great (1737), E¥ise (1764), and Lazar P‘arpec‘i (1793, Venice). In this he exemplifies Eisenstein’s comment that initially older texts find their way into print more quickly than recent ones91. That remark certainly applies to 18th century Armenian works, e.g. Abraham Erewanc‘i’s His- tory of the Wars, 1721-1736 and Xac‘atur Ju¥ayec‘i’s History of Persia, both published only in the 20th century, and catholicos Abraham III Kretac‘i’s history of Nader Shah, to which we will return, that appeared in Calcutta in 179692. The one exception to this tendency is Oskan Erewanc‘i’s publication of Arak‘el Dawrizec‘i’s contemporary history in Amsterdam in 1669 only seven years after its completion93. As Gellner underscores, shared history is frequently a crucial aspect of the nationalist project94. In keeping with this, a second trend character- izing the period is the compilation of new histories based on Xorenac‘i’s material supplemented by later sources still accessible only in manuscript to produce narrratives highlighting both the Armenians’ great antiquity as a people and their possession of a state with a succession of royal dynasties into the medieval period. The first examples are rather brief synopses, beginning with the Genealogy of the Kings of Armenia written by Minas Amdec‘i, Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1698 (published posthu- mously in Constantinople in 1735), which traces the Armenian dynasties from pre-history to the fall of the Rubenids in 137595. That schema was

90 See HAKOBYAN, Manr zamanakagrut‘yunner. 91 EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 48. 92 For publication details, see OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 721- 725. 93 Ibidem, p. 58-60. 94 GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism, p. 56. 95 In his first chapter, in traditional fashion the author traces Armenian genealogy back to Adam the protoplast. OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 331. Compare

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then applied in the Jesuit Jacques Villotte’s History of the Catholicoi and Kings of the Armenians published first in Venice in 1713 and then appended to his Latin-Armenian dictionary in abbreviated form the following year in Rome96. At the same time, these compilations emerge out of an earlier manuscript tradition of creating lists of rulers and hierarchs such as the Order of the Kings of Armenia According to Movses Xorenac‘i, which is attributed to the 14th century writer Movses Erznkac‘i in Matenadaran MS 503 copied in 1601, an anonymous piece Order of the Patriarchs and Kings of Armenia in MS 502 of 1619, and Martiros Lrimec‘i’s poem Order and Number of the Kings of the Nation of Arme- nians of 167297. The pattern was also followed by Patriarch Yakob Nalean of Constan- tinople in his more extensive coverage in the fourth volume of his final work Ganjaran canuc‘manc‘ [Treasury of Information] of 1758. While the latter is formally parallel with the third in which he had treated other nations, the Armenians are currently ineligible for comparison from the perspectives of territoriality and statehood and hence to include them in his project in order not to be considered unpatriotic (hayrenateac‘k‘98), the author is compelled to present the Armenians purely in terms of their past, focusing on their origins, the acts of bravery they had accomplished, the lands they became masters of, and the extent of their rule99. Starting with the patriarch Hayk’s establishment of the country, Nalean pursues Armenian kingship from Paruyr the Giant through the Arsacid and Bagratid dynasties, to end with Rubenid rule in Cilicia, highlighting the leaders’ achievements, especially their prowess and physical presence. To account for the Armenians’ current situation Nalean remains true to the patristic and medieval view, ultimately deriving from the Deutero- nomic Historian, that loss of statehood was precipitated by divine retribu- tion for the people’s corporate sin100.

the work Eremia’s Genealogy of the Kings of Armenia according to Movses Xorenac‘i preserved in Matenadaran MS 9006. 96 The author begins his narrative with the Common Era, concluding his account of the Armenian kings with the Rubenid dynasty of Cilicia, while tracing the catholicate up to his own day. Ibidem, p. 197, 209. 97 On the latter, see OSKEAN, Karg ew t‘iw t‘agaworac‘n Hayoc‘. 98 NALEAN, Ganjaran canuc‘manc‘, p. 227. 99 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 441-442. To reach a wider readership the work is composed in both Classical Armenian and the vernacular. 100 NALEAN, Ganjaran canuc‘manc‘, p. 227. See also Azaria Ju¥ayec‘i’s similar comments on the impact of the Jalalian revolt of 1602 on the Armenian plateau, his ascription of this to sin, and his complaint that the earlier Armenian kings had left their people unprotected in BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin-hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢, p. 30.

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In contrast, Lazar Jahkec‘i, the catholicos’ representative in Smyrna, valorizes Armenian ethno-religious continuity in his Draxt c‘ankali [Desirable Paradise] published in Constantinople in 1735 as part of an Armenian apology against Roman Catholic criticism101. There the author employs the paradigm set by Anania Narekac‘i (10th c.), Po¥os Taronec‘i (12th c.), and Step‘anos Orbelian (13th c.) to defend his people and their church from attack by the Theatine missionary Clemens Galanus and later authors of the Propaganda102. Narrating Armenian history in the traditional textbook form of question and answer between a pupil and teacher from the Flood to the Cilician period in heroic, larger-than-life propor- tions, he then delineates the institution of the catholicate as the center of the Armenian polity in the more recent period, referring to the Armenians as the ‘flock’, as frequently in the works of authors from Ejmiacin, and the current incumbent Astuacatur Msec‘i as their ‘shepherd’103. It should be noted that the author himself succeeded to that office two years after the book’s appearance.

12. Historical and Political Laments

Another oral genre of great antiquity, which enjoyed a long interface with the literate tradition is that of lament. Originally associated with funerary obsequies, the political application of such rites in the Near East can be traced back to the third millennium BCE104. A series of Armenian laments from 1145 to 1604 testifies to the destruction of Christian cities by successive Muslim powers largely from an eyewitness perspective105. While most deal concretely with the specifics of each individual case, the first, composed by the poet-catholicos Nerses Snorhali, an extensive treatment of the seizure of Edessa by the Turkmen Zengi, the trigger for the Second Crusade, includes an excursus that rehearses the panoply of Armenian dynasties to rise and fall106. It concludes with the future

101 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 329-330. 102 In his three-volume work on Armenian Church history and relations with Rome Galanus draws attention to a number of Armenian doctrines and practices not in conformity with their Roman counterparts. Several of these issues are accordingly raised by Jahkec‘i, including Christology, the Armenian mata¥ (animal sacrifice), and a refutation of the Latin doctrine of purgatory. 103 LAZAR JAHKEC‘I, Draxt c‘ankali, p. 611. It is significant that the military strategist Yovsep‘ Emin qualified his people as “the sheeplike shepherdless Armenian nation” (EMIN, Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, p. 103). The above tradition gives new mean- ing to Yovhannes Aivazovsky’s famous portrayal of Catholicos Mkrtic‘ Xrimean of 1895, for which see XAC‘ATRYAN, Aivazovsky, p. 22. 104 See KUTCHER, Oh Angry Sea. 105 XAC‘ATRYAN, Hay mijnadaryan patmakan o¥ber. 106 First published in 1685, the work was frequently reprised in the following century.

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scenario of Armenian liberation through the assistance of the Western Christian powers, an apocalyptic expectation associated with a vision of the homonymous 4th century hierarch Nerses Part‘ew, whose contemporary significance is documented by a series of new redactions updating the ‘prophecy’ to accommodate to current realities107. Gellner also underscores the importance of laments as an early feature in the nationalist project108. Snorhali’s imprint on the subsequent poetic tradition is well illustrated by the following passage from a poem by archbishop Karapet Ba¥isec‘i, which the editor Nerses Akinean dates to 1540109. Writing during the initial period of Ottoman expansion onto the Armenian plateau and the beginning of the Ottoman-Safavid conflict to establish a firm international border in the area, he voices his community’s sense of helpless- ness at the devastation caused to their institutions and way of life and the haemorrhaging of their population. Moreover, although he is contemporary with the early generations of Armenian printers, the outlook he voices differs radically from the self-confident, progressive global expan- siveness typical of printers’ colophons from the trade colonies, as noted above. Rather, it represents the traditional view of spokesmen from the Armenian homeland regarding the Armenian dispersion, considering the phenomenon as inherently volatile and oppressive (“trampled upon”) in contrast to other nations’ secure ensconcement in their “allotted terri- tory110.” Its literary genealogy can be traced back through the laments of Step‘anos Orbelean and Xac‘atur Kec‘arec‘i at the turn of the 14th century that appealed to the Armenian aristocracy of Cilicia to return to the east to recreate the solidarity of the past in the face of the dual external threats of Mamluk attack and Latin ecclesiastical demands111. That perspective also inspired the establishment of the anti-catholicate at Ejmiacin in 1441, which thereafter established itself as the primatial see of the whole church. Let us review the sons of Hayk, Strewn hither and thither among every nation. As to national descent, we are called Armen, As to our apportioned lot, we hail from T‘orgom... Laudable and famous

107 HOVHANNISYAN, Drvagner hay azatagrakan mtk‘i, p. 44-49. 108 GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism, p. 58-59. 109 AKINEAN, Karapet V. Ba¥isec‘i. 110 Note the emphasis on territory on the part of spokesmen for the Plateau in contrast to the focus on nation (azg) and genealogy (azgabanut‘iwn) in the trade diaspora uncou- pled from location and a spatial dimension. 111 SANJIAN, Step‘anos Orbelian’s Elegy, and XAC‘ATUR KEC‘AREC‘I, XIII-XIV dareri, p. 134-138.

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From beginning to end. Not a one was like you Neither before nor after. False and transient world, Where are all our princes? Trdat, the powerful king, [And] the barons with you, worthy of praise. Awake and see us wretched112, Pitiable, and smarting. Every nation is on its allotted territory, But we are tossed hither and yon. We are miserable captives, Trampled on by every nation. We have no king, Nor a powerful, mighty soldier.

Ultimately, the negative stereotype of dispersion derives from comparison with Jewish experience as Armenian Christianity appropriated for itself the Pauline image of the New Israel. As a result, many features of Old Testament history are regarded as having their typological fulfillment in the present. One of the first Armenian inflections of the narrative of the exile is found in the speech of the chorepiscopus Daniel to king Tiran and the court in the aftermath of the murder of Catholicos Yusik in the 340s. Its current formulation by the 5th century author Ps. P‘awstos may allude indirectly to the partition of Armenia in 387113. You will be scattered and divided and your territories will be scattered as was done to Israel, and you will have no one to protect you, look after you, or care for you, and you will be like a flock without a shepherd. You will be handed over into captivity and to the yoke of servitude, and the yoke of servitude will never be lifted from you or diminish, nor will the harsh yoke of the slavery of servitude be eased from your necks. You will be worn down and consumed in your desires. As Israel was torn to pieces, so will you be scattered and destroyed, and others will delight in [the product of] your labors and others will devour your resources114.

Another locus classicus for the topos of banishment is the 11th century historian Aristakes Lastivertc‘i’s concluding colophon on the Seljuk sack of the former Bagratid capital of Ani in 1064 and the dispersement of its population115. That theme is also developed by our 17th century pilgrim

112 Reading zmez with MS B, col. 337. 113 GARSOÏAN, Epic Histories, p. 259. 114 P‘AWSTOS BUZAND, Patmut‘iwn, p. 35-36. 115 ARISTAKES LASTIVERTC‘I, Patmut‘iwn, p. 176-179. This perspective on the fall of Ani is also maintained by catholicos Abraham Kretac‘i (d. 1737) in his history of the city.

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Simeon Lehac‘i, who argues regarding the Armenian community in the Polish city of Lvov that, although God cursed and destroyed Ani, He blessed those who departed from it, including the forebears of his inter- locutors there116. Later the view of the Armenians as having been scattered by God like their Jewish prototypes became stock in both Georgian and Russian society in the 19th century117. At the same time, Karapet Ba¥isec‘i’s poem concludes with stanzas evoking the same hope of salvation with western assistance associated with Snorhali and Nerses Part‘ew that motivated a series of embassies to the pope and various European monarchs over the 16th-17th centuries to launch a fresh crusade to reestablish Armenia’s statehood118. Where are our first princes, Brave Muse¥ and Wolf Vahan119? Let them fight for us And liberate all those fallen captive. The patriarchs have borne witness [to this] With consoling vows, “May there be liberation for you From that valiant nation120.”

However, the last of these, directed toward Peter the Great, which had originally appeared so promising, ended in his abortive withdrawal to fend off a Swedish offensive, leaving the Armenian forces under Dawit‘ Bek to withstand the might of both Persian and Ottoman armies in the 1720s and 30s121. Turkish garrisons were then billotted in most of the region until Nader Shah expelled the Ottomans and recognized the semi- autonomy of the meliks of Kharabagh and Siwnik‘. This existential situation generated a new series of printed works devoid of any mitigating expectations, which seems rather modelled on the prose lament with

116 SIMEON LEHAC‘I, Travel Accounts, p. 286-287. The theme is repeated, now with regard to the burgeoning of the Armenian community on the Crimea, in Martiros Lrimec‘i’s History of the Land of Crimea of 1672, on which, see BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin- hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢, p. 35. 117 SUNY, Images of the Armenians, p.116, 118. 118 COWE, Church and Diaspora, p. 430-437. 119 The reference is to Muse¥ Mamikonean prince of Taron who, according to the legendary History of Taron, adopted Wolf Vahan, after which they led the Armenian forces against the Persian army. 120 The patriarchs in question are the 4th century Nerses Part‘ew, whose later apocalyptic vision adumbrates Armenia’s liberation by virtue of Western intervention and his 12th century namesake Nerses Snorhali, whose lament on the fall of the Crusader County of Edessa reprises similar aspirations in its concluding section. 121 BOURNOUTIAN, Eastern Armenia, p. 87-89, and FERRARI, In cerca di un regno, p. 115-138.

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which Xorenac‘i concludes his history, depicting the utter collapse of good order in Armenia in the 430s-40s on the abolition of the kingdom and death of the hierarchs Sahak and Mastoc‘122. Having already identified with the Golden Age of Hayk the progenitor and his heroic succes- sors, the writers mourn the dichotomy of the present as one of Paradise Lost. Interspersed in a series of ta¥ poems such as traditional prayers to the Virgin in the collection Ta¥aran p‘ok‘rik [Small Book of Poems] of 1732 produced by pupils of the patriarch of Constantinople Yovhannes Kolot is a piece entitled “Vasn azgis meroy [On Our Nation]” that highly unu- sually addresses itself directly to the patriarch Hayk. There the author laments the current situation in which the once resplendent Armenian is now a slave123. The scenario is further developed five years later by Lazar Jahkec‘i, now catholicos, in a poem “O¥b i veray Hayastan asxarhin [Lament on the Land of Armenia]” from his Ergaran [Songbook] in which, after extolling the exploits of “great Hayk the archer, mighty Aram the giant” and their descendants, he turns his gaze to more recent history in which “our strong men have become weak, the rich and opu- lent impoverished, the beautiful and tender taken into captivity,” alluding to a series of Turkish and Persian deportations of the Armenian population in the course of the latest campaigns. Jahkec‘i then offers a religious interpretation of the people’s predicament, arguing that through this process they are undergoing martyrdom and as such bids them endure these persecutions as the Bible exhorts, finding solace in their church and orthodox confession124. In this way, he seems to suggest that Armenians have undergone a gradual transformation from a civil polity into a religious communion125. It is noteworthy that the inception of this series of laments in the 1730s coincides with the Ottoman campaign against the Armenian uprising of the previous decade. So far are they from exploiting the opportunity to offer a literary tribute to Dawit‘ Bek’s stalwart direction of the Arme- nian forces that the works exhibit a strikingly resigned acceptance of the status quo. This response highlights the absence of a nationalist ideology such as that which motivated the poets Pesikt‘aslean and Patkanean to

122 MOVSES XORENAC‘I, Patmut‘iwn Hayoc‘, p. 358-366. 123 Ta¥aran p‘ok‘rik, 1732, p. 114-150. For the sentiment, see a poem of the 17th century philosopher Simeon Ju¥ayec‘i cited in BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin-hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢, p. 34. 124 LAZAR JAHKEC‘I, Ergaran, p. 238-241 and Girk‘ noraboys, p. 196-198. 125 On this approach, compare Simeon Lehac‘i’s remarks in BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin-hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢, p. 31.

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transform the purely local character of the Zeyt‘un revolt of 1862 into one of significance for all Armenians126. At the same time, it is clear that the skill, courage, and endurance of the Armenian resistance offered a much better indication of readiness for liberation struggle than the crusading approach discussed earlier. The metamorphosis of the Armenian community Jahkec‘i suggests had already been articulated by earlier ecclesiastics like Mkrtic‘ Na¥as in crafting a response to the papal overture of 1436 to the Armenian catholicos to attend the Council of Florence with a view to establishing union with Rome127. There he takes comfort in the profusion of Arme- nian church schools and sees before commenting on the demise of the Rubenid dynasty: “God’s providence removed from us fleshly government (isxanut‘iwn), for, if earthly monarchical rule (t‘agaworut‘iwns) were a good thing, Christ himself would have participated in fleshly monarchical rule, but [instead] he disdained it and preached the cross and torments for his followers128.”

13. The Armenian Polity Viewed as a Confessional Community on the Plateau

The theme is expanded by catholicos Simeon Erewanc‘i in his Zbosa- ran hogewor [Spiritual Diversion], the first publication to issue from the new press at Ejmiacin. The fact of the latter’s being a monastic complex not a major trade entrepôt underscores the catholicos’ personal initiative to acquire this modern means of mass communication to propagate his vision for the Armenian collective among his constituency in different parts of the world129. Elected to the primatial office in 1763, there is evidence from at least 1765 of his desire to found a press to disseminate his message130, and correspondence illustrating his assiduity in distribut- ing his publications to the important Armenian community in India131. It is patent that contemporary religious issues proved part of the motivation

126 PESIKT‘ASLEAN, Mkrtic‘ Pesiktaslyan Ta¥er, p. 48-58 and PATKANEAN, Erkeri zo¥ovacu, p. 81-82. 127 COWE, Church and Diaspora, p. 428-429. 128 MKRTIC‘ NALAS, Mkrtic‘ Na¥as, p. 196. 129 From his correspondence, we learn that the Indo-Armenian merchant Yovsep‘ Marut‘ean had asked Simeon to send him copies of all his publications. A letter of May 26, 1775 indicates he had already dispatched the first two. See ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1913, col. 201. 130 On this, see ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894, col. 550-554, and 155. 131 ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1913, col. 198, 201.

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to assert powerful leadership over his farflung flock. One facet of these was jurisdictional tensions within the upper hierarchy, as the catholicate of Ganjasar had advanced rival claims to the Russian court as the Church’s legitimate representative, while the Armenian patriarch of Constantinople had recently obtained a firman blocking his superior’s direct intervention in Ottoman territory (primarily to raise funds) without coordinating his policies with the patriarch132. Another major concern, which he shared with previous writers in Constantinople, was Roman proselytization both via the publications of the Mxit‘arist congregation and mission on the ground133, which was particularly active in the region of Axalc‘xe where Catholics had won over some of the local clergy and impelled some of their converts to cease referring to themselves by the designation ‘Armenian134’. Thus, Simeon enjoins the people to maintain the faith of St. Gregory the Illuminator in his later treatise Partavcar [Payment of Debt] of 1783, appealing to them to beware of those of their fellow-countrymen who had gone over to Rome. In a section of the above work entitled “A¥ot‘k‘ o¥bergakank‘ vasn hasarak azgis ew eke¥ec‘eac‘s Hayoc‘ [Prayer of Lament on the Universal Armenian Nation and its Churches],” which also reveals its genealogy from Karapet Ba¥isec‘i, the catholicos implores divine mercy on the ‘little flock135’. Once again the Armenian diaspora is perceived as ‘scattered over every land and suffering, entrusted into the hands of foreign lords and enemies136’. Nor is there a divinely appointed leader like Moses, David, or Joshua in ancient Israel. The Armenian freeborn nobility are now under the dominion of others, while the populace at large is in servitude under the Muslim yoke and scarcely able to secure their livelihood. Although, as stated above by Nalean, this situation had occurred because of corporate sin, as God alone is their ‘lord and king’, as Na¥as had implied, he is implored to intervene to heal and comfort his new Armenian people as he did to Israel of old137. Similarly, in Partavcar Simeon further exhorts his people to manfully bear the tortures they endure for their faith, echoing Lazar Jahkec‘i’s comments above138.

132 Finally, a letter of June 30, 1768 acknowledged Simeon’s sole right to appoint clergy for the Armenian communities in the Russian lands. See ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894, col. 121. 133 Ibidem, col. 132. 134 Ibidem, col. 132-138, 145-149. 135 SIMEON EREWANC‘I, Zbosaran hogewor, p. 69-84. 136 SIMEON EREWANC‘I, Girk‘ or koc‘i partavcar, p. 105. 137 Ibidem, p. 108-109. 138 SIMEON EREWANC‘I, Girk‘ or koc‘i partavcar, p. 358-389. In his Stampoloy patmut‘iwn [History of Istanbul], the 17th century historian Eremia C‘elepi K‘eomiwrcean also argues

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This approach underscores the status of communities on the Armenian plateau under Islamic jurisprudence, particularly as interpreted in the Ottoman Empire, not as an ethnic, but a religious confessional minority on a par with the much more amorphous Rum Orthodox community held together by its Chalcedonian creed139. As, in consequence, the church became the sole Armenian institution in the state with legal standing, the authority of the patriarch of Constantinople and his superior the catholicos was extended from the purely spiritual sphere to embrace aspects of the secular realm as well140. In view of this, the primatial see gradually assumed a heightened profile, accruing titles such as vehap‘ar [of exalted glory] and amenayn Hayoc‘ [over all Armenians] once the prerogative of the royal house, as well as developing a more elaborate rite of unction as part of the liturgy of consecration141. Similarly, after struggling to extri- cate itself from debt in the 17th century and assert its jurisdiction over the other Armenian hierarchical sees, the catholicate of Ejmiacin in the mid- 18th century enjoyed much greater material security142. The desire to build on the status quo and further elevate Ejmiacin’s prominence as the epi- center around which the Armenian world should revolve clearly under- lies most of Simeon’s published writings143. Thus, in his historical and archival compilation Jambr Simeon dwelt in detail on the significance of the cathedral’s foundation by St. Gregory the Illuminator and the circum- stances of the return of the catholicate from Cilicia and its establishment at Ejmiacin in 1441 before enumerating its ecclesiastical benefices and property deeds144. Also emblematic is a dialogue poem in which the Armenian nation is rhetorically portrayed as appealing to “our mother Holy Ejmiacin” before receiving her reply145. Moreover, in a second section of his Zbosaran

for the key role of the catholicos in the absence of Armenian statehood, on which, see BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin-hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢, p. 41. 139 BARSOUMIAN, Eastern Question, p. 182-188. 140 For the view that the Armenian Church constituted the most important national institution, see ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894, col. 9-10, 31. 141 The latter involves the complete envelopment of the candidate in a diaphanous gauze after receiving unction, a rite unparalleled in the consecration or installation of hierarchs in other Christian traditions. 142 COWE, Church and Diaspora, p. 437-438. The Catholicate of Ganjasar in particular had posed problems in Simeon’s relations with the Russian court. However, a letter of June 30, 1768 acknowledged his sole right to appoint clergy for the Armenian communities in the Russian lands. See ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894, col. 121. 143 ASLANIAN, Dispersion History. 144 SIMEON EREWANC‘I, Jambr, p. 1-60. 145 SIMEON EREWANC‘I, Ta¥aran p‘ok‘rik, p. 12-15. Compare the monk Petros’ portrayal of the church as “our mother” in his Grguk eramasneay [Tripartite Book], Constan- tinople, 1752, p. 118-119.

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hogewor cited above which bears the title “Snorhakalut‘iwnk‘ ar Astuac vasn yatuk barerarut‘eanc‘n ork‘ ar azgs Hayoc‘ [Thanks to God for His Special Benefactions Toward the Armenian People]” the divine (astuacakert) foundation of the monastery of Ejmiacin and its role as a continually-flowing fountain of spiritual gifts for Armenians and source of envy to other nations permeates the discourse. In contrast, whereas God had ordained kings and fleshly princes for other polities, the author argues in continuity with Na¥as that God himself is “king, lord, and prince of the Armenians” and, as Christ had stated his kingdom was not of this world, he enjoins his followers to bear their cross146. Moreover, when finally acknowledging the existence of Armenian secular authorities (“princes and leaders of the people”), Simeon does so to underscore their subordination to external “isxo¥ac‘ ew brnaworac‘ [rulers and tyrants, i.e. Persian and Ottoman officials]”, in whose eyes they should be “sweet,” and their service to the church, whose “pride and joy” they should be. The corolary of this is their probable inclusion in the category of those under kingly sway who are exhorted to display loyalty and obedience to their masters147. As a result, Simeon’s conception of Armenian collective identity closely parallels Josephus’ original delineation of Jewish rule under the High Priest as a theocracy148. In consequence, his ascription of the Armenians’ current state to divine punishment and his appeal to divine omnipotence alone to liberate the oppressed and imprisoned, quite apart from jeopardizing the counterpoised doctrines of theodicy and mercy, exclude any opportunity for human initiative or agency. Instead, he adopts a quietist position vis-à-vis Islamic rule not dissimilar to that reported by a village headman to the Indian soldier-adventurer Yovsep‘ Emin on his journey across the Armenian plateau in 1759149. The latter informed him that the Arme- nians’ king is Jesus Christ and that God had placed them under Muslim suzerainty from which they would only be released at the Second Com- ing. Moreover, when Emin pressed him as to the source of this teaching, he attributed it to “the Holy Fathers of the Church150.” It is therefore no

146 SIMEON EREWANC‘I, Girk‘ or koc‘i partavcar, p. 116. 147 At this period, commonly referred to as the ‘era of the princes’ in the abeyance of strong central government in Iran a plethora of local semi-independent rulers emerged that generated a series of internecine quarrels inveigling the Armenian catholicos in one capac- ity or another. See ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894, col. 101-104. 148 Perhaps this should now be retermed as an ecclesiocracy as in its current definition the term theocracy usually implies a claim on the part of the governing body to ruling through direct divine guidance. 149 For further details, see FERRARI, In cerca di un regno, p. 147-159. 150 EMIN, Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, p. 141-142.

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surprise that Emin refers to Simeon as “the god of the Armenians,” while the latter was so implacably opposed to the new threat posed to his worldview by Emin that he undermined his contacts with the king of Kartli Erekle II and sought to apply rigorous censorship on the democratic republicanism of Emin’s colleague Movses Ba¥ramean, ordering the burning of all copies of his revolutionary work New Pamphlet Called Exhortation, together with the author’s expulsion and the destruction of the press in Madras from which it emanated, an unequivocal endorsement of the power of the press to impact intellectual debate in Armenian society151. Championing an Islamic concept of Armenian corporate identity as a non-territorial confessional entity, Simeon nevertheless interprets entry into that communion practically as a fact of birth rather than as a matter of spiritual conviction. In applying to the print medium to contact his far-flung flock, he also addresses them from a traditionalist approach to magisterium in which his exhortation has the effect of a command, as if haranguing them during one of his sermons. This tactic, however, betrays his lack of awareness of the medium’s more egalitarian character and inherent role of fostering individualism and critical judgment in readers rather than the collective instincts of the throng152.

14. Diasporic Poetic Identification with the Homeland

Despite his long years of service in Constantinople as the catholicos’ representative, Petros Lap‘anc‘i manifests a very different perspective valorizing the committed patriot’s emotional attachment to the homeland. Indeed, he emerges as a distinctive literary voice, being one of the first early modern poets to articulate allegiance to his nation and country and the pathos of longing for a renewal of Armenian fortunes. These senti- ments are powerfully expressed in several compositions from his Erga- ran [Songbook] of 1772 under the traditional ciphers of the rose and nightingale of Persian love allegory that had become indigenized in Armenian poetry since the 13th century153. Traditionally the songbird enters his beloved’s garden in early spring before the rose is in bloom and mourns the absence of his love, one glimpse of whom would revive him entirely154. Identifying with Majnun, the Middle Eastern stereotype

151 For his comment on the catholicos, see ibidem, p. 241, and, for Simeon’s reaction to the Madras group, see ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1908, col. 577-580. 152 EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 62-64. 153 COWE, Politics of Poetics, p. 391-396. 154 PETROS LAP‘ANC‘I, Petros Lap‘anc‘i, p. 233-235.

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of the distraught lover searching for his lost love, Lap‘anc‘i describes himself as xelagareal [distracted] as he yearns for his beloved country to reappear after a millennium’s slumber155. In one of his poems entitled “Zvstakrut‘ene hayreneac‘ meroc‘ [Grief upon Our Homeland]” Lap‘anc‘i describes the reality more directly, stating that Armenian communities have become scattered, their city walls breached and fallen. Meanwhile, the nightingales lament the delay of spring, i.e. the restitution of Armenian statehood previously predicted by Snorhali156.

15. Diaspora Uniate Perspectives on the Purity of the Armenian Tradition

In the course of time, in addition to the tensions we have addressed between the Roman Catholic and the Armenian Apostolic churches which impelled both communities to present their case to public opinion through the medium of print, a distinct third voice emerged on certain facets of the debate, that of the Mxit‘arist congregation, whose inception we have already discussed157. Whereas in matters of dogma the Armenian brother- hood was totally consonant with the Roman Propaganda, it differed from the latter on its evaluation of the orthodoxy of the Armenian doctrinal tradition. Whereas the Propaganda argued that at various points in its history the Armenian church had rejected the Council of Chalcedon and adopted anti-dyophysite Christological formulations, the Mxit‘arists maintained that such an account was incorrect and based on biased, inaccurate sources. Similarly, by the end of the 18th century when attempts were undertaken to reconcile the Armenian Catholic movement with the Apos- tolic church, this divergence in churchmanship acquired institutional form, as the Mxit‘arists and their supporters (the Abbotians) strove to maintain civil unity between Catholics and Apostolics within the Armenian millet, while the Propaganda and its followers (the Collegians) sought to achieve separate civil representation for Armenian Catholics outside the jurisdiction of the Armenian patriarch of Constantinople158. The founder of the order had already charted a distinctive course in the sphere of language, desiring to free Armenian grammar and style from the categories of Latin, which had been applied by scholars and translators from Latin to

155 Ibidem, p. 236-237. 156 Ibidem, p. 238. 157 For a discussion of the wider impact of the interconfessional debate on 18th century Armenian literature, much of which was not printed in that era, see BARDAKJIAN, Refer- ence Guide, p. 90-98. 158 BARSOUMIAN, Eastern Question, p. 185-187.

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Armenian over the last two centuries, many of whom had studied at the Propaganda159. In this he evinced the same rigor he exercised in enjoining his fellowcountrymen to maintain linguistic purity by desisting from Turkish and other foreign idioms as well as dialectal Armenian registers when composing literature160. The principles Mxit‘ar had implemented in producing his monumental grammar and dictionary of the Armenian language were followed by Fr. Mik‘ayel C‘amc‘ean in his vast three-volume Armenian history from the beginning of the world up to the present (Venice, 1784-88161). This massive undertaking embodied the Mxit‘arist stamp of industry, scale, and comprehensiveness, resting on the unprecedented assemblage of manuscript data accumulated in the monastery in Venice, which was marshalled and ordered for inclusion162. It was also composed at the request of many lay readers who over the middle decades of the 18th century expressed their appetite for publishing more historiographical studies163. However, as Nichanian indicates, the author approached his task as “an immense selective collage of the chroniclers and historians of the past164.” Hence the work’s advance over those discussed above lay in its inclusivity of coverage, the range of witnesses cited, and the accuracy of their representation, characteristics aligning the author with the ‘erudite’ approach to historiography that eschewed interpreting the various events described and offering a more profound understanding of the underlying historical pro- cesses165. At the same time, his patriotism found expression in his affirmation that Armenia was the site not only of the renewal of humanity through Noah on Mt. Ararat after the Flood (Gen 8: 4-19), but also the site of the original Creation in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2: 8-25)166. Moreover, he

159 The prolific translator from Latin Yovhannes Holov falls into the latter category, however a number of Apostolic clergy also utilized a Latinizing idiom. One of the most typical is the clerical publisher Oskan Erewanc‘i who, among other cases, significantly altered the original text of the historian Arak‘el Dawrizec‘i in the process of editing it for publication, on which, see BARDAKJIAN, Reference Guide, p. 68-69. 160 For the role of publishing in Turkish employing Armenian characters, see STEP‘ANYAN, Hayatar t‘urk‘eren. 161 The period after the fall of the Cilician state was referred to as the era of lack of (indigenous) rule [anisxanut‘iwn]. 162 C‘amc‘ean displayed equal comprehensiveness in his commentary on the Psalms in ten books in which he comments on each verse according to Origen’s four exegetical principles. Needless to say, such a tour de force had never been attempted before. 163 NICHANIAN, Enlightenment and Historical Thought, p. 90-91. 164 Ibidem, p. 114. 165 See BREISACH, Historiography, p. 199-210. 166 This assertion found resonance with the Armenian Classicist writer Yovhannes Vanandec‘i who immortalized it in the poem Ar Hayastan [To Armenia] that later entered general circulation under Komitas’ arrangement as a song.

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averred that until the division of the tongues the universal language spo- ken was Armenian. Similarly, the fact that Armenian tradition as represented by Movses Xorenac‘i traced its origins lineally from Noah’s son Japheth, where Latin and Greek sources tended to be silent, led him to accord greater prominence to Armenian evidence on pre-history. The crux of the traditional account of Armenian doctrinal development for Catholic writers was the catholicate of Yovhannes Ojnec‘i (717-728). Whereas Apostolic theologians saw in him the reaffirmation of their earlier non-Chalcedonian creed after a period characterized by pro-Chalcedonian vacillation on the part of certain of the hierarchs, and Roman writers concurred with that historical analysis, while condemning the move as heterodox, writers of the Mxit‘arist congregation diverged from both posi- tions, deeming Ojnec‘i orthodox from a Catholic perspective and arguing that the opposing view depended on spurious documents falsely attributed to him167. C‘amc‘ean actually compiled a dossier of evidence entitled Vahan hawatoy [Shield of Faith] in support of his conclusions168. The work does not therefore reflect any of the contemporary European (particularly French) debate on the methodology and purpose of historical research and hence the understanding of the human past in association with the present and future. Although written in Venice by a Catholic, it maintains significant continuity with the Armenian historiographical tradition, since the author is a cleric and devotes much attention to issues of religious importance. Nevertheless, C‘amc‘ean’s world also depended on long-distance communication and book circulation. On the one hand, he remarks on an error in a historical work emanating from Madras, we are about to examine, concerning the date of the demise of the Cilician kingdom169. In addition, he participated in an anonymous correspondence with the hierarch-diplomat Yovsep‘ Ar¥ut‘eanc‘. The latter’s criticism in a publication of 1791 from Madras concerning a historical error in his history provoked C‘amc‘ean to respond rather unflatteringly, sparking a retort from Ar¥ut‘eanc‘ in similar vein. The episode foregrounds the importance of printing and its growing readership on making or breaking a reputation for accurate scholarship170.

167 See POLAREAN, Hay gro¥ner, p. 98-101. 168 This work, which was condemned as heretical by a theological commission at Rome on May 5, 1819, is preserved in several manuscript copies, but has never been published in its original form. However, an abbreviated version appeared in Calcutta in 1873, on which see OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1851-1900 t‘vakannerin, p. 198. 169 C‘AMC‘EAN, Hayoc‘ patmut‘iwn, p. 392. 170 On the exchange, see ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894, cols. 129-141.

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16. Diaspora Lay Enlightenment and the Nationalist Project

While Mxit‘arist publications advanced the nationalist cause in rendering language an ideological issue for the first time, the adverse impact on Armenian merchants of European mercantilism, protecting local entrepre- neurs at the expense of foreigners, also facilitated the movement econom- ically, a factor Gellner underscores in the development of nationalism171. The 17th century had witnessed the establishment of limited stock compa- nies in Holland, England, and France for trading in the east, which enjoyed extensive state support to ensure their success. Hence, for example, Arme- nians utilizing Dutch ships were required to pay higher consulate fees than Dutch citizens. Moreover, in 1769 the State-General forbade Dutch subjects in the Levant to broach commercial partnerships with Armenians. While it is true that one of the original directors of the French company was the New Julfa Armenian Marcara Avachintz, it is noteworthy that he was subjected to discrimination, being falsely charged with favoring Arme- nian traders with company contracts, and, despite winning his court case, was not reinstated in his position172. Similarly, with the collapse of the New Julfan economy in the early 18th century and largescale resettlement in India, Armenian merchants’ freedom of action became increasingly cir- cumscribed by the incremental British presence and ultimate domination of the east of the country, leading to similar restrictive and discriminatory practices173. At the same time, the Armenian community there benefited from expo- sure to press coverage of world events and discussions of political philosophy. Moreover, America in the 1760s-80s provided Armenian intellectuals with the first modern prototype for conducting a war of liberation and the subsequent construction of a nation state, as acknowledged in the preamble to the work the Snare of Glory published there in the 1780s174. The latter volume emanated from a small, dedicated cell of laymen operating in Madras. Composed of a loose confederation of the wealthy pearl merchant Sahamir Sahamirean and his son Yakob, the intellectual Movses Ba¥ramean, and a soldier-adventurer Yovsep‘ Emin, this group offered a radical modernist alternative to the clerical diptych of ancient prowess and contemporary servitude by offering a more convincing analysis of the process behind the collapse of Armenian statehood and the practical

171 GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism, p. 59-60. 172 For the case of E¥ia Muse¥ean who suffered injustice at the hands of the French in the early 18th century, see ABRAHAMYAN, E¥ia Karnec‘u divan¢, p. v-xxxvii. 173 GHOUGASSIAN, Quest for Enlightenment, p. 262. 174 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 492-493.

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steps by which the territory of the homeland might be repossessed and a new state constructed on more equitable egalitarian principles175. In this way they represent a major milestone in the process Eisenstein qualifies as the ‘secularization or desacralization of the press’ in an Armenian ambience176. As earlier remarked, Armenian historiography was traditionally the preserve of the clergy. The one prominent exception from the medieval period was a scion of the royal house Sapuh Bagratuni who wrote an account of the reign of king Asot I (884-890) in the contemporary vernacular that presumably for reasons both of register and subject matter did not commend itself to the clerical canons and hence was not copied and is no longer extant177. The Armenian history of Eremia C‘elepi K‘eomiwrcean (1637-1695), a prolific lay writer of wealthy middle class origins from Constantinople, who also briefly established his own press in the Ottoman capital, has similarly not come down to us178. Conse- quently, Ba¥ramean emerges as the first prominent lay Armenian historian whose work we have access to. And this, in large measure, is due to its dissemination by the modern medium of print179. Constructing a press in the same year as their ideological antithesis Simeon Erewanc‘i, the first in the Indo-Armenian community, with the same express purpose of expounding their message, for about the next two decades they introduced their readership to a range of materials indirectly drawn or directly translated from English, which was to be a hallmark of Indo-Armenian publishing. All of these publications were intended in varying degrees to further their nationalist aims. These included an alphabetic primer to encourage literacy, an Armenian rendering of Jonas Hanway’s history of the powerful Persian ruler Nader Shah, and a composite text relating to the future liberation and cooperation of the Armenians and their neighbors the Georgians, loosely based on the prophecies of the 4th century catholicos Nerses Part‘ew we have already discussed180.

175 See FERRARI, In cerca di un regno, p. 161-173. 176 EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 105. 177 The case of prince Het‘um of Korikos of the turn of the 14th century is something of an exception, as he composed his major work La Flor des estoires de la Terre d’Orient while a monk in the Premonstratensian order. 178 See BARDAKJIAN, Reference Guide, p. 59-63. 179 His work also served as a source for the history of Iran by a contemporary, Xac‘atur Ju¥ayec‘i, whose narrative was only published in 1905. See Nor tetrak or koc‘vum e hordorak, n. 8, p. 254. 180 For the primer, see OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 489, for Nader Shah, p. 521-527, and for the Armenians and Georgians, p. 502-503. It is significant

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The Madras project simultaneously incorporated elements of both Smith’s eastern and western models of nationalism, hence constituting an exception to the norm181, the former in their publication Nor tetrak or koc‘i yordorak [New Pamphlet Called Exhortation] of 1772, treating matters of shared history, patriotic affiliation with the beauty of the homeland, and motivation to prepare for the ‘long struggle for liberation182’, while the latter occupies their attention in two subsequent works, Nsawak [Target] of 1783, outlining contingency plans for the administration of the Armenian community of Madras until the establishment of a state, and Orogayt‘ p‘arac‘ [Snare of Glory], probably of 1786-87, referenced above, which lays out their blueprint for the constitution by which such a liberated state should be governed183. Moreover, their enterprise is the most printerly of those reviewed to date in being based purely on published materials, primarily Movses Xorenac‘i’s history and Lazar Jahkec‘i’s Draxt c‘ankali [Desirable Para- dise], rather than manuscript texts184. Similarly, as Eisenstein indicates, printing facilitates the more rapid development of various disciplines rather than the mere replication of received standards through copying185. In this way our authors transform the geography (asxarhac‘oyc‘) then attributed to Xorenac‘i, which was essentially a description of the world based on Ptolemy enhanced by a more detailed treatment of the wider Caucasus that had originally been published for its universal coverage, rendering it an account of Armenia’s natural beauty and resources to

that the editors interpolated the presence of Georgian troops assisting the Armenians in their war against the Persians in the 4th century CE into the original text, to which they also appended a separate account of the settling in Armenia of the Georgian aristocratic family of the Orpelians. See Nor tetrak or koc‘vum e hordorak, p. 213, n. 100. These tactics were clearly intended to provide historical precedents for contemporary collabora- tion between the neighboring peoples to advance Armenia’s liberation. 181 SMITH, Ethnic Origin of Nations, p. 138-152. 182 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 489-491. 183 ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1909, col. 138 contains the reference in a letter of 1 November, 1789 from Catholicos Lukas Karnec‘i indicating he had received his earlier work Nsawak (1783), but that his latest publication Orogayt‘ p‘arac‘ had not yet arrived. This among other factors calls into question the 1773 imprint present on the book. 184 Nor tetrak or koc‘vum e hordorak, p. 192-216 for Xorenac‘i and p. 200-228 for Jahkec‘i. Xac‘atryan also notes the authors’ employment of the second volume of Mxit‘ar Sebastac‘i’s dictionary especially in the sixth chapter focusing on Armenian geography (Bargirk‘ haykazean lezui [Dictionary of the Armenian Language] Venice, 1769), on which, see p. 193-244, the edition of the Armenian Bible Mxit‘ar had published in 1733 (see n. 79 on p. 248), as well as possibly English studies of biblical history (p. 201). 185 EISENSTEIN, Printing Revolution, p. 340.

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encourage patriotic allegiance186. Similarly, whereas modern Armenian cartography had begun with the world map of 1695, and progressed to Mxit‘ar Sebastac‘i’s map of Armenia of 1751 intended as an insert to illustrate his great dictionary187, the variation of the latter commissioned by Sahamirean in 1778 contextualizes it with potent symbols, which met- amorphosize it into an instrument to promote the territory’s reappropria- tion by the Armenian reader. The latter comprise images of the legendary Armenian heroes Hayk and Aram together with the kings Tigran II (crea- tor of the empire) and Trdat III (introducer of Christianity) already singled out as figures for patriotic emulation in the Nor tetrak, as well as historical Armenian flags and arms symbolizing Armenia’s glorious past188. Finally, instead of the clerical authors’ frequent harangues on conformity, these authors better comprehend the print medium’s more egalitarian modality and hence seek to make their point by reasoned argument and persuasion. Moreover, to achieve that end more readily they gloss terms in Classical Armenian with better-known equivalents to facilitate compre- hension and are prepared to distribute their volume free of charge to eliminate economic obstacles to the propagation of their message, trans- lating it into Russian for even wider impact189. While the authors are exercised not to alienate any of the Armenian secular or religious elite, inserting an explicit poem of thanksgiving for the contributions of the clergy and closing with a standard plea for God to visit and save the suffering Armenian people, the crux of their thought inculcates such a fresh perspective on the causes of earlier Armenian states to fail and a revolutionary new focus on how the nation should chart its future course that they provoked the reactionary catholicos Simeon Erewanc‘i to unprecedented censureship, having all available copies of the book confiscated and burned190. The historical aspect of the program unfolds in dialogue with their clerical antecedents we reviewed above, arguing that the fundamental problem is not sin nor external enemies, but

186 Nor tetrak or koc‘i yordorak, p. 157-187. This work is also one of the first to refer to the homeland by the image of Mother Armenia that was later to assume great importance and popularity. See ibidem, p. 13 (Erevan). 187 OSKANYAN, Hay girk‘¢ 1512-1800 t‘vakannerin, p. 413. 188 GRIGORYAN, Sahamir Sahamiryani Hayastani k‘artez¢. 189 Two thousand copies of the Russian translation were printed in St. Petersburg in 1786. Sahamirean also sent a letter to King Erekle II of Georgia in the following year suggesting he become a constitutional monarch and proposing his Snare of Glory as a model. See GHOUGASSIAN, Quest for Enlightenment, p. 258-259. 190 ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1908, p. 577-580. The clash between these virulently opposed perspectives was inevitable granted the catholicos’ negative response to Yovsep‘ Emin in the 1760s.

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psychological and institutional weaknesses. The first comprises characteristics like disunity, lack of discipline, and stubbornness, while the latter highlights the lack of a proper school network and political structure and the folly of entrusting supreme authority in the state to one individual on the criterion of lineage191. In so doing, they provide an analysis of the historical process lacking in the works surveyed above, offering an expli- cation (bac‘atrut‘iwn) of the precise issues undermining each successive dynasty192. Moreover, their study bears the precise imprint of Enlightenment thought in their humanist approach to history, emancipating it from the divine realm, and in their optimistic view of the innate comprehensibility of human affairs and the possibility of discovering their internal laws193. Their political philosophy also follows Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire in critiquing the arbitrary, authoritarian state, seeking to replace it with an improved, more equitable alternative. In their case, this involves a national parliament elected by popular suffrage whose prerogatives should be determined by a thoroughly reasoned constitution194. Similarly, as Emin sets out in his proposals for training an army of liberation, the authors recognize the crucial role of motivation and commitment to a cause in ensuring its success195. At the outset they sound the modernist watchword of awaking from slumber to strive with unity, courage, and self-denial and are the first to secularize the iconic martyr Vardan Mamikonian as a patriot giving his life in defense of his native land, a role that was to continue to develop through the 19th century up to the present196. Thus nationalism demands the ultimate sacrifice once the monopoly of religion197. Moreover, building on Locke’s valorization of environment over heredity and his view of the mind as a tabula rasa gradually formed through experience, they direct their message at the youth as being more impressionable and open to consider new perspectives rather than the older generation, inured to the status quo and loth to con- template change198.

191 Nor tetrak or koc‘i yordorak, p. 157-187. 192 Ibidem, p. 54, 122. 193 BREISACH, Historiography, p. 205-210. 194 KHACHATRIAN, Shahamirian’s Views on Natural Law. 195 GHOUGASSIAN, Quest for Enlightenment, p. 247, 251. 196 TOLOLYAN, Cultural Narrative. In contrast, the portrayal of Vardan by the mid- 19th century Mxit‘arist poet Lewond Alisan in his famous poem ‘The Nightingale of Avarayr’ remains deply religious, though invoking patriotic emulation. See BLACKWELL, Armenian Poems, p. 107-109. 197 GELLNER, Nations and Nationalism, p. 56. 198 Nor tetrak or koc‘i yordorak, p. 5-46.

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The Madras coterie’s primary contribution to the nationalist project was therefore the progressiveness, analytical rigor, and conceptual boldness of their ideological framework, which they broadcast through their printed works, transporting them both to other parts of the Diaspora as well as the Armenian Plateau. This they also reinforced by widespread correspond- ence199, personal visits to the homeland, generous gifts to strategic foreign heads of state, and contacts with diplomats and other stakeholders in the process. Clearly, a much longer timeframe was necessary to mobilize the unpoliticized mass of the population on the land to identify with the cause. Nevertheless, the republican democracy they envisaged was realized on one portion of the historical homeland for some years in the aftermath of World War I.

17. The Impact of the Enlightenment on Clergy of the Diaspora

The final work I should like to consider was penned by the priest T‘adeos Sogineanc‘, originally from New Julfa, and published in 1791 at the press of Fr. Yarut‘iwn Smawonean, later publisher of the first Arme- nian periodical Azdarar (1794-1796200). As its title “Tetrak or koc‘i o¥b Hayastaneac‘ [Pamphlet Called Lament of the Armenians]” implies, one facet of this remarkable potpourri is a further composition in the lament genre we have already reviewed. However, the book also contains a loose assortment of other materials including an introduction to readers, a translation from English, a short panegyric, and a set of fables. As such, the volume represents an intriguing amalgam of several of the tendencies we have observed in earlier authors of the Diaspora and the Plateau and prefigures the evolution of their thought by subsequent nationalist authors of the mid-19th century. Hence, the author establishes himself as a transitional voice in writing about Armenian nationalism. Typical of his clerical mold, like Karapet Ba¥isec‘i, the writer evinces the impact of Step‘anos Orbelean’s lament as a model for his opening section, especially in the depiction of the main figure as a widow bereft of her children, now imploring them to return201. However, its dialogue

199 For Sahamirean’s correspondence with the catholicos Lukas Karnec‘i on questions of liberty and servitude to Islamic administrations, see ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894, col. 11. For his contacts with king Erekle II of Kartli, see C‘OBANYAN, Vrac‘akan u¥egrut‘yunner¢, p. 162-181. 200 I should like to express my gratitude to Bishop Anoushavan Tanielian, Vicar Gen- eral of the Eastern Prelacy of the Armenian Church in America, for his kind assistance in obtaining access to this work. 201 SOGINEANC‘, Girk‘ or koc‘i o¥b Hayastaneac‘, p. 7.

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structure recalls rather Simeon Erewanc‘i’s schema in his Zbosaran hogewor collection, while at the same time reconfiguring the Armenians’ orientation from Mother Ejmiacin to Mother Armenia, thereby aligning himself with Ba¥ramean in Nor tetrak, highlighting an image destined to become a potent symbol of national unity in the next century202. Like the earlier clergy, he accepts diasporic exile as punishment for the people’s sin and hence offers a negative evaluation of their scattering to the four corners of the globe. However, for him this process involves several non- religious factors, such as assimilation to the various host societies (Ira- nian, Arab, English, etc.), the shortsighted envisaging of diasporic centers as permanent settlements, and loss of fluency in Armenian203. Nevertheless, whereas Simeon succumbs to despair in denying the presence of a Moses-like champion to free his people from servitude, T‘adeos confidently hopes for such a leader to guide them back to the Promised Land of Armenia. Recognizing that others, like Petros Lap‘anc‘i, may have despaired of such a goal coming to fruition, still Sogineanc‘ shares the latter’s nostalgic yearning (karot) toward the homeland as a distinct territorial entity204. Similarly, acknowledging that some, like Emin’s village headman, considered that Armenia’s lot had always been subordination and suffering, he advocates countering this view by familiarizing oneself with the ancient histories that had been published throughout the century, evincing knowledge himself of the Amsterdam edition of Arak‘el Dawrizec‘i of 1699205. Drawing on C‘amc‘ean’s depiction of Armenia as a paradise watered by the rivers of the Creation account and Simeon Erewanc‘i’s portrayal of God’s great benefactions to Armenia in the spread of Christianity and the descent of the Only-Begotten Son according to Ejmiacin tradition to determine the site of the cathedral in the capital Va¥arsapat, Sogineanc‘ balances this attitude of passive receptivity in the past with one of active engagement in the present. This radically new perspective is to promote the conception and execution of policies for future reclamation of their paradise, grounded in a thorough program of education for the younger generation in the principles of the Enlightenment based on emulation of the experience of other nations. Following Sahamirean, Sogineanc‘

202 For the traditional image of Mother Armenia as a beautiful young woman mourn- ing among the ruins of Armenian statehood, see VEHAPETEAN, Azgayin lur c‘awer (front cover), and for other poems devoted to that figure, see BLACKWELL, Armenian Poems, p. 43-44, 133-134, 181-185. 203 SOGINEANC‘, Girk‘ or koc‘i o¥b Hayastaneac‘, p. 12-16. 204 Ibidem, p. 21. 205 Ibidem, p. 12, 16.

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sounds the modernist watchword of waking from the torpor of sleep to comprehend the lessons of history to pursue liberty, as advocated by thinkers like Voltaire206, and the benefits of a rational approach to problem solving, and seek the attainment of various technical skills and the acquisition of foreign languages according to a program soon to be embodied in the curriculum of a series of merchant schools and col- leges207. The three examples employed as models for imitation are the English and Spanish, with whom the Armenian merchant networks were well acquainted by this time, to which the author then adds the case of Russia as a power that had advanced meteorically as a result of Peter the Great’s initiatives, which are extolled in a passage translated from English twenty years earlier but only now published208. Its inclusion is particularly significant in light of the ongoing negotiations with the Russian court concerning current Armenian relocation to commercial centers and future modalities of Russian suzerainty over a liberated Armenian state, which loomed ever larger in the pages of the Madras press209. The final section sums up the message already exposed at length through the medium of Aesop’s fables, as being more appropriate for young minds to comprehend, each one inculcating a prized quality, some of which, such as the primacy of liberty, appear rather progressive when we reflect on the author being a priest. Others include the necessity of setting of long-term goals, creating a legacy of diligence and achievement in service to society, an ideal Emin regarded so highly, and the ultimate concern for agency, which we may paraphrase in the saying “God helps the man who helps himself210.” The divine-human synergy here envisaged moves significantly beyond the quiescence Simeon had invoked and acts as a bridge to Raffi’s socialist interpretation of the original postlapsarian curse “You shall earn your bread by the sweat of your brow” (Gen 3:19) as a religious endorsement of human industry in his blueprint for a future Armenian state in the novel Xent‘¢ [The Fool]211. Meanwhile, the moti- vational role Sogineanc‘ ascribes to Mother Armenia in his lament prefigures that of Mother Arax in Rap‘ayel Patkanean’s famous dialogue poem of 1855, in which the river challenges the reader to join the ‘sacred’

206 Ibidem, p. 22. 207 The A¥ababian school in Astrakhan (1810), the Lazarian Academy in Moscow (1815), and the Mardasirakan Cemaran (Philanthropic Academy) in Calcutta (1821). 208 SOGINEANC‘, Girk‘ or koc‘i o¥b Hayastaneac‘, p. 22-27. 209 For details, see FERRARI, In cerca di un regno, p. 175-205. 210 SOGINEANC‘, Girk‘ or koc‘i o¥b Hayastaneac‘, p. 30. 211 RAFFI, Erkeri zo¥ovacu, p. 365 and IDEM, The Fool, p. 208.

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task of Armenia’s liberation212. Indeed, in general, the author prefigures the activities of clerical intellectuals of the next generation like Gabriel Patkanean (1802-1889), who impressed their message on society as peda- gogue, writer, printer, and journalist. As such, his individual synthesis of the principal trends of 18th century Armenian thought in print circulation deserves to be better known.

Conclusions

The inception and development of Armenian printing in Western Europe in several prime commercial centers heightened the rapport between the new technology and merchant capital where it serves both to increasingly acculturate the Armenian middle class to values, concepts, and practices accepted in that part of the world as well as to forge closer bonds of internal affiliation. At first the books published in that milieu circulate in the Armenian urban communities of the Iranian and Ottoman empires before print technology finally migrates there, initiating a dialogue between perspectives which may initially be classified as Western and Eastern, but certainly with the rise of Armenian printing in India may more readily be identified as globalized and regional. While the former is typified by a faster process of secular and scientific development, gaining momentum from the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the latter emerges as more tradition-bound and reactionary, in keeping with a regional thought world that had not undergone such a trajectory. Printing similarly offered a new forum for the discussion of confessional differences and was so employed by the Propaganda and Papacy on the one hand, the Armenian Uniate congregations, as well as representatives of the Armenian Apostolic Church, with varying skill and per- suasiveness. Granted the inherent Christian distinction between the ethnic/ national and religious spheres, confessional fluidity did not have the profound implications of conversion to Islam, which was generally viewed as renunciation of Armenian society. Moreover, the overall secularizing trend increasingly dislocated religious adherence from civic participation, as reflected in the Madras draft constitution which advocated separation of church and state and pronounced all citizens equal in most public spheres213. Printing’s encouragement of greater merchant and ethnic affiliation smoothly transitioned to issues of common origin and shared history in

212 PATKANEAN, Erkeri zo¥ovacu, p. 53-57 and BLACKWELL, Armenian Poems, p. 68-71. 213 Orogayt‘ p‘arac‘, p. 140-142.

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the 17th century, which, in turn, expanded to questions of territoriality and statehood and appeals to expectations of its renewal in the 18th. Whereas at first these reflected the political quiescence and lack of agency of its clerical exponents, this later gave way to more humanist future-oriented alternatives, seeking to educate middle class youth about the potential benefits of a democratic republican Armenian state and the distinction between liberty (with its inner moral dimension associated with the Enlightenment) and formal independence214. Printing’s spread of literacy among urban Armenians through the countless editions of alphabetical primers over the centuries analyzed automatically assured a growing reader pool to consume the exponentially expanding number of titles published per decade over this period. The process also helped stem the flow of linguistic diversity in the Armenian community, which was actually facilitated by the provision of pastoral literature in Armeno-Turkish215. Here too one of the provisions of the Madras constitution was to enforce Armenian as the lingua franca of the future state. While the longstanding diglossia between Classical Arme- nian and the diverse dialects was only overcome in the mid-19th century with the creation of unitary literary standards in the communities of the Ottoman and Russian empires, even in the early modern period, printing in Armenian automatically encouraged a sense of shared belonging and tightened bonds of affliation between readers. Outreach to the mass bulk of the populace in the villages and towns of the eastern vilayets would only seriously begin in the 19th century, but this was greatly facilitated by the periodical press, which nevertheless made its appearance among the Armenians in the last decade of the 18th. This important datum only serves to underscore the enormously complex pro- tracted process of modern Armenian nationalism which does not smoothly fit either of the paradigms enunciated by Gellner and Smith and hence demands greater attention from historians and sociologists alike to develop a more cogent framework for its interpretation.

Bibliographical Abbreviations

ABRAHAMYAN, E¥ia Karnec‘u divan¢ = A.G. ABRAHAMYAN, E¥ia Karnec‘u divan¢ [E¥ia Karnec‘i’s Divan], Erevan, 1968. ABRAHAMYAN, Hamarot urvagic = A.G. ABRAHAMYAN, Hamarot urvagic hay ga¥t‘avayreri patmut‘yan [Brief Overview of the History of Armenian Colonies], vol. 2, Erevan, 1967.

214 See, for example, EMIN, Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, p. 17, 198. 215 On the range of this material, see STEP‘ANYAN, Hayatar t‘urk‘eren.

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ACARYAN, Hayeren armatakan bararan = H. ACARYAN, Hayeren armatakan bararan [Armenian Etymological Dictionary], Erevan, 1971. AKINEAN, Karapet V. Ba¥isec‘i = N. AKINEAN, Karapet V. Ba¥isec‘i (1475-1550), in Handes Amsoreay, 51 (1937), col. 318-343. ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean, 1894/ 1908/ 1909/ 1913 = G. ALANEANC‘, Diwan Hayoc‘ patmut‘ean [Archives of Armenian History], 13 vols., Tiflis, 1893-1917. ALISAN, Hay-Venet = L. ALISAN, Hay-Venet [Armenian Venice], Venice, 1896. ANDERSON, Imagined Communities = B. ANDERSON, Imagined Communities, London, 1991. ARISTAKES LASTIVERTC‘I, Patmut‘iwn = ARISTAKES LASTIVERTC‘I, Patmut‘iwn Aristakeay vardapeti Lastivertc‘woy [History of the vardapet Aristakes Lastivertc‘i], Tiflis, 1912. ASLANIAN, Dispersion History = S.D. ASLANIAN, Dispersion History and the Polycentric Nation: The Role of Simeon Yerevantsi’s Girk‘ or koc‘i partavcar in the 18th Century Nation Revival (Bibliothèque d’arménologie “Bazmavep”, 39), Venice, 2004. BAMBUK‘CEAN, Yovhannes patriark‘ Kolot = G. BAMBUK‘CEAN, Yovhannes patriark‘ Kolot (1678-1741) ew ir asakertner¢ [Patriarch Yovhannes Kolot (1678-1741) and his Pupils], Istanbul, 1984. BARDAKJIAN, Reference Guide = K.B. BARDAKJIAN, A Reference Guide to Modern Armenian Literature, 1500-1920, Detroit, 2000. BARSOUMIAN, Eastern Question = H. BARSOUMIAN, The Eastern Question and the Tanzimat Era, in R.G. HOVANNISIAN (ed.), The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, vol. 2, New York, 1997, p. 175-201. BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin-hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢ = H.G. BAXC‘INYAN, XVII dari hay azgayin-hayrenasirakan banaste¥cut‘yun¢ [17th Century Armenian National-Patriotic Poetry], in Patmabanasirakan Handes, (1990)/3, p. 26-42. BLACKWELL, Armenian Poems = A.B. BLACKWELL (trans.), Armenian Poems, facsimile of the 1917 edition, Delmar, NY, 1978. BOURNOUTIAN, Eastern Armenia = G. BOURNOUTIAN, Eastern Armenia from the Seventeenth Century to the Russian Annexation, in R.G. HOVANNISIAN (ed.), The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, vol. 2, New York, 1997, p. 81-107. BOYCE, Parthian gosan = M. BOYCE, The Parthian gosan and the Iranian Minstrel Tradition, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., 79 (1947), p. 12-45. BREISACH, Historiography = E. BREISACH, Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chicago, 2007. C‘AMC‘EAN, Hayoc‘ patmut‘iwn = M. C‘AMC‘EAN, Hayoc‘ patmut‘iwn [Armenian History], vol. 3, Venice, 1786. C‘OBANYAN, Vrac‘akan u¥egrut‘yunner¢ = P.A. C‘OBANYAN, Vrac‘akan u¥egrut‘yunner¢ ev nranc‘ te¥ekut‘yunner¢ hayeri masin [Georgian Trav- elogues and their Information on the Armenians], Erevan, 1981. COHEN, Global Diasporas = R. COHEN, Global Diasporas. An Introduction, Seattle, 1997. COWE, Church and Diaspora = S.P. COWE, Church and Diaspora: The Case of the Armenians, in M. ANGOLD (ed.), Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 5: Eastern Christianity, Cambridge, 2006, p. 430-456.

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UCLA S. Peter COWE Humanities Building, 368 415 Portola Plaza Los Angeles, CA 90095-1511, USA [email protected]

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Abstract — This article investigates the significant metamorphosis in traditional means of communication (oral and manuscript transmission) within Arme- nian society on the Armenian Plateau and throughout the worldwide network of trade communities with the advent of print technology in the early modern period. It analyses the latter’s impact on the spread of literacy and democratization of discourse, engaging the merchant middle class in various capacities (financier, reader, printer, author), through a process which transforms the terms in which common origins, shared history, and collective identity are envisaged. As a result, a transition is observable from biblical and ecclesiastical perspectives on the phenomenon of dispersion and the primacy of religio-confessional identity associated with the past to an incipient future-oriented nationalist project broached by representatives of both the secular and ecclesiastical elite under the influence of Enlightenment thought, which prefigures the fuller program elaborated and articulated in the 19th century through the periodical press and inauguration of political parties.

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