Revisiting Armenian Hagiographical Sources: a Distinctive Local Collection of Neomartyrologies from the Nineteenth Century

Abstract This article is dedicated to a unique Armenian manuscript, under the shelf mark 4596 in the collection of the Matenadaran – Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, containing a number of neomartyrological texts. A subset of these was published as early as 1902–1903, in the collection New Martyrs of the Armenians , a work whose publication history and significance are also presented in this article. The remaining texts saw publication in 1910, in the pages of the Ararat monthly, the official periodical of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin. They did not, however, enter into scholarly circulation and have remained almost unknown to researchers. The aim of this article is to explore the codicological peculiarities of the manuscript in question. It further seeks to examine the circumstances connected with the creation and the relocation of this manuscript. The eight individual martyrological narratives are presented in brief, and an attempt is made to elucidate the purpose and context of the collection’s creation.