Death of Khrimian Hayrig (October 29, 1907)

Khrimian Hayrig remains one of the most popular names in the history of the Armenian Church, as shown by the use of the endearing name hayrig (“papa”) along his name.

Mgrdich Khrimian was born in the Aikestan quarter of Van on April 4, 1820. He lost his father at an early age and was brought up by his uncle, a merchant. He was educated at the parochial schools of the islands of Lim and Gduts in Lake Van and the monastery of Varak, where he studied Classical Armenian. In 1842, after returning to Van, he embarked on a journey across the region and made a pilgrimage to Holy Etchmiadzin.

From 1844 to 1846, Khrimian lived in Constantinople, where he made connections with Armenian intellectuals. In 1846 he returned to Van and married Mariam Sevikian. In 1847 he visited Persia and the Russian Caucasus, and sojourned in Alexandropol (today Gyumri) for six months. He moved again to Constantinople and lived there until 1853, teaching at an all-girl school in the quarter of Hasköy. He published his first books in 1850 and 1851.

Khrimian returned to Van in 1853, but finding that his mother, wife, and daughter had all died, he decided to enter the Armenian Church. He was ordained vartabed at the Cathedral of Aghtamar in 1854 and appointed dean of a church in Scutari, near Constantinople, a year later. He started publishing the periodical Artsiv Vaspurakan.

He returned to Van in 1857 and established a seminary at the monastery of Varak. He founded a publishing house there and resumed the publication of Artsiv Vaspurakan (1859-1864). In 1862 he was appointed abbot of the famous monastery of Surp Garabed near Mush. He was instrumental in the foundation of a school and a journal there, called Artsvik Tarono, and transformed the monastery into a flourishing center. In those years, he earned the name of Hayrig.

Ordained as a bishop in Etchmiadzin (1868), Khrimian was elected Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople in September 1869. He cleared the patriarchate's debt and sought to increase the provincial representation in the Armenian National Assembly. He presented a detailed report to the Ottoman government documenting instances of oppression, persecution, and miscarriage of justice in the Armenian provinces. He used the position to advance the interests and conditions of Armenians in the provinces.

His outspokenness annoyed not only the Ottoman authorities, but some of the Armenian wealthy elite as well. The government compelled him to resign in 1873. Afterwards, Khrimian dedicated his time to literary pursuits until 1878 (he published four books from 1876-1878), when he led the Armenian delegation at the Congress of Berlin. The delegation's memorandum to the great powers concerning the implementation of reforms in the Armenian provinces was dismissed, and the Treaty of Berlin, signed in July 1878, failed to force the Ottoman government to implement real reforms.

 After returning to Constantinople, Khrimian delivered a well-known sermon in which he called Armenians to use arms to win over their rights. He told his flock that Armenians, unlike the Christians in the Balkans, had not won autonomy because “no Armenian blood had been shed in the cause of freedom.” Famous for its allegories, such as the analogy of a ladle and cauldron with the sword and freedom, the sermon is considered one of the forerunners of the Armenian revolutionary movement.

After his return from Europe, Khrimian was appointed Prelate of Van in 1879. He opened new schools, including the first agricultural school in Armenian lands. In the 1880s he supported the Armenian secret societies devoted to the cause of national liberation. The Ottoman government, which looked unfavorably on his activities, suspended him in 1885 and had him sent back to Constantinople. Following the Kum Kapu demonstration of July 15, 1890, four representatives of the Armenian National Assembly, including Khrimian, issued a report criticizing the government for the treatment of the Armenian peasantry. Khrimian was exiled to Jerusalem in December 1890 and lived in the St. James monastery of the city’s Armenian Quarter.

On May 5, 1892, Khrimian was unanimously elected Catholicos of All Armenians. Sultan Abdul Hamid II initially did not allow him to travel to Etchmiadzin. He was granted permission to travel, only if he did not set foot in Turkey, after Russian emperor Alexander III’s request. He was finally enthroned as Catholicos Mgrdich I in September 1893. He had his Ottoman citizenship revoked and became a Russian subject. During the Hamidian massacres of 1894–96, Khrimian provided material assistance to the Armenian refugees. He also implemented the renovation of many ancient monasteries and churches. He collaborated with the Armenian Revolution Federation to organize mass demonstrations against the June 1903 edict of the Russian government that closed down Armenian schools and confiscated the properties of the Armenian Church. Popular resistance led to the revocation of the edict in August 1905.

Catholicos Khrimian remained active until the end of his life, on October 29, 1907. He was buried in the courtyard of Holy Etchmiadzin. He was revered for his progressive and nationalist views. A school in Yerevan founded by him in 1906 and renamed for the 26 Baku Commissars during the Soviet period was renamed after Khrimian in 1989. A school in Buenos Aires (Argentina) has carried his name since 1930.

Death of Varaztad Kazanjian (October 19, 1974)

World War I led Armenian American oral surgeon Dr. Varaztad Kazanjian to be regarded as the founder of the modern practice of plastic surgery.

Kazanjian was born in Erzinga (Western Armenia) on March 18, 1879. He attended a French Jesuit school in Sepastia (Sivas), and then he moved to Samsun, on the Black Sea shore, to live with his older half-brother. In October 1895, at the age of sixteen, he arrived in the United States as an escapee of the Armenian massacres ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He settled in Worcester, Massachusetts, and took a job at the local wire factory, where he first displayed the dexterity that would serve him so well in the future.

The future surgeon decided to pursue a career in dentistry at the suggestion of a coworker. He continued working during the day, spending his nights taking classes and learning English. He entered the Harvard Dental School in 1902, receiving his D.M.D. degree three years later.

Kazanjian began a private practice upon his graduation, and also accepted a position as an Assistant in Prosthetic Dentistry at his alma mater. While working at the Harvard Dental School Clinic, he treated over four hundred jaw fractures and introduced a new method of treatment. He was one of the first to replace the inter-dental splint with a simpler inter-maxillary wiring method.

He was married and successfully running his own dental practice in 1914, but when the First World War broke out, he volunteered to join the Harvard Medical Corps, and posted to a huge tented hospital complex in Camiers, France, where he served British forces. There Kazanjian began to treat some of the worst injuries suffered in trench warfare: jaws, noses, cheeks, and skulls shattered by bullets and grenades.  After treating more than 3,000 such cases, and reconstructing many disfigured faces, he was celebrated as the “Miracle Man of the Western Front.” Working under primitive conditions in makeshift hospitals, the surgeon’s humane concern, combined with innovative medical procedures, established his reputation and marked his career as a founder of the modern practice of plastic surgery. He was subsequently promoted to the rank of major in June 1916.

For his efforts, British King George V invested Kazanjian as a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George in 1919. In the same year, he returned to Boston and accepted a position as Professor of Military Oral Surgery in Harvard Dental School. He completed his medical studies in 1921, when he graduated from Harvard Medical School, and became head of the combined Plastic Surgery Clinic of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Massachusetts General Hospital. He also served on the staffs of several hospitals. In 1922 he became Professor of Clinical Oral Surgery at Harvard Medical School, a position he held until 1941, when he became the first Professor of Plastic Surgery at the same educational institution.

Varaztad Kazanjian’s groundbreaking use of medical technology in eliminating facial deformities and reconstructing faces after injuries was widely lauded during his lifetime. His pioneering contributions transformed plastic surgery into an esteemed surgical specialty. He recorded his unique treatments and methods in one hundred and fifty journal articles, and co-authored the classic The Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries (1949) with John M. Converse.

During the 1950s, Kazanjian received many honors and awards from the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the American Society of Oral Surgeons, and the American Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1959. Besides being a Fellow of a string of scientific organizations in the United States and Great Britain, he served as president of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, the American Society of Maxillofacial Surgery, and the New England Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He died on October 19, 1974 at the age of 95. Armenian American actress and radio and TV personality Arlene Francis (Kazanjian) was his niece.

Birth of Rafael Nogales Méndez (October 14, 1879)

Among the many sources about the Armenian Genocide, the memoirs of Venezuelan soldier Rafael de Nogales Méndez occupy a particular place. Firstly, Nogales served in the Ottoman army, and secondly, his writings
did not show him as particularly appreciative of Armenians. This makes his testimony more compelling and trustworthy.

 

Nogales (his birth name was Rafael Inchauspe Méndez) was born in San Cristóbal, state of Táchira, on October 14, 1879. His father sent him to Europe, where he studied in Germany, Belgium, and Spain, and spoke German, French, and Italian fluently.

 

The thirst for adventure and the attraction of the military profession turned him into a soldier of fortune from the late nineteenth century. In 1898 he fought with Spain during the Spanish-American War. He returned to Venezuela in 1901, but he was critical of Cipriano Castro’s dictatorship. In 1902 a revolution started and Castro tried to have him arrested, but Nogales escaped to Nicaragua, where President Zelaya supported him in a failed expedition to overthrow the Venezuelan dictator. After spending time in Mexico, where he enjoyed the protection of another dictator, Porfirio Díaz, he went to China and then he was involved as a double spy in the Russo-Japanese war. In 1904-1905 he mined gold in Alaska. Then he returned to California, where he fought along the forces of Mexican revolutionary Ricardo Flores Magón. After the military coup of Juan Vicente Gómez in Venezuela, which overthrew Castro’s dictatorship, Nogales returned to his homeland (1908). He was appointed governor of the state of Apure, but two months later he made himself an enemy of the new president and had to go into exile.

 

He tried to join the French army at the outbreak of World War I, but he refused to renounce his Venezuelan nationality. In the end he enlisted in the Ottoman Army and was assigned to the Caucasus Front, where he reached the rank of major. During the siege of Van in April-May 1915 he led gendarmerie troops, but asked to be relieved for what he characterized as “unjustified massacres of Christians.” He wrote that the massacres were executed by Halil Bey, the commander and chief of the expeditionary army he had volunteered to serve. (Halil Bey was Minister of War Enver Pasha’s uncle.).

In his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent (1924), Nogales recounted the massacres perpetrated against the Armenian population of Van by order of Governor Jevdet bey (Enver’s brother-in-law): “Supported by the Kurds and the rabble of the vicinity, they [the civil authorities] were attacking and sacking the Armenian quarter. I succeeded at last, without serious accident, in approaching the Beledie reis of the town, who was directing the orgy; whereupon I ordered him to stop the massacre. He astounded me by replying that he was doing nothing more than carry out an unequivocal order emanating from the Governor-General of the province to exterminate all Armenian males of twelve years of age and over.”

 

Nogales visited Diarbekir (Diyarbakir) in June 1915, and was a witness to the widespread massacres of the local Armenians. According to his conversation with Governor Mehmet Reshid, the orders to massacre had been sent by Interior Minister Talaat Pasha.

 

The Venezuelan soldier was transferred from the Caucasus and continued fighting in Mesopotamia and Palestine. He was awarded the Iron Cross by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and earned several Ottoman medals.

 

After the end of the war, Nogales worked with Nicaraguan revolutionary Augusto César Sandino and wrote Spanish books, including his memoirs of World War I, Four Years beneath the Crescent (1924), translated into English and German, The Robbery of Nicaragua (1928), and Memories of a Soldier of Fortune (1932). After the death of Gómez, he returned to Venezuela and was appointed to study the army of Panama, but died in Panama City on July 10, 1936.

Death of Khachatour Lazarian (October 10, 1871)

The Lazarian family had an important role in the history of the Armenian liberation movement from the eighteenth century. Hovhannes Lazarian (1735-1801) worked to that end through his connections to the Russian court. He bequeathed a big sum of money to the foundation of a high school in Moscow for Armenian children, designating his brother Hovakim as executor of the will. The Lazarian College, founded in 1815, would become an education beacon for the Armenians in the Russian Empire.

Hovakim Lazarian’s younger son, Khachatour, continued the family work. He was born on June 1, 1789. The details about his early life are sketchy. In 1819 he married the daughter of Manuk bey Mirzayan (1769-1817), a well-known trading partner of his father in Moldavia (Moldova), who had been very active during the Turkish-Russian war of 1806-1812.

The obstacles put by Russian high-level bureaucracy, particularly the Ministry of Education, to the activities of the Lazarian College led the Lazarian family to take an unprecedented step. In 1824 Hovakim Lazarian addressed the Council of Ministers to ask that the College be taken out of the ministry’s orbit and put under the direct supervision of the council. Brothers Hovhannes and Khachatour Lazarian, together with two members of the Committee of Educational Institutions, prepared the bylaws of the College, which were approved. The Lazarian College was renamed Lazarian Institute of Oriental Languages in 1828.  

Meanwhile, Khachatour Lazarian had been actively involved in the last phase of the Russo-Persian war of 1826-1828. Along with Prince Konstantin Arghoutian and scholar Alexander Khoudabashian, Lazarian prepared a project of autonomy for the Eastern Armenian territories that would be annexed to Russia after the war. The project, entitled, “A Series of Proposals for Georgia and Adjacent Territories,” called for an ample autonomy of Armenia within the Russian Empire and the restoration of the Armenian kingdom with Czar Nicholas I adding “King of the Armenians” to his titles. The project also anticipated the immigration of Armenian population from Persia to Eastern Armenia. Lazarian also lobbied the Russian authorities to incorporate the province of Maku, beyond the border of the Arax River. The idea of Archbishop Nerses Ashtaraketsi (future Catholicos of All Armenians) was to turn its mountains and valleys into a natural protection for the country. However, Lazarian failed in his purpose due to the obstinate refusal of General Ivan Paskevitch, who had fought and won the war. The autonomy project was also rejected, but it contributed to the initial creation of the Armenian Province (1829-1840). He was also a member of the committee that prepared the reforms in the administration of Eastern Armenia. The project, known as Polozhenye, was approved by Nicholas I on March 11, 1836.

To confront the matter of insufficient income for the Lazarian Institute –the family covered the deficits from their own pocket—Lazarian presented a project in 1837 that proposed to unify the five Armenian churches of Moscow and St. Petersburg with the Institute and establish a synergia between them, with the units mutually covering their deficits. He also suggested the creation of a religious section in the Institute for the education of the clergy. The project was approved by Catholicos Hovhannes Karbetsi and the Synod of Etchmiadzin in 1840, and then approved by the czar in 1841. Another project approved in 1848 by Nicholas I turned the Institute into an eight-year educational institution, instead of the previous six-year period.

Khachatour Lazarian’s only son, Hovhannes, passed away at an early age in 1850. His parents and uncle donated 60,000 silver rubles in his memory to establish a preparatory section for the children of Armenian poor families that lacked knowledge of the Russian language to enter the Institute. As an exception, the czar agreed to this donation.

In 1860 Lazarian, a man of progressive ideas in education and always ready to have the best possible level, made a huge donation of 200,000 rubles from his own fortune to improve the educational level of the Institute—now divided into two sections, gymnasium and Oriental languages—and allow the graduates to pursue higher education without additional exams. Czar Alexander II (1855-1881) decorated him with the order of the White Lion. The intervention of the Minister of Education, Count Dmitri Tolstoy, another man of progressive ideas, established a new reform, which reunited both sections while keeping their high educational level. The new curriculum remained unchanged from 1872 to 1918, when the newly established Soviet government closed the Lazarian Institute.

Besides his support for education, Khachatour Lazarian continuously sought to support Armenian Studies among Russian scholars and convince wealthy Armenians of throwing their support “in favor of the Church and the Armenian people, which demand and are thirsty for education and science.”

Lazarian passed away in Moscow on October 10, 1871. A marble bust was installed in the hall of the Lazarian Institute in the same year thanks to the fundraising of Russian Armenians. 

Birth of Henrik Malian (September 30, 1925)

Henrik Malian, one of the most popular filmmakers in Soviet Armenia from the 1960s, was born in Telavi (Georgia) on September 30, 1925. After working during his teens as a draftsman at the aviation factory of Tbilisi (1942-1945), he moved to Yerevan. Here he studied at the Institute of Art and Theatre of Yerevan, in the section of direction, from 1945 to 1951. He continued his graduate studies in Moscow, where he finished courses of film and theater direction at the State Institute of Theatrical Art “Anatoli Lunacharsky” in 1953.

Malian’s career started in 1951 as a director in theaters of various towns of Armenia (Artashat, Kirovakan, Ghapan) and on television. In 1954 he entered Armenfilm, the cinema studios, where he was first an assistant director and, since the 1960s, a director. In 1961-1962 he spent a year at the Mosfilm studios, where he studied with two noted Soviet directors, Mikhail Kalatozov (Kalatozishvili) and Sergei Bondarchuk.

Malian’s first films were of a genre that mixed lyricism and comedy, such as The Guys of the Orchestra (1960), Road to the Circus (1963), and Monsieur Jacques and Others (1964). His breakthrough came with The Triangle (1967), one of his best films, which was crucial for the creation of a poetic style in Armenian cinema. The film was endowed with immediacy and a delicate taste for direction, with a powerful artistic discourse. He won the State Award of Armenia in 1975 for this film.

Malian characterized his films by the election of apparently minimal subjects, which he later turned into meaningful, psychologically deep generalizations. The fate of his heroes, their thoughts and experiences were linked to the events of their time. Such was the case of his next works: We Are Our Mountains (1969), Father (1972), and especially Nahapet (1977), which was released in the United States as Life Triumphs. The latter, for which he wrote the screenplay on a short novel by Hrachia Kochar, touched for the first time in Armenia the relatively taboo subject of the Armenian Genocide through the lenses of a survivor and his attempt to rebuild life after the catastrophe. 

Malian became People’s Artist of Armenia in 1977 and People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1982. He also wrote and directed A Piece of Sky (1980), a reconstruction of life in pre-genocide Kharpert, based on a fragment of Vahan Totoventz’s memoir Life on the Ancient Roman Road . He would still write several films in the 1980s, such as Gikor (1982, based on Hovhannes Tumanian’s short story) and White Dreams (1985, also based on another episode of Totoventz’s memoir), and direct and write A Drop of Honey (1984, also based on a short story by Tumanian). Yearning (1990), the first film to address Stalin’s repression, was posthumously filmed, on a screenplay written by Malian and Ruben Hovsepian (based on another short novel by Hrachia Kochar).

Henrik Malian was not only a director, but also a long-time teacher. He taught at the Khachatur Abovian Pedagogical Institute (now University) from 1971-1988, and was chair of Direction and Master Acting from 1975 on. He was a professor at his alma mater, the Institute of Art and Theater, from 1982 to 1988. In 1980 he founded and directed the Theater-Studio for Film Actors, which was renamed after him in 1988.

He passed away prematurely, at the age of 62, on March 14, 1988, in Yerevan. The Henrik Malian Theater Studio is now directed by his daughter, the actress Narine Malian.

Birth of Marco Polo (September 15, 1254)

Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant and traveler, was most famous for his travel through Asia in the thirteenth century, including his description of the mysterious and impenetrable China. He first visited Cilicia and Greater Armenia, about which he left some very interesting pages.

His date of birth and place are disputed, but conventionally it is considered that Polo was born in Venice on September 15, 1254. His father and brother were merchants who traded with the Near East and acquired great prestige and wealth. In 1260 they foresaw a forthcoming political change and timely left Constantinople, capital of the short-lived Latin Empire, established by the Fourth Crusade in 1204. A year later, Michael VIII Paleologos, occupied the city and re-established the Eastern Roman Empire, with the Venetian quarter burned and captured Venetian citizens blinded in revenge.

Marco spent part of his childhood in Venice, where he was raised by an aunt and uncle, since his mother had passed away early, and receive a good education. In 1269 his father and uncle returned from a travel to China and set off back in Asia with young Marco Polo, then seventeen, in 1271. The story of their travels and deeds would be documented in his Livres des merveilles du monde ( Book of the Marvels of the World, also known as The Travels of Marco Polo ) three decades later. They returned to Venice in 1295, after having traveled almost 15,000 mile and gathered many riches.



Polo armed a galley to participate in the ongoing war of the republics of Venice and Genoa. He was captured in a naval skirmish in 1296, and spent several months of his imprisonment dictating a detailed account of his travels to a fellow inmate. Rustichello da Pisa, a professional writer, incorporated tales of his own and other collected stories. The book depicted the three Polo travelers’ journeys throughout Asia, with a first European comprehensive look into the Far East, including China (Cathay) and Japan (Cipango). Marco Polo was released from captivity in 1299 and returned to Venice. The Polo family company continued its activities, and Marco became a wealthy merchant. His father died in the meantime, and he married the daughter of a fellow merchant. They had three daughters.

The famous traveler passed away on January 8 or 9, 1324, after a long illness. He was buried in the Venetian convent of San Lorenzo. His work would be widely read and translated in the following centuries. It would inspire Christopher Colombus in his quest for going to Asia by the west.

In their travel to the east, the Polos sailed from Venice to Acre, in Palestine, and then rode on camels to the Persian port of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf. In 1293, on their way of return, they would sail from China to Hormuz, and then go overland to Trebizonda, on the Black Sea. They crossed Armenia and Cilicia on their way both times. In one passage of his book, Polo referred to Cilicia as “Lesser Hermenia” (Armenia Minor), and to its famous port of “Layas” (Ayas), which was frequented by Venetians, Genoese, and other merchants, as a crossroads of international trade:

“There are two Hermenias, the Greater and the Less. The Lesser Hermenia is governed by a certain King, who maintains a just rule in his dominions, but is himself subject to the Tartar. The country contains numerous towns and villages, and has everything in plenty; moreover, it is a great country for sport in the chase of all manner of beasts and birds. It is, however, by no means a healthy region, but grievously the reverse. In days of old the nobles there were valiant men, and did doughty deeds of arms; but nowadays they are poor creatures, and good at nought, unless it be at boozing; they are great at that. Howbeit, they have a city upon the sea, which is called LAYAS, at which there is a great trade. For you must know that all the spicery, and the cloths of silk and gold, and the other valuable wares that come from the interior, are brought to that city. And the merchants of Venice and Genoa, and other countries, come thither to sell their goods, and to buy what they lack. And whatsoever persons would travel to the interior (of the East), merchants or others, they take their way by this city of Layas.”

In another passage, he referred to Greater Armenia, then under Mongol domination:

“This is a great country. It begins at a city called Arzinga [Erzinga], at which they weave the best buckrams in the world. It possesses also the best baths from natural springs that are anywhere to be found. The people of the country are Armenians. There are many towns and villages in the country, but the noblest of their cities is Arzinga, which is the See of an Archbishop, and then Arziron [Erzerum] and Arzizi [Arjesh]. The country is indeed a passing great one… At a castle called Paipurth [Papert], that you pass in going from Trebizond to Tauris [Tabriz], there is a very good silver mine.

“And you must know that it is in this country of Armenia that the Ark of Noah exists on the top of a certain great mountain on the summit of which snow is so constant that no one can ascend; for the snow never melts, and is constantly added to by new falls. Below, however, the snow does melt, and runs down, producing such rich and abundant herbage that in summer cattle are sent to pasture from a long way round about, and it never fails them. The melting snow also causes a great amount of mud on the mountain.”

Birth of Fr. Nerses Akinian (September 10, 1883)

Father Nerses Akinian was one of the most prolific and renowned names of Armenian philology in the first half of the twentieth century.

 

He was born Gabriel Akinian on September 10, 1883, in Artvin, an area in northeastern Turkey that was part of the Russian Empire at the time. He was sent to the Mekhitarist seminary of Vienna at the age of twelve, in 1895, and entered the Viennese branch of the congregation in 1901 when he was anointed a celibate priest and renamed Nerses. He followed the courses of the University of Vienna, where he studied Greek, Latin, and Syriac, history of Greco-Roman and Byzantine culture, philosophy, and theology. After graduation in 1907, he would have a wide number of functions in the Mekhitarist Congregation for the next decades. He was first a teacher at the seminary (1907) and later its deputy principal (1908-1911) and principal (1916-1920). Along his educational tasks, from 1909 until his death Fr. Nerses Akinian was also the head librarian of the Vienna monastery and the editor, with intermittencies, of Handes Amsorya, the Armenian Studies journal of the Viennese branch of the Mekhitarists. He became a member of the general board of the congregation in 1931 and superior of the monastery from 1931-1937.  

 

From the very beginning, Akinian passionately pursued historical studies, following the general orientation of the Viennese Mekhitarists, and researched the whole extent of Armenian history and literature with German-like rigorousness and method. He was an indefatigable traveler, and would go to many countries to study Armenian culture and gather thousands of Armenian manuscripts and printed books for the library of Vienna. In 1912 he represented the Mekhitarists of Vienna at the consecration of Catholicos Gevorg V Sureniants (1911-1930) and traveled to his birthplace, Artvin, and Eastern Armenia, where he visited Ani, Garni, Geghard, and other ancient places. During World War I, he collected money to help the refugees of the Armenian Genocide, as well as Armenian war prisoners in Germany and Austria.

 

In 1924 Fr. Akinian was assigned to pastoral mission in Soviet Armenia and he would also visit Moscow, Nor Nakhijevan (Rostov-on-the-Don), Batumi, Tbilisi, and Lvov. This gave him the opportunity to visit ancient monuments and research collections of ancient Armenian manuscripts, particularly in Armenia, where he worked at the collection of Holy Etchmiadzin (which would be later moved to Yerevan and became the basis for the collection of the Matenadaran). In 1929 he was arrested, suspected of being a foreign spy, and forced to leave Armenia after a forty-day imprisonment. He went back to Vienna and continued his studies in different cities of Western Europe, including Berlin, Munich, Tubingen, Paris, Rome, and Livorno. In 1939 he went to the Middle East, but remained stranded in Beirut for the next seven years due to World War II. He spent his time teaching at the local Mekhitarist School and studying available Armenian manuscripts. He returned to Austria in the fall of 1946 and spent his last years in Vienna. In 1954 he earned an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna.

 

Akinian published most of his studies in Handes Amsorya over more than a half century . Many of them were also published in book form. He published more than 40 books related to Armenian medieval literature, Armenian text issues, and Armenian Studies in general. He also compiled catalogues of Armenian manuscripts conserved in collections of Cyprus, Poland, Ukraine, and elsewhere. He discovered and published works by fathers of the Church and various early Christian authors (John Chrysostom, Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, Irenaeus, Ephrem the Syrian, Proclus, and others). Some of his studies on Armenian ancient authors, like Koriun, Movses Khorenatsi, Yeghishe, Ghazar Parpetsi, and others, became controversial due to his penchant to accommodate their texts and chronologies to his views. He passed away on October 28, 1963, in Vienna, leaving more than a dozen unpublished works in the archives of the Mekhitarist Congregation.