NERSES SHNORHALI IN THE EVALUATION OF FRENCH AND FRENCH-SPEAKING FOREIGN ARMENOLOGISTS

Abstract

French and French-speaking foreign scholars studying Armenian medieval literature could not help but pay special attention to the literary heritage of Nerses Shnorhali. Firstly, the fame of Shnorhali went beyond the borders of both Cilician Armenia and Greater Armenia. Secondly, he was a prominent theologian, politician and chronicler who brought great innovations to Armenian literature. Certain types of Shnorhali’s works are closely related to early Renaissance thinking. As writes Frederic Feidy, the most prominent armenologist of the second half of the twentieth century, in the preface to the French translation of the complete collection of the epic David of Sasun, published in Paris in 1964, Shnorhali played a very important role in strengthening the Christian spirit among the Armenian people. Nerses Shnorhali, born three quarters of a century before François of Assises, became a proponent of the reform known as Gallicism.

            Shnorhali tried to bring Christianity closer to believing people. The result of his innovation was the lyrics, created in the language of the people, which was highly understandable to the broad masses of his time. Folk lyrics boldly entered Armenian literature.

            The founder of Armenian studies in France, A.-J. Saint-Martin paid great attention to the works of Nerses Shnorhali. According to his gifted student Marie Félicité Brosset, he planned to translate the works of Schnorhali. This plan did not come to fruition due to the untimely death of Saint-Martin.

Édouard Dulaurier gave a detailed reference to Shnorhali's historical verse work Epic Verses which included a French translation of the Lamentations on Edessa, written in 1145, in the huge book "Collection of Armenian Documents of the Historians of the Crusaders", with appropriate comments and annotations.

The Belgian French-speaking Armenologist Félix Nève, in his monumental work Christian Armenia and Its Literature, published in Louvain in 1886, devoted a separate section to the work of Nerses Shnorhali, also translating his hymns. Felix Nève's book most fully presents the personality and work of Shnorhali, emphasizing the innovative nature of his work.

            French armenologists spoke with admiration of the work of Nerses Shnorhali, emphasizing both his national and universal orientation.