History of Aristakes Lastivertts'i

for the "heretics," characterizing the behavior of the sectarians with disparaging adjectives. However, the cognitive value of these pages is very high. He inadvertently shows how widely the Tondrakian doctrine spread, which, in addition to broad popular strata, was also joined by certain representatives of the privileged class. Carried away by the polemic, he inadvertently provides interesting information about some of the habits of the Tondrakians, and the last paragraph of Chapter 23 presents in a primitive way the main points of Tondrakian ideology, which leave no doubt regarding the social purposefulness of that movement:

"They did not accept the Church and the order of the Church at all; neither baptism, nor the great and terrible mystery of the Eucharist, nor the cross, nor the regulation of fasts."

It must finally be said that Aristakes's work is not only a history of the Armenians, but also of the Byzantines, or rather, the imperial history. Individual chapters are devoted to the history of the Byzantine Empire: "The Reign of Constantine," "How Romanos Reigned," "The Reign of Theodosius, which is translated as God-given," and so on. These chapters partially coincide with the narrative of Byzantine historians, and partially provide new data on Byzantine life. Lastiverttsʻi was well acquainted with Byzantine daily life and administrative structure; he repeatedly uses individual administrative terms, sometimes Armenianizing them and sometimes preserving the Greek form. No other Armenian author was as knowledgeable about Byzantine life and history as Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi.

These aforementioned circumstances allow Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi's work to be ranked among the most valuable historiographical works of the Armenians.

Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi's historical work, the complete title of which is History of the Vardapet Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi concerning the events that happened to the neighboring nations around us, was first published by the Mekhitarists of Venice (History of the Vardapet Aristakes Lastiverttsʻi, Venice, St. Lazarus Press, 1844). That text was republished twice: in 1901 in Venice and in 1912 in Tiflis, in the "Ghukasyan Matenadaran" series. Translations into modern Armenian original: "աշխարհաբար" — world-speech/modern language and French were made from the editio princeps.

In the "Report" of the first printing, the publishers state: "Among the copies compared in our hands were four undated, notarial manuscripts; the works, as is evident from the manner of the scribes' handwriting, were written at the end of the eighteenth century, or at the beginning of the current nineteenth." F. Macler notes this last manuscript in his catalog.