Hrach Bartikyan


Hrach Mikayeli Bartikyan was an Armenian historian and specialist in Byzantine and medieval Armenian studies. The author of over 200 books, articles and monographs, Bartikyan was a full member of the Armenian Academy of Sciences and the head of its Medieval Studies department. He was also a member of several academic institutions, including the Greek Academy of Sciences, the Tiberian Academy of Rome, the Byzantine Studies Association of Greece, and is an honorary member of the Greek Civilization Establishment.

Life

Education

Born in Athens, Greece, Bartikyan attended a gymnasium, graduating in 1945. A year later, his family repatriated to the Soviet Armenia. He enrolled in the history program at Yerevan State University, obtaining his degree in 1953 and subsequently finding work at the Institute of History at the Armenian Academy of Sciences. In 1972, he received his Doktor nauk.

Career

Bartikyan's research focused on social movements and political and cultural relations between Armenians and the Byzantine Empire during the Middle Ages. A number of his articles centered on the Paulician and Tondrakian heretical sects and connections between medieval Armenian and Byzantine Greek literature. In the 1960s, he laid the groundwork for a translation project that aimed to translate important medieval Byzantine sources relating to Armenia and Armenians. Bartikyan translated and wrote the introductions to select excerpts from Procopius's, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus's, John Scylitzes's and Theophanes the Confessor's histories. Bartikyan also translated the twelfth-century Armenian chronicler Matthew of Edessa from classical to modern Eastern Armenian.
In addition to being a contributor to several chapters in the Armenian Academy of Sciences' eight-volume History of the Armenian People series, he wrote numerous entries on Byzantine and late medieval Armenian political and military figures, events, regions and cities in the Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia.
Along with fellow Soviet Byzantine scholars such as Alexander Kazhdan, Bartikyan was a regular participant to international conferences and medievalists' congresses. In April 2005, Bartikyan was awarded the Armenian President's Prize, which is "granted to successful candidates of art, culture and science," in the category of humanities.

Selected publications

Istochniki dlia izucheniia istorii pavlikanskogo dvizheniia . Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1961.
  • "Zametki o Vizantiiskom epose o Digense Akrite," Vizantiiskii vremennik 25.
  • "La généalogie du Magistros Bagarat, Catépan de l'Orient, et des Kékauménos," Revue des Études Arméniennes 2.
  • "L'enoikion à Byzance et dans la capitale des Bagratides, Ani, à l'époque de la domination byzantine," Revue des Études Arméniennes 6.
  • "Hayastani nvachume Byuzandakan kaysrutyan koghmits", Patma-Banasirakan Handes 49.Hellenismos kai Armenia. Athens: Hidryma Goulandre-Chorn, 1991.
  • "Armenia and Armenians in the Byzantine Epic," in Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry . David Ricks Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1993.Partenios Atenatsu Paghestini Kesariayi metropoliti patmutyun hunats yev hayots taradzaynutyan . Yerevan: Yerevan State University Press, 2005.