He was born Hovsep Shishmanian on September 16, 1822, in Constantinople, in an Armenian Catholic family. At the age ten, his parents sent him to the Mekhitarist monastery on the island of San Lazzaro (Venice), but after five years of studies, he refused to become a celibate priest, and in 1837 returned to his birthplace. He worked for a few years as a teacher of Armenian language, literature, and history, and in 1843 he traveled to Tiflis, starting a long journey through Eastern and Western Armenia to get acquainted with the places and the people of the homeland. He would later contribute his impressions to Armenian newspapers in Constantinople, adopting the pseudonym Dzerentz ( dzer means “old person” in Armenian).
In 1848 Dzerentz decided to pursue medical studies and departed for Paris, where he studied Medicine at the Sorbonne, while at the same time he taught at the Samuel-Moorat lyceum of the Mekhitarists in Paris. The revolution of 1848 in France, which spread throughout Europe, and the Italian liberation movement had a great impact over the future writer’s thinking. He made friends with other Armenian students in the French capital, like Krikor Odian, Nahabed Rusinian, and Stepan Voskan, who would have an important role in the “awakening” ( Zartonk ) of Western Armenian intellectual life.
After graduation, Dzerentz returned to Constantinople in 1853 and pursued his professional career, while actively participating in Armenian public life. He wrote articles about educational issues, participated in the preparatory works of the Armenian Constitution passed in 1860, and fought against the confessional disputes that plagued the Armenian Catholic community.
On the eve of the rebellion of Zeitoun (1862), Dzerentz traveled to Cilicia with the aim of working in the educational field and opening an agricultural school. However, he was subject to political persecution and forced to return to Constantinople.
Through Krikor Odian’s intervention, Dzerentz went to work at one of the hospitals of Constantinople as a physician in 1872. Two years later, his wife passed away, leaving him alone with his fourteen-year-old daughter Takouhi. A year later, the intrigues of some French Catholic nuns forced the director of the hospital to fire him. In 1876 the Ottoman government sent him to Cyprus, then an exile area, to work as a doctor.
Two years later, Dzerentz abandoned the Ottoman Empire and moved to Tiflis with his daughter, who had married there. In the last ten years of his life, he would become a very popular novelist, making an important contribution to the genesis and development of the historical novel. In 1877 he had published his first novel, Toros, Son of Levon , about the life and exploits of prince Toros of Cilicia (1145-1169), which enjoyed huge success. Once in Tiflis, he taught at the Nersisian School and in 1877-1878 he traveled to Van, Alashkert, and Basen to bring medical help to the population during the Russian-Turkish war.
Dzerentz published in rapid succession his second novel, Travails of the Ninth Century (1879), which dealt with the rebellion of villager Hovnan of Sassoun against the Arab domination in 852-853, and his third novel, Teotoros Reshtuni (1881), about the situation in Armenia during the Byzantine-Persian wars of the seventh century. The popularity of Dzerentz novels would survive him until our days.
The writer lost his twenty-four-year-old daughter in 1884, and this was a terrible blow for him. His health quickly decayed and he died in Tiflis from a heart attack on February 17, 1888, at the age of sixty-six.
