Ecclesiastical History

Page 15.

A few months after the Supreme Patriarch Catholicos Mkrtich I Khrimian, also known as Khrimian Hayrik. arrived at this Mother See Holy Etchmiadzin, the spiritual center of the Armenian Church., the same bishop addressed a letter to His Holiness and requested that the transcription of our monastery's manuscript be sent to Jerusalem so that, by comparison with the copy they possessed, it might be published there; arrangements for the printing of the book had already been made and communicated. But when I learned that the lost manuscript had been found again, I addressed a letter to the Bishop and requested a description of the manuscript and a transcription of several missing and lost pages; my letter remained unanswered. The Most Reverend Bishop Sahak, replying to my second letter on April 2nd of this year—in which he describes their three manuscript copies—states that the first letter was not received. I publicly express my special gratitude to the Bishop for the description he sent. Later, in 1894, in Vienna, I received some very important information regarding that same manuscript from Father Hakobos Tashian Father Hakobos (Jacobus) Tashian (1866–1933) was a preeminent Mekhitarist scholar and philologist known for his monumental catalogs of Armenian manuscripts.. The manuscript was brought from India by the hand of Bishop Nerses the Legate, donated by Father Hovhannes Khachikian in 1868 1. The Most Reverend Sa-

1. Arshaloys Araratian A prominent 19th-century Armenian periodical published in Smyrna. 1868 (Nov. 23) No. 845: "A clergyman from Calcutta sends manuscripts to be given to a national institution, which are now in Jerusalem; among others is the history by Philo of Tirak original: "Փիլոնի Տիրակացւոյ"; Philo of Tirak was the 7th-century scholar credited with the Armenian translation of Socrates Scholasticus., the opening words of which were provided below for the information of antiquarians. This volume is of cotton-paper bambakap'ut' A type of paper made from cotton fibers, common in medieval Armenian manuscripts before the widespread use of wood-pulp paper., decayed by the antiquity of its time, yet the writing remains intact." It then provides the book's colophon A brief statement at the end of a manuscript giving details about its production, such as the scribe, date, and location. and a large excerpt from the beginning (see Socrates, pp. 1–3).