User:Yerevantsi/sandbox/Koriun

sources

Most of our knowledge of these events comes from a short biography of Mashtots written by one of his pupils, Koriun, after the master’s death (Koriun, 1964). Although it is rather short on precise details and rather long on rhetorical description, this Life of Mashtots is important both as a historical source and as the first example of biographical writing in Armenian. Koriun says little about the early life of Mashtots. He was bom in the province of Taron in western Armenia and received

an education in Greek literature. We are not told where; but many of Mashtots’s contemporaries went to the schools of Antioch and other centers of Greek learning. He entered the royal chancellery and advanced to an important position. However, he had a vocation for the religious life; abandoning the secular world, he became an ascetic hermit. After some time he began to attract disciples, and embarked on the career that would transform Armenia.

Mashtots’s efforts were directed to preaching the gospel in remoter parts of the country. Although King Trdat (Tiridates in Greek) had been converted to Christianity at the beginning of the century, and St. Gregory the Illuminator had established the first organized Armenian bishoprics—the main episcopal see being at Ashtishat in Taron, Mashtots’s native province—the whole country was by no means converted overnight. Another early historian, Pavstos (P'awstos) Buzand, describes in some detail the struggle of the church in fourth-century Armenia; there was much opposition from the old noble families with their pagan traditions and basically Iranian-oriented outlook (P'awstos Buzand, 1989). And from Koriun we learn that many areas were still entirely untouched by the Christian message. Mashtots set to work to eradicate “ancestral habits and the diabolical worship of demons.’1

• Thomson, Robert W. (1997). "Armenian Literary Culture Through the Eleventh Century". In Hovannisian, Richard G. (ed.). The Armenian People From Ancient To Modern Times Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 199–239.

https://ia601506.us.archive.org/5/items/koryun-mashtots/KORYUN_AGATANGEGHOS%20%281%29-1-12.pdf

Acharian 1984