Matthias von Edessa

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Matthias von Edessa ( Armenian Մատթէոս Ուռհայեցի , Matevos Urhayetsi ; * around 1070; † not before 1137) was an Armenian historian and an Armenian apostolic monk from Edessa ( Greek ; Syriac : Urhay, today Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey). He is known as the author of the "Chronicle of Matthias von Edessa" (Armenian Zhamanakagrut'iwn ), which was created in the first half of the 12th century and in three parts the period from 952 to 1128/1129 as well as a continuation by priest Gregory the Time to 1162/1163 portrays.

The strictly linear narrated chronicle instead of a literary historiography is the earliest known example of this form written in Armenian. The chronicle marks the beginning of a development in Armenian historiography, in which, from the 12th century, the earlier literary and sometimes lyrical stories are replaced by simple annals . Matthias probably used the missing chronicle of the learned monk Hakob Sanahneci († 1085 in Edessa) as a model. In addition to the accusation of insufficient education of its author, the work is accused by some historians of the lack of linguistic quality. The significance of the work, which has been handed down in at least 42 manuscripts, as a historical source is independent of this . Its structure is based on the biblical prophecy in the Revelation of John , which is presented as historically fulfilled, according to which Christianity falls into sin, is punished by God for it and is redeemed at the end of all days.

biography

Matthias lived in Edessa in a city predominantly inhabited by Syrian and Armenian Christians. His nickname Urhayetsi ("from Edessa") does not make it clear whether he was born in this city or only lived there for a long time. The name of the monastery to which he belonged is also unknown. At some point he seems to have moved to Kesun (now Çakırhüyük in Besni County ). According to his own testimony, Matthias had not had any higher education and wrote in the colloquial language he was familiar with. Matthias was the head of a monastery in Edessa, without being called Wardapet . He wrote the chronicle from 1101 to the 1130s shortly before his death. During this time Edessa was the center of a principality founded by the Crusaders ("Franks"). The Armenians in Edessa lived as a minority in a Syrian environment. The battles between Byzantines , Turkish Seljuks and Franks that Matthias experienced around him occur at regular intervals in his work. Presumably he died in 1137 or 1138. The only source for this biographical information are two insets in the chronicle after the dates 1051 and 1101.

timeline

Title page of the Armenian standard edition from 1898

The editors have divided the 180-year work into three parts. The first chapter covers the period from 952 to 1052, the second chapter describes the following years up to 1102 after a personal preface by the author and the third chapter, which also begins with an introduction, ends in 1129. Each chapter covers only half the period of the previous one in order to express the increasing threat to the Armenians in the dramatic concentration. The author wrote the first chapter 1102–1110, the second 1110–1125, and probably completed the third in 1136. The only references to Matthias' working method and his biography can be found in the short introductions. After his death, the priest Gregor, who lives in Kesun, about 140 kilometers to the north-west, continued the work for the years 1136 to 1162, although Gregor did not proceed so strictly chronologically. No information is given about the relationship between the two clergymen.

The broad horizon of Matthias, reaching far beyond medieval Armenia, has made his chronicle a valuable source for the entire South Caucasus , Syria and Mesopotamia . According to Tara Andrews , the information contained in the chronicle, for example on the First Crusade, cannot literally be compared with the reports of the parties involved as those of a neutral observer, but must be interpreted with an understanding of the Armenian perspective in order to be of practical use. This also applies to the views on other topics that Matthias expresses. Where the Armenian narrative tradition has not been included, historians such as Steven Runciman have attested Matthias a one-sided assessment combined with hatred of the Byzantines and deplored his expressed aversion to the Byzantine Orthodox faith . In fact, narrative underhanded Byzantines, diabolical Turks and heroic Armenian military leaders collide. The fact that the monk Matthias pretended to be uneducated should be seen as a common topos at the time .

All of this work is based on belief in the biblical prophecy of lost children who are punished for their aberrations and finally redeemed by the grace of God. According to Armenian tradition, the history of the Armenians is placed in this context of fate. In the introduction to the third chapter, Matthias mentions the Bible-based story of the chosen people who will be rewarded for their suffering with paradise at the end. Matthias thus sets since Koriun in 440 years in the hagiographischem work "Life of Mashtots " ( Vark' Maštoc'i continued) on the Armenian people minted Christian tradition. The historical fate, which precedes the timeframe presented in the chronicle, was the Arab conquest of the Armenian territories in the 7th century, which, before Matthias, the historians called Sebeos with the sinful life of Christians as a whole explained why in the second half of the 7th century they lost the Holy Land . The promised liberation from the Arab yoke happened in 884 with the coronation of Ashot I as Armenian king. A historiography that was customary in the 10th century and began with the biblical beginnings of the Armenian people follows the example of the "History of Armenia", which is ascribed to a historian named Moses von Choren . According to the Armenian tradition, Moses lived in the 5th century, but according to independent historians, his "History of Armenia" was published in the 8th / 9th centuries. Compiled in the 19th century . When the Armenian Kingdom of Ani was annexed by the Byzantine Empire in 1045 and soon afterwards was conquered by the Seljuks, the historian Aristakes Lastivertsi (1002-1080) reverted to the old narrative tradition and led the renewed oppression back to the sins of the Armenian people.

According to this pattern, the chronicle written by Matthias is divided into three chapters: Chapter 1 deals with the time of the independent Armenian kingdoms, followed by Chapter 2, which contains the prophetically predicted loss of independence and the influence of the Byzantines on the religion around the Armenian Christian to impose the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon . Added to this is the conquest of Ani by the Seljuks in 1064 and the defeat of the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, which brought about 50 years of Persian domination. This chapter ends shortly after the arrival of the first crusaders in 1096 in 1098, when Baldwin I (r. 1100–1118) had proclaimed a county of the crusaders in Edessa. Geographically, the first two chapters deal with the Armenian regions in the South Caucasus and around Lake Van , only the third chapter focuses on Edessa herself.

Chapters 1 and 2 begin with a prophecy dedicated to the Wardapet Hovhannes corporation and probably written by him; the first is dated 1029, the second 1036. They reflect the core of the history presented in the chronicle in the timeframe discussed. Little is known about Hovhannes Kozern, also Hovhannes Taronetsi. Aristakes Lastivertsi holds him for one of the leading scholars in the first two decades of the 11th century during the reign of the Bagratid Gagik I (r. 989-1020). He is said to have written a two-volume story about the Armenian Bagratids. In the first prophecy, at the request of King Hovhannes and the nobles, Hovhannes declares a solar eclipse that has just been observed as a sign of Christ's baptism a thousand years ago and predicts the end of Satan's thousand-year captivity . This would lead people to sin, as a result the punishment of God would be expected. Monks would abandon their monastery, priests their church, family members would turn against each other and the whole kingdom would fall to the Muslims. With the second prophecy, Hovhannes established another solar eclipse after King Gagik, Catholicos Petros Getadarz (Petros I, 1019-1058, of the Pahlawuni dynasty) and other nobles approached him for advice. Again Satan and sin and schism among men are to be expected. Soon after, the Seljuks would invade. In contrast to other medieval apocalyptic scenarios, there is no Christian king who defeats the unbelievers in order to unite the believers in an exemplary manner and to make them steadfast in the face of impending catastrophes. Instead, the believers should be shown the impermanence of their existence.

In the foreword to the third chapter Matthias confesses his difficulties in organizing the historical material, he is not a scholar and does not have a cultivated style of speech. After looking for a more suitable author to complete his work, but not finding it, he recognizes God's dispensation, which urges him to finish his work himself. So he goes back to work in chapter 3 and describes the presence of Baldwin in Edessa and the other crusaders in Antioch, including Godfrey of Bouillon in Jerusalem . He often mentions the religious differences between the Crusaders and the native Christians. In his ambiguous attitude towards the crusaders, he makes them appear heroic in their struggle against the Muslims and at the same time greedy for their land seizures. The chapter ends in the 1120s with the rise of the Bagratid king Dawit , who succeeded in driving out the Seljuks and placing the Armenian principalities under Georgian rule. The third chapter ends in the Armenian church year 577 (corresponds to 1128/1129 AD) without a final vision. Matthias no longer prophesied whether he would like to recognize the end-time Christian redeemers in the form of the Bagratids, Byzantines or the Western Crusaders. Overall, the result is a partial, yet multi-faceted picture of the everyday life of the medieval Armenian population, who lived as a minority under Turkish rule.

Manuscripts

42 known manuscripts are listed in library catalogs, seven of which are only preserved as fragments. The oldest fragment, dated 1323 (number 430), is owned by the Bzommar monastery in Lebanon . The oldest completely surviving copy dates from the 1590s and is kept under the number 887 in the monastery library of the mechitarists on the island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni near Venice . A large part of the remaining manuscripts, most of which were copied in the 17th century and still in the 18th and 19th centuries, is in Matenadaran in Yerevan (six of them were previously stored in the library of the Patriarchate in Etchmiadzin ). The rest are to the library of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem (three manuscripts), the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris (three manuscripts), the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British Museum in London, the Armenian Hospice in Rome and the library of the Mechitarists distributed in Vienna .

There are differences in content between the copies of the 17th century: Manuscript 449 copied in Bzommar in 1699 differs particularly clearly in several places from all other texts. It is not known where this manuscript was copied. A colophon added later only notes that it appeared in Livorno in 1787 . The long opening credits of texts whose authorship is attributed to several other learned monks (wardapets) is unusual. The comparison of the manuscripts is made more difficult because most of them do not have an addendum ( colophon ) that informs about the copyist and the place of production. Most of the almost completely preserved manuscripts have come down to us together with the historical work "Life of Nerses " by the chronicler Mesrop (by Vajoz Dzor ) from the 10th century. Catholicos Nerses foresaw the separation of the Byzantine from the Armenian Church in the 4th century. Matthias reports on this prophecy as a historical event that has taken place. Some manuscripts are preceded by the last section from “The Life of Nerses”, so that both texts are in a meaningful context. In the Bzommar manuscript (449) the excerpt from “The Life of Nerses” begins after the opening credits from fol. 70 r . The layout of the pages does not show where the copyist saw the end of the Nerses text and the beginning of the chronicle.

The most completely preserved manuscript is listed in Matanadaran under the number 1896. It was copied in 1689 in the Amrdolu Monastery in Bitlis . This emerges from a long colophon in which the copyist Yakob Erez names a Matthias who wrote it on behalf of the "great Armenian Prince Vasil" as the author. It is unclear which historical person is behind the name Vasil. The beginning is preceded by a one-sided excerpt from “The Life of Nerses”.

Editions and translations

Part of the chronicle was first published in 1850 in the French translation by Edouard Dulaurier (1807-1881). Dulaurier had a manuscript from Venice available, which included the years 1096 to 1162. In 1858, Dulaurier published a French translation of the entire text, based on two manuscripts in the Paris National Library. The first Armenian edition of the entire text appeared in 1869. It was based on three manuscripts from the library of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. This publication served as a comparison for the Armenian standard edition drawn up by Mambrē Mēlik'-Adamean and Nersēs Tēr Mik'ayēlean in Wagharschapat in 1898 and which is still valid today. She used the six manuscripts stored at that time in Vagharschapat and cited deviations from the Jerusalem edition in the footnotes. Hratch Bartikian published the Vagharschapat edition in 1973 as a new edition together with a translation in modern Armenian, but without commentary. In Ankara in 1962, HD Andreasyan published a Turkish translation based on the French translation by Dulaurier.

The only English translation was done by Ara Edmond Dostourian. It is based on the Armenian edition from 1898. No other manuscripts than those kept in Armenia and Jerusalem were used for any publication, with the exception of the Paris manuscript used by Dulaurier.

literature

  • Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena to a Critical Edition of the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, with a Discussion of Computer-Aided Methods Used to Edit the Text. Oxford 2009, (Oxford, Linacre College - University of Oxford, dissertation, 2009; digitized ).
  • Tara L. Andrews: The New Age of Prophecy: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa and Its Place in Armenian Historiography. In: Erik Kooper (ed.): The Medieval Chronicle. Volume 6. Rodopi, Amsterdam et al. 2009, ISBN 978-90-420-2674-2 , pp. 106-124.
  • Christopher MacEvitt: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa: Apocalypse, the First Crusade, and the Armenian Diaspora. In: Dumbarton Oaks Papers . Vol. 61, 2007, pp. 157-181, JSTOR 25472048 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, p. 7 f., 14.
  2. ↑ Christopher MacEvitt: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. 2007, p. 161.
  3. ↑ Christopher MacEvitt: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. 2007, pp. 160, 168.
  4. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, p. 76 f.
  5. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, pp. 79-81.
  6. ↑ Christopher MacEvitt: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. 2007, p. 162 f.
  7. ^ Tara L. Andrews: The New Age of Prophecy. 2009, p. 110 f .; Christopher MacEvitt: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. 2007, p. 175 f.
  8. ↑ Christopher MacEvitt: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. 2007, p. 158.
  9. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, pp. 91-96.
  10. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, p. 16, 308 f.
  11. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, pp. 20 f., 27.
  12. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, p. 22 f.
  13. ↑ Ara Edmond Dostourian (Ed.): Armenia and the Crusades. Tenth to twelth Centuries. The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. Translated from the original Armenian with a Commentary and Introduction. University Press of America, Lanham MD et al. 1993, ISBN 0-8191-8953-7 , pp. Xii.
  14. ↑ Urfalı Mateos Vekayi-nâmesi (952–1136) ve Papaz Grigor'un Zeyli (1136–1162) (= Türk Tarih Kurumu yayınları. Series 2, 21, ZDB ID 2259533-8 ). Türkçeye çeviruses: Hrant D. Andreasyan. Notlar: Édouard Dulaurer, M. Halil Yinanç. Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, Ankara 1962.
  15. ↑ Ara Edmond Dostourian (Ed.): Armenia and the Crusades. Tenth to twelth Centuries. The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa. Translated from the original Armenian with a Commentary and Introduction. University Press of America, Lanham MD et al. 1993, ISBN 0-8191-8953-7 .
  16. ^ Tara L. Andrews: Prolegomena. 2009, p. 11 f., 19.
personal data
SURNAME Matthias von Edessa
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Մատթէոս Ուռհայեցի; Matevos Urhayetsi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Armenian monk and chronicler
DATE OF BIRTH around 1070
DATE OF DEATH 1137 or 1138