St. Sahak is one of the most well-known figures in Armenian history. As Catholicos, he supported the work of Mesrob Mashdots in the creation of the Armenian alphabet and the translation of the Bible into Armenian. A scholar and theologian …
Catholicos Nersess I, known as St. Nersess the Great, lived in the fourth century and was Catholicos from 353-373. He clearly would not have used the language of “social justice,” today a phrase meant to invoke wide-ranging demands for a …
From the perspective of the liturgical calendar, this week could very well be one of the strangest of the year. As we have discussed before, the temporality of the Armenian Apostolic Church emerges from the quality of different “kinds” of …
This Thursday, May 28, marks the 102nd anniversary of the First Republic of Armenia. After a series of military victories known as the Heroic Battles of May, the most famous of which is the Battle of Sardarabad which we discussed …
Few figures loom larger in the ecclesial history of the nineteenth century Armenian Church than the man known affectionately as Khrimian Hayrig. Hayrig, a diminutive form of the Armenian word for father, captures the love and respect nearly universally felt …
“On this day…” begins most entries in one of the most remarkable and yet under-utilized liturgical books of the Armenian Apostolic Church. So ubiquitous is this little phrase that the book itself is known in Armenian as the Յայսմաւուրք/Haysumavurk, which …
Bishop Drtad Balian was the Bishop of Caesarea/Gesaria/Կեսարիա (modern-day Kayseri in Turkey) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Living during the time of famous hierarchs like Khrimian Hayrig and Malachia Ormanian (the author of the monumental ecclesial-national history …
The Hope of Easter In Times of Darkness A Special Easter Message from Bishop Daniel Findikyan The true joy of Easter and of the resurrection of Jesus Christ lies in the assurance that God—almighty and invincible—is alive and with …
St. Gregory of Narek’s classic, the Book of Lamentations, the Մատեան Ողբերգութիւն/ Matean Oghbergut’ean needs no introduction. It is perhaps the most well-known text written in the Armenian language. Revered for a thousand years, the book is so closely identified …
On several occasions in “Back to the Sources” we have had the opportunity to remark on the extensive commentary tradition of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Exegesis, the explication of a text, and hermeneutics, the work of interpretation, were highly refined …