>> Announcer: From the Library
of Congress in Washington, DC.
[ Pause ]
>> Weeks: Good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen,
and welcome to the African
and Middle Eastern Division
of the Library of Congress and
to our noon time lecture series
with special presentation today,
the "Rouben Mamoulian
Illuminated Armenian-The Life
of St. John the Evangelist
from 1757."
I'm Joan Weeks, acing head
of the Near East Section.
On behalf of all my colleagues and
in particular Dr. Mary Jane Deeb,
the chief of the division, I would
like to extend a very warm welcome
to everyone, but before I introduce
our speaker for today's program I'd
like to give a brief overview of
our division and its resources
in the hopes that you will
return and use our collections
in this magnificent reading
room in your research.
This division is comprised
of 3 sections that build
and serve the collections to
researchers from around the world.
We cover over 78 countries
in more than 35 languages.
The African section
includes countries
in all of sub-Sahara Africa.
The Hebraic section is responsible
for Judaica and Hebraic worldwide,
and the Near East section covers all
of the Arab countries
including North Africa, Turkey,
Turkic Central Asia, Iran
Afghanistan, the Muslims,
and Western China, Russia,
the Balkans, and the peoples
of the [inaudible], as well
as Armenian collections,
and now it is my great honor and
pleasure to introduce my colleague,
Dr. Levon Avdoyan, who will
discuss one of the African
and Middle East division's
top treasures.
Actually it's in the
Rare Books Reading Room.
[Laughter] Well, it's one of the
top treasures, and Rouben Mamoulian,
illuminated Armenian, Life
of St. John the Baptist...
Evangelist.
Levon Avdoyan received his B.A.
in history from the University
of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee,
and an M.A. in philosophy PhD
in ancient history with a minor in
Armenian history and civilization
at Columbia University under
Morton Smith and Nina Garsoian.
After a year as a fellow
at Dumbarton Oaks Center
for Byzantine Studies in Washington,
he joined the Library
of Congress in 1976.
He became a specialist for Classics,
Ancient History, and Byzantine
and Medieval Studies in the
Main Reading Room in 1982
and the Armenian and Georgia Area
Specialist in the Near East section
of the African Middle
East Reading Room in 1992.
Since that time, he's overseen the
growth of the Armenian collections
from some 7,000 items to
over 45,000 currently.
In 2012 he curated an exhibit for
the five hundredth anniversary
for the first printed Armenian
book, which drew close to a quarter
of a million people, and the
exhibit catalog became a best seller
at the Library's gift shop.
The Library now has entered into
an agreement with a publisher
in Yerevan to produce an
eBook version, "To Know Wisdom
and Instruction," the
exhibit, cataloged and authored
by Levon Avdoyan, It will
appear in the fall of this year.
He has published and spoken
widely both on Armenian history
and on the digitization
of Armenian resources
and is truly a scholar
of the highest caliber.
Please help me welcome
Dr. Levon Avdoyan.
[ Applause ]
>> Avdoyan: Thank you, Joan, and
thank you all for coming on a day
where we have so many events
at the Library of Congress
and the weather is
not exactly conducive
to bringing you out of your home.
I know if I were retired,
I would probably be there
reading at the moment.
So I'm especially thankful.
Before I continue though, part of
the purpose of these lectures is
to show what a collegial atmosphere
we have at the Library of Congress
and the wonderful colleagues
that we have.
So I want to thank first of all Dr.
Mary Jane Deeb, who is the Chief
of the African and
Middle Eastern Division,
not so much for the
daily ins and outs,
but the fact that she shepherded the
transition of this particular gem
from the Rare Book Reading
Room to our collection
where it joined its cousins,
Armenian manuscripts,
which start with a 1321 gospel.
I want to thank Alice Birney
from the Manuscript Division,
who you will later hear, who was
responsible really for the mechanics
of bringing the Rouben Mamoulian
collection into the Library
of Congress, most of it in
the Manuscript Division.
I'd like to thank [inaudible],
whom I do not see yet, [inaudible],
and Claire Deckle from the
Conservation Department.
Much of what you will hear
of the physical description
of this gem comes from their
expertise, and also thanks
to Claire Deckle when you are
done listening to me ramble
on about this wonderful manuscript,
you can see the manuscript
in the first case behind
you as you leave.
I'd like to thank the Reverend
[inaudible], who was my teacher
at Columbia University and
joined the Order of St. James
of the Jerusalem Patriarchate
in 1986 and is now an advisor
to that marvelous manuscript
collection in Jerusalem,
and I would also like
to thank the comment,
the people who gave comments after
I delivered a different version
of this lecture in
October of last year
at the [inaudible]
in Yerevan, Armenia.
My purpose is to follow my
wonderful colleague, Dr. Ann Brener,
the Hebraic world specialist,
who started this particular
lunchtime series with the idea
that we should be speaking about
the treasures in our own collection
and making them accessible to you,
the public and the researchers.
So my purpose today is to
have a conversation with you.
I've not written it down.
I've had some notes.
With my age I probably
miss some of these.
I'd like to have a
conversation on this little gem,
which as I was looking through
it, I realized with its 156 pages,
can foster research for at
least 4 different disciplines.
So it is truly one of those
things that looks beautiful,
and its beauty belies
its true worth.
Now this is the Rouben
Mamoulian Illuminated 1765.
I'm sorry, that's 1757 was my
mistake as you'll soon see due
to my feeble intelligence, the 1765
Armenian manuscript of the History
of the Acts of St. John, the
Evangelist [foreign language],
bequeathed by Azadia Mamoulian.
First, in an era where the most
identifiable Armenian is Kim
Kardashian, [laughter] I have got
to explain who Rouben Mamoulian is.
I mean, I go around to even Armenian
kids and say "Rouben Mamoulina,"
and there's a blank face.
Now I grew up, I was born in a
time when we knew William Saroyan,
Arshile Gorky, Lucina Morrow,
Lily Picasia, Mike Connors,
and even Cher, and Rouben Mamoulian.
Now here for good reason
you see Mr. Mamoulian
with Marlene Dietrich
and Amelia Earhart.
What is he doing there?
Well, I can say that
he's a film and screen...
stage director, and that would
mean nothing, but then I can say,
he is the director of such little
known works as "Porgy," "Porgy
and Bess," "Queen Christina," "Becky
Sharp," "Oklahoma," "Carousel."
He started "Laura."
He was fired from that, and
he started the "Cleopatra"
with Liz Taylor and Richard
Burton, and he was fired from that,
but he was a very innovative
director, very influential
in the early part of
the twentieth century,
and I draw my information here
from my colleague Alice Birney's
press release upon receipt
of his manuscripts.
He was born in 1898 in what was
then widely known as Tiflis,
which is now Tbilisi, or was then
but is now the Georgian Tbilisi
capital of the Republic of Georgia.
He died in 1987.
The Library had long solicited
his manuscript materials.
It's a long, long journey,
which I hope someday the Manuscript
Division will actually give us.
He died. His wife...
it was in his wife's hands.
She died in, I believe, 2002...
2002, and soon after, 2003,
the materials were received,
thanks again to Alice Birney into
session in the Library of Congress.
I'd like to read what she states.
The majority of the material in
the Mamoulian collection is papers,
but several other formats are also
included-- books and photographs,
music and audio sound recordings,
film elements and several things...
on and on.
One of the most wonderful afternoons
I had is when Alice showed me some
of the materials, and she opened
a scrapbook of his production
of "Hamlet," and I notice a
letter from George Bernard Shaw
to him written the day after his
production of "Hamlet" opened
in London, and it was typical Shaw.
Congratulations on a
marvelous production.
Oh, and by the way,
John Barrymore stank.
[Laughter] So I would be in seventh
heaven if I were actually into film
and stage, but that's not
what we're here to discuss,
although I am discussing
it at this length
because these papers are
available to researchers
in the Manuscript Reading Room.
The signed autographed
copies of his books are
in the Rare Book Reading Room,
and this manuscript that we're
about to discuss was transferred
to the Rare Book Reading Room,
and again, as I said,
Mary Jane Deeb saw
to its transfer to our collections.
Now, Mr. Mamoulian was an
excellent film and stage director,
but he didn't know that much
about Armenian manuscripts.
However he got this
manuscript, he loved it.
You can see that it is
in a beautifully tooled
red leather slipcase
from which is has been removed
because in conservation fashion,
it's not really good
to leave it in there.
You will see that also in the case.
He called it an "Armenian Bible."
We will soon see it is not a Bible.
What is it?
Well, let me give you the
physical description of it.
You see the inside of the
slipcase, with the "Ex Libris,
Rouben Mamoulian," and the cover,
and for this description
I owe in the main...
the information to [inaudible].
It is 15.4 inches by 20.24
inches by 1.11 centimeters.
It is a small book of 156 pages.
The binding is fine goatskin over
pasteboard with gilt and paint,
the medallion and gold tooled
and gold painted with inlay,
and the larger size, according to
experts, of the medallion indicates
that this is an Ottoman rather
than a Persian origin manuscript,
and this will be important for
something we will discuss later.
There is a...
what is known as an Islamic
chevron headpiece using pink
and gold silk thread, and
here you see very barely,
you see gold painted edges
with a zigzag design,
which partially mimics,
as you can see here,
the design in the medallion
on the cover.
This is basically a
Western designed paper.
It is sized probably with starch and
burnished with agate stone, which is
yet again another indication
of Ottoman manufacture.
You will see why I
am insisting on this
when we discuss later
the artistic elements.
The end papers are
again Ottoman design.
It's quarto.
The front pages are three
leaves with one tipped in.
Eight quires of tin leaves
backing the papers are tipped in.
There are extra pages on the
front and the back probably
to give it a heft and a
beauty from the original.
There are extra pages, and
there are, as you noticed,
this is a hybrid manuscript,
Western numerals as pagination.
Unfortunately you can also
see here and in the previous
and in the next page bleeding of
the type because this had been used
with what is known as iron gall ink,
which is already bleeding through
and eating through
the paper like rust.
I believe that conservationists
think
that this could possibly disappear
within 100 years if there is no cure
for this, which really
actually is endemic
to manuscripts using this ink.
The text block itself is 8.73
centimeters by 14.13 centimeters.
That's 3 and 7-sixteenth inches
by 5 and 9-sisteenth inches
with a gold border, and the text
occasionally breaks the border,
which is very, very
interesting if you are a student
of manuscript production.
Now what we're going
to do is go slowly
through this manuscript,
and I want to...
This is the colophon
of the manuscript.
Now a colophon, [inaudible]
in Armenian,
are the parts of manuscripts
which tell you
about who ordered the manuscript
and who wrote the manuscript.
Well, the commissioner of
the manuscript is Paul,
the son of the pilgrim Harut'iwn
Amira, who is resting with the Lord,
and he, himself is the
son of Martires Hovucan.
It is a very difficult passage
to translate because of the range
and the positioning of the words,
but we know that it is not Paul,
the son of Martires, son
of the pilgrim Harut'iwn,
because of what follows at the end.
It is of my aforementioned father,
the pilgrim Harut'iwn, who has died.
Now that sets who he is and what
we need to know about amiras.
Amiras are a very distinct class
of individuals in the Armenians
and the Ottoman Empire, and
I draw the information here
from a book called "The Amira
Class of Istanbul," who is written
by a colleague of mine at Columbia
University, Hagop Barsoumian,
a very fine scholar, who
unfortunately was kidnapped in 1986
and murdered and cutting short
the life of a very fine scholar.
The amiras were very
wealthy and had easy access
to the Ottoman court
and the administration.
They used their wealth and influence
within the Ottoman government...
governing class to further their
leadership in the Armenian millet.
The millet is the system
the Ottomans used
to govern the various
religious minorities.
Bringing the Armenian
patriarch under their control,
they effectively controlled
the whole Armenian millet
within the boundaries of the
empire and delayed the emergence
of some institutions and helped
in the development of others.
They were instrumental
in the cultural revival
of the Armenian people.
Their philanthropic
generosity, on the other hand,
though impressive was not devoid
of selfish considerations.
In other words they were used to
the furtherness of their own riches.
I like to think of them as the 1%
of the Armenian millet
in the Ottoman Empire.
They could also afford
what was to follow.
Paul, the son of Harut'iwn, writes
on the top, "I had this written
with great delight from
select paper traced
with beautiful letters
fashioned from gold paint
and richly ornamented in a variety
of colors by a certain worthy notary
and expert painter of flowers,
the teacher of our youths."
That's what he says, and he says
further down the notary himself adds
to his own colophon that
"I am the unworthy John,
the notary from Beykoz, which
is a suburb of Istanbul,
son of the shoe repairman,
Marites Simonian,
employee of the amira,
the [inaudible] amiras.
What is Beykoz?
Beykoz, and it's very
interesting how long it took me
to identify this, Beykoz
is the red district you see
on the Anatolian side of
Istanbul, and I was lying in my bed
in Yerevan, in the Golden
Tulip Hotel in Yerevan,
looking over my lecture the night
before the lecture, and I'm saying,
"Beykoz, Beykoz," and then I
read that there was a church
of St. Nicholas, Armenian church of
St. Nicholas in Beykoz also built
in the eighteenth century, and
all of a sudden I think, God,
I travel with a flash drive
full of images of objects
from the Library of Congress.
I remembered that we had recently
bought another gospel book
from a unknown Church of St.
Nicholas somewhere in Istanbul.
So it seems that within
the space of 10 years,
we now have two manuscripts
from Beykoz,
and you see this unfinished gospel
book on the bottom, and I'd like you
to pay attention to it because
this is typical Armenian design.
When was this done?
In the reckoning of the Armenian
era 1214, 1214 plus 551 equals 1765,
and in the Roman month of December.
It's a hybrid manuscript.
You use the Armenian
era for one side
and use the month in the Roman era.
Now we start the manuscript
itself, and now we know
that it is also not a Bible.
It is the [foreign language spoken].
It is the Acts of the...
of St. John, the Evangelist.
None of you can tell me that
the Acts of St. John are part
of the Bible, and we will soon
go into what exactly this is.
I want to draw your
attention to two things.
I have never seen this
kind of design
in an Armenian manuscript
before, and it's very interesting
about the same time I was first
investigating this manuscript,
Dr. Bener was talking
about Hebrew manuscripts,
having borrowed artistic
devices from publications,
and that is exactly what this is.
I have not identified it,
but obviously this is taken
from a plate, some kind of
published bookplate and made
into a manuscript tradition.
I said that what you can learn from
little manuscripts and the varieties
of research that you have,
another research that has
yet to be accomplished is why after
the era of printer starts in Armenia
in 1512 are there still so many
manuscripts being produced?
And they are, but they're also
borrowing from the publications,
but what I also want to do
now is tell you what this is.
The Acts of John are what
we call apocryphal acts,
and I'm going to quote from Henneca
Schenecker [assumed spelling],
and this brings back wonderful days
studying Biblical theory and canon
under Morton Smith going
back to these sources.
The New Testament Apocrypha are
writings had not been received
into the canon, namely the 27or
28 books which are received
in the Western and the Eastern
churches into the New Testament,
which had not been received in
the canon but which by title
and other statements lay
claim to be in the same class
with the writings of the canon.
In other words they were authored as
though they were canonical gospels
and which from the point of view
of form criticism further developed
and mold the kinds of
style created and received
in the New Testament whilst
foreign elements certainly intrude.
In the second and third century we
have a series of apocryphal acts
of the saints and of
the evangelists.
This is one of the most popular.
It exists in a Greek original.
It exists in a fifth
century Armenian translation,
which seems to be very
close to the Greek original
from the Armenian translation
comes the Georgian translation.
There is a Syriac translation,
which is used to produce
an Arabic translation.
They were very popular either as
a whole, or in this case in part,
the last chapter of many
of the manuscripts gives you
the dormission, the rest,
the death of St. John,
as this does, too.
This is not the place to really go
into Biblical criticism and to go
into the role of Apocrypha.
Let's just say Apocrypha however
can now be more than one thing.
You can use Apocrypha for
heretical gnostic literature.
You can use Apocrypha for literature
like this, which was received
in the church, but not considered
canonical, and that's what this is,
and as a matter of fact
Professor Robert Thompson,
who was the former professor of
Armenian at Harvard and Oxford
and the former director of Dumbarton
Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies,
is actually producing a study on a
twelfth century Armenian commentary
on that last portion,
the dormission,
which means it was
honored by the church.
It was not considered
canonical however,
and now we go into the manuscript
itself because I actually want
to leave room for questions
and discussions on this.
First and foremost this
is the Incipit page.
You can see I asked you to look
at that other gospel from Beykoz,
which was typically Armenian.
You can see you still have the
headpiece and the side gloss,
but it's totally different
in artistic flavor, in
artistic temperament.
The portrait of St. John is
almost European in style.
This is not a typical
Armenian portrait.
It is loaded with flowers.
Remember the colophon, "I have
ordered him to produce very colored
and brilliant flower
productions," and it is a hybrid.
It was very interesting to see
when this manuscript first appeared
and I showed it to a
variety of scholars.
Without reading the colophon,
which identified Beykoz,
well this is obviously Iranian
because there was a
large Iranian component.
No, this is obviously
Turkish because of this.
Well, it proves to be Turkish,
but so entrenched is the thoughts
of certain people, when I finished
the version I gave in Yerevan,
one the great scholars of
[inaudible] art, Dr. [inaudible],
insisted, still insisted
that this is a product
of the Iranian Armenian
community and not the product
of Ottoman artistic
effort in Beykoz.
So I'm not about to go into
that, and to determine it,
but I happen to believe
in the colophon.
The problem is John, [inaudible],
the notary, the artist.
Obviously he was a brilliant artist.
He produced a brilliant work.
This is not the work
of a new neophyte,
and yet this is the only
manuscript I have identified
that we have of his.
So there's no way to
really trace anything else.
So we have again the History
of the Acts of St. John,
the Evangelist followed
by chapter 1.
There are 11 chapters, which
indicates actually its proximity
to the original Greek version
and therefore the antiquity
of the Armenian version, which
was done in the fifth century
after the creation of the Armenian
alphabet in approximately 407 AD.
The first chapter indicates, as do
all 11 chapters, the fabulous nature
of apocryphal literature and it's
especially the acts of the apostles.
This is not Biblical.
This is not necessarily religious.
It is patterned after a Greek
novelistic style with fables
and humor and religiosity and magic.
This one is about when and what kind
of torments he bore and what kind
of miracles the holy John wrought,
and you can see him
on his first page.
I wanted to include two pieces
of-- you've seen the flowers--
these are two pieces actually
of Iranian manufacture.
We have in the African and Middle
Eastern Division the Near East
section part of our Islamic book
bindings and also a pencil case
from roughly the same period,
and this is the sort of material
that leads Dr. [inaudible]
and others to say
that the influence came from
the community in Julfa rather
than Ottoman, but again we have...
that's a long shot.
The second chapter shows you even
more the flowers that [inaudible],
Paul, ordered to be
drawn by [inaudible].
Each flower is different, and I
want to say that I ran these flowers
by some botanist friends
of mine, and I said,
"Can you identify these flowers?"
and they said, "No," and I think,
my friend here I sent them to once,
but I do know that one
of my botanist friends said there
are too many or too few petals.
These are not real flowers, which
made me feel better because I said,
"I don't know what these are."
They are incredibly delicate
and incredibly beautiful.
[Inaudible] got his money's
worth to be quite frank about it.
What you also should notice is...
are the capital letters even though
you don't know what they are.
These, however, are
typically Armenian.
These are traditionally
Armenian in design.
So you have a Europeanized
Istanbul kind
of drawing here, a
typical Armenian here.
The gold that [inaudible]
wanted in the chapter,
which is about the exile of the
apostle of Christ, St. John.
The third chapter, again with
a different kind of flower
and a different kind of unctual
with the bird motif, is about Mireon
and his entire house and his coming
to St. John, and another flower
in the fourth book
concerning Basil and his wife
and how they were illuminated,
baptized by St. John.
So here we clearly have a
religious element in this chapter.
The fifth chapter is about
the persecution of the demons.
So this is not so Biblical.
This is obviously again a
fableistic element to St. John with
yet another flower, and also
if you have been noticing,
each one of these headbands
which starts the first sentence
of the chapter has different
type color, different background,
what we would call film, and
according to [inaudible],
a very rare pigment
when we use the white.
The sixth chapter is about
[inaudible] and his sorcery.
Again we are getting into
what we can term a very Greek
novelistic style.
Seventh, again about the demon
who took on the aspect of a wolf.
This is not the sort of thing
you would see in the canonicals
of gospels or even in
the Pauline epistles.
A different flower.
The eighth is, again, about another
individual and his entire house
and what they did to John.
I look at these flowers, and I say
to myself, "That looks so familiar,"
but again I cannot identify it.
The ninth is about
[inaudible] and his mother,
the evils that they wrought
presumably against St. John,
and I'm going through these
slowly so you can get a flavor
for what kind of work
this apocryphal act is.
Oh, and I would like
to point your finger.
Here you have quite an identifiable
bird motif, which is typically...
can you see that?...
typically Armenian.
And the eleventh concerning the
gospel of John, how he related it,
and in what place it was...
the faithful received these gifts.
Obviously we are getting into the
meat of St. John the Evangelist.
St. John is usually shown in gospel
portraits dictating his gospel
to his faithful scribe, Pachomius.
Usually, at least in the old
Armenian tradition you see the hand
of God coming from the frame
and this reflects a relatively
recent aspect of art history
where the hand of God is not there,
but he is now dictating his gospel
to Pachomius in the fields.
You know, usually it's
inside, inside setting.
It is a charming setting,
and what is the heading?
[Foreign language spoken] "In
the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and
God was the Word," the opening
of the Gospel of St. John, and I
find this possibly the most moving
of all the pages in this
exquisite little manuscript.
It is about where and
why the wonderful
and blessed John had his
vision and how he adopted
with great care the public.
This is immediately
before the St....
the death of St. John,
and this is the one time
that you will see rather
than facing forward,
I don't know if you've noticed it,
the flower is facing
away from the reader.
I have asked many art historians
whether they have ever seen this
used before in proximity of death,
and so far no one has given
me a satisfactory conclusion,
but I would argue that
that before the vision
of St. John exquisitely detailed
and before the final chapter,
[foreign language spoken], the rest,
the repose of St. John
the Evangelist.
You can see him going into
his grave and to his repose.
I would argue that that flower is a
symbol of death at least in the eye
of this particular notary, this
particular scribe and artist.
Notice again the exquisite
detailing of this manuscript
and also it's something that I
have not successfully studied.
Why the dove in this manuscript
both in the beginning pages
and the end pages is black?
You usually see a white dove, and
this is again something that I would
like to delve into or like to
have art historians delve into.
I think I've demonstrated with
the colophon, with the nature
of the book itself, with the
art, and with Biblical literature
that this little gem can
support several different aspects
of scholarly research,
but what about the future?
And we're all about the future here.
Azadia Mamoulian's bequest to the
Library of Congress did something
that I wholeheartedly approve of.
It took a collection and
a manuscript like this
out of the vaults of
a private collection,
and it put it into
this great institution
where everyone is free to use it.
In short, this manuscript is
now available to the public,
and it will be even more available
to the public because within I'd say
about 6 months a digital
version will be online
in the world digital library
and on our own online site.
So what do I expect scholars to do?
Well I expect those who are
interested in the amiras
to use the information
in the colophon
about the [inaudible]
family of Beykoz to add
to what Hagop Barsoumian
wrote in his wonderful book
on the amira class of Istanbul.
I expect an art historian
or someone to try to search
out other manuscripts written
and decorated and illuminated
by Holames Simonian, the notary.
I expect a new critical edition
to be fashioned from this
because I did have the time
to look at this edition
and compare it section by section
to the one critical edition
that exists based on 2
manuscripts published in 1878
in the [foreign language spoken],
which is literally the non-canonical
Armenian books of the New Testament,
and believe me, preparing
a critical edition
of a manuscript is
not the easiest work,
and I would expect further
argumentation about exactly
where did this artistic
tradition come from.
We know that they lived in Beykoz
on the Anatolian side of Istanbul.
We know that the amira
class actually had...
they claimed their origins
from the Ottoman-Turkish city
of [inaudible] in Anatolia.
We know nothing about Holames
Simonian other than his fact...
the fact that his father was in
the service of the [inaudible].
We don't know however what
influence might have come
from Iran, the merchants of Iran.
We don't know what influence
might have come from Europe
because there's obviously European
influence in this manuscript.
So what I'm hoping I have
done in these brief minutes is
to take a small 156-page manuscript
and show you the different things
that can be done with it and to say
those of you who are trained in any
of these disciplines are more than
welcome to come back to see this
and any of the other
Armenian manuscripts we have,
and with that I thank you.
[ Applause ]
I would welcome some
questions if you have them,
but I have to tell you first
that as you can see this lecture is
being filmed for future webcasting.
So by asking a question you are
giving us permission to include you
in that webcast, and with that
I believe you had a question.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: It's typical of
most manuscripts that I know.
Now this is counterintuitive,
contradictory actually.
Someone who has wasted, wasted
or actually used, pages of...
blank pages both at the
beginning and at the end,
starts the chapters immediately,
but I can see why he does that.
It is actually more artistically
fulfilling to see a continuity
of the pages, but yes, most
of the manuscripts I have read
for my own work have continued.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: I think you need to look
at the actually the Incipit
page, which you see there.
There's a lot of color there.
The variation, maybe you could
not see it, the variations
on the unctuals, the variations
on the headbands, the variations
of the flowers, no, he has as
the colophon demanded a variety,
a great variety of colors, and
his palette was quite broad.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: Thank you.
This is Alice Birney, by the way
who shepherded the
collection into the Library.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: Well, I
didn't, and what he thought
of it was it's obviously a beautiful
book in the Bible, which it isn't.
Do you have anything to add?
>> Jensen: I do.
>> Avdoyan: This is Mr. Jensen
who has actually been
studying Rouben Mamoulian.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: That's a good guess.
I don't know if you heard
this, but it is his supposition
since Rouben Mamoulian's
mother was wealthy,
it could have been
in her possession.
I doubt very much that
this was a gift.
No one would give this superb
manuscript up as a personal gift,
especially an Archbishop.
So I think my colleagues, my
[inaudible], would agree with me.
There is a mystical
possession of manuscripts here,
and if it's in the wrong
hands, it is not accepted.
So this was either
bought or inherited.
That would be my guess.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: Yeah.
Now this, of course, as
a historian makes me...
makes me unsettled that we're
even considering these things
without any proof, but we're just
putting this out, the possibilities.
Anyway, there was a...
yes?
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: I learned a long
time ago in my period not
to say definitively,
definitively, unless someone says,
"I took this from x," that
this is exactly the case.
On its face however by the primary
evidence, which is the colophon,
this is a work of Ottoman
design, but trade, influence,
artistic influences went
east, west, north, and south.
So as again I would like to find
out more about Holames Simonian,
and if we don't find more, then
we're going to have to really rely
on one, the colophon, two, people
like [inaudible] and others
who view the size of the medallion
and the construction of the chevrons
and their knowledge of what
the physical artifact was
like in both cultures.
Yes, John?
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: A critical edition
of the Armenian version,
and unfortunately it was
based only on two manuscripts,
one of which was not complete.
One did not have the
dormission; the other one did.
So I don't...
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: Greek is the original.
It's second or...
definitely second or
third century authorship.
The first time it was mentioned by
anyone was by Eusebius of Cesaria,
but we're sure that all
of the apocryphal acts
of the evangelists were written
in the second and third century.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: No, it doesn't.
No. [Laughter] I was
trained by Morton Smith,
and that means you don't have
an opinion unless you've read
everything, and I mean
everything, so I don't.
I have got to admit.
I am a historian.
I'm not a hagiographer.
Thank God.
I'm not an art historian.
What I remember many years ago
when I first started graduate work
at Columbia University, Professor
[inaudible] in the Department
of Middle East Languages
and Studies,
all of the professors
were brought out so
that they could indoctrinate
the new students.
Well, he sat back rather
arrogantly and said, "Okay,
my job is to tell you
what the text says.
That's all I'm interested in.
I don't want to analyze it.
I don't want to do anything.
I'm going to tell you what it says,
and then you can do what you want."
That's exactly what I've done here.
I've tried to explicate the
manuscript and make it available
to researchers in a
variety of disciplines.
If this had been a
historical manuscript,
a manuscript about Armenian
history or something,
I wouldn't let you see it.
I'd be running with it myself.
[Laughter] There was an English
translation of the Greek Acts,
and there is a French translation
by [inaudible] of the first chapter
of the Armenian Acts
but no translation
of the Armenian Acts in total.
We do know as I've told you that
the newer versions of the Acts
of St. John have many
more chapters than 11.
The older version has 11.
The fact that the Armenian version
has 11 chapters indicates it's very
close to the original, and
indeed that's not to be...
that's not surprising.
The Chronicle of Eusebius
of Cesaria is incomplete.
In some cases the Armenian
translation not only provides the
sections that are not in
the Greek version we have.
They also antedate the
Greek version that we have,
so that they're even older
than the Greek version.
So, I mean, we have to remember
that all the ancient languages
of the Middle East were used
to preserve, to translate
and preserve the riches
of previous cultures.
Anything else?
[ Inaudible ]
>> Avdoyan: Dr. Brener.
She's very kind, but anyway any...
Very good.
Thank you so much.
I truly hope you will come back,
and may I say that on May 8 we
are having the Vardanants lecture
delivered by Dr. Susan Harper.
It will be in the room
behind us, and it will be
on American humanitarian assistance
and the Armenian crucible 1915
to 1923, and I hope
we will see you there.
If I can't see you then on May
8, we'll be having a display,
a major display of Armenian
manuscripts, books, maps, etc.,
again in the Northeast
Pavilion, and for the public,
and I hope I see you then.
Thank you for coming.
[Applause]
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