Mesrop Mashtots
Mesrop Mashtots was an Armenian linguist, composer, theologian, statesman, and hymnologist. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church.
He is best known for inventing the Armenian alphabet AD, which was a fundamental step in strengthening Armenian national identity. He is also considered to be the creator of the Caucasian Albanian and, possibly, the Georgian script, though it is disputed.
Name
While Koriun, his chief biographer, only refers to him as Mashtots, Movses Khorenatsi and later Armenian historiography predominantly calls him Mesrop. It was not until the 20th century that he came to be referred to by both names, sometimes spelled with a hyphen. Some scholars, including Malachia Ormanian, maintain that Mashtots was his birth name, while Mesrop was his ecclesiastical name by which he was ordained. believed the opposite to be true. According to James R. Russell, Mashtots was his primary name, while Mesrop a secondary one, "possibly an epithet."The etymologies of both Mesrop and Mashtots have been widely debated. In his authoritative dictionary of Armenian names, Hrachia Acharian described Mashtots to be of uncertain origin. Nicholas Adontz believed it stemmed from Iranian mašt, which is also the origin of the name Mazdak. suggested an origin from the name of the Urartian goddess Bag-Mashtu. Russell argued that the original form of Mashtots may have been Maždoc‘, originated from Middle Parthian mozhdag and means "bearer of good news or reward". Today, Mesrop is a common male name and Mesropyan a common last name among Armenians.
There is more agreement about Mesrop. Acharian considered it to be of unknown origin, but noted that it is usually thought to have originated from "serovbe", Armenian for "seraph", a word of Biblical Hebrew origin. Russell described Mesrop a mysterious word, seemingly Syriac, "perhaps an epithet meaning 'seraphic'." Some scholars maintain that Mesrop is a blend of "Mar" and "Serob", a version of "Serovbe".
Background and early life
The date of birth of Mashtots is not well-established, but recent scholarship accepts 361. Others give 361–364 as the likely range. He was born in the village of Hatsekats in the canton of Taron, to a father named Vardan, who may have been a priest or a nobleman. Some scholars believe he was affiliated with the Mamikonian dynasty since Taron was their feudal domain. Others suggest he may have belonged to the lesser nobility or reject his noble origin at all. Leo believed he was the son of a peasant. According to Anania Shirakatsi, Vardan was an azat. Some scholars, including Stepan Malkhasyants, have identified Vardan with Vrik, mentioned by Pavstos Buzand. Vrik was the illegitimate son of Catholicos Pap, the grandson of Gregory the Illuminator. Mashtots, thus, may have been a second cousin to Catholicos Sahak Partev. Acharian outright rejected this theory, but it has been cited by Elizabeth Redgate. Other scholars, including Ormanian, believed Mashtots was the son of Vardan Mamikonian, the older brother of sparapet. This theory has been rejected by Hakob Manandian and Garnik Fntglian. James R. Russell writes that Mashtots' father was "probably a member of the Mamikonean clan."Another point of contention is whether Mashtots was a student of Nerses the Great, first mentioned by Khorenatsi. Both Acharian and Leo rejected it. Acharian noted that Mashtots probably studied at the prominent Surb Karapet Monastery, not far from his birthplace. Koriun tells that Mashtots received "Hellenic education," i.e. education in the Greek language. Besides his native Armenian, Mashtots knew Greek, Persian, and Syriac.
In late 380s Mashtots moved to Vagharshapat, Armenia's capital, where he began a career at the court of King Khosrov III. While Khorenatsi says that he worked as a royal secretary, both Koriun and Parpetsi assign him other positions as well, especially in the military. He was initially royal chancellor, then moved on to serve in the military after receiving training.
In c. 394 Mashtots became a clergyman and was ordained as a monk and lived in a monastery, in Goghtn. He, thereafter, became an ascetic hermit to live in the mountains and uninhabited areas. Mashtots then gathered a group of 40 disciples and began missionary work among Armenians, many of whom were still pagan. He begin his first mission in Goghtn around 395. He successfully spread Christianity in the area and expelled the pagans.
Life
, his pupil and biographer, writes that Mashtots received a good education and was versed in the Greek and Persian languages. On account of his piety and learning, Mesrop was appointed secretary to King Khosrov IV, in charge of writing royal decrees and edicts in Persian and Greek.Leaving the court, Mashtots took the holy orders and withdrew to a monastery with a few companions, leading a life of great austerity for several years. In 394, with the blessing of Sahak Part'ev, Mashtots set out on a proselytizing mission. With the support of Prince Shampith, he preached the Gospel in the district of Goghtn near the river Araxes, converting many.
Encouraged by the patriarch and the king, Mesrop founded numerous schools in different parts of the country, in which the youth were taught the new alphabet. He himself taught at the Amaras monastery of the Armenian province of Artsakh. However, his activity was not confined to Eastern Armenia. Provided with letters from the Catholicos, he went to Constantinople and obtained from emperor Theodosius the Younger permission to preach and teach in his Armenian possessions. Having returned to Eastern Armenia to report to the patriarch, his first thought was to provide religious literature for his countrymen. He sent some of his numerous disciples to Edessa, Constantinople, Athens, Antioch, Alexandria, and other centers of learning, to study the Greek language and bring back the masterpieces of Greek literature. The most famous of his pupils were John of Egheghiatz, Joseph of Baghin, Yeznik, Koriun, Moses of Chorene, and John Mandakuni.
Image:Dzeragir.jpg|left|thumb|150px|Verses of Mesrop Mashtots
The first monument of Armenian literature is the version of the Holy Scriptures. Isaac, says Moses of Chorene, made a translation of the Bible from the Syriac text about 411. This work was considered imperfect, for soon afterwards John of Egheghiatz and Joseph of Baghin were sent to Edessa to translate the Scriptures. They journeyed as far as Constantinople and brought back authentic copies of the Greek text with them. With the help of other copies obtained from Alexandria, the Bible was translated again from the Greek according to the text of the Septuagint and Origen's Hexapla. This version, now in use in the Armenian Church, was completed about 434.
The decrees of the first three ecumenical councils—Nicæa, Constantinople, and Ephesus—and the national liturgy were also translated into Armenian, the latter being revised on the liturgy of St. Basil, though retaining characteristics of its own. Many works of the Greek Fathers were also translated into Armenian. The loss of the Greek originals has given some of those versions a special importance; thus, the second part of Eusebius's Chronicle, of which only a few fragments exist in Greek, has been preserved entirely in Armenian. In the midst of his literary labors, Mashtots revisited the districts he had evangelized in his earlier years, and, after the death of Isaac in 439, looked after the spiritual administration of the patriarchate. He survived his friend and master by only six months. Armenians read his name in the Canon of the Liturgy and celebrate his memory on 19 February.
Mashtots is buried at a chapel in Oshakan, a historical village southwest from the town of Ashtarak. He is listed officially in the Roman Martyrology of the Roman Catholic Church; his feast day is 17 February.
Alphabet
Armenia lost its independence in 387 and was divided between the Byzantine Empire and Persia, which received about four-fifths of its territory. Western Armenia was governed by Byzantine generals, while an Armenian king ruled as Persian vassal over eastern Armenia. The principal events of this period are the reinvention of the Armenian alphabet, the revision of the liturgy, the creation of an ecclesiastical and national literature, and the revision of hierarchical relations. Three men are prominently associated with this work: Mashtots, Part'ev, and King Vramshapuh, who succeeded his brother Khosrov IV in 389.Armenians probably had an alphabet of their own, as historical writers reference an "Armenian alphabet" before Mashtots, but used Greek, Persian, and Syriac scripts to translate Christian texts, none of which was well suited for representing the many complex sounds of their native tongue. The Holy Scriptures and the liturgy were, to a large extent, unintelligible to the faithful and required the intervention of translators and interpreters.
Mashtots was assisted in inventing an Armenian writing system by Sahak and Vramshapuh. He consulted Daniel, a bishop of Mesopotamia, and Rufinus, a monk of Samosata, on the matter and created an alphabet of thirty-six letters; two more and F ) were added in the twelfth century.
The first sentence in Armenian written down by Mesrop after he invented the letters was the opening line of Solomon's Book of Proverbs:
The reinvention of the alphabet around 405 was crucial for Armenian literature and was significant in the creation of a separate idea of Armenian language and what was connected to it. "The result of the work of Isaac and Mesrop", says St. Martin, "was to separate for ever the Armenians from the other peoples of the East, to make of them a distinct nation, and to strengthen them in the Christian Faith by forbidding or rendering profane all the foreign alphabetic scripts which were employed for transcribing the books of the heathens and of the followers of Zoroaster. To Mesrop we owe the preservation of the language and literature of Armenia; but for his work, the people would have been absorbed by the Persians and Syrians, and would have disappeared like so many nations of the East".
Medieval Armenian sources also claim that Mashtots invented the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets around the same time. Most scholars link the creation of the Georgian script to the process of Christianization of Iberia, a core Georgian kingdom of Kartli. The alphabet was therefore most probably created between the conversion of Iberia under King Mirian III and the Bir el Qutt inscriptions of 430, contemporaneously with the Armenian alphabet.