Roundtable on “Key Issues and Challenges in the Formation of the Western Armenian World”

Under the chairmanship of Archbishop Kegham Khacherian, Primate of the Armenian Diocese of Western America, a roundtable on “Key Issues and Challenges in the Formation of the Western Armenian World” was held on Wednesday, February 25, in the “Tigran and Zarouhi Der Ghazarian” Hall of the Western Prelacy, with the keynote speaker being Prof. Seta P. Dadoyan (New York) and the presence of a group of invited intellectuals.

On this occasion, the Prelacy published a booklet, which contains the sidebars of the three volumes and an essay by Prof. Seta P. Dadoyan. The author explained the historical novelties, goals, and significance of the series, in particular the millennial revolution of the Western Armenian world, the political-cultural specifics, and the historical political history of the Armenian Church.

Currently, two volumes (bilingual) have been published in the series, and the third (in English) and the most extensive is under press. They are:

– “Nerses IV Shnorhali – Saint and Diplomat and the Persistence of the People and the Church in the Western Armenian World.” (2025).

– “Yovhan III Odznetsi, Saint, Jurist and Great Master of Armenian Mesopolitan Culture and Diplomacy. (717-728).” (2025).

– “Prolegomenon to the Millennial History of the Western Armenian World ‒ The First Phase 10th to 15th Centuries – From Kingdoms to Awakening, Politics and Culture.” (2026)

The series has its origins in social, cultural and historical concerns. One of the main goals is to make intellectual and spiritual culture, and lived — not imagined, composed and “programmed” — history accessible to the people and relevant to their current issues and horizons of self-knowledge.

Apart from a few topics, such as the Genocide and Karabakh, there are many dark parts, radical dead ends and impasses in Armenian historiography – not history. According to the author, the reasons should be sought in the partial ways and perspectives of understanding and explaining the historical experiences of Armenians within the context of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean situations.

One of the important topics of the series is the political history of the Armenian Church over more than 17 centuries, which has only received marginal attention from historians. The social, political and theological legacy of figures like Shnorhali and Narekatsi, the real-life personalities are uncertain, and they themselves remain great “familiar strangers”. Shnorhali is known for his hymns and theology, and Narekatsi for his healing and wonderful Narek. Already very late initiatives have studied the role of Shnorhali in his complex and dangerous medieval time and period, and Narekatsi as a courageous and brilliant socio-ideological revolutionary of the 10th century. Approaches and analyses of this kind characterize the volumes of the series.

The author’s approach to the series is interdisciplinary. This means and requires combining historiography, sociology, cultural history, arts, and in particular, the philosophical-critical method. Thus, Shnorhali’s ecclesiastical, theological, literary, and political spheres come within a single broad historical framework. There are not several Shnorhalis, there is one Shnorhali who is a saint and at the same time a diplomat, as well as a poet. So the usual focus on a narrow face has obscured the whole person, his role and legacy. The same is true of Narekatsi, historical periods and important events.

One of the important innovations in the approach to the series is also the revolution of the historical paradigm, model. Instead of center-periphery, or homeland-Diaspora/abroad, two historical Armenian worlds are taken: the Eastern Armenian world, around one part of the native land, and the millennial and dynamic Western Armenian world to its west and south. The third volume of the series is a comprehensive critical prologue to the still incomplete history of the Western Armenian World (Prolegomenon to the History of the Western Armenian World).

Almost unnoticed is the historically substantiated fact that already by the end of the 10th century and, of course, with the final collapse of the Armenian kingdom in 1045 AD., in particular as a result of the Byzantine imperial plan to annex Armenia, the Armenian World had begun to divide. In the eleventh century, with mass migrations to the west and south, and at the same time the rapid penetration of the Ghuz-Seljuk Turkic tribes, the native land was emptied and a new Armenian settlement, Habitat/Ecumene, emerged, which was much more extensive than the eastern one and was located directly in the middle world (mesopolitan, meso-poleis), that is, between various states and nations. There was no center and periphery.

Clearly, for at least a millennium, the two Armenian worlds have been in different situations and subject to different impulses of revolution. Therefore, the “center and periphery” comparison has no historical basis. And the homeland-Diaspora division was a direct consequence of the Cold War. Simply put, there is one nation in two different Armenian worlds.

The separation has naturally developed its own associated issues. The first is internal division and conflict within each world and between the two. The differences between the two Armenian worlds were inevitable in the most unstable and turbulent period of the world and between competing powers. The fact that after the 7th century, with the exception of Cilicia, the majority of Armenians were in the Islamic world has often been ignored. The representative of non-Islamic minorities was the religious leader. The historical and source-based study of the situation of Armenians in the Islamic world is still preliminary and based on narrow, Armenocentric assumptions and narratives. The main problem is that in all cases, the Church and the Catholicos were part of the political-diplomatic process. Pacts were often concluded with the Catholicos, such as Sahak G. Dzoraporetsi, Yovhan G. Odznetsi, and hence the importance of the political history of the Church.

The phenomenon of Armenian Cilicia finds its historical explanation in the Western Armenian World and in particular in The Armenian Intermezzo in the Near Eastern World.

This “intermediate” period, from the 10th to the 12th centuries, is the period of nearly two hundred years, from the decline and decline of the Armenian kingdoms to the establishment of a kingdom in Cilicia in 1198/9. Contrary to popular belief, this is the most active and important field and region of Armenian political potential and activity, north of the Euphrates, Cappadocia, northern Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Unfortunately, however, it has been completely ignored and reduced to a so-called “Cilician history.”

Cilicia is not only a part, but also, among other consequences, a consequence of this intermediate period. It is not a divine gift or a heroic episode, but a true medieval phenomenon, and the longest-lasting political entity (body politic) in the history of Western Armenia, between the Christian West and the Islamic East.

During the two centuries of the Armenian Mediator, the “realpolitics” of various and numerous Armenian forces, faces and trends, including the Cilicians, created small and large political-military powers in the territory of Western Armenia, from the principality of Philartos around Marash to the Armenian Century in Egypt, and the Avakian principality in Palestine. The historical novelty is that Roupinian Cilicia was one of these phenomena, surrounded by the Chalcedonian Byzantines, the Seljuk Turks, the Latin Crusaders, the Sunni Ayyubids, and then the Mongols and Mamluks.

With Cilicia, the difficult path of Western Armenians to survive on foreign soil officially began. Today, thousands of miles away, we are still walking that path.

The author of the series also presents another new theory. It is often spoken and written about the Armenian Age of Kingdoms from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, as if it were the only and last. There is also, and as a consequence of the Armenian Mediator, a second period, which the author calls the “Dynastic Triangle” or the “Second Age of Kingdoms”. These are Cilicia, the City State of Erznka/Erzinjān, and the Georgian-Armenian Zakarians at Ani.

The relationship between the Western and Eastern Armenian worlds should in turn be the subject of objective and critical historiography. That work has not been done. The author discusses the reasons in the book series. Developing in completely different geographical, political, social and cultural worlds, the Western and Eastern Armenian worlds would necessarily be different. Disagreements were inevitable, sometimes violent but always understandable and explicable. Unfortunately, that is not the public opinion.

In Western Armenia, the conditions were truly medieval and as a result the culture was completely different. Already in the eleventh century, when the exiled people, their patriarchal authorities and the Catholicosate were trying to find minimal security and a permanent place, all of them were already in close relations with the local people and authorities. Consequently, the emergence of a more liberal and pragmatic culture on the Western side was not only natural but necessary, at least for survival. It was this situation that gave rise to the Silver Age of Armenian Culture in the 12th century, which was followed by a kind of Proto-Awakening during the following centuries until the end of the Middle Ages. Indeed, it was in Cilicia that the revolutionary ideas of Naregatsi and the new literature were understood and liberated.