Beginning of the first printing of the Armenian Bible (March 11, 1666)

After the pioneering publications by Hakob Meghapart in Venice (1512-1513), Armenian printing started a more consistent pace in the second half of the sixteenth century. A few decades of slow development would suffice to bring to the forefront a main concern and goal: the printing of the Bible in Armenian.

The task would ultimately be undertaken by Archbishop Oskan Yerevantsi (1614-1674), a native of Nor Jugha, the Armenian center founded in Iran after the forced emigration carried out by Shah Abbas III in 1604. Invited to Holy Etchmiadzin in 1634, Oskan met there a Dominican monk, Paolo Piromalli, who had come to Armenia with instructions to adapt the Armenian text of the Bible to the Vulgate, its Latin translation used by the Catholic Church. Piromalli, who taught Latin and other subjects to Oskan, returned to Rome four years later, but Vatican censorship did not allow him to publish his intended translation of the Bible into Armenian. Coming back to Etchmiadzin in 1642, Piromalli collaborated with Oskan to publish the Armenian Bible, but always trying to reconcile the Armenian text to the Latin. This did not come to fruition.

Twenty years later, Oskan Yerevantsi left for Europe with a letter of recommendation by Catholicos Hakob IV Jughayetsi with the goal of printing the Bible in Europe. There was no printing house in Eastern Armenia, under Persian domination, or in Western Armenia, under Ottoman domination. The ecclesiastic first went to Livorno and then to Rome, where he unsuccessfully tried to obtain license from the Vatican to publish the Bible anywhere in Italy. Afterwards, he left for Amsterdam; the Netherlands was a Protestant country and there was complete printing freedom. There, he took over the direction of the printing house named after Holy Etchmiadzin and St. Sarkis (founded by Mateos Tzaretsi in 1660) in the fall of 1664. While publishing other books, he started preliminary work for the printing of the Bible. He ordered new typefaces and ornamented letterheads, while preparing the text for publication.

Oskan worked on the printing with the help of his disciples Garabed Andrianatsi and Ohan Yerevantsi. The 1,462-paged, two column book was printed with a run of 5,000 copies. It was finished in two years and seven months (March 11, 1666 – October 13, 1668). Four lithographs were used in the title pages, with human figures representing Faith and Hope in the ornamental pictures left and right. The word Աստուածաշունչ (Asdvadzashoonch, “Bible”) is printed in bird-like script, and the book cover is red leather-covered, thick wood. The book used seven different typefaces and 159 pictures, mostly by Dutch engraver Christoffel van Sichem the Younger (1581-1658). 
The first edition was partly marred by the text, which constituted a distortion of the fifth century translation. It was probably based on the manuscript commanded by King Hethum II of Cilicia (1294-1301) in 1295. However, it was edited—whether by Piromalli or by Oskan himself—with an eye on the Vulgate, and Oskan translated and added several books of the Old Testament, which were missing from the Armenian Bible and its canon. Its middle position between the classical text and the Vulgate was aimed at making it palatable to Armenians of all denominations, as well as the Catholic Church hierarchy. The next two editions of the Bible (Constantinople, 1705, and Venice, 1733, the latter by Mekhitar of Sebastia, the founder of the Mekhitarist Congregation) were based on the 1666 edition. In 1805 a Mekhitarist monk, Hovhannes Zohrabian, published the fourth edition of the Bible, where he restored the original translation of the Golden Age.

Oskan’s edition was criticized, but it had a great impact on Armenians everywhere. A specially ordered copy from the famous Dutch artist/bookbinder Albert Magnus, with deluxe binding, was presented to the French king Louis XIV. That exemplar is now kept at the National Library of France.

October 13, 1668: Completion of the first printing of the Armenian Bible

After more than two and half years of work, the printing of the first edition of the Armenian Bible was finished in Amsterdam (Netherlands) in 1668. The tenacious efforts of Voskan Yerevantsi, a bishop of the Armenian Church, had finally achieved an elusive target that had been pursued for several decades.

Voskan (1614-1674) was the son of parents from Yerevan, who had been part of the deportation of Armenians from Eastern Armenia to Persia ordered by Shah Abbas I in 1604 and settled in New Julfa (Nor Jugha), the Armenian suburb of Ispahan founded by the Persian ruler. He studied at the monastery of All Saviors and, against the wishes of his parents, he was consecrated a celibate priest. After a few years of further study in Holy Etchmiadzin and Yerevan, he returned to New Julfa. Invited to Etchmiadzin by Catholicos Pilipos I Aghbaketsi in 1634, he was appointed abbot of the monastery of St. Sargis in Ushi, where he took classes in Latin, philosophy, geometry, and astronomy from the learned Dominican monk Paulo Piromalli, a Catholic missionary in Armenia, and taught Armenian to him.

In 1655 Catholicos Hakob IV Jughayetsi (1655-1680) sent his secretary, Movses Tzaretsi, to Europe with the aim of establishing a print shop. He did not find support in Italy and went to Amsterdam, where conditions were more favorable for printing, as the Netherlands were outside the sphere of influence of the Catholic Church. He was able to establish a print shop, but his attempt at printing the Armenian Bible ended in failure. Before his death in 1661, he asked his friend, the merchant Avetis from Jugha, to take over the print shop and continue his work. Avetis, at his turn, asked his brother, Voskan Yerevantsi, to come to Amsterdam. The latter had already been consecrated as bishop and was commissioned by the Catholicos to continue the task.

The first page of the Gospel of Matthew from the first printed Armenian Bible of 1668.

Bishop Voskan arrived in the Dutch port in 1664 and took over the direction of the “Holy Etchmiadzin and St. Sargis” print shop. Between 1664 and 1669, he printed 14 Armenian books, including the first printed book by a living Armenian historian, the Book of Histories by Arakel of Tabriz (1669). He and his disciples Karapet Andrianatsi and Ohan Yerevantsi started the printing of the Armenian Bible on March 11, 1666, which would result in a beautifully illustrated edition of 21 x 26 cm. (8.27 x 10.23 inches) and 1464 pages. This achievement would become enough to give Voskan Yerevantsi a place of honor in the history of Armenian printing, following the first printer of Armenian books, Hakob Meghapart.

Voskan moved his print shop to Livorno, Italy, in 1669, and three years later to Marseilles, France. He would print eight more books, including the first mathematical textbook, which was also the first printing in Modern Armenian, entitled Art of Calculus (Արհեստ համարողութեան, 1675). He died on February 4, 1674, before the printing of the textbook was complete. His print shop remained active until 1686 and a total of 40 books were printed.

The original text of the Armenian Bible has had ten editions since 1666 (the last one was printed in Vienna by the Mekhitarist fathers in 1929). Very Rev. Hovhannes Zohrabian’s edition, printed in Venice in 1805, is regarded as the most valuable by Biblical scholars.