The Narratio de rebus Armeniae (Latin for "Account of Armenian Affairs")[1] is a history of relations between the Armenian and Greek churches written around AD 700.[2] It is not exclusively focused on ecclesiastical affairs and also touches on Armenian relations with the Roman Empire.[3] It was originally written in Armenian, but the complete text is known only from a Greek translation, entitled Diegesis, made before the eleventh century, possibly as early as the eighth.[2][3] Although there are later Armenian writers who cite the Armenian version, it is now lost.[2]
The Narratio is written from a pro-Chalcedonian perspective out of step with the Miaphysite position adopted by the Armenian church and better aligned theologically with the Greek church.[2][3] It covers the series of councils that caused the Armeno-Greek schism—Nicaea (325), Chalcedon (451) and Dvin (555)—and the various attempts to heal the rift in the sixth and seventh centuries. It ends on a note of failure.[2] The Narratio itself, however, is evidence of the continuing existence of a Chalcedonian minority among Armenians into at least the eighth century.[3]
In the ninth century, Arsenius the Great cited the Narratio in his account of the schism between the Armenians and his own Georgian church.[2] The Greek text is preserved in four manuscripts, a fifteenth-century one now in Paris (BnF ms. Grec 900) and three in the Vatican Library (Gr. 1455; Ottob. gr. 77; Gr.1101) ranging in date from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth.[4] The text was first published in 1648 by François Combefis, who gave it the Latin title by which it is now known.[5]
References[edit]
- ^ Thomson 2010, p. 60. Booth 2013, p. 200, uses the title Narration on Armenian Affairs.
- ^ a b c d e f Thomson 1991.
- ^ a b c d Avdoyan 2018.
- ^ Garitte 1952, p. 8. Ottob. gr. 77 is available online.
- ^ Garitte 1952, p. 1.
Bibliography[edit]
- Avdoyan, Levon (2018). "Narratio de Rebus Armeniae". In Nicholson, Oliver (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, Volume 2: J–Z. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 1058. ISBN 978-0-19-881625-6.
- Booth, Phil (2013). Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity. University of California Press.
- Garitte, Gérard, ed. (1952). La Narratio de rebus Armeniae: Édition critique et commentaire. Imprimerie Orientaliste L. Durbecq.
- Thomson, Robert W. (1991). "Narratio de Rebus Armeniae". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Vol. 2. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. p. 1437. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
- Thomson, Robert W., ed. (2010). The Lives of Saint Gregory: The Armenian, Greek, Arabic, and Syriac Versions of the History Attributed to Agathangelos. Caravan Books.