This substantial volume, comprising twenty-seven contributions, is dedicated to the memory of the eminent scholar of medieval Armenia, Professor Karen Yuzbashyan. Although the multi-authored collection of essays is now a ubiquitous form of scholarly production, this volume represents an excellent illustration of what can be achieved when the primary goal of the publication remains centre-stage. It recognises and reflects the scholarship of Karen Yuzbashyan: the articles engage with important themes in his own publications. Although Yuzbashyan is perhaps best known for his meticulous research into the History of Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i – a complex composition tracing Armenian experiences and transformations across the first seven decades of the eleventh century – he made many incisive contributions to the study of Armenia across the antique and medieval periods, exploring the multiple contexts in which Armenian culture was negotiated, transformed and remembered. Evidently the authors were allowed to write on subjects they wished to write on, within the broad contours of Yuzbashyan's scholarly output, and without minimum or maximum word-limits. The shortest submission is just five pages in length, the longest extends to 138 pages (including eighty-six figures). This is not a diffuse collection of formulaic 6,000-word articles; instead it is a coherent, balanced and well-coordinated volume, containing individual responses of varying lengths which engage with Yuzbashyan's interests and approaches and which are situated at the very edges of the research horizon. It should also be noted that the volume opens with not one but three personal and affecting tributes which speak to different dimensions of Yuzbashyan's life, as father, scholar, teacher and friend. Several of the articles also contain short personal vignettes. With regret, my own experience was restricted to just one engaging conversation on a cramped minibus travelling from Ann Arbor to Detroit in April 2004, but I recognise the scholar depicted and commemorated here.
The volume is divided into three principal sections each consisting of seven or eight papers. The first is titled ‘Jewish and Christian Beginnings through the Lens of Armenian Sources’ and opens with Shirinian's study highlighting significant differences between the biblical citations found in late antique Armenian compositions and Armenian translations and adaptations of pre-existing works and the Armenian translation of the Bible in its canonical form. Bukovec analyses Philo of Alexandria's interpretation of the Passover through his Quaestiones in Exodum, a work which is preserved only in Armenian translation; critical editions of this text and Philo's Quaestiones in Genesim, also preserved in Armenian, are currently under preparation in Münster. Horn examines the relationship between the sole Georgian witness to the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas and the versions of this text in the Ethiopic, Syriac, Greek and Armenian traditions by way of comparative analysis of the passage in chapter 6 in which Jesus describes the shape of the first letter of the alphabet. She posits an anterior Armenian version underlying parts of the Georgian version whilst also identifying both Syriac and Greek influences as well. Gippert's study of a palimpsest in the National Library of Greece in Athens (ATN 637) reveals an early Armenian lectionary of the Jerusalem style, matching the text and form of J121 – which witnesses the mid fifth-century Jerusalem rite and which was famously edited by Renoux – but with intriguing differences, while Winkler's contribution examines the manuscript traditions for the two Armenian translations of Basil of Caesarea's Anaphora in order to resolve textual challenges and to determine where and when those manuscripts describing mixed wine and water for the sacrament, contrary to orthodox Armenian practice, may have been used. In her submission, Raphava proposes that while Gregory Oshkeli's tenth-century Georgian translation of §10 of Gregory Nazianzenus’ Oratio xxvii was based on an earlier Armenian version, the commentary accompanying this section was composed in Georgian by Gregory himself, although he exploited Greek commentaries to do so. Finally Lourié offers an important re-evaluation of the structure and contents of another early Hierosolymitan composition preserved only in Armenian, John ii of Jerusalem's Homily on the Encaenia of St Sion, delivered on 15 September 394 ce.
The first paper in the second section, ‘Armenian Textual and Material Culture’, also comprises a codicological excavation of a palimpsest (TBI 491), by Aleksidze and Chitunashvili, revealing fragments from an archaic copy of Agat‘angełos's History of Armenia. These come from late in the text (§§781–874) and do not derive from the Teaching of Saint Gregory. Mahé offers a significant reassessment of the mid fifth-century Letter from the Armenian Catholicos Giwt to the king of Ałuank‘, Vač‘ē, highlighting its value for the study of Sasanian Iran as well as ecclesiastical authority, politics and learning in Armenia and Ałuank‘. Terian provides a short but invaluable annotated translation and commentary of a discourse on the universal Church attributed to the seventh-century theologian Yovhan Mayragomec‘i, including an allegorical interpretation of the church building, which draws significantly upon Philo's Quaestiones in Exodum once more, and the seven orders or ranks in the church hierarchy. The following two papers also supply translations. Cowe situates Anania Narekac‘i's poem On this transient life in the context of the expansion and economic development of the Arcruni kingdom of Vaspurakan in the tenth century. Andrews introduces several of the challenges presented by the letters of the emperor John Tzimiskes preserved in the History of Matthew of Edessa; these obtain English translation from a new edition currently in preparation. Asryan discusses ornamented door and window frames from tenth- and eleventh-century Tayk in the context of the circulation of textiles. In the longest submission in the volume, Donabédian proposes that small plaques depicting tree-of-life crosses, sometimes carrying Armenian inscriptions and situated predominantly on external walls, mark a significant development from the freestanding stone monuments, especially xač‘kars, of historic Armenia. They became a defining feature of diaspora communities, from Cilicia to Crimea, from Rome to Isfahan. Their size and location reflects a combination of reduced resources, loss of technical ability and a sensitivity to the urban contexts in which the Armenian churches were constructed. A final paper by Drost-Abgarjan explores the canons of Armenian hymns devised by the eighth-century scholar Step‘annos Siwnec‘i; their arrangement may have been inspired by the canon tables of Eusebius.
The final part is titled ‘Interacting with a Wider Cultural Context’ and explores Armenian cultural exchanges of different kinds in Iranian, Roman, Byzantine, Georgian and Coptic contexts. Lurje compares the pre-Christian Armenian deity Baršamin with the Sogdian Vrēšman, interpreted as originally Indian and Buddhist rather than Iranian. In his wide-ranging study, Russell explores the topos of the interrupted feast through two twelfth-century compositions: the Lament for Edessa and the epic narrative, reframed as a poem, recording the deeds of Vasak Pahlawuni in the History of Matthew of Edessa. Treadgold offers a meticulous reconstruction of the first thirteen lost books of the Res gestae of Ammianus Marcellinus, covering the period from 96 to 354 ce. Outtier supplies a translation and assessment of a tenth-century Georgian liturgical calendar preserved in a manuscript (no. 14) from St Catherine's monastery at Sinai and proposes that a Greek source underlay it, partly on the basis that it ascribed 30 September for the feast of St Gregory. Gaprindashvili identifies the Martyrdom of George zoravar narrated by Basil, preserved in a tenth-century Georgian manuscript (Ath. 8), as a translation from an Armenian version of the Martyrdom of Gordios, a homily attributed to Basil of Caesarea. Ostrovsky investigates a medieval Georgian manuscript preserved in the National Centre of Manuscripts in Tbilisi which contains the Dogmatikon of Arsen Iqaltoeli, a rich collection of dogmatic and polemical writings translated from Greek towards the end of the eleventh century at Athos and in Constantinople and from which Armenian translations, including John of Damascus’ Fount of knowledge were prepared. The section concludes with Youssef's study of St Gregory the Illuminator in Coptic tradition. Two final essays, by Dédéyan and Mutafian, introduce historical surveys of Cilician Armenia. Only a bibliography of Yuzbashyan's scholarly publications, published separately in 2009, is missing.
In its diversity and erudition, identifying new relationships between Armenian, Georgian and Byzantine Greek Christian cultures without downplaying wider connections to Iran, Egypt and beyond, re-interpreting the known and introducing the unknown, this volume is a fitting tribute to Karen Yuzbashyan.
