The
nineteenth century was the time for the rediscovery of the Armenian
past, with the two branches of the Mekhitarist Congregation in Venice
and Vienna leading the charge. A monk from Vienna, Rev. Clement
Sibilian, would become the pioneer of Armenian numismatics.
Born
Mgrdich Sibilian in Constantinople on February 17, 1824, he entered the
Mekhitarist monastery of Vienna in 1838. He became a member of the
congregation in 1842 and was ordained a celibate priest in 1845, taking
the name of Clement (Կղեմես
in Armenian). He had started learning numismatics in the classes of
Abbot Aristakes Azarian, who had begun the collection of coins of the
Congregation in 1825. In 1846 he started writing what would be his
magnum opus, Classification of Rupenian Coins, but
he left the manuscript aside when he understood the lack of primary
research in the field. He traveled through Armenia Minor in 1847-1849.
In 1851 he published two books of general interest in Vienna: Hernán Cortés or the Conquest of Mexico as Continuation of Christopher Columbus and Terdat’s Isolation, the Last Days, and the Death (the
latter was about Armenian king Terdat III). He was in Smyrna from
1853-1855. An attempt to go on a scientific expedition to Cilicia was
botched by his superiors’ decision to send him to Constantinople and
then, in October 1856, to Persia (Iran), where he spent twelve years at
the helm of the Armenian Catholic community in Ispahan. In the meantime,
he had started publishing articles on numismatics and antiquities in
Armenian and European journals.
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| Golden coin of King Levon I |
During
his sojourn in Persia, Sibilian visited Tehran (1857), Tiflis and
Echmiadzin (1864). Thus, he got acquainted with both the past of
Armenia, his subject of interest, and the present. He returned to
Constantinople in 1868 and went out in another field trip to Asia Minor
until 1870. Each of his travels was an opportunity to collect coins and
other antiquities, which he donated both to the museum of the
Congregation and to other European institutions. After a short return to
Vienna, he went back to Constantinople, where he started collaborating
with all Armenian cultural institutions of the city. He gave lectures in
the schools and published a textbook, Brief Geography for Children of Elementary School (1877).
In
1875 Sibilian was designated corresponding member of the Numismatic Society of
Vienna as an expert in Greek and Armenian coins. He classified the
ancient materials of the Ottoman Museum of Constantinople and in 1876
Sultan Abdul Aziz, in appreciation of his talents, designated him second
director of the museum. In late 1876 he finally was able to visit
Cilicia, and in April 1877 he was commissioned by the museum to go to
Mesopotamia to acquire materials. This trip would prove fatal. Sibilian,
physically weakened by continuous traveling, caught dysentery and
arrived in a semi-comatose state to Diarbekir, where he passed away
eight days later, on May 23, 1878, and was buried.
Shortly before his death, Sibilian had completed Classification of Rupenian Coins, where
he processed, classified, and chronologically established for the first
time more than two thousand coins of the Armenian state of Cilicia. The
manuscript remained in the family until the Mekhitarist Congregation
bought it and published it in 1892, in an edition prepared and updated
by Rev. Fr. Krikoris Kalemkiarian. In the preface, the editor noted that
the Mekhitarists of Vienna possessed a collection of 15,000 coins,
including 220 coins from the Arsacid dynasty and 2,232 coins from the
Cilician period, thanks to Sibilian’s continuous efforts. A review in
the journal Ararat of
the Catholicosate of Holy Echmiadzin remarked in 1893: “Here is a book
that deserves to ornate the table of each Armenian, if the memorials of
his ancestors are valuable to him, if he wants to have a permanent image
of those memorials before him.” The Armenian Numismatic Society of
California published a commemorative volume in 1980 on the centennial of
Sibilian’s death.
