Scholar Erna Shirinian Delves into Armenian-Greek and Armenian-Byzantine Relations

At present, she has quite a few ongoing projects. She is collaborating with the Canadian D. S. Hutchinson on the Greek and Armenian Pseudo-Aristotelian texts of De vitiis et vertutibus and is preparing English translations of the philosophical texts of Davit the Invincible with a colleague at the University of Geneva. The Armenian Version of David the Invincible’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories will come out in book form in a year or so. She is working on completing for publication the Book of Causes, which is a prolegomena, on questions which should be settled before exegesis of the Bible. It is one of the unpublished manuscripts of the Matenadaran and dates from the 12^th to 13^th centuries AD. This is an example, she pointed out, of what Armenian scholarship can give the world – in this case concerning the study of Christianity.

A book she began with Professor J. J. S. Weitenberg two decades ago, Parallel Aligned Text and Bilingual Concordance of the Armenian and Greek Versions of Vita Silvestri, is coming to completion in 2018, though Weitenberg’s death in 2012 has complicated the work.

Another topic that she is working on is the “mankunk yekeghetsvo,” or the Children of the Church, which concerns a teaching from the early period of Christianity. According to Shirinian, the meaning of this phrase changed over time from pious and pure Christians in general to a class of people who were like studious vardapets, dealing with literature and knowledge and living in separate communities with special belts and rules.

While pursuing her research at the Matenadaran, Shirinian has been developing new generations of scholars. She supported the transition of several of her students from the university’s Theology Department to the Matenadaran, and has succeeded in sending some to various European institutions for further study. One now is at Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, another at Basel University in Switzerland, and others in Armenia. She exclaimed, “They are Armenian women, but they are also great scholars. It is amazing, but they have families too. They are strong in everything.”
Shirinian pointed out how hard it is in Armenia today to be a good scholar. She said, “You must be completely dedicated or very rich, but if the latter, you don’t really case. You can’t sleep at night to be a good wife and mother and a good scholar.” It is not something material, yet, she said, “you cannot touch love or music either, but without them, how can you live.” She added that scholarship everywhere in the world, not just in Armenia, is in decline. Even in Germany, she noted, they are closing Byzantine and Classical Studies centers.

In Armenia, she said, “Scholars are fighters, just as in the Karabagh battles. Perhaps this is unexpected, but this is the same battle, and the same people. Scholarship is a truly important weapon for us.”

At present, Shirinian aside from working at her two main jobs, serves as editor of the Armenological periodical Ashtanak and the multivolume annotated bibliographical series Armeniaca, which covers Armenological publications printed in Armenia. It is in English, in order to keep Armenian specialists abroad up-to-date and informed. She began work on it in 1998. The first volume covers the year 2000, and now the latest volume (four) covering 2003 will soon appear. The National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) in Belmont, Mass. helped support this project. Today, the internet makes it easier to find out about new publications in Armenia, but in earlier years this publication served an indispensable function.

Shirinian is president of the Armenian National Committee of Byzantine Studies (ANCBS). It is the Armenian branch of the international organization, Association International des Études Byzantines. NAASR supported Armenia’s participation in this organization’s conferences, so that two people from Armenia were able to attend its Athens conference in 2008. Shirinian has participated in many other conferences of this organization and in fact at present is preparing to go to Belgrade as a representative of the Armenian National Committee to deliver a paper at yet another conference.

Most recently, Shirinian as president of ANCBS initiated a major conference entitled “The Historical Region of Tayk: History, Culture, Religious Confessions,” which took place in Armenia from June 22 to 27 of this year. There were 32 academic participants from various countries including Armenia, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition to the National Committee, the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts and the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia were organizers, while the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin, the State Committee of Science of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Armenia, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Armenia, and the Honorary Consulate of Italy in Gumri were financial sponsors. The most important grants for the conference were from the Knights of Vartan Fund for Armenian Studies and NAASR. Jack Medzorian, member of NAASR’s executive board, was able to be present with his wife Eva.

The disputes around the identity of Tayk continue to have very real political implications today. One evidence of that was that Georgian scholars were invited, and two even sent abstracts, but all pulled out of the conference. A similar conference in Georgia organized by Ilia State University will take place in September, and three young Armenian scholars are planning to apply to participate. However, they were warned that if the Armenian toponyms Tayk or Kghardzk were to be used in an abstract, it would be rejected.

Tayk was one of the fifteen historical provinces of Armenia, and today its territories are in northeastern Turkey. Disputes over the understanding of the nature of Christ led at one time to both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Armenians living there in large numbers. In the eighth century the Chalcedonians came under pressure and eventually the non-Chalcedonian Armenians of the Church of Armenia won control in general, but Tayk was predominantly Chalcedonian and went over to the Georgians. Shirinian explained that they began to call themselves Georgian, but this at the time was only in a religious sense, not ethnic. The Bagratuni clan split so that those who went over to the Chalcedonian side are today claimed as ethnic Georgians though they were Chalcedonian Armenians.

Those who became “Georgian” continued to write in Armenian however. This is clear from the inscriptions in the Chalcedonian churches they created, many of which are now in Turkey or Georgia.

Even the scholar Nikolai Marr, whose mother was Georgian, says that the population of Tayk was Armenian. He wrote an important Russian-language article in 1906 which is now being prepared by Shirinian for a new trilingual edition including Armenian and French translations (“Ark’aun, mongolskoe nazvanie Khristian” Vizantiiskiï Vremennik, xii). Marr’s article concerns the term “ark’aun” used for Christians by the Mongols as well as observations on the Chalcedonian Armenians.

The conference includes papers on Tayk during various historical periods, starting from the second millennium BC and covers historical, ecclesiastical, architectural, musical, literary, artistic and political topics. The goal was to show scholars outside of Armenia, including the Georgians, that there are a plethora of historical materials and sources in Armenian. Serious scholarship cannot be done on this topic without using these materials, while Georgians are lacking many primary sources prior to the 11^th century.

Political conditions did not permit any excursions to the historical areas of Tayk, but the conference participants visited Chalcedonian churches in the north of Armenia, such as Kobayr and Akhtala, along with some other non-Chalcedonian churches.

On a different topic, Shirinian noted with gratitude the donations of the sisters Maria and Beatrice Gheridian, who live in the Boston area, to the Matenadaran. They donated money in 2015 to create the Mashtots Fund for the preservation and progress of Armenian culture. One of the goals is to support young scholars working at the Matenadaran. The sisters previously donated to the Matenadaran five manuscripts, 144 valuable early printed books, largely from the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and two Armenian rugs in memory of their brother Dr. Ruben Gheridian. They donated books and other items to the Armenian Museum of America in 2012.