History of Armenia

defends himself against the accusations of the lying aredas heretical monks/priests. The letter is important as a source from which we obtain information exclusively about the life and work of Ghazar, and partially about Vahan. It is also important, although it provides only fragmented information, for what it reports about several prominent authors. However, the main significance of the Letter is that it gives us an idea about the parties existing within the clergy and literary circles in Armenia in the second half of the fifth century, their mutual accusations, and the weapons they used against one another. We see that a struggle is being waged here between two orientations, perhaps the Assyrian and Greek schools, the first of which embodies the old and traditional, while the second embodies the new and progressive. The representatives of the Greek school, with greater knowledge, a broad worldview, innovations in language, and free thinking (perhaps even with a freer lifestyle), incited the dense mass of the remaining clergy against themselves, as it expected danger from these newcomers not only to its once-and-for-all established fixed concepts and manners, but likely to its interests as well. Therefore, Ghazar’s Letter is a small picture of that great, eternal struggle that has been waged in all centuries and all worlds between the old and the new. Ghazar himself is one of those perishing in the struggle, and for this reason, his words directed against his opponents sound so bitter, just as the heavy words directed at his own opponents by his fellow struggler and fellow sufferer, M. Khorenatsi, have been in his own Eghb Lamentation.

Ghazar’s History has had three editions to date, all three in Venice, by the hand of the Mkhitarists, in 1763, 1873, and 1891. In the first edition, there is no information about which manuscript it was performed from. The publishers content themselves by stating that "in every way, they have been careful to follow the copy faithfully; although here and there, errors of words, omissions, and alterations of sayings are not lacking. But because it did not have any division into chapters or books, we deemed it appropriate for the clarification of the reader to place a heading for notable events in the margins."

[The first paragraph of column 2 repeats the end of column 1 as a visual catch-up or error in layout, though the column continues here with the second edition discussion.]

In the Announcement of the second edition, the publishers state that after the first edition, they did not encounter another manuscript, therefore they were forced to take the first edition as the base text, making corrections in a few places where obvious errors were observed, and dividing the whole history into three episodes, faithful to the essential parts of the book, keeping the word "episode" used by the author. They also divided the entire material into one hundred chapters, but without headings. Only in the Vision of St. Sahak and the commentary were changes introduced, in accordance with the oldest copies in the jarrntir lelectionaries/homiliaries.

The third edition is a reprint of the second, because again, no new base text appeared. They only printed the History at the beginning with a new, more suitable arrangement of speech segments 1.

Ghazar P'arpetsi’s Letter has also had three editions to date: in 1853 in Moscow, by the hand of M. Emin, and in 1873 and 1891 in Venice, by the hand of the Mkhitarists, together with the History.

From the Preface of the first edition (30—31), it is evident that this Letter was first noticed by Archbishop Yovhannes Shahkhatunyan and Master Mser of Smyrna in Etchmiadzin in the year 1829, behind the manuscript of P'arpetsi’s History, while they were working to organize the Etchmiadzin library. Both copied a sample of this Letter for themselves, and in the end, both ceded their transcriptions to M. Emin, who performed his printing in comparison with them.

The first edition served as the prototype for the second edition.

1) See page 7, note 7 in this publication.

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