Armenian Lectionary of the Academy Library of Romania
Rezumat
Abstract: This article analyzes an Armenian Lectionary located at the Academy Library in Romania (MS Or. 225). The manuscript was copied at the beginning of the 17th century by the scribe Abraham in Suceava, where there was an Armenian community. The manuscript testifies to the presence of Armenians in Suceava and their literary heritage. Previous scholarship on this Lectionary was limited to a brief catalogue description of contents. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the manuscript from codicological, paleographic, and artistic perspectives. The paper also analyzies a previously unknown and intriguing feature of this Lectionary, namely the complex cryptograms with five keys composed by a certain Esayi.
Keywords: Lectionary, manuscript, cryptography, paleography, miniature, scribe, Abraham, Suceava.
Citation suggestion: Sargsyan, Lusine . “Armenian Lectionary of the Academy Library of Romania”. Transilvania, no. 12(2025): 84-96.
https://doi.org/10.51391/trva.2025.12.12.
Acknowledgements: As a Research Fellow at New Europe College Institute for Advanced Studies (October- February, 2013-2014 and May-June, 2017, Bucharest.), I had an opportunity to study the collections of Armenian manuscripts in Romania, including the collections of the Academy Library of Romania and the National Archives of Cluj-Napoca. For obtaining the necessary images of some pages of the MS Or. 225 of the Academy Library, I am grateful to Dr. Ioana Feodorov (Senior Researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy, PI of the ERC Typarabic Project) and Mr. David Linus Neagu (Junior Researcher at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy).
I express my gratitude to my colleagues Narine Vardanyan (Ph.D, Department of Manuscipt Study at the Matenadaran) and Arusyak Tamrazyan (Ph.D., Department for the Study of the Musical Texts at the Matenadaran) for their assistance in some issues regarding the contents of the manuscript. Also, I am grateful to Heghnar Watenpaugh (Ph.D, Professor of Art History at Department of Art and Art History at the University of California) for editing this paper into academic English, and Erin Piñon (Ph.D, Postgraduate Research Associate at Princeton University) for her assistance in translating the codicological description of the manuscript into English.
Bibliografie
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Link
https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romanization/armenian.pdf – Armenian alphabet’s Romanization and numerical values according to the Library of Congress, USA.
