Death of Stepanos Siunetsi (July 21, 735)

Stepanos Siunetsi was a very prolific medieval author and translator, as well as an important figure of the Armenian Church.

He was the son of Sahak, a clergyman, and was probably born in 688. His father was an archpriest in Dvin, the capital of Armenia and seat of the Catholicosate, where Stepanos studied. Afterwards, he received his religious education first in the monastery of Makenetsots (province of Gegharkunik, near Lake Sevan) and then in the famous seminary of Siunik, directed by Movses Kertogh. He was consecrated archimandrite and replaced the latter as director of the seminary. A few years later, he returned to Dvin, where he continued his intellectual activities. 

In 710 Stepanos traveled abroad to pursue what we would today call “graduate studies” in Athens and Constantinople, where he studied Greek and Latin literature, learned musical theory, and deepened his knowledge in theology and literary scholarship. He also produced translations from the works of several authors, such as Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, Nemesius of Emesa, and Gregory of Nyssa.

Around 720 he returned to Armenia and settled in Dvin, where he continued his literary and ecclesiastic work. He wrote biblical commentaries and, above all, church hymns, which entered the Sharaknots (collection of hymns) of the Armenian Church and are praised for their musical quality and freshness. He also wrote a commentary of Dionysus Thrax’s Art of Grammar. During his preaching, he met Prince Sembat Bagratuni, a staunch defender of the resolutions of the Council of Chalcedon, who quarreled with Stepanos and subjected him to persecution and death threats. The ecclesiastic escaped to Constantinople in disguise and found refuge near an Orthodox hermit to continue his theological and philosophical studies.

In 728 he went to Rome and brought the texts of several Fathers of the Church (Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius of Alexandria, and Epiphanius of Cyprus) to Armenia. Catholicos David I received him with joy for this important discovery, which was coincidental with the death of Bishop Hovhan of Siunik. Stepanos was consecrated bishop and prelate of Siunik. Upon the request of the Catholicos, he wrote the work Commentary on the Four Evangelists, which is the only work of the old school of commentary of Siunik that has reached us in a twelfth-century manuscript discovered by Bishop Garegin Hovsepiants, future Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia, in 1917. (The Commentary was recently translated into English by Dr. Michael B. Papazian.)

Historian Stepanos Orbelian (thirteenth century) described Stepanos Siunetsi as a spiritual pastor of “sweet severity” and a careful guide, who both “nurtured the children with the milk of Christ” and “stroke the vicious ones like a sword.” Unfortunately, his severity towards the vicious ones cost him his life. 

In 735 the prelate made a pastoral tour of the twelve districts of Siunik, where he redecorated the churches, preached the word of the Gospel and advised and punished sinful people. He visited the town of Moz in the valley of Yeghekis. He admonished  a woman of lewd behavior to repent, but she continued her indecent ways, and the bishop excommunicated her. Seeking revenge, the woman persuaded her lover to kill Stepanos while he slept. He was unable to carry it out, and the woman took the sword and killed Stepanos. The unfortunate ecclesiastic was buried in the church of St. Christopher.

According to Stepanos Orbelian, a strong earthquake hit the area for forty days in the same year, causing the death of some 10,000 people. Because of the lamentations of the population (symbolized by the interjection vay/վայ in Armenian), the region was said to have taken the name of Vayots Dzor (valley of the vays). The catastrophe was ascribed to a divine punishment for the tragic murder of Stepanos Siunetsi. His body was reburied in the monastery of Tanahat, where a small chapel was built over his tomb. In 1273-1279 the chapel was replaced by a magnificent church.

Stepanos’ sister, Sahakdukht, was also a teacher and the first Armenian female composer known as such. She renounced to worldly life and carried the life of a hermit in a cave at the gorge of Garni, near the ruins of the homonymous pagan temple. She taught children and composed church hymns.

Birth of Nicholas Adontz (January 10, 1871)

A statue of Nicholas Adontz near the

museum of history of Sisian, named after him.

Nicholas Adontz was one of the most influential Armenian historians and philologists in the first half of the twentieth century at an international level. Poet Mushegh Ishkhan, one of his students in Brussels, wrote about him: “Nicholas Adontz seemed to be Armenia, the embodiment of its better qualities, its human image. He was the Armenian man, in the traditional, modern, and noble sense of the word; the living fortress of Armenian ancient culture, heroic history, beauty, and virtues of the Armenian character, who knows how to instill joy and pride.”

He was born Nikoghayos Ter-Avetikian in the village of Brnakot (Sisian, region of Siunik/Zangezur) on January 10, 1871. He traced his roots to Ter Avetik, a priest who was a close ally to David Bek, the hero of the Armenian rebellion of Siunik from 1722-1728. He studied for a very short period at the monastic school of Tatev and then at the Gevorgian Seminary of Holy Echmiadzin (1882-1891). He interrupted his studies and moved to Tiflis, where he studied Russian for a year and then entered the second year of the Russian gymnasium (1892-1894). He adopted the last name Adontz, derived from an ancestor of their family, to avoid being called “Ter-Avetikov.”

Adontz’s dreams to pursue higher education were fulfilled thanks to the sponsorship of benefactor Alexander Mantashov (Mantashiants). He first studied at the School of History and Philology of the University of St. Petersburg (1894-1899), where he had among his teachers the famous Orientalist Nikolai Marr. After graduating from the university, Mantashov sponsored his three-year sojourn in Europe, where Adontz studied and researched in Munich, Paris, Oxford, and Venice. In 1902, once the agreement was finished, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he passed his examinations for a master’s degree. Then he went to the Caucasus, where he studied the manuscripts of Echmiadzin and Tiflis. He also published a journal of Armenian literature, Banber grakanutian yev arvesti (1903-1904).

In 1908 Adontz published Armenia in the Period of Justinian in Russian, a remarkable study on the social and political structures of early medieval Armenia. He defended it as his master’s thesis in April 1909 and was appointed assistant professor at the University of St. Petersburg. His second monograph in Russian, Dionysus of Thrace and the Armenian Commentators, published in 1915, was an edition, along with the Greek original, of the early medieval Armenian translation of the grammar of Dionysus Thrax (a Greek grammarian of the second century B.C.), based on 30 manuscripts. He defended it as his Ph.D. dissertation and was appointed professor of the chair of Armenian and Georgian philology in 1916.

Also in 1916, Adontz first participated in the works of an archaeological expedition to Mush and Erzerum, and later headed an expedition to Van, at a time when Western Armenia was mostly occupied by Russia. In 1917-1918 he became honorary trustee of the Lazarian College of Moscow. After the October Revolution, he successfully fought to avoid that the Armenian manuscripts from Echmiadzin, and the Armenian libraries of the Lazarian College and the Moscow churches were incorporated into the “Alexander III” library of Moscow. In the spring of 1920 the Russian Academy of Sciences decided to send him abroad in a six-month study trip. The Armenian scholar did not wait for the documentation to be completed and left Russia on his own.

Adontz, who had actively participated in political activities about the Armenian Question in the 1910s, first settled in London and published the book Towards the Solution to the Armenian Question (in English, 1920). The next year he moved to Paris, where he had been named consultant for the Armenian National Delegation. He married singer Olga Hovnatanian and lived in the French capital for the next ten years. He continued publishing and lecturing, supported by benefactor Abraham Ghoukassiantz.

In 1931 an Armenian Studies chair, funded by millionaire Robert Werner; Eva-Zarouhi Nubar, Countess d’Arschot Schoonhoven (daughter of Boghos Nubar Pasha, founding president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union), and the Armenian community of Brussels, was founded within the Center of Oriental Studies at the Free University of Brussels (Belgium). Adontz was appointed to the position. He would teach an array of courses on Classical and Modern Armenian, as well as subjects of Armenian and Byzantine Studies, while continuing his publications and lectures.

However, Brussels did not offer him peace of mind. After a long illness, his wife passed away in 1935. He was deeply affected by this loss, and its impact took a strong toll from his body. In May 1940 Belgium was occupied by Nazi Germany. Adontz’s health problems became worse and he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. He was admitted to a hospital in October 1941 and passed away on January 27, 1942. He was buried in the cemetery of Brussels. Adontz left more than 120 scholarly articles and monographs on the history and literature of Medieval Armenia, Armenian-Byzantine relations, Armenian-Greek philology, mythology, religion, and linguistics, in Armenian, Russian and French. In the last years of his life, he worked on a history of Armenia from the beginnings to the twentieth century, but he only completed the first volume (Paris 1946; Armenian translation, 1972). A collection of his most important Armenian-Byzantine studies was published in French (1965). The importance of his works for scholarship is evidenced by the fact that Armenia in the Period of Justinian was translated into English and published by historian Nina Garsoian in 1970 with revisions, a bibliographical note, and appendices (an Armenian translation appeared in 1987), while Dionysus of Thrace and the Armenian Commentators was published in French in 1971. Many of his works have appeared in Armenian since 1989, including a six-volume collection published in Yerevan from 2006-2011.

End of the Republic of Mountainous Armenia - July 10, 1921

Historical circumstances have created the existence of two independent Armenian republics, one fully recognized (Armenia) and the other unrecognized (Mountainous Karabagh), since 1991. However, there was another time in the past century when two Armenian republics coexisted, although under completely different circumstances.

The first Republic of Armenia existed from May 28, 1918 to December 2, 1920. The southern part of the Republic, the territory of Zangezur or Siunik, confronted the assault of Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Soviet Russian forces at one time or another during the two years, under the leadership of Garegin Nezhdeh. The area remained unoccupied after the establishment of the Soviet regime in Armenia.

The anti-popular measures exerted by the Revolutionary Committee that had seized power in late 1920 triggered a revolt, and the Bolshevik regime was temporarily ousted on February 18, 1921. Armenia briefly restored its independence under the authority of the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland (C.S.F.), led by the A.R.F.

In mid-February, the forces of Autonomous Siunik occupied the area of Vayots Dzor, which constituted the nexus of the region with the rest of the country. The Armenian resistance lasted until April 2, when some 12,000 refugees, including 4,000 members of the military, left Yerevan before the occupation by the Red Army. Vayots Dzor became the door to enter Siunik and be free of Communist persecution. On April 26, 1921, the second congress of Zangezur proclaimed the Republic of Mountainous Armenia, with Nezhdeh as prime minister. Resistance was aimed at ensuring the escape of the refugees from Communist rule towards Persia and maintaining the region within the borders of Soviet Armenia.

Meanwhile, the internal crisis in Soviet Armenia continued, and to solve it, Moscow sent an influential and well-regarded Bolshevik, Alexander Miasnikian (1886-1925). His take was that the errors committed by the Revolutionary Committee should be rectified at once. On May 18 he was designated President of the Soviet of Commissars (Ministers) and War commissar. Negotiations between Soviet Armenia and Mountainous Armenia started, with Nezhdeh’s number one condition being: “Zangezur must be totally part of Armenia.”

Datev Monastery, located in the heart of Zangezur.

As the Soviet Armenian government could not guarantee the achievement of that condition, the negotiations failed, and hostilities began again. The morale of the Armenians of Siunik was lowered by the stance of the refugees, many of which, rather than fighting, were just interested in fleeing to Iran as soon as possible.

The Soviet Armenian government finally received a positive answer from Moscow and declared that Zangezur would be part of the Soviet Armenian republic. The main towns of Siunik fell one after the other between June 22 and July 5. Nezhdeh conceded defeat and crossed into Iran on July 10.

In hindsight, there is no doubt that the heroic resistance of the short-lived Republic of Mountainous Armenia had not only ensured the physical safety of its population against the Azerbaijani advance, but also of thousands of politicians, intellectuals, military, and others from the Bolshevik persecution. Above all, Zangezur was kept in Armenia, and the Turko-Azerbaijani project of a geographic union failed. The fate of the two other contested areas, Karabagh and Nakhichevan, during the decades of existence of the Soviet Union, and the strategic position that Zangezur maintains today in the geopolitical map of the area are proof that the Armenian sacrifice, this time, was not in vain.