Lives and Martyrdoms of the Saints, Volume 1

Since translations have been made at various times and from diverse sources, we cannot say with certainty when or from whom they were transferred into ours. Although from the style and the antiquity of the language, one might think that some were translated as early as the fifth century, and others from Atom, the abbot of Gagi's monasteries, yet many were translated by Gregory Catholicos Pahlavuni, who was called the Vkayaser Martyr-Lover, and by his student, Kirakos. For this reason, some bear their names in the colophons, especially that of Gregory. For even the Vkayaser Martyr-Lover himself says somewhere in his own handwritten colophon that "The lives of the (saints), in their edifying histories, which did not exist among us in Armenian script, we translated with great effort from Greek into our script and language."

It would be possible, and indeed it was worthy, to add many notes and important examinations to this book. However, we have gathered only the necessary, concise information in the footnotes below so that the volume might not become too heavy. Moreover, this labor was already anticipated by a man worthy of good memory, Fr. Mkrtich V. Avgerian, to whose compiled complete lives and martyrdoms of the saints we refer those who desire more.

We have gathered the contents of this volume from about thirty Charentrak Lectionaries. Although many were old and excellent manuscripts, because they had different discourses and martyrdoms from one another, we were often forced to base the printed text on a single copy, from which some passages remained dark or unintelligible.