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Les récits historiques entre Orient et Occident, XIe-XVe siècle

 | 
Irène Bueno
, 
Camille Rouxpetel

Troisième partie. La parole prophétique ou le temps suspendu de l’attente

The persistence of history: two Armenian reactions to the failure of prophecy1

Sergio La Porta

Résumé

This essay examines how two Armenian authors, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i and Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i, contoured their historical narratives in reaction to the failure of eschatological prophecies to materialize after the total solar eclipse of 1033. Although both authors maintained the use of prophetic discourse for didactic purposes, this essay argues that they chose different interpretative strategies to substantiate the efficacy of prophecy. Writing four decades after the eclipse, Aristakēs downplayed dramatic eschatological interpretations of the eclipse and of biblical prophecy; instead, he emphasized their spiritual fulfillment through a stricter analogical reading of prophecy. Matt‘ēos, on the other hand, composed his Chronicle nearly a century after the eclipse. He sought to reaffirm both the historical and prophetic accuracy of biblical and extra-biblical eschatological prophecies through their reinterpretation and redeployment in the light of contemporary historical events.

Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 Armenian names and text are transliterated in accordance with the Hübschmann-Meillet-Benveniste sys (...)
  • 2 Mentioned, for example, by Rudolphus Glaber in his Historiarum Libri Quinque, IV.ix.24, see Rudolph (...)

1On Friday, June 29, 1033, a near total solar eclipse was observed in many parts of Europe and Western Asia. As it occurred during the year that marked the millennium of Christ’s crucifixion, many Christian observers understood it to be portentous.2 For Armenian witnesses, the eclipse not only coincided with the millennium of Christ’s crucifixion, but transpired –and was (re) interpreted– in the religiously and politically charged context of the long eleventh century which began with the Byzantine enroachment on the Armenian plateau and concluded with the establishment of Seljūq and Türkmen dominance in eastern Anatolia and the arrival of the first Crusade in Syria and the Levant. The socio-political transformations in Anatolia and the sudden appearance of the Crusaders in Syria-Palestine facilitated dramatic interpretations of the eclipse and insured the relevance of revealing its significance for over a century after its appearance.

  • 3 On the Byzantine annexation of the Arcruni and Bagratuni kingdoms, see Bartikian 1971.
  • 4 For a recent discussion of the Turkish invasions of Armenia and the Caucasus, see Peacock 2005.
  • 5 See La Porta 2013.

2With the weakening of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate in the late ninth century, the Armenian noble houses of the Bagratuni, Arcuni, and Siwni negotiated the creation of semi-autonomous kingdoms on the Armenian plateau and surrounding areas. The decentralization of ‘Abbāsid control, however, also enabled the refortification and expansion of the Byzantine Empire under the Macedonian dynasty. By the time of the eclipse in 1033, the Empire had made deep inroads into Anatolia and secured the annexation of the Arcruni kingdom in 1021. In 1045, some twelve years after the eclipse, Constantin IX Monomachos had succeeded in forcing the surrender of the Bagratuni kingdom of Ani to the Empire; and in 1064, the Bagratuni kingdom of Kars also succumbed.3 With the annexation of these lands, numerous noble families and their attendants as well as the upper hierarchy of the Armenian Church removed themselves to other parts of the Empire, to northern Syria-Mesopotamia, or to neighbouring areas to the east and north of the Armenian plateau. Meanwhile, by 1029, Türkmen tribes affiliated with the Seljūqs launched raids onto the Armenian plateau from Azerbaijan, and then towards the middle of the century the Seljūqs themselves directed more concerted attacks.4 The Seljūq defeat of the Byzantine Emperor Romanos Diogenes at the battle of Manazkert in 1071 and the subsequent founding of Seljūq, Türkmen, and Kurdish polities in the region inaugurated a process of demographic, linguistic, and cultural change with which Armenian elites were engaged both through conflict and accomodation. The new socio-political landscape eventually achieved a high degree mutual cultural intelligibility among the different ethno-religious communities and supported a dynamic cultural environment.5 Nevertheless, the loss of cultural dominance and the increasing fluidity of ethno-religious identity posed a challenge to Armenian ecclesiastical elites in Anatolia, who struggled to interpret the signs of divine providence that might give meaning to these historical developments and sought to delineate more starkly the boundaries of communal identity.

  • 6 Critical edition: Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963; French translation (based on Yuzbašyan’s edition and (...)
  • 7 Editions: Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1869; Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898. Citations of the text in this essay wil (...)
  • 8 On the date of Matt‘ēos’s final entry, see Greenwood 2007, p. 225, 229, 234; followed also Andrews  (...)
  • 9 La Porta 2011.

3Our two principal sources for the Armenian reaction to and later interpretation of the eclipse of 1033 are the History (Patmut‘iwn) of Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i6 and the Chronicle (Žamanakagrut‘iwn) of Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i (Matthew of Edessa).7 The former, composed at the end of the eleventh century, starts with the Byzantine conquest of Eastern Anatolia and concludes with the Seljūq victory at Manazkert in 1071 and the death of Alp Arslan the following year. Matt‘ēos covers some of the same ground as Aristakēs, but as his account ends in 1128-29, it also relates the coming of the Crusades to the region for which he is an important primary source.8 Although reliance upon prophetic texts is very much present in historiographical works composed between the fifth and tenth centuries, Lastivertc‘i and Uṙhayec‘i use them far more intensively and extensively in their works. Prophetic discourse assisted these authors to discern and communicate the course of history as well as how they thought it could be corrected. By foreshortening temporal expectations, their employment of prophetic texts and utterances, in general, and of eschatological prophecies in particular, provided an opportunity for them to heighten the temporal urgency of their agenda –whether of spiritual reform or of confessional fidelity– as well as to dehumanize their perceived opponents, both internal and external, through presenting them as the impersonal manifestations of divine punishment or as mythologized incarnations of evil.9

4The eclipse of 1033 and its interpretation are critical to the two accounts. Both authors record a dire prophecy uttered shortly after the eclipse took place and indicate that it was dramatically understood among certain contemporary learned Armenian elites as a sign of either the birth of the Antichrist or the release of Satan from his bonds as predicted in chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation. Aristakēs and Matt‘ēos, however, not only reported the eschatological prophecy regarding the eclipse, they also contoured their narratives around the prophecy’s apparent failure to materialize. I suggest that the emphasis on the fulfillment of prophecy found in their works was partially motivated by a desire to reassert the veracity of prophetic discourse in reaction to the eschaton’s not coming to pass in accordance with the eclipse-prophecy.

5At the same time, Aristakēs’s and Matt‘ēos’s divergent approaches to the eclipse and to the employment of eschatological prophecy reveal that they availed themselves of differing rhetorical and exegetical strategies to illustrate the relationship between history and prophecy in their works. As this essay will show, Lastivertc‘i sought to downplay dramatic interpretations of the eclipse of 1033 and of eschatologically marked biblical prophecies by historicizing their fulfillment. Uṙhayec‘i, by contrast, did not try to avoid the eschatological implications of the eclipse-prophecy, but attempted to reinterpret their significance in the light of changed historical circumstances.

Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i

  • 10 Thomson 2003.
  • 11 Thomson 2005, p. 40-41.
  • 12 La Porta 2011, p. 107-108.
  • 13 “but we put all this concerning those things down so that you may read and know that sin was the ca (...)

6Very little is known about the eleventh-century historian Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i. As his History ends with the battle of Manazkert and the death of Alp Arslan, his date of death is posited as being sometime shortly after 1072.10 The town of Lastivert whence he hailed is thought to be near the city of Arcn (Erzerum) based on remarks of the author in his text. As has been noted by scholars, Aristakēs’s worldview was heavily determined by the Bible; direct quotes or allusions to scripture permeate the text. According to Aristakēs, nearly every episode of the period either was the fulfillment of biblical prophecy or served as a distant reflection of a biblical example.11 Similarly, Lastivertc‘i employs many marked terms and imagery from earlier historical accounts of Persian and Arabic invasions.12 Aristakēs clearly elucidates that his purpose for writing the history was to teach and warn his audience that the evils that befell Armenians during the eleventh century were the result of their own sinful behaviour, which includes urban degeneracy, clerical corruption, and schismatic beliefs. In order to forestall the Lord’s wrath his work is meant to encourage them to repent.13

  • 14 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 49; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38.
  • 15 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 142; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 129.

7Given this perception of historical causation, it is not surprising that Lastivertc‘i reports on the significance of the widely seen and speculated upon eclipse of the sun which he dates to the Armenian year 482 (= 1033-34). He informs us that the near total eclipse was understood by many “learned people” to portend either the birth of the Antichrist or the occurrence of great calamities. He continues to explain that indeed the evils it presaged came to pass in his own days and that his history will describe them.14 Despite this statement, some hesitation on the author’s part in accepting the former interpretation of the celestial event is discernible. While he clearly agrees that the eclipse presaged the historical calamities of the eleventh century and the times of tribulation Jesus predicted in Matthew 24,22, he does not explicitly confirm the interpretation of learned people that it signaled the birth of the Antichrist. When he revists the solar eclipse in the colophon to his work Aristakēs again avoids any mention of the Antichrist; he only vaguely claims that the prophecy of that eclipse had gradually come to fruition.15

8An unusual aspect of Lastivertc‘i’s account of the eclipse is his reluctance to identify the monastic scholar Yovhannes Kozeṙn as the source for its prophetic interpretation as signaling the birth of the Antichrist. Aristakēs lists Kozeṙn among the great monastic teachers (vardapet-s) of the period and remarks that he composed a book on the faith, but he never overtly associates him with the “learned men” who were frightened by the eclipse on the millennium of the crucifixion. Although it is possible that Lastivertc‘i was unaware of the prophecy’s attribution to Yovhannēs Kozeṙn, it seems more likely that he wished to distance the renowned teacher from such speculations about the Antichrist.

  • 16 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 49-50; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38-39.

9In the same passage where he recounts the eclipse, Aristakēs mentions two other prognostications of catastrophe.16 The first was by a certain Ananias who stood in the middle of Jerusalem and loudly pronounced a woe upon it. Lastivertc‘i claims that this prophecy derives from the fourth-century Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea, but no such passage has been identified. The second prediction was uttered by a mysterious homeless and destitute man from the East who appeared in Aristakēs’s own time and place (ast i merum žamanakis) and ceaselessly uttered, “Woe is me”. According to Lastivertc‘i, the foolish mocked the anonymous stranger as mad, while the wise understood his woe to refer to the entire nation. In neither of these instances, however, is the emergence of the Antichrist revisited. In addition, by evoking the example of Ananias in the fourth century, he obliquely reminds his audience that woes had been pronounced before that did not result in the inauguration of the Antichrist drama.

  • 17 Thomson 2003, p. 83.
  • 18 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 46; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 32-33.

10Aristakēs’s treatment of the eclipse strongly suggests that he was wary of predictions of the Antichrist and the drama of the eschaton and attempted to tamper their employment. This strategy of avoiding such associations is also detectable in Lastivertc‘i’s tendency to restrict the interpretation of prophetic texts and reveals a consistent methodological approach to certain eschatologically marked verses. Thomson has already observed that in contrast to other Armenian historiographers Lastivertc‘i’s application of the prophetic interpretation of the statue of different metals in Daniel 2,32-33 with reference to the accession of the Emperor Michael IV in 1034 severely limits the scope of the Danielic text.17 Instead of using the image as a way of providing a general framework through which to interpret historical change, Aristakēs merely explains that the feet of iron mixed with clay reflect the lack of strict patrilineal inheritance of the Imperial throne and that the Emperor Michael was not of royal descent, but a palace official.18

  • 19 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 22; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 2.
  • 20 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 23; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 4.
  • 21 If not intentionally inserted by Aristakēs (see below), Tabēēlay is clearly a scribal error for Ṙom (...)
  • 22 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 23; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 4-6.

11Elsewhere, his deployment of certain verses eschews known eschatological interpretative developments. For example, at the outset of the work, Lastivertc‘i describes how the province of Tayk‘ came to pass into Byzantine power. According to Aristakēs, during the rule of Dawit‘ Bagratuni, who had been awarded the title of curopalates by the Empire, the land was prosperous and at peace so that it recalled the prophetic verse, “everyone rested under his own vine and his own fig tree” (Micah 4,4; Zechariah 3,10).19 Lastivertc‘i then relates the visit of Emperor Basil II to the region in the year 1000. While the Emperor’s advance proceeded well at first as he was greeted with honor and authority, matters turned sour and thereby fulfilled the prophecy of David in Ps. 89 (90), 5-6: “In the morning they grow like fresh grass; in the morning they rejoice and flourish like fresh grass; in the evening they wilt, dry up, and fall”.20 The lesser nobility of Tayk‘, looking to capitalize on promises made by the Emperor and having tired of Dawit‘’s leadership, poisoned the curopalate. According to Lastivertc‘i, from that time forth all the nobility of Tayk‘ met with premature deaths as punishment for this betrayal and became extinct. Aristakēs adduces Isaiah 8,6-7 as a rebuke against them for their actions: “Because this people did not desire the waters of Shiloah that flow peacefully, but desire to make their king Hṙasim and the son of Tabēēlay;21 therefore, on account of that, the Lord says: I am bringing up against you the water of the powerful and surging river, the king of Assyria and his glory”.22

12All three of the verses cited in this passage bear eschatological overtones that Aristakēs evokes to heighten the tragedy of the situation. His portrayal of the situation in Tayk‘ during the rule of Dawit‘ in the paradisical paradigms of Micah and Zechariah, followed by the citation of Ps. 89 (90), 6 that presages the end of good times, accentuates the dire circumstances of the region at that moment. Aristakēs’s final citation of Isaiah 8,6-7 clearly fits well with the author’s theme of divine punishment for sins, but it also ignores a tradition that associates this verse with the origins of the Antichrist.

  • 23 The text is found in ms. 706 of the Mesrop Maštoc‘ Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran), (...)
  • 24 Rosenstiehl 2014, esp. p. 254-263.
  • 25 Mesrop Vayoc‘jorec‘i 2010, p. 722. The Vision as preserved in the vita of St. Nersēs I the Great (s (...)
  • 26 Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, p. 88-90.
  • 27 Hippolytus Werke 1897, p. 38.
  • 28 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 49; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38. See also, below.

13In an unedited Armenian text, On the end of times and the coming of the Antichrist,23 recently explored by J.-M. Rosenthiel,24 the Antichrist’s name is said to be Hṙasim (Rezin) and that of his father, Hṙomełay (Romelias). The identification of the Antichrist with Hṙasim, the son of Hṙomełay, is clearly predicated upon this verse in Isaiah. The same identification of the Antichrist is found in the Vision of St. Nersēs contained within the tenth-century Life of St. Nersēs25 and in the twelfth-century Armenian Sermo de Antichristo apocryphally attributed to Epiphanius, as well as in other Armenian texts on the Antichrist.26 A development of this tradition, in which Rezin (Gk. Raasôn) is further identified with the king of Assyria, found in Hippolytus’s De Christo et Antichristo 57, reveals that this interpretation was not unique to Armenian.27 Aristakēs either decided not to explore the associations with the Antichrist when employing this marked verse here, or was not aware of any such associations, although his account of the eclipse prophecy suggests that he was cognizant of traditions concerning the advent of the Antichrist.28 By not following a line of interpretation that explored the Anitchrist dimension of this verse, Lastivertc‘i precludes his audience from reading the incidents in Tayk‘ as a precursor to the rise of the Antichrist and the eschaton.

  • 29 Rosenstiehl 2014, p. 256-257. Y. Zōhrapean’s edition of the Armenian Bible, Astuacašunč‘ matean hin (...)
  • 30 No variants to this reading are provided in the apparatus to the Zōhrapean Bible.
  • 31 Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, p. 273.

14Aristakēs’s citation of Isaiah 8,6 itself provides a further indication that he was intentionally distancing his narrative from traditions associated with the Antichrist drama. Although the identification of Hṙasim/Raasôn with the Antichrist may have been a common eschatological tradition, the particular identification of Hṙasim as the son of Hṙomełay, according to Rosenstiehl, seems to have been facilitated in Armenian by the wording of Isaiah 8,6 as witnessed in Zōhrapean’s edition of the Armenian Bible.29 In Greek, the verse says that the people wanted “Raasôn and (kai) the son of Romelias” to be king; the Armenian version of the biblical text, however, omits the conjunction.30 Rather than refer to two kings, then, the Armenian version contains only one king, Hṙasim/ Rezin, who is the son of Hṙomełay/Romelias. As noted above, the identification of Romelias as the father of Rezin already occurs in the tenth-century Life of St. Nersēs as well as in the Sermo de Antichristo attributed to Epiphanius. Although no direct citation of Isaiah 8,6 appears in either text, the reading of the Armenian Bible seems to rest behind the identification. In the commentary to his edition and translation of the Sermo de Antichristo, Frasson notes the text’s reliance on the Life of St. Nersēs for the Antichrist’s parentage, but also considers the reading of Isaiah 8,6 found in the Zōhrapean edition without the conjunction to be the justification of this genealogy.31 Contrary to the reading of the Armenian biblical text as preserved in Zōhrapean’s edition, Aristakēs’s citation of the verse includes the conjunction and no variant without it appears in the apparatus to Yuzbashyan’s edition.

15Two possibilities regarding Aristakēs’s reading present themselves. The first is that Rosenstiehl and Frasson are correct in their estimation of the reading without the conjunction found in the Zōhrapean edition and as indirectly supported by the Life of St. Nersēs. If indeed that reading is not a variant, but represents the text and tradition of the Armenian Bible, then Aristakēs has consciously decided to render the wording of the Greek text in preference to that of the Armenian. One may speculate that a desire to distance his citation from the verse’s association with the origins of the Antichrist constituted part of the reasoning for his selection. His substitution of Tabēēlay for Hṙomelay, if not a scribal error, may similarly reflect a desire to weaken connotations of the Antichrist.

16The second, less likely possibility is that Rosenstiehl and Frasson have incorrectly considered the weight of the reading in the Zōhrapean edition and that the omission of the conjunction represents a true variant. In this case, as Aristakēs’s reading is both closer to that of the Septuagint and is already attested in the eleventh century, one may conlude that it, in fact, represents the actual reading of the Armenian version and that the omission of the conjunction should be considered a secondary development. If so, Aristakēs’s citation simply reflects the text as he knew it and obviously does not reveal anything about his intentions regarding its interpretation. Nevertheless, he still ignored an already present tradition which connected this verse with the legend of the Antichrist and was likely known to him.

  • 32 Zōhrapean relied for his text on Venice, Mekhitarist Library, 1508, which was copied in 1319 by a s (...)
  • 33 Stone 2006 (originally published in 1973) long ago pointed out the criterion on which an edition of (...)

17Lastivertc‘i’s citation further raises a question on the relationship between the development of the Armenian biblical text and its interpretative tradition. Did the Armenian version of the verse that omits the conjunction, as Rosenstiehl and Frasson suppose, facilitate the identification of Romelias and Rezin as father and son? Or did Armenian scribes in certain scribal centers omit the conjunction because of the tradition that identified Isaiah 8,6 with the names of the Antichrist and his father? As Hippolytus’s De Christo et Antichristo shows, the identification of Rezin with the Antichrist was both old and common, and it is possible that Romelias could have been interpreted as his father without recourse to emending the biblical text. Once that identification was exegetically accepted, however, it would also not be difficult to see how the conjunction may have been omitted to bring the verse into greater alignment with its interpretation. Given the probable Cilician provenance of the text of the Zōhrapean edition of the Armenian Bible and of the Sermo de Antichristo,32 the omission may represent a reading of the biblical text that emerged in a Cilician milieu based on the Antichrist tradition, whence it became dominant. Any firmer solutions to this problem await an examination and critical edition of the Armenian version of Isaiah.33

  • 34 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 105; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 96.
  • 35 Ew kat‘sayn or Eremiayi yeandn c‘uc‘aw` or i hiwsisoy i haraw jgēr yaynžam zc‘nc‘ułs eandeann, ay (...)

18Another instance in which Aristakēs ostensibly avoids associating historical events with the drama of the eschaton occurs in his depiction of the Turkish invasion during the Byzantine civil war between the Emperor Michael VI and Isaac Komnenos in 1057.34 Aristakēs evokes three biblical verses in his account. He characterizes the internal conflict of Byzantium as the “broken reed” the Assyrians use mockingly about Egypt in Isaiah 36,6. He also refers to Matthew 12,25, a “kingdom divided against itself will be ruined”, to contextualize how the Turks were able to take advantage of the situation. Between these two references, Lastivertc‘i employs the image of the boiling cauldron from the north of Jeremiah 1,13-14 to depict the incursion of the Turks from the south: “the cauldron that was shown boiling to Jeremiah (1,13-14), which at that time spread its diffusion of boiling [water] from north to south, now [spread] with its terrible boiling from south to north, and burned and destroyed the Christian peoples”.35

  • 36 The authorship of the work was also misattributed to Movsēs Kałankatuac‘i; on questions of authorsh (...)
  • 37 La Porta 2016, p. 367-369; Zuckerman 2007. A different division of these chapters is given in Green (...)
  • 38 The History of the Caucasian Albanians 1961, p. 106.
  • 39 La Porta 2016, p. 369-370.

19Like Isaiah 8,6, this verse is a marked one in the Armenian tradition, particularly with reference to Turkic invaders. A late-seventh century source (labeled Source B) comprising chapters 12-16 of Book II of The History of the Ałuank‘ (Caucasian Albanians), compiled by Movsēs Dasxuranc‘i in the tenth century,36 records the Turkic invasions of the Caucasus in 626 and 628-9.37 In chapter 16, Source B refers to the Turkic armies as the “cauldron of the North”, alluding to the same verse of Jeremiah. The West Turkic Khaganate, to which these armies belonged, was indeed situated to the north of the Caucasus, so the allusion to the image in Jeremiah was particularly apt. As in Lastivertc‘i, the context of the reference is internal discord, but here it is the Turkic forces that are beset by it. According to the text as preserved in Dasxuranc‘i, Armenia and Caucasian Albania were spared by God from a prolonged Turkic occupation because “the cauldron of the North turned his countenance against his sons and fought against his own kin”.38 The application of the image forms part of a development of the larger theme of an enemy from the north within an eschatological framework.39

  • 40 Edition: Yovhannēs Drasxanakertc‘i 1867, p. 295, 344; English translation: Yovhannēs Drasxanakertc‘ (...)

20Another tenth-century source reveals that the image of Jeremiah’s cauldron could still be used even when the object of comparison was not literally from the north. In his History, Catholicos Yovhannēs V Drasxanakertc‘i applies this image to the Sadjid emir Yūsuf (901- 28), whom he designates “the insidious serpent of Dan” (daranakal ōjn Danay), an allusion to both Gen. 49,17 and traditions about the emergence of the Antichrist.40 Thus, Drasxanakertc‘i does not employ the image within the typology of the enemy of the north but within the narrative of the drama of the Antichrist.

21Aristakēs does not explore the interpretative possibilities of this verse of Jeremiah within a larger eschatological discourse of either the “enemy of the North” or of the drama of the Antichrist, both of which were available to him. Instead, the reference to Jer. 1,13 is inserted, almost seemingly forced, in between two others that highlight the weakness of a house divided. It is the causal relationship between the internal discord of the Byzantine Empire and the emergence of the Turkish invasions that Lastivertc‘i wished to emphasize, and where he wanted to place responsibility. Although the imagery is indicative of the impending eschaton, the Turkic invasions as presented by Aristakēs do not form part of a dramatic eschatological narrative predetermined to unfold, but rather result from the behaviour of imperial elites.

  • 41 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 77; this section is omitted in the French translation. An English t (...)
  • 42 Edition: Łewond 1887, p. 8-11; English translation: History of Lewond 1982, p. 51-52; cf. Greenwood (...)
  • 43 K‘ristos yamē zzart‘nuln, ew oč‘ orpēs yaynžam, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 79; Aristakēs Lasti (...)

22Aristakēs’s account of the sacks of the city of Arcn and Ani by the Seljūq Turks reflects a similar approach to eschatologically marked biblical verses. In his description of the attack on the city of Arcn, Aristakēs justifies its destruction as punishment for the sins of the city’s inhabitants and draws an elaborate comparison with the Persian sack of Jerusalem, evoking Ps. 78 (79), 1-3.41 He then addresses the city, recounting its ruin with imagery reminiscent of the description of the Arab attack on Duin in 640 by the eighth-century historian, Łewond.42 Finally, he concludes with David’s lament in Ps. 77 (78), 61, “their might he delivered into captivity; and their towns into the hands of their enemies”. Lastivertc‘i explicitly qualifies his evocation of the Pslam lest his readers think these events presage the awakening of the Lord proclaimed in v. 65 of that psalm. Denying the imminent Second Coming and onset of the eschatological drama, he complains that “Christ delays his awakening, and [now is] not like then [i.e., the time of psalmist]”.43

  • 44 gazank‘ vayri ew ěntani` ełen gerezman diakanc‘n. vasn zi oč‘ goyr or t‘ałēr ew harkawor hołown cac (...)
  • 45 Łewond 1887, p. 10; History of Lewond 1982, p. 51; La Porta 2016, p. 372-373. Although Łewond is a (...)
  • 46 Ps.-Methodius 1992, XIII, 19.

23In his passage on the sack of Ani, Aristakēs notes that once the Turks penetrated the defenses of Ani, they created a mass slaughter such that, “wild and domesticated beasts became the tomb of those corpses, for there was no one to bury them and to cover the slain with the needed earth”.44 The description again is a reworking of Ps. 78 (79), 1-3: “O God, heathens have entered your inheritance, profaned your holy temple…. They have cast the corpses of your servants as food for the birds of the sky and the bodies of your saints to the beasts of the land.… and there was no one to bury them”. The last portion of the verses also appears in the History of Łewond, employed in the above-mentioned description of the sacking of the city of Duin by the Arabs in 640. There it is found in close association with Isaiah 14,29 and Jeremiah 6,23.45 The two latter verses are both descriptions of the “enemy of the North”. In the seventh-century Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius, Ps. 78 (79), 3 also appears in connection with the prophecy of an invasion of the men from the north and the mass destruction that will occur.46 Given the evidence from Łewond and Ps.-Methodius, it seems probable that an exegetical tradition existed that linked a destructive invasion of the “enemy from the north” with the lament found in Ps. 78 (79).

  • 47 La Porta 2014c, p. 521 and n. 70, where, however, the connection to the Psalm is not made, although (...)
  • 48 See La Porta 2016, p. 374-377. The restrained approaches of Łewond and Aristakēs may be compared to (...)

24The verse is also employed by Vardan Aygekc‘i (1170-1235) in his “Counsel on the birth of the Antichrist”, where, however, the author uses it in a long description of the tribulations that will occur after the prophets Enoch and Elijah are sent to alert people during the reign of the Antichrist.47 This verse thus experienced a similar development as the image of the cauldron from Jeremiah 1,13 in that it was reapplied from the narrative context of an invasion by the enemy of the North to that of the drama of the Antichrist. Aristakēs, however, has again chosen to historicize the interpretative scope of the verse by limiting it to the particular sacks of Arcn and Ani and not pursuing lines of interpretation associated with the “enemy of the North” or the rise of the Antichrist. In this approach Lastivertc‘i resembles Łewond who similarly de-eschatologizes these verses through limiting their application to a particular historical context.48

  • 49 On this expression, see Pogossian 2014, p. 462. Lastivertc‘i’s use of this phrase which also occurs (...)
  • 50 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 86; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 78.

25From the above observations we may conclude that Aristakēs attempted to suppress, or at least restrain, interpretative traditions that sought to understand contemporary historical events as signaling the advent of the Antichrist. Aside from his report of the prophecy of the eclipse of 1033, Lastivertc‘i refers to the Antichrist only once, and then by periphrasis, as “the impure one of the desert” (piłcn anapati)49 when lamenting the destruction of the region after the Seljūq invasion of 1054.50 His narrow, historicizing exegesis of prophetic passages from Daniel, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, as well as the lack of any explicit support for the interpretation of the eclipse of 1033 as a harbinger of the Antichrist all suggest that Aristakēs tried to tone down any resonances with the drama of the eschaton that these may have held.

  • 51 The Antichrist saga has a pronounced focus on political affairs as the figure of the Antichrist ope (...)
  • 52 See, for example, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 52-53, 80-81, 123; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p (...)
  • 53 Pakaseac‘ ays amenayn ew koreaw ewOč‘ ews yaweluc‘u yanel”, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 60; (...)
  • 54 La Porta 2011, p. 107-108.

26By closing off any interpretative move that could support an imminent eschatological drama of the Antichrist, Lastivertc‘i sought to emphasize that spiritual reform, as opposed to political restoration, constituted the only hope of salvation for Armenian Christians.51 Along those lines, Aristakēs repeatedly condemns the vanity of relying upon secular rather than divine power.52 Although he laments the loss of the Bagratuni kingdom, the insecurity of the patriarchate, and the removal of the nobility, he also exclaims, citing Ps. 40 (41), 9 of the Armenian Bible, “all this ended and was destroyed, and ‘will never again arise’”.53 The socio-political changes of the period are presented as a spiritual crisis, and Lastivertc‘i’s treatment of the Muslim Turks reflects and reinforces that focus. In Aristakēs’s reenactment of events, the Muslim Turks emerge not as political actors imbued with agency, but as impersonal manifestations of divine wrath, often characterized as types of animal, or as stereotyped enemies from biblical literature and Armenian history.54 At the same time, Armenian Christians fufill the role of the nation of Israel, the Ninehvites of Jonah, the Galileans, or other biblical people in repeated need of correction. Aristakēs’s othering of the Muslim Turks and self-othering of Armenian Christians reframe the developments of the eleventh century within a spiritual discourse that simplfies the naviagtion of the evolving socio-political context. Lastivertc‘i’s depiction of his society is one where neither political nor cultural negotiation is desired or even held forth as a possibility; only greater adherence to the moral and spiritual norms espoused by the Church that he advances can insure the return of God’s favor and of regional peace and stability.

  • 55 The prophetic vision of Sahak I the Great (sed. 388-428) is found in the History of Łazar Parp‘ec‘i (...)

27Further evidence for the conncection between Aristakēs’s spiritual rather than political perspective and his desire to avoid dramatic eschatological interpretations of events may be found in his reluctance to introduce non-biblical eschatological traditions that had presumably developed and circulated in Armenian by the late eleventh century. There are no references in his text to the prophecies attributed to Nersēs the Great or Sahak Part‘ew, both of which do posit a resurrection of the Armenian monarchy and assume greater significance in other historical sources;55 nor –with the exception of one phrase (mentioned above)– have I been able to detect resonances of them in Aristakēs’s descriptions.

  • 56 Agat‘angełos 1976, p. 272-295. On different interpretations of the vision, see Thomson 2014, p. 285 (...)
  • 57 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 120-121; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, omits. On the T‘ondrakite mov (...)
  • 58 See La Porta 2014b.

28Lastivertc‘i only explicitly evokes the vision attributed to Gregory the Illuminator found within the conversion narrative of the Arsacid kingdom of Armenia in the early fourth century attributed to Agat‘angełos.56 He applies the image of white lambs becoming ravenous wolves found in the prophetic vision to the spread of the antinomian T‘ondrakite heresy.57 Although the vision is supposed to have occured in the early fourth century, the historical context of its composition was likely the Armenian rebellion against the Persians in 451 and postdates the removal of the Arsacid dynasty as well as of Gregory’s descendants as patriarchs of Armenia in 428. In the vision the lambs that turned into wolves signify those Armenians who abandoned their Christianity in favor of the Zoroastrianism of the Sasanian Empire. In Lastivertc‘i’s estimation, the historical situation and the backsliding of these Christian Armenians constituted an apposite analogy to the followers of the T‘ondrakite sect whom he reckons “pagan” and “godless” and as the false prophets against whom Paul warns in II Corinthians 11 and Matthew in ch. 7. Moreover, Gregory’s vision does not foresee a role for the institutions of the monarchy or the patriarchate and does not postulate a return of Armenian secular power,58 a position in concert with Aristakēs’s lack of confidence in the rulers of his day as well as his emphasis on spiritual rather than political renovation.

  • 59 In the passage noted above where Aristakēs describes the destruction of the land after the Seljūq i (...)
  • 60 Thomson 2003, p. 83.

29Although Lastivertc‘i eschews any elaboration of a dramatic eschatological scenario, he does not completely abandon an end-time perspective in his work. Aristakēs’s “end” is not the eschaton per se,59 but the fulfillment of prophecies that relate to the punishment and destruction of a people. This “fulfillment perspective” serves the rhetorical function of heightening the temporal urgency for his audience to repent of their sins. Thomson correctly notes that Lastivertc‘i does not see history as inevitable and does not predict any future bliss,60 but Aristakēs’s framework of prophetic punishment does present the current historical crises besetting Armenia in direct causal relationship with their past and present sinful activity. To that end, Lastivertc‘i does not provide any way to avoid the current predicament as he sees it, although he holds forth the possibility that God may have mercy if Armenians amend their behavior.

  • 61 Ibidem, and p. 85 with regard to Matthew of Edessa (Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i).
  • 62 Aune 1986, p. 90.

30Moreover, “inevitability” does not constitute the underlying premise of an eschatological perception of history, as Thomson suggests.61 Rather, as Aune has argued with reference to apocalyptic literature,62 an “end-time” perspective is used to encourage the modification of people’s mentality and beahvior, much as Lastivertc‘i’s framework of prophetic fulfillment does. There is thus not a large difference in rhetorical function between his perception of history as an evolving form of prophetic fulfillment intended to instruct those who reflect upon it and the eschatological perspective of other Armenian historiographers, such as Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i, who similarly attempted to both explain the course of history and modify its direction.

31In sum, approximately four decades after the prognostication that the eclipse of 1033 indicated the birth of the Antichrist, Aristakēs seems to have been more circumspect about its accuracy and tried to distance its author, the respected Yovhannēs Kozeṙn, from the prophecy’s pronouncement. The failure of this prophecy to materialize contributed to Lastivertc‘i’s discarding of dramatic end-time scenarios found in eschatological interpretations of biblical prophecy and extra-biblical eschatological traditions. Nonetheless, he retained a rhetorical strategy of prophetic fulfillment to compel his audience to rigorously observe the moral norms upheld by the Armenian Church. In order to underscore for his readers the spiritual –as opposed to the political– nature of the current crisis, he promoted a stricter analogical reading of the Bible in which he recast the political events and actors of his day in terms of biblical history and the fulfillment of prophecy.

Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i

  • 63 See MacEvitt 2007, p. 161-162.

32As with Aristakēs, we know next to nothing about Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i (Matthew of Edessa) other than that he was a monk and priest from the city of Edessa.63 Composed around 1130, his Chronicle provides significant information for the period between 952 and 1128, particularly on the Byzantine annexation of Armenia, the rise of the Seljūqs, and the coming of the Crusades. Matt‘ēos employs biblical prophecy less frequently in comparison to Lastivertc‘i, but readily refers to extra-biblical prophecies and proclaims their fulfillment. Most famously he explicitly cites two prophecies by Yovhannēs Kozeṙn, as well as the prophecies attributed to St. Nersēs and St. Sahak and the more contemporary Mark the Hermit. Among biblical prophecies, he relies upon the Psalms most often, but also makes use of verses from the Gospels, including the Synoptic Apocalypse, and from the prophets Isaiah, Daniel, Joel, and Jeremiah.

  • 64 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 52-54; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 47-49.
  • 65 aysōr arjakac‘aw satanay i hazar amē kapanac‘ iwroc‘, or Hayoc‘ t‘uakann ew NHě am ē ew kal zaaǰin (...)
  • 66 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 66-74; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 56-60.

33Matt‘ēos assigns the two prophecies uttered by Yovhannēs Kozeṙn to different dates than Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i. He includes the first one under events that took place in 471 of the Armenian era (= 1022-23 CE),64 but the words of Kozeṙn himself quoted in the prophecy explicitly indicate that it was pronounced in the year 478 (= 1029-30). Kozeṙn asserts: “today Satan was released from his thousand years of bondage, which in the reckoning of the Armenian is the year 478 and there is the first 552 years, which is 1030 years. Subtract the thirty years before the baptism and there is 1000 [years] until today”.65 The second prophecy occurred, according to Matt‘ēos, in 485 of the Armenian era (= 1036-37 CE).66

  • 67 aysōr lc‘an hazar am č‘arč‘aranac‘ K‘ristosi xač‘elut‘eann ew arjakmann Beliaray, zor kapeal ēr zna (...)

34Whether Yovhannēs actually delivered a second prophecy is questionable, although the second prophecy does refer to the earlier one. In words very similar to those he uttered in the first prophecy, Kozeṙn explains that “today the thousand years of the tortures of the crucifixion of Christ and the release of Beliar, whom the Savior bound in the Jordan river, has been fulfilled, which was shown to us by a previous sign fourteen years ago, about which we spoke”.67 Fourteen years prior to Armenian year 485 (= 1036- 37) would be 471 (= 1022-23), which does correspond to the year in which Matt‘ēos includes Yovhannēs’s first pronouncement. However, as noted above, the prophecy itself makes clear that it was delivered in 478 (= 1029-30), not in 471. The similarity in wording between the two prophecies and the fact that the period of fourteen years corresponds to the year given for Matt‘ēos’s entry and not the year in which Yovhannēs himself says he delivered his prophecy, suggests that this reference to the earlier prophecy was added, most probably by Matt‘ēos himself.

  • 68 This must have occurred in the city of Sebastia (Sivas) then under Byzantine control as the Arcruni (...)
  • 69 Samuēl Anec‘i only mentions one prophecy of Kozeṙn that should be dated to 1035-36: “In the days of (...)
  • 70 “And at that time, the valiant nation, who are the Franks, will arise and with a multitude of force (...)
  • 71 See the remarks of Canard and Berbérian in Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38, n. 1, and Andrews 20 (...)

35There are other indications that the two accounts actually refer to the same event. Both of the prophecies are occasioned by the appearance of an eclipse; in both prophecies the Arcruni king Yovhannēs-Senek‘erim68 summons Yovhannēs Kozeṙn, and the latter delivers his words in the presence of members of the nobility; and in both Kozeṙn exclaims, based upon Rev. 20,3, that the thousand-year imprisonment of Satan has ended. Moreover, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i, the twelfth-century Chronicle of Samuēl Anec‘i, and the fourteenth-century Chonicle of Mxit‘ar Ayrivanec‘i only mention one prophecy pronounced following an eclipse at this time.69 In addition, the second prophecy of Kozeṙn included by Matt‘ēos, which is far more elaborate than the first, exhibits clear signs of having been updated as it “predicts” the rise of “the valiant nation of the Franks” and the capture of Jerusalem,70 and is thus likely to represent a revised and expanded version of the first. Finally, the first prophecy itself is almost certainly to be identified with the predictions noted by Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i about the advent of the Antichrist among learned circles that were engendered by the eclipse of June 1033, which is most probably the correct date for these pronouncements as well.71

  • 72 The literature on the Last Emperor motif is quite large, but see in general, Alexander 1971; Alexan (...)
  • 73 Thomson 2003, p. 87.
  • 74 Andrews 2009b, p. 112-113.
  • 75 Ibidem, p. 113-114.
  • 76 Pogossian 2014, p. 475.
  • 77 As noted, in the text of the prophecy Kozeṙn claims that the year is 485 (1036- 37). He “predicts” (...)
  • 78 Pogossian 2014, p. 474 and n. 74.
  • 79 MacEvitt 2007, p. 158.

36According to the second prophecy, the period of Frankish supremacy will be brief and followed by fifty years of “Persian” [i.e., Turkish] oppression. The remnants of the Frankish forces will then slowly begin to strengthen and establish themselves in various lands. At that moment, a Roman emperor will arise and utterly defeat the Persians and rule the land. Although Dostourian, the English translator of the Chronicle, interprets the figure of the Roman Emperor to signify Alexius Komnenos (reg. 1081-1118) and the end of the prophecy to promote the hope of a Byzantine resurgence under the Komnenoi, subsequent scholarship has seen a correlation between the Roman Emperor evoked by Matt‘ēos and the legend of the Last Roman or World Emperor as articulated in the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius.72 Thomson asserts that “[b] oth here and in the earlier prediction of John Kozern [sic] concerning the Turks, there are reminiscences of this influential Apocalypse, though it is not quoted verbatim”.73 Andrews compares the second prophecy beginning with the rise of the Roman Emperor to ch. XIII.11-15 of Ps.-Methodius and concludes that there are “broad parallels” between the two texts and that “direct echoes” of the Apocalypse may be discerned in the text of Matt‘ēos.74 Referencing Thomson, she acknowledges that similarities in language and symbolism may also be found in the earlier prophecy, but she clearly considers the later part of the second prophecy to have been composed by someone who lived after Kozeṙn.75 Pogossian comments upon the allusions to the Last Roman Emperor in both the second prophecy attributed to Kozeṙn and Ps.-Methodius but refrains from suggesting any direct dependence of the text of the Chronicle upon the Apocalypse.76 She further entertains Marr’s dating of the second prophecy to shortly before the Second Crusade of 114777 and therefore considers it an interpolation in the narrative by either Gregory the Priest or some other author.78 On the other hand, MacEvitt implies that Matt‘ēos had access to the text of Ps.-Methodius when he remarks that he “drew his expectations of the coming Apocalypse from a number of sources, the most important of which was the Syriac account by an anonymous seventh-century author now referred to as Pseudo-Methodius”.79

  • 80 Step‘anos Ōrbēlean 1859, p. 188-201.
  • 81 Topchyan 2014, p. 368. I independently reached a similar conclusion regarding the improbability of (...)
  • 82 Stone 1998; Ervine 2000; van Donzel –Schmidt 2010, p. 42-44; Topchyan 2014, p. 369-370.
  • 83 Guillaume de Rubrouck [William of Rubruck] 1990, p. 265-267; Thomson 2001, p. 77-78; van Donzel – S (...)

37A selection of Ps.-Methodius in Armenian is preserved in the History of the Province of Sisakan by Archbishop Step‘anos Ōrbēlean (d. 1304), completed in 1298.80 In that text, Ōrbēlean attributed the translation of the Apocalypse into Armenian to his eighth-century namesake, Step‘anos Siwnec‘i. The latter is known to have completed a few translations of Greek patristic texts into Armenian including the corpus of works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Nature of Man. His translation style is quite literal and it is often difficult to comprehend the Armenian version of the text without reference to the Greek original. Based on a comparison of Siwnec‘i’s other translations with the Armenian version of Ps.-Methodius, Aram Topchyan has concluded that Step‘anos Siwnec‘i was not the translator of the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius. Although he dismisses Ōrbēlean’s claim that Siwnec‘i was the translator, Topchyan holds that it is possible the text was still translated in the late seventh or eighth century.81 I am less certain about the date of translation, but do not discount the possibility that it preceded its appearance in Ōrbēlean’s thirteenth-century History by several centuries. Nonetheless, the twelfth to thirteenth centuries seem a critical moment in the dissemination of Ps.-Methodius in Armenian as passages and themes from the Apocalypse appear in Armenian in different contexts.82 In addition, William of Rubruck, when travelling through the region of Naxiǰewan in the middle of the thirteenth century, provides evidence that the prophecies of Methodius about the rule of the Saracens and of “Acacron” about the invasions of the “nation of the Archers… from the north” were popular amongst the population.83 He also notes that he read the latter prophecy in Constantinople where the local Armenians had brought it.

  • 84 La Porta 2014a, p. 88, n. 2.

38Regardless of the exact date of the translation of the Apocalypse into Armenian and whether it was Matt‘ēos or a later interpolator who included the second prophecy of Kozeṙn, it seems very likely that a version of the text would have been available to an author of the twelfth century. Given that Matt‘ēos lived and worked in Edessa, the possibility also remains that he might have had access to a Greek or Syriac version of the text. Despite the likelihood that the text of the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius may have been available to Matt‘ēos or a slightly later author, I remain circumspect about a textual relationship between the Apocalypse and the second prophecy of Yovhannēs Kozeṙn in the Chronicle.84 Although I recognize general affinities between the two, the central argument for seeing any textual dependence of the second prophecy upon Ps.-Methodius rests upon the appearance of a victorious Roman king or emperor and that he will arise “as if waking from sleep”, a phrase borrowed from Ps. 77 (78), 65.

39In addition to a lack of verbal agreement between the Apocalypse and the second prophecy, significant features of the Last Roman Emperor motif as expressed in Ps-Methodius are absent from Kozeṙn’s prophecy. Among the most obvious we may cite the invasion of the people from the North, the Emperor’s surrendering of his crown in Jerusalem, and the rise of the Antichrist. Moreover, the Roman emperor is not placed in any eschatological context; nowhere does the prophecy claim that the Roman emperor will be the final temporal ruler or a precursor of the Second Coming. If indeed the author of the second prophecy of Yovhannēs Kozeṙn did access the text of the Apocalypse, it seems rather unlikely that he would only extract the idea of the rise of a victorious Roman emperor and the application of Ps. 77 (78), 65 to describe it, given the involved and dramatic presentation of the Last Roman Emperor motif in Ps.-Methodius.

  • 85 Greisiger 2014, esp. p. 175-183; cf. also Stoyanov 2014.
  • 86 The author also appears as Agadron or Agat‘ang in the manuscripts. Zaroui Pogossian is currently pr (...)
  • 87 Pogossian – La Porta 2017. The exact dates of composition of the Prophecies of Agat‘on and On the e (...)

40In the light of these marked differences, it seems more prudent to hesitate in privileging the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius as a direct textual source for the second prophecy of Yovhannēs Kozeṙn. The author of the Apocalypse did not invent the legend of the Last Roman Emperor, and his work represents only one particular, albeit popular, articulation of that motif. In particular, recent studies have emphasized the role of imperial propaganda during the reign of the Emperor Heraclius and the Persian Wars in formulating the topos of the Last Roman Emperor.85 In a recent essay, Zaroui Pogossian and myself contend that two anonymous Armenian apocalypses, the Prophecies of Agat‘on and On the end of the world attributed to a certain Agat‘angel,86 preserve elements of the Last Emperor myth that harken back to a Heraclian milieu and cannot be derived from the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius.87 The appearance in other traditions, including post-Rabbinic sources, of some of the features found in the Armenian texts suggests that they circulated around Syria-Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean and were not necessary constrained to a particular textual tradition. Furthermore, we should not discount the possibility that the figure of the victorious Roman emperor as presented in the Chronicle was informed by oral tradition rather than a single identifiable text. As Rubruck’s testimony indicates, these prophecies functioned in both literary and oral registers. The figure of a victorious Roman emperor may even have reached Edessene circles via the Crusaders themselves.

41It was therefore not necessary for the author of the second prophecy to have been familiar with the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius in order to have been aware of the motif of the rise of a victorious Roman emperor –whether within an eschatological context or not. Whoever contoured the second prophecy in the form we now have it may have known of Armenian texts or traditions that reflected imperial propaganda deriving originally from a Heraclian context; or, he may have heard stories about a salvific Roman emperor amongst the variegated population in the streets and squares of twelfth-century Edessa.

  • 88 ays ełew skizbn kataraci ew krkin awerman ašxarhis yanōrēn zōrac‘n T‘urk‘ac‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 18 (...)
  • 89 It should be noted that the word translated here as “world” (ašxarh), also signifies “realm”, as it (...)
  • 90 karapetk‘ en Neinn ew skizbn kataraci ašxarhis, ew ai banaloy hawatoc‘ ew astuacpaštut‘eanc‘ ew (...)

42Although it is clear that Matt‘ēos evokes both biblical and extra-biblical eschatological prophecies in his history, we must ask to what purpose does he do so? This question is particularly poignant as we may observe that Matt‘ēos himself is somewhat ambiguous about the actual “End”. Neither prophecy of Kozeṙn as cited in the Chronicle actually mentions the eschaton; nor does the prophecy ascribed to Mark the hermit. In II, 55, Matt‘ēos records that a comet appeared in 519 of the Armenian era (= 1070- 71) which was interpreted as the fulfillment of Lk. 21,25 about the final days. The author himself comments, however, that “this was the beginning of the end and of the second destruction of this realm by the forces of the lawless Turks”, thereby historicizing the prophecy and deflecting its eschatological import.88 On the other hand, Matt‘ēos asserts that the spiritual confusion and impiety caused by the division of the Armenian patriarchate in the final quarter of the twelfth century were “forerunners of the Antichrist and the beginning of the end of this world,89 both with respect to the removal of faith and piety as well as to the fulfillment of the writings in the holy books, which St. Nersēs said and his son Isaac [Sahak], and which in our times the holy vardapet Yovhannēs, who is called Kozeṙn, spoke”.90 This remark which explicitly associates the prophecies of Nersēs, Sahak, and Yovhannēs Kozeṙn with the coming of the Antichrist and the eschaton indicates that Matt‘ēos retained an eschatological perspective and harbored expectations of an imminent End.

  • 91 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 54 and 70; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 49 and 58. Vardanyan 2015, (...)
  • 92 vasn mełac‘ ew č‘ar gnac‘ic‘ meroc‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 140-141; Armenia and the Crusades  (...)
  • 93 vasn bazmac‘eal ew covanman mełac‘ meroc‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 193; Armenia and the Crusade (...)
  • 94 Ays ełew skizbn awerman ew k‘akeloy tann arewelic‘ ew Yunac‘, zors yałags mełac‘ meroc‘ ěnkalak‘ zh (...)

43A possible interpretation of Matt‘ēos’s reliance on eschatological prophecies is that they provided a framework through which to see recent events as having order and meaning. While prophecies are able to arrange historical data within a comprehensible pattern, authors who employ them do not usually do so solely to give shape to the past as much as to contour the present and future. Although Matt‘ēos may not emphasize divine punishment as an encouragement for moral reform to the same degree as Aristakēs, that notion is not absent from his thinking. For example, in both prophecies of Kozeṙn, the destruction caused by the Turkic invasions is described as divine wrath for the iniquities of the population and particularly of the clergy.91 Similarly, referring to the Seljūq invasion of 1062-63, Matt‘ēos remarks that God had delivered them up to the enemy “because of our sins and evil ways”, in accordance with the prophecy of Ps. 43 (44), 10-12.92 The destruction of “this realm” in 1070-71 by Turkish forces noted above is ascribed by Matt‘ēos to “the multiplication and inundation of our sins”.93 Again, when relating the tremendous damage of a severe famine combined with an attack of Turkish forces in 1079-80 in the regions of Antioch, Cilicia, and Marash, Matt‘ēos exclaims: “This was the beginning of the destruction of the house of the eastern [Christians] and Greeks; for, because of our sins, we were punished by God, the Just Judge, in accordance with that which the Savior said: ‘Every tree which does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’”.94 Just as in the previous examples, Matt‘ēos perceives the devastation visited upon the Christians on this occasion as divine punishment for their sins.

  • 95 See also La Porta 2011, p. 109-110, and MacEvitt 2007, p. 158-159, 180, for Matt‘ēos’s concern with (...)

44The verse he cites as justification for this cruel treatment of Christians is Mt. 7,19, but the same words also occur in Mt. 3,10 and Lk. 3,9. In the latter two instances, it is John the Baptist, not Jesus, who pronounces them and he does so within the context of urging people to repent. In Mt. 7,19, Jesus speaks these lines to warn people about following false prophets who are ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing. The citation of this verse against following false prohpets certainly points to one of the sins that Matt‘ēos blames eastern Christians generally and Greeks in particular for having committed and for which they must repent; namely, apostasy or conversion to Islam. In both prophecies of Kozeṙn, Christian denial of their faith features prominently among the signs of the release of Satan from his thousand-year imprisonment. The eschatological implications of the prophecies Matt‘ēos uses in the Chronicle, even if not explicitly articulated, would have been clear to an audience well familiar with them and intensified the urgency of a message that stressed remaining faithful to one’s ethno-religious identity.95

  • 96 odn današunč‘ ew mahaber, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 118; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 86.
  • 97 La Porta 2011, p. 109-110.

45Uṙhayec‘i also uses equally demeaning and depersonalizing characterizations of Muslims as Aristakēs, again referring to them as types of beasts. Their arrival and incursions into Armenia are often depicted as ominous meteorological events, such as a “bitter and fatal wind”.96 In another correspondence with Lastivertc‘i, Matt‘ēos reserves similar invective only for an internal other, in this instance, the Armenian Chalcedonian Philaretos.97 By creating a clear separation between the Armenian Apostolic Christian population from the Muslim Turks and Armenian Chalcedonians, he reinforces the boundanries of communal identity. Unlike Aristakēs, however, Uṙhayec‘i is willing to speculate upon the association between fidelity to ethno-religious identity and positive historico-political change. According to him, the evidence for this connection is to be found in prophecy.

  • 98 An English translation of the Armenian version of the relevant portions of these Psalms as well as (...)

46Matt‘ēos’s employment of Psalms 43 (44) and 77 (78), the two biblical prophetic texts that appear in the Chronicle most often, exemplifies this aspect of the relationship between history and prophecy in the Chronicle.98 Select verses of each pslam are unpacked over the course of the narrative that underscore Matt‘ēos’s appreciation of the pedagogic and paraenetic purpose of history as realized in biblical prophecy. It is not a coincidence that both psalms evoke historical experience that has been passed down to the present as their guides. Ps. 43 (44) begins “we have heard with out own ears, God, what our fathers related to us (zor hark‘n mer patmec‘in mez). The work which you did in their days; in the first days”; while Ps. 77 (78) declares itself a parable spoken “from the beginning” that “we heard and know, and our fathers related to us (hark‘n mer patmec‘in mez)”. Both psalms talk about first things and use the phrase, “our fathers related to us”. We should also observe that in Armenian, the verb here translated as “to relate”, patmel, in its nominal form, patmut‘iwn, denotes “history”.

  • 99 Translation is from The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version; all other English ver (...)

47The text of Ps. 43 (44) seeks divine deliverance of Israel from her enemies. According to the psalmist, although God had been the instrument of Israel’s prior victories, He has abandoned her and let her been slaughtered by her foes. He therefore asks God to reverse His course, rise up, and come to Israel’s assistance. Verses 17 (18)-22 of the psalm are usually understood to voice a denial of Israel’s past sins of apostasy as a justification for such punishment. This is clear from the English translation of v. 17: “All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten thee or been false to thy covenant”.99 However, the Masoretic text, followed by the LXX and the Armenian Bible, do not read “though we have not…”, but “and we have not…”. As Berlin has emphasized:

  • 100 Berlin 2005, p. 73.

Verses 18-22 is not a denial that sin led into exile, but a statement of the faithfulness of the people under circumstances adverse to the practice of their religion. Forgetting the name of God and spreading their hands to a strange god (v. 21) are precisely the temptations faced by the exiled community in a foreign country, far from the “place where the name of the Lord resides,” where pagan worship was readily accessible and where worship of the God of Israel was problematic, theologically speaking. Despite being in this pagan environment, the exiles continue to pray to God (v. 21), and to keep the covenant and obey its stipulations (vv. 18-19).100

48According to this reading, the psalm is not one that proclaims childish incredulity for contemporary difficulties, but one that reinforces faith and devotion to the covenant in the face of calamity.

  • 101 For an overview of which psalms were commonly used in Armenian historiographical literature and how (...)
  • 102 Agat‘angełos 1976, p. 146-217.
  • 103 Ibidem, p. 215. The citation of v. 23 is mixed with that of v. 26.

49The evocation of Ps. 43 (44) in some Armenian historiographical texts prior to Matt‘ēos’s Chronicle indicate that the psalm possessed such an interpretative possibility within the Armenian tradition as well.101 For example, the received account of the conversion of the Armenians to Christianity attributed to Agat‘angełos contains the story of the martyrdom of a group of nuns led by a certain Gayanē who had fled the Roman Empire to Armenia.102 The Emperor Diocletian alerted the king of Armenia, Trdat, to their presence and informed him that among the nuns was the beautiful Hṙip‘simē. Although the emperor had originally desired to wed her, he notified Trdat that if the latter found her and similarly desired her, he could keep her. The king’s men found the nuns and dragged Hṙip‘simē to the royal court where she and her companions refused to succumb to Trdat. After Hṙip‘simē rejected Trdat’s violent advances, the king ordered her and her fellow nuns to be martyred. Following his murder of Hṙip‘simē, Trdat blamed Gayanē for encouraging her protégé to remain faithful to her vows, and commanded that she be tortured and killed. Immediately prior to her execution, Gayanē expresses her gratitude to the Lord for deeming her worthy of a martyr’s death and recites Ps. 43 (44), 22-23/26.103

  • 104 Ełišē 1982, p. 100.
  • 105 Łazar P‘arpec‘i 1991, p. 139.
  • 106 Ibidem, p. 161.

50In his History of Vardan and the Armenian War, which recounts Armenian armed resistance to the Sasanian policy of imposing Zoroastrianism on the Christian population of Armenia in the mid-fifth century, Ełišē (Vth-VIth c.) recounts how Armenian nobles were summoned to the Sasanian court and commanded to abandon their faith by Shāh Yazdegird II. Upon refusing to do so, they were imprisoned, whereupon Ełišē has them evoke Ps. 43 (44), 14 in a prayer for deliverance.104 In his account of the same war, the historian Łazar P‘arpec‘i (Vth-VIth c.) records that the Armenian priests captured in the aftermath of the Armenian loss at the battle of Awarayr blessed the nobles who had been imprisoned with them and consoled the nobles by reminding them that the Lord was with them and that “he has indeed come and is in our midst; he will free you from the bonds in which you stand, and will preserve you in the hope of his support. He will let you say with frank boasting: ‘For you we die daily. We have been reckoned as sheep for slaughter’ (Ps. 43 [44], 22; Rom. 8,36)”.105 Later in the narrative, Łazar alludes to the same verse but applies it to the Armenian widows of the martyred soldiers and wives of the imprisoned nobles.106

  • 107 T‘ovma Arcruni 1985, p. 225.
  • 108 Ibidem, p. 228.

51The historian T‘ovma Arcruni explicitly cites 43 (44), 22 twice in his early tenth-century History of the House of the Arcrunik‘. The context for both citations is an exhortation for the maintenance of the Christian faith in the face of persecution and martyrdom. The first time, T‘ovma relates that three members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy who had been imprisoned by the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (reg. 847-61) sang the verse.107 They had criticized Islam in the Caliph’s presence and refused to convert. T‘ovma clearly contrasts their steadfastness and the eventual martyrdom of one of them with the apostasy of prince Bagarat Bagratuni which the latter justified by claiming that “apostasy because of danger of suffering does no harm if one secretly keeps in one’s heart the confession of faith”.108 T‘ovma equates that assertion with the Elkesite heresy and considers it to be particularly pernicious.

  • 109 Ibidem, p. 235-236.

52The context of the second utterance of the verse is similar to that of first. After entering the city of Duin to winter there, the ‘Abbāsid general Bughā summoned several nobles and members of the cavalry before him and ordered that they accept Islam. They refused and immediately before their martyrdom exclaimed Ps. 69,2 (70,1) and 43 (44), 22.109 These examples demonstrate that an interpretative tradition of Ps. 43 (44) existed in Armenian that viewed the psalm as a declaration of faithfulness to Armenian Christianity in circumstances where such an explicit religious allegiance was inconvenient to say the least and where conversion could relieve the pressure on the historical actors. Although most of these citations focus on v. 22, Ełišē’s allusion to v. 14 indicates that this interpretation was applied to the entire psalm and not limited to that particular verse.

  • 110 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 140-141 and 151; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 98-99 and 104-105.

53Given this interpretative tradition among Armenian historiographers, I suggest that when Matt‘ēos employs Ps. 43 (44), he does not merely articulate a rhetorical fulfillment of prophetic punishment for sins, but also reminds his audience of their covenant with God and their need to remain faithful to it despite the altered socio-political environment. Matt‘ēos cites Ps. 43 (44) on three occasions. Although they do not occur in the same passage, the first two references to the psalm interlock as he first cites vv. 10-12 in II, 16 and then vv. 13-14 in II, 23.110 As noted above, the first deployment occurs when Matt‘ēos describes the Turkish attack of 1062-63 as the fulfillment of Ps. 43 (44), 10-12. Far from using the psalm to deny Armenian responsibility for the attack, he explicitly remarks that this destruction happened because of their prior sins. Simultaneously, the psalm reminds his contemporary audience of the need to remain steadfast in their faith despite such dire circumstances.

  • 111 k‘akteal apakanec‘aw hayrenatunn mer xleal xaxtec‘aw himn bnakut‘ean Hayastan azgac‘s, oč‘ mnac‘ te (...)
  • 112 Vačaec‘er zžołovurds k‘o aanc‘ gnoy, ew oč‘ goy t‘iw ałałaki meroy. ararer zmez yaaks het‘anosac (...)

54Matt‘ēos relies upon the psalm a second time when portraying the situation after the Bagratuni surrender of the kingdom of Kars to the Byzantine Empire in exchange for lands in Tzamandos, Comana, and Amasia. According to Matt‘ēos, the king’s removal along with that of his nobles left Armenia vulnerable to attack from the Turks and “our ancestral home, was smashed and destroyed; the foundation of the home of our Armenian peoples was extirpated and shaken; no place for hope of refuge remained, and we were delivered into the servitude of infidel peoples and foreign beasts”.111 Matt‘ēos then exclaims that this was the fulfillment of Ps. 43 (44), 13-14, “You sold your people for nothing, and our pleas were without number; you made us despised before our neighbors, a joke and a laughing-stock to those who surrounded us. On account of this we pray and say: Turn to us God, our savior, and turn your anger away from us”.112 Taking into account Matt‘ēos’s earlier admission that such attacks had been justified through the Armenians’ prior behavior, this explanation should not be read as a lament or complaint against God. Instead, it reinforces that we read the two passages together as linked by the verses of the psalm, and in the light of v. 18: “All this happened to us, and we did not forget your name nor did we violate your covenant”. The Turkish attacks are not just the historical fulfillment of biblical verses that presage destruction, they directly relate to the current situation of Matt‘ēos’s audience to reinforce the idea of maintaining faithfulness to the covenant in the context of a challenging religious environment.

  • 113 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 253; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 164.
  • 114 As Andrews 2009b notes, in the Armenian historiographical tradition, “[t] he history of the Armenia (...)

55Matt‘ēos’s use of Ps. 43 (44) culminates in II, 110 when he describes the coming of the Crusaders as the Lord’s awakening, citing 43 (44), 23.113 If the first two instances where Matt‘ēos quotes the psalm communicate that divine punishment was justified and emphasized the need for Armenians to remain loyal to the covenant, this third reference provides the proof that God rewards such faithfulness by turning back his anger. According to Uṙhayec‘i, just as the psalm prophesied what happened to Israel, so too did it prophesy what happened to those Armenian Christians at the time of the millennium who experienced the Byzantine annexation of the Armenian kingdoms and the Seljūq invasions. More importantly, it remains operative for and applicable to Matt‘ēos’s audience which is living in the first quarter of the twelfth century.114 Uṙhayec‘i, then, does not consider biblical prophecy to be fulfilled in a single historical moment; rather, prophecy repeatedly unfolds throughout historical time. The author is thus able to exhort his readers not to forget God’s name and violate the covenant as he gradually opens the meaning of the psalm in his narrative.

  • 115 Greenstein 1990, p. 208: “In opposition to nearly all modern exegetes, who view the psalm flatly as (...)
  • 116 Berlin 2005, p. 82-83: “The psalm [78], then, is not about history per se, nor is it a condemnation (...)
  • 117 Agat‘angełos 1976, p. 425. For a thorough discussion of the use of this citation from Ps. 77 [78] i (...)
  • 118 See above, n. 42.

56In addition to Ps. 43 (44), 23, Matt‘ēos cites Ps. 77 (78) in that same passage. Like Ps. 43 (44), Ps. 77 (78) includes a review of Israel’s history and has often been understood as a litany of condemnations against her. More recent readings of the psalm, however, have emphasized that its rhetorical use of history and memory is a call for reform115 and of restoration.116 Although the psalm is not relied upon greatly in the Armenian historiographical tradition, there is some evidence for the existence of such an interpretation within it. For example, Agat‘angełos quotes vv. 5-8 at the end of his History in a passage which clearly elucidates the paraenetic role of remembering the past. He prefaces his citation by explaining that he has not written his narrative merely to praise those saints and martyrs of the past, but to provide “an inspiring example to their spiritual offspring”.117 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i’s apparent need to qualify Ps. 77 (78), 61, noted above, by denying any hope in the coming of Christ implied in v. 65 further suggests that the psalm bore positive notions of salvation in certain Armenian circles.118

  • 119 See above, p. 287.
  • 120 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 186; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 125.
  • 121 “Fire ate their young men, and no one mourned for their virgins; and their priests fell to the swor (...)

57To return to the Chronicle, as with the quote from Ps. 43 (44), 23, Matt‘ēos uses verses 77 (78), 65-66 to portray the arrival of the Crusaders as the Lord’s waking up and punishing his enemies. As I mentioned above, an allusion to v. 65 also occurs in the second prophecy of Yovhannēs Kozeṙn.119 Although we cannot be absolutely certain about the degree to which Matt‘ēos had a hand in the composition of the second prophecy, it seems appropriate to consider the two passages in dialogue with each other. This may be supported by the fact that between them, at II, 48, Matt‘ēos again makes an intriguing reference to the psalm.120 The passage describes the destruction of the monastic complexes found on the Black Mountain north of Antioch in an attack of 1066-67 by the Seljūqs. When describing the slaughter of the monks and the priests, Uṙhayec‘i exclaims that all this happened according to the prophecy of David and he begins by quoting Ps. 77 (78), 63-64.121 He continues, however, not with Ps. 77 (78), 65, but with Ps. 78 (79), 3. In other words, at the moment when 77 (78), 65 is expected to appear, Matt‘ēos substitutes Ps. 78 (79), 3.

58By replacing 77 (78), 65 with 78 (79), 3 Matt‘ēos both looks back to the second prophecy of Kozeṙn in I, 64 and anticipates the coming of the Crusaders in II, 110. The absence of 77 (78), 65 here is marked as it is assumed to follow 77 (78), 63-64, especially since the allusion to it in Kozeṙn’s prophecy had already prepared the ground for its appearance. By delaying his deployment of the verse, Matt‘ēos heightens the tension over its fulfillment. His choice of the eschatologically charged 78 (79), 3 to supplant 77 (78), 65 must also be considered deliberate. While 77 (78), 63-64 present themselves as particularly apposite to the massacre of monks and ecclesiastics, the use of 78 (79), 3 is not dictated by the historical context. In addition to exploiting the structural correlation between 78 (79), 3 and the verses in Ps. 77 (78), by shifting to this exegetically laden verse, Matt‘ēos further amplifies the expectation of fulfillment inherent in 77 (78), 63-64; a tension that is not resolved until II, 110. The prophecy of Ps. 77 (78) thus unfolds over the course of the narrative in a way similar to that of Ps. 43 (44) described above, and historical events “prove” its accuracy –as well as that of the prophecy of Kozeṙn– and the hope for salvation it contains.

  • 122 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 253; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 164.
  • 123 Ibidem.

59Matt‘ēos finally brings together Ps. 43 (44), 23 and 77 (78), 65 in II, 110 in order to proclaim the arrival of the Crusaders.122 Their simultaneous appearance at this particular moment would seem to point to their fulfillment and the resolution of the tension that had been accumulating through the course of the narrative. This expectation is further raised by Matt‘ēos’s prior assertion in II, 109 that the prophecies of St. Nersēs and Daniel 7,7 were fulfilled at this time by the coming of the Romans.123 As posited earlier, however, Matt‘ēos does not concieve of the fulfillment of prophecy as a single event; instead, he here again seeks to articulate that just as prophecy has been fulfilled in biblical history, it has also been fulfilled –despite appearances– in recent history, and thus his audience should have faith that it will continue to be fulfilled in the future.

  • 124 Andrews 2009b, p. 110.
  • 125 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 300-301; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 196-197.
  • 126 Andrews 2009b, p. 120.
  • 127 In the introductory section to the final of his Chronicle, Matt‘ēos expresses his desire that “thes (...)

60Matt‘ēos’s employment of these psalms corresponds well to Andrews’s thesis concerning the central role of prophecy in Matt‘ēos’s work. She contends that “the use of prophecy in the Chronicle… is much more than a means of describing recent calamity… it is the key to understanding the entire narrative thrust of the Chronicle.124 In particular, Andrews argues that Matt‘ēos constructed his work around the second prophecy of Yovhannēs Kozeṙn. The disappointment of the Crusades, however, posed a distinct challenge to the structure of his narrative as it confused Matt‘ēos’s contemporary context and discouraged his audience. Yet, according to Matt‘ēos, even that setback was prophesied by Mark the hermit, a Syrian monk and healer who lived on a mountain in the province of Mokk‘, to the south of Lake Van.125 Andrews further speculates that Matt‘ēos may have looked for possible redemption through the growing power of the Georgian kingdom under the rule of David the Restorer, although she concedes that it is impossible to determine exactly whence Matt‘ēos expected this resurgence to come.126 While the future was uncertain, the “proof” of prophetic revelation as demonstrated through the repeated fulfillment of the psalms supports Matt‘ēos’s underlying belief that the promised “good times” will come.127

  • 128 Bnaw amenewin oč‘ karac‘ak‘ imanal, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 141; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, (...)

61In as much as Matt‘ēos is a Christian cleric, his perception of history is teleological and presented as the fulfillment of divine providence. Nonetheless, his course of history does not remain simply programmatic; rather, it is above all pedagogic. As he attempts to demonstrate through historical precedent, prophecies and specific natural phenomena provide signs that serve as guideposts about the present and future. In this way, prophecy and its historical fulfillment do not diminish historical agency, they inform it. I mentioned earlier that Matt‘ēos envisioned certain military attacks as a form of divine punishment for sins, implying that such attacks were not inevitable, but the result of sinful acts. In the same context, he also emphasizes the necessity of knowing how to read signs. When describing the Seljūq attack of 1062-63, he remarks that the invaders took a large number of captives back with them to Persia. When “the infidels” saw them, they wondered how come the captives were completely unprepared for the attack and did not have any foresight through a rumor or sign of what was going to happen. The captives responded that although the signs did occur, they were “completely unable to understand [them] at all”.128 The story, regardless of its authenticity, highlights that Matt‘ēos perceived natural phenomena and prophecies to provide signs that one must learn how to read, not just to understand what has happened, but also to be prepared for the future.

Conclusion

62Aristakēs’s account of the interpretation of the eclipse of 1033 and Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i’s discussion of the same event indicate that the millennium of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection triggered eschatological anxieties among Armenian political and intellectual elites. In the immediate aftermath of the celestial event, the learned cleric Yovhannēs Kozeṙn prophesied that the eclipse marked the advent of the Antichrist. As that prophecy did not come to fruition, these later reporters of the eclipse were forced to re-explain its significance and reassert the efficacy of prophecy. Both authors used prophetic discourse to enforce normative codes of behavior – namely, adherence to one’s ethno-religious community and its moral standards– in their audiences as well as “to other” external foes, particularly the Muslim Turks, and internal sectarians in order to further strengthen communal identity.

63Nonetheless, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i and Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i employed different strategies for interpreting prophetic discourse in their histories. Lastivertc‘i forsook any overtly eschatological dramatic interpretation of events that foregrounded a political restoration of Armenia. Rather than predict salvation through a political revival, he attempted to foster a spiritual reawkening among his fellow Armenian Chrsitians through his presentation of the events of the eleventh century as a series of spiritual conflicts. Towards that end, he downplayed the eschatological interpretation of the eclipse, studiously historicized biblical verses that were eschatologically marked in the Armenian tradition, and excluded from his narrative any reference to extra-biblical prophecies of the eschaton that had developed by his time.

64By contrast, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i not only embraced Kozeṙn’s dire prediction held at arm’s length by Lastivertc‘i, but also constructed his narrative around a new iteration of it. The coming of the Crusades at the end of the eleventh century resurrected notions of imminent political salvation, and Matt‘ēos’s Chronicle provides an example of how prophecies could be redeployed to suit new historical contexts. In his work, Uṙhayec‘i endeavoured to illustrate that history had in fact substantiated the accuracy of biblical and extra-biblical prophecies and that it instructs its students to remain steadfast in their faith. Despite these differences in the two authors’ strategies, Aristakēs and Matt‘ēos share the notion that the dynamic between history and prophecy is one of pedagogy and paraenesis and that the study of history affirms prophecy’s legitimacy.

Annexes

Appendix

Psalm 43 (44)

1. To the completion. Wisdom for the sons of Korah, a Psalm of David, 43.

2. We have heard with our own ears, God, what our fathers related to us. The work which you did in their days; in the first days.

3. Your hand demolished the heathens and felled them; you tormented the peoples and removed them.

4. They did not inherit the earth by their sword, nor did their arm save them, but your right hand and your arm and the light of your countenance, since you were pleased with them.

5. You yourself are my king and my God, who ordained the salvation of Jacob.

6. With you let us strike our enemies; with your name let us disdain those who have risen up against us.

7. I have not trusted in my bow, and my sword will not save me.

8. But you saved us from the hands of our enemies, and you shamed those who hate us.

9. Let us boast in God every day, and profess his name forever.

10. But now you have repulsed and rejected us; and You, God, did not go forth with our armies.

11. You turned us back from our enemies, and those who hate us ravished us.

12. You delivered us like sheep to sacrifice, and you dispersed us among the heathens.

13. You sold your people for nothing, and our pleas were without number;

14. You made us despised before our neighbors, a joke and a laughing-stock to those who surrounded us.

15. You have made us an example for the heathens; a shaking of the head for the people,

16. All day my reproach is before me; the shame of my face covers me.

17. By the voice of he who abuses and slanders us; by the face of our enemy and he who persecutes us

18. All this happened to us, and we did not forget your name nor did we violate your covenant;

19. Nor did we turn back our hearts. You turned our ways from your path

20. You humbled us in a place of torments, and the shadow of death covered us.

21. If we have forgotten the name of our God, or if we have extended our hands to foreign gods,

22. But God sought this, for he examines the secrets of our hearts. For your sake we die daily, we reckon ourselves like sheep for slaughter.

23. Awake! Why do you sleep Lord? Arise and do not utterly reject us.

24. Why do you turn your face from us, forget our poverty and tribulations?

25. Our souls have been humbled unto the dust, and our backs have been joined to the earth.

26. Arise Lord, help us, and save us, for the sake of your name.

Psalm 77 (78), 1-8, 54-66

1. Wisdom for Asaph Attend, O people, to my laws. Lower your ears, to the words of my mouth.

2. I will open my mouth in parables, I will speak parables from the beginning.

3. As this we heard and know, and our fathers related to us.

4. Nothing was hidden from their sons in another generation, to relate the blessings of the Lord, his power, and his wonders which he did.

5. He established his testimony with Jacob, and he placed his laws over Israel, that which at the same time he commanded our fathers to show their sons,

6. So that they may know them in another generation. Sons who are born should arise and relate this to their sons,

7. So that they will put their hope in God, and not forget the works of God. They should ardently seek their commandents,

8. And not be like their fathers, an evil and bitter generation, a generation that did not reform its heart nor establish its spirit in God.

54. He brought them to the mountain of his sanctuary: the mountain which his right hand had obtained. He repulsed the heathens from their face, he divided for them the lot of his inheritance,

55. And he had the nation of Israel dwell in their tents.

56. They tested and embittered God, the most-high, and did not keep his testimony,

57. They turned and were lead astray like their fathers also, they turned and became like a crooked bow.

58. They turned and angered him in their temples, and they made him jealous with their graven images.

59. God heard and disdained them, and greatly rejected Israel,

60. He removed his tabernacle in Siloh, the tabernacle, which he had built amongst men,

61. He delivered their strength into captivity, and their beauty into the hands of their enemies.

62. He confined his people to the sword, and made his inheritance invisible.

63. Their young men ate fire, and no one mourned for their virgins;

64. And their priests fell to the sword, and no one wept for their widows

65. The Lord was awakened, as if from sleep, like a might one that discards the wine,

66. He struck back at his enemies, and made them a reproach for ever.

Psalm 78 (79), 1-3

1. O God, heathens have entered your inheritance, profaned your holy temple; they have rendered Jerusalem a hut for storing fruit;

2. They have cast the corpses of your servants as food for the birds of the sky and the bodies of your saints to the beasts of the land.

3. They spilled their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them.

Notes

1 Armenian names and text are transliterated in accordance with the Hübschmann-Meillet-Benveniste system. Biblical books are cited according to Y. Zōhrapean’s edition of the Armenian Bible, Astuacašunč‘ matean hin ew nor ktakaranac‘ 1805. All references to the Psalms follow the numbering in the Armenian version followed by the numbering of the Masoretic text and English translations of the Bible in parentheses. Translations of the most commonly referred to verses from the Psalms appear in an appendix to this essay. These include Ps. 43 (44); 77 (78), 1-8, 54-66; and 78 (79), 1-3. I would like to thank Prof. Jay Rubinstein of the University of Tennessee Knoxville for his comments.

2 Mentioned, for example, by Rudolphus Glaber in his Historiarum Libri Quinque, IV.ix.24, see Rudolphus Glaber 1989, p. 210-211; also by Sigebert of Gembloux, in his Chronicle composed c. 1100-06, cited in van Meter 2003, p. 344-345; cf. also Schaefer 2003, p. 330; Andrews 2009b, p. 114-115 and n. 12.

3 On the Byzantine annexation of the Arcruni and Bagratuni kingdoms, see Bartikian 1971.

4 For a recent discussion of the Turkish invasions of Armenia and the Caucasus, see Peacock 2005.

5 See La Porta 2013.

6 Critical edition: Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963; French translation (based on Yuzbašyan’s edition and Russian translation): Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973. An English translation by R. Bedrosian is also available online at his website www.rbedrossian.com. All translations of Aristakēs are my own.

7 Editions: Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1869; Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898. Citations of the text in this essay will refer to the edition of 1898. On the textual history of the Chronicle and the challenges facing an editor, see Andrews 2009a, p. 6-74. See now Andrews 2017, which unfortunately appeared after the writing of this contribution. French translation: Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1858; English translation: Armenia and the Crusades 1993. Below I provide book, chapter, and page references to Dostourian’s English translation, however, all translations of Matt‘ēos’s Chronicle are my own.

8 On the date of Matt‘ēos’s final entry, see Greenwood 2007, p. 225, 229, 234; followed also Andrews 2009b, p. 105-106 and n. 2. In printed editions and translations of the Chronicle, 1136 is usually suggested as Matt‘ēos’s final entry. The Chronicle was continued by Grigor the Priest down to 1162-63.

9 La Porta 2011.

10 Thomson 2003.

11 Thomson 2005, p. 40-41.

12 La Porta 2011, p. 107-108.

13 “but we put all this concerning those things down so that you may read and know that sin was the cause of all this which happened to us. So that looking at us, you may be terrified, [and learn] to be afraid before the Lord, and to tremble from awe of His power, to anticipate through confession and repentance His being moved to punishment before it happens and to prevent [it]” (bayc‘ zays amenayn yałags aynorik edak‘, zi ěnt‘erc‘ǰik‘ ew gitasǰik‘, etē mełk‘n ełew ays amenayni patčaṙ or ēanc‘ ěnd mez: Zi hayec‘eal ěnd mez` zarhuresǰik‘ erknč‘el yeresac‘ teaṙn, ew dołal yahē zōrut‘ean nora. kanxel yaṙaǰagoyn xostavanut‘eamb ew apašxarut‘eamb` vał žamanel k‘an zšaržel patuhasin, ew ěnddēm kal), Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 145; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 132.

14 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 49; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38.

15 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 142; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 129.

16 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 49-50; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38-39.

17 Thomson 2003, p. 83.

18 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 46; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 32-33.

19 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 22; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 2.

20 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 23; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 4.

21 If not intentionally inserted by Aristakēs (see below), Tabēēlay is clearly a scribal error for Ṙomelay or Hṙomelay, almost certainly from confusion with Tabelay in Isaiah 7,6 (Arm). This error must have slipped into the manuscript tradition early and was possibly made by Aristakēs himself as the variants listed in Yužbašian’s apparatus all contain the initial t- and medial -b-. In their translations Canard and Berbérian as well as Bedrosian “correct” to Romelias.

22 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 23; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 4-6.

23 The text is found in ms. 706 of the Mesrop Maštoc‘ Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran), Yerevan, Armenia, dated to 1680.

24 Rosenstiehl 2014, esp. p. 254-263.

25 Mesrop Vayoc‘jorec‘i 2010, p. 722. The Vision as preserved in the vita of St. Nersēs I the Great (sed. 353-73) includes a reference to the Franks, which suggests a twelfth-century date of composition. The tenth-century composer of the vita, Mesrop Vayoc‘jorec‘i, however, notes in his colophon to the work that the text includes a vision of St. Nersēs. Presently we cannot be absolutely certain of the original form of the vision, but it seems most likely that it was only updated to include the reference to the Franks, rather than wholly interpolated in the twelfth century. Nevertheless, the vision is considerably expanded from the one attributed to Nersēs in the fifth-century Buzandaran (Epic Histories) attributed to P‘awstos on which it is based, The Epic Histories 1989, IV.xv, p. 142.

26 Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, p. 88-90.

27 Hippolytus Werke 1897, p. 38.

28 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 49; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38. See also, below.

29 Rosenstiehl 2014, p. 256-257. Y. Zōhrapean’s edition of the Armenian Bible, Astuacašunč‘ matean hin ew nor ktakaranac‘ 1805, is the most commonly referenced edition of the Armenian Bible and is the one that appears in the apparatuses of the Cambridge and Göttingen editions of the Septuagint, see Cox 1984.

30 No variants to this reading are provided in the apparatus to the Zōhrapean Bible.

31 Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, p. 273.

32 Zōhrapean relied for his text on Venice, Mekhitarist Library, 1508, which was copied in 1319 by a scribe named Yohanēs. The scribe used the text of Gēorg Skewṙac‘i, a monk of the famous Cilician monastery of Skewṙa, as his exemplar, Cox 1984, p. 70.

33 Stone 2006 (originally published in 1973) long ago pointed out the criterion on which an edition of the book could be made. It is worth noting that one of the two manuscripts he determined from his sample collation could best serve as a base text, Jerusalem, Armenian Patriarchate, 1930 (1323), “is almost totally identical with Zohrabian’s text”, p. 602.

34 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 105; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 96.

35 Ew kat‘sayn or Eremiayi yeandn c‘uc‘aw` or i hiwsisoy i haraw jgēr yaynžam zc‘nc‘ułs eandeann, ayžm i harawoy i hiwsis ahagin eandeamb, ew kizeal apakaneac‘ zazgs k‘ristonēic‘, ibidem.

36 The authorship of the work was also misattributed to Movsēs Kałankatuac‘i; on questions of authorship and dating, see The History of the Caucasian Albanians 1961, p. xvii-xx.

37 La Porta 2016, p. 367-369; Zuckerman 2007. A different division of these chapters is given in Greenwood 2002.

38 The History of the Caucasian Albanians 1961, p. 106.

39 La Porta 2016, p. 369-370.

40 Edition: Yovhannēs Drasxanakertc‘i 1867, p. 295, 344; English translation: Yovhannēs Drasxanakertc‘i 1987, p. 175, 193; La Porta 2016, p. 383-387.

41 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 77; this section is omitted in the French translation. An English translation of the Armenian version of these verses may be found in the appendix to this essay.

42 Edition: Łewond 1887, p. 8-11; English translation: History of Lewond 1982, p. 51-52; cf. Greenwood 2012, p. 150-153; and Greenwood 2017; La Porta 2016, p. 372-374.

43 K‘ristos yamē zzart‘nuln, ew oč‘ orpēs yaynžam, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 79; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 67.

44 gazank‘ vayri ew ěntani` ełen gerezman diakanc‘n. vasn zi oč‘ goyr or t‘ałēr ew harkawor hołown cackēr zxołxołealsn, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 136; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 123.

45 Łewond 1887, p. 10; History of Lewond 1982, p. 51; La Porta 2016, p. 372-373. Although Łewond is a witness to the eschatological application of these verses, he does not share that interpretation, see below n. 47.

46 Ps.-Methodius 1992, XIII, 19.

47 La Porta 2014c, p. 521 and n. 70, where, however, the connection to the Psalm is not made, although it is to Ps.-Methodius.

48 See La Porta 2016, p. 374-377. The restrained approaches of Łewond and Aristakēs may be compared to the “subdued millenarianism”, as Greenwood aptly terms it, of Step‘anos Tarōnec‘i who wrote just after the turn of the first millennium, The Universal History of Step‘anos Tarōnec‘i 2017, p. 73-74. Greenwood briefly contrasts this “subdued millenarianism” with the eschatological attitudes of Aristakēs and Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i, but, as I hope the following argument will illustrate, I do not think Aristakēs’s expectations were as far from Step‘anos’s as Greenwood posits. Unfortunately, Greenwood’s excellent translation of and introduction to this work came out too late for me to address his careful analysis more fully within this essay.

49 On this expression, see Pogossian 2014, p. 462. Lastivertc‘i’s use of this phrase which also occurs in the Life of St. Nersēs and the Vision of St. Sahak further suggests that Aristakēs may have been familiar with these texts, even though he does not explicitly refer to them.

50 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 86; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 78.

51 The Antichrist saga has a pronounced focus on political affairs as the figure of the Antichrist operates in a manner completely contrary to the spiritual work of Jesus and achieves temporal power. This is not to deny that the Antichrist could be interpreted spiritually, but in the Armenian tradition, the Antichrist is most commonly identified with a socio-political foe.

52 See, for example, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 52-53, 80-81, 123; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 43 (the translation omits much of the passage), 68-69, 111.

53 Pakaseac‘ ays amenayn ew koreaw ewOč‘ ews yaweluc‘u yanel”, Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 60; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 48-49.

54 La Porta 2011, p. 107-108.

55 The prophetic vision of Sahak I the Great (sed. 388-428) is found in the History of Łazar Parp‘ec‘i, likely composed at the end of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century. On this vision see Muradyan 2014. On the Vision of St. Nersēs, see n. 24 above.

56 Agat‘angełos 1976, p. 272-295. On different interpretations of the vision, see Thomson 2014, p. 285-295; and Aleksidze 2014, p. 326-340.

57 Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 120-121; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, omits. On the T‘ondrakite movement, see Garsoïan 1991, p. 2093.

58 See La Porta 2014b.

59 In the passage noted above where Aristakēs describes the destruction of the land after the Seljūq invasion of 1054, he explicitly evokes the eschaton: “I became the bearer of bad news, not only to one village or one city, but to the entire world, from generation to generation until the end of time, because there isn’t any time or deed which is able to consume our [misery] except for the impure one of the desert [about] who [m] scripture forewarns” (gužarku ełē, oč‘ mium giułi kam mium k‘ałak‘i, ayl amenayn ašxarhac‘, azgac‘ yazgs minč‘ew i katarac žamanakac‘. k‘anzi č‘ik‘ inč‘ žamanak kam gorc or zmern hnac‘uc‘anel karē, bayc‘ t‘ē or zpłcoyn anapati zgušac‘uc‘anen girk‘), Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1963, p. 86; Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 78. It is unclear in this passage, however, whether Lastivertc‘i considered the eschaton to be imminent.

60 Thomson 2003, p. 83.

61 Ibidem, and p. 85 with regard to Matthew of Edessa (Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i).

62 Aune 1986, p. 90.

63 See MacEvitt 2007, p. 161-162.

64 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 52-54; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 47-49.

65 aysōr arjakac‘aw satanay i hazar amē kapanac‘ iwroc‘, or Hayoc‘ t‘uakann ew NHě am ē ew kal zaaǰinn ŠCB, or liniL am. zeresun amn tur yaaǰ k‘an zmkrtut‘iwnn ew kal zhazarn minč‘ew c‘aysōr, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 53; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 48.

66 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 66-74; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 56-60.

67 aysōr lc‘an hazar am č‘arč‘aranac‘ K‘ristosi xač‘elut‘eann ew arjakmann Beliaray, zor kapeal ēr zna P‘rkič‘n I Yordanan get, zor yaaǰin nšanēn c‘uc‘aw mez yaaǰ k‘an č‘orek‘tasan amn zor asac‘ak‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 68; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 57. Dostourian mistakenly translates “fourteen”, č‘orek‘tasan, as “forty”, as also noted in MacEvitt 2007, p. 176, n. 88.

68 This must have occurred in the city of Sebastia (Sivas) then under Byzantine control as the Arcruni king in 1021 had surrendered his kingdom in Vaspurakan to the Empire in exchange for Sebastia.

69 Samuēl Anec‘i only mentions one prophecy of Kozeṙn that should be dated to 1035-36: “In the days of Michael the Turks seized Edessa. The sun darkened amazingly and there was a terrible famine and mourning. The vardapet Yovhannēs Kozeṙn also spoke of the destruction of the clergy and the ruin of this realm by unworthy clergy”, Samuēl Anec‘i 1893, p. 106-107. In the printed edition this entry is assigned to the year 1037, but it should be noted that there is a two-year discrepancy in the reckoning of years according to the incarnation in the printed edition. For example, the next entry is dated to 1039, but is also assigned the Armenian year 486 (=12 March 1037-11 March 1038). Indeed, in a manuscript of the Chronicle, the Armenian year 484 (=13 March 1035-12 March 1036), is given for the eclipse, as noted by E. Prud’homme in Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1864, p. 52, n. 2. Mxit‘ar Ayrivanec‘i dates the occurrence to Friday, July 22, 1031, Histoire Chronologique par Mkhithar d’Airivank 1869, p. 90.

70 “And at that time, the valiant nation, who are the Franks, will arise and with a multitude of forces capture the holy city of Jerusalem, and the holy sepulcher which received God will be freed from captivity” (Ew yaynžam elc‘en azgn ariakank‘, ork‘ en Fang, ew bazmut‘eamb zōrōk‘ ac‘en zsurb k‘ałak‘n Erusałēm, ew azati i gerut‘enēn surb gerezmann Astuacěnkal), Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 72-73.

71 See the remarks of Canard and Berbérian in Aristakēs Lastivertc‘i 1973, p. 38, n. 1, and Andrews 2009b, p. 114.

72 The literature on the Last Emperor motif is quite large, but see in general, Alexander 1971; Alexander 1985; and more recently, Möhring 2000; and Greisiger 2014.

73 Thomson 2003, p. 87.

74 Andrews 2009b, p. 112-113.

75 Ibidem, p. 113-114.

76 Pogossian 2014, p. 475.

77 As noted, in the text of the prophecy Kozeṙn claims that the year is 485 (1036- 37). He “predicts” that there will be sixty years of Persian rule that will be ended by the Franks; 1036/37 + 60 = 1096/97. According to the prophecy, the Persians will subsequently ravage the land for fifty years until the appearance of a Roman Emperor; 1096/97 + 60 = 1146/47. Thus, if one understands the prophetic part of the prophecy to begin with the appearance of the Roman Emperor and everything that preceded it a vaticinium ex eventu, then one could conclude that whoever composed the second prophecy wrote slightly prior to 1146/47. By contrast, one could follow Andrews 2009b, p. 114, and consider the fifty years following the Crusades to be the onset of the “prophecy” as it is a “safe round interval” that should not be imbued with strict historical meaning.

78 Pogossian 2014, p. 474 and n. 74.

79 MacEvitt 2007, p. 158.

80 Step‘anos Ōrbēlean 1859, p. 188-201.

81 Topchyan 2014, p. 368. I independently reached a similar conclusion regarding the improbability of Step‘anos Siwnec‘i’s being the translator of the text based on a comparison of the Armenian version of the Apocalypse and Siwnec‘i’s translation of the works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite.

82 Stone 1998; Ervine 2000; van Donzel –Schmidt 2010, p. 42-44; Topchyan 2014, p. 369-370.

83 Guillaume de Rubrouck [William of Rubruck] 1990, p. 265-267; Thomson 2001, p. 77-78; van Donzel – Schmidt 2010, p. 44, n. 87; Topchyan 2014, p. 368-369. The “Acacron” mentioned by Rubruck is to be identified with the prophecies attributed to Agat‘on in the Armenian tradition, see below. According to Rubruck, his informant, an Armenian bishop, summarized the prophecy which predicted the eventual conversion of the peoples of the East to Christianity, “and such peace will reign in the world that the living will say to the dead, ‘Alas for you who have not lived to see these times’”, p. 267. We may note that this sentiment also appears in a version of the prophecies of Agat‘on after the destruction of the nation of archers at Tabrīz by Kostandianos: “The earth will be at peace like the garden of God and there will be [such] joy and merriment that the living will lament the dead. And they will say, ‘Woe to you who have not lived at this time of goodness’” (Xałałana [y] erkir ibrew zdraxt astucoy ew lini c‘ncut‘iwn ew uraxut‘iwn minč‘ew kendanik‘n apašawen zmeealsn. ew asasc‘en awał zjez or oč‘ žamanec‘ik‘ i barut‘iwn aysm žamanakis), Erevan, Mesrop Maštoc‘ Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran), Yerevan, Armenia, 8687, f. 99v. The expression is also found in the Counsel concerning the Antichrist of Vardan Aygekc‘i (1170-1235), La Porta 2014a, p. 92 and n. 3 referencing a similar idea in the Lament on the Fall of Edessa of Nersēs Šnorhali (1102-1173) composed in 1145 or 1146.

84 La Porta 2014a, p. 88, n. 2.

85 Greisiger 2014, esp. p. 175-183; cf. also Stoyanov 2014.

86 The author also appears as Agadron or Agat‘ang in the manuscripts. Zaroui Pogossian is currently preparing an edition of the various texts that fall under this name for the series Corpus Christianorum Scriptorum Orientalium.

87 Pogossian – La Porta 2017. The exact dates of composition of the Prophecies of Agat‘on and On the end of the world are unknown. The earliest copy of the former is found in a manuscript that dates to the thirteenth century and William of Rubruck again attests to its popularity by that time. The first manifestations of On the end of the world date to the sixteenth century. Pogossian, however, contends that, despite its later attestation in manuscripts, On the end of the world actually preserves a much earlier text, and she speculates that it may in fact be a work of translation.

88 ays ełew skizbn kataraci ew krkin awerman ašxarhis yanōrēn zōrac‘n T‘urk‘ac‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 193; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 129.

89 It should be noted that the word translated here as “world” (ašxarh), also signifies “realm”, as it was translated in the previous quote. Matt‘ēos’s earlier reference to both a “second destruction” and the Turks leads me to think that he intended the more restricted understanding of the term, while his evocation of the future coming of the Antichrist in this instance suggests that he has the larger notion of world in mind.

90 karapetk‘ en Neinn ew skizbn kataraci ašxarhis, ew ai banaloy hawatoc‘ ew astuacpaštut‘eanc‘ ew i katareloy greleac‘n i girs surbs, zor asac‘ surbn Nersēs ew ordi norin surb Isahak, ew zor xōsec‘aw i merum žamanakis surb vardapetn Yovhannēs` or asi Kozen, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 230; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 151.

91 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 54 and 70; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 49 and 58. Vardanyan 2015, p. 243-245, has correctly emphasized that this prophecy reflects a contemporary criticism of the religious and political elite of Armenia.

92 vasn mełac‘ ew č‘ar gnac‘ic‘ meroc‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 140-141; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 98-99.

93 vasn bazmac‘eal ew covanman mełac‘ meroc‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 193; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 129.

94 Ays ełew skizbn awerman ew k‘akeloy tann arewelic‘ ew Yunac‘, zors yałags mełac‘ meroc‘ ěnkalak‘ zhatuc‘umn yArdar Dataworēn Astucoy, ěst aynm` zor asac‘ P‘rkič‘n, et‘ēAmenayn ca` or oč‘ berē ptuł bari, hatani ew i hur arkani’”, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 218; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 144.

95 See also La Porta 2011, p. 109-110, and MacEvitt 2007, p. 158-159, 180, for Matt‘ēos’s concern with the loss of cultural identity.

96 odn današunč‘ ew mahaber, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 118; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 86.

97 La Porta 2011, p. 109-110.

98 An English translation of the Armenian version of the relevant portions of these Psalms as well as of 78 (79), 1-3, may be found in the appendix to this essay. For a different perspective on these psalms, and particularly the latter, in Matt‘ēos, see Pogossian 2014, p. 473-475; and cf. MacEvitt 2007, p. 157.

99 Translation is from The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version; all other English versions read similarly.

100 Berlin 2005, p. 73.

101 For an overview of which psalms were commonly used in Armenian historiographical literature and how, see Thomson 1996.

102 Agat‘angełos 1976, p. 146-217.

103 Ibidem, p. 215. The citation of v. 23 is mixed with that of v. 26.

104 Ełišē 1982, p. 100.

105 Łazar P‘arpec‘i 1991, p. 139.

106 Ibidem, p. 161.

107 T‘ovma Arcruni 1985, p. 225.

108 Ibidem, p. 228.

109 Ibidem, p. 235-236.

110 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 140-141 and 151; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 98-99 and 104-105.

111 k‘akteal apakanec‘aw hayrenatunn mer xleal xaxtec‘aw himn bnakut‘ean Hayastan azgac‘s, oč‘ mnac‘ tełi yusoy apawini, ełak‘ matnealk‘ i caayut‘iwn azgac‘ anōrinac‘ ew ōtar gazanac‘, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 151; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 105.

112 Vačaec‘er zžołovurds k‘o aanc‘ gnoy, ew oč‘ goy t‘iw ałałaki meroy. ararer zmez yaaks het‘anosac‘, całr ew aypn katakanac‘ aynoc‘ik` or šurǰ ēin zmeōk‘, ew vasn aysorik ałałakemk‘ ew asemk‘. darj amez Astuac P‘rkič‘ mer ew darjo zsrtmtut‘iwns k‘o i mēnǰ, ibidem.

113 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 253; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 164.

114 As Andrews 2009b notes, in the Armenian historiographical tradition, “[t] he history of the Armenians, as Christians of the ‘true’ (that is, non-Chalcedonian) faith, was the history of the chosen people of God, and could be acceptably drawn from Biblical patterns with which he was familiar”, p. 120.

115 Greenstein 1990, p. 208: “In opposition to nearly all modern exegetes, who view the psalm flatly as a historical condemnation, I shall read the psalm as an exercise in rhetoric, telling it like it is for the purpose of changing it. The psalmist, I shall suggest, practices memory, not to recount the past, but to prompt the kind of remembrance that leads to change”.

116 Berlin 2005, p. 82-83: “The psalm [78], then, is not about history per se, nor is it a condemnation of past sins, an anti-northern polemic, an ode to Zion, a call to unite all Israel under the Davidic monarchy and the Jerusalem Temple, or even just a lesson in memory to motivate the people to maintain their side of the covenant. It is a psalm of restoration –of comfort and hope in the belief that Judah, unlike Ephraim, will not be rejected forever. The psalm paints a picture of the past to give hope for the future”.

117 Agat‘angełos 1976, p. 425. For a thorough discussion of the use of this citation from Ps. 77 [78] in Agat‘angełos, see Calzolari 2003-2004.

118 See above, n. 42.

119 See above, p. 287.

120 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 186; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 125.

121 “Fire ate their young men, and no one mourned for their virgins; and their priests fell to the sword, and no one wept for their widows” [Ps. 77 (78), 63-64]. And “they spilled their blood like water around Jerusalem and there was no one to bury them” [Ps. 78 (79), 3]” ( “Zeritasards noc‘a eker hur, ew vasn kusanac‘ noc‘a oč‘ ok‘ sgac‘aw. ew k‘ahanayk‘ noc‘a ankan i sur, ew zayris noc‘a oč‘ ok‘ ēr or layr” ew tē`Hełin zariwns noc‘a orpēs ǰur šurǰ zErusałemaw, ew oč‘ ok‘ ēr or tałēr znosa”), ibidem.

122 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 253; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 164.

123 Ibidem.

124 Andrews 2009b, p. 110.

125 Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 300-301; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 196-197.

126 Andrews 2009b, p. 120.

127 In the introductory section to the final of his Chronicle, Matt‘ēos expresses his desire that “these events and tribulations will be a memorial for the future at the good time, when the Lord God will grant what was promised in the last times, when God will grant to the faithful the time which indeed will be filled with every happiness” (ays kataracs ew nełut‘iwns abari žamanakn, yoržam tac‘ē Tēr Astuac zxostac‘ac‘ealsn jetin žamanakin, yoržam tac‘ē Astuac hawatac‘eloc‘ zžamanakn` or li isk ic‘ē amenayn uraxut‘eamb), Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 277-278; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 181; cf. also Andrews 2009b, p. 108.

128 Bnaw amenewin oč‘ karac‘ak‘ imanal, Matt‘ēos Uṙhayec‘i 1898, p. 141; Armenia and the Crusades 1993, p. 99.

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California State University, Fresno

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