(In)visible Philosophical Traditions: Aristotle in Armenia

Greek philosophy, and in particular Aristotelian and Neoplatonic doctrines, reverberated into Eastern Christian societies from Late Antiquity onwards. Concepts of philosophical provenance were progressively appropriated by Eastern Christianity and integrated into new conceptual frameworks, and in particular into theological speculations. In this context, the Armenians had one of the most prolific and long-lasting Aristotelian commentary traditions from Late Antiquity up to the 18th century. The research will focus on the period between the 12th and the 13th century, which represents an important milestone in Armenian intellectual history, however neglected. In this period, cultural transfer of texts and ideas was indeed boosted by trade exchanges and social encounters in highly multilingual and multicultural societies. The Armenians represented one of the most influential and well-connected minorities, and were prominent and active cultural brokers both in Christian and non-Christian contexts of the Mediterranean and South-Caucasian areas. This also implied transfer of ideas, which is mirrored in several philosophical and theological commentaries, compendia and works of this period. In this respect, the aim that the project Invisible Philosophical Traditions: Aristotle in Armenia sets out is twofold: on the one hand, the inquiry of the dynamics of appropriation of Greek terms and theoretical tools in the hands of 12th and 13th centuries Armenian theologians and philosophers, in order to show at what extent Greek philosophy continued to exert its influence on late Medieval Armenian reasoning (diachronic perspective). On the other hand, the inquiry of theoretical exchanges between Arabo-Muslim and Greek Byzantine traditions and Armenian texts (synchronic perspective). Some fundamental theories, such as the question of universals or common natures (ontology, i.e. theory of being) and their application to theological issues, as well as the role of imagination in the intellects act of abstraction (epistemology, i.e. theory of knowledge), will be explored through the examination of seven unedited Armenian texts contained in different manuscripts, as well as of seven edited Armenian texts, which are not yet accessible to Western scholarship because of linguistic barriers. In the meanwhile, the results of this research will be compared with the theories elaborated by contemporary Muslim and Greek Byzantine philosophers with regard to ontology and epistemology. Methodologically, the project will apply the concepts of connected histories and connectivity nodes borrowed from World History, as well as the methods of Philology and of Medieval philosophy. An approach concerned with the significance of the texts, as well as with the social, cultural and historical context that had caused the production of the texts under examination, will be privileged. The spirit of the project is to foster a new dialogue on Armenians in the history of Medieval philosophy, as well as of Byzantine and Near Eastern Studies.

The project aimed to draw scholarly attention on a neglected and invisible philosophical tradition of the Eastern Christian world, and namely the Armenian. The focus was on the exegetical texts and original works produced by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Armenian philosophers and theologians as result of their own reflection on Greek philosophy. The overall goal of the project was to achieve a better evaluation of the textual transmission and circulation of ancient and late ancient Greek philosophy among a dynamic and interconnected intellectual milieu as it was the Armenian one in the period between the twelfth and the thirteen centuries, especially during the reign of Cilicia Armenia. The philosophical literature of this period was produced in varied cultural contexts: in the monastic schools of Eastern Armenia, at the roayl court of Sis and in the monasteries of Cilicia Armenia, and in the coty of Erzincan in Eastern Anatolia. The results of the project are to be found in four articles which deals with different authors and problems. In the first article, I analysed three works, among which two were authored by John the Deacon and one by the court secretary of King Levon III. The second article examines the cognitive and psychological theories of John of Erzincan (Yovhannes of Erznka), who was one of the most influent religious and political personalities in the period of the Mongol invasions of Anatolia. The third article sought to provide a preliminary analysis of the transformation of classical ethics into a kind of societal praxis or ethical way of life in the sermons and the brotherhood's constitutions of John of Erznka. The fourth article examines the use of some Aristotelian concepts, such as likeness, analogy and homonymy, in the works of several Armenian theologians with a particular focus on two scholars who lived in Cilicia Armenia.