Abstract
The poetic genius Gregory Narekats’i (950–1003/1011) is largely unfamiliar to the Western theological tradition, but recently he was declared a Doctor of the Catholic Church. The church’s unfamiliarity with its new teacher Gregory has created the opportunity of introducing him, and this book could help make its subject more widely known and appreciated. Its author, Michael Papazian, is a professor of philosophy at Berry College and a reader and translator of Armenian literature. He has written a genuinely commendable introduction—not just to Gregory, but to the Armenian tradition that preceded him—and has provided a clear and readable volume that covers the main lines of Gregory’s life and works.
P. proceeds slowly, introducing the following: the monastery of Narek and its work; the main theological controversies and movements in Armenia of the second half of the first millennium, and particularly the Julianists and the T’ondrakeans; the teachings of the school of Narek; and the role of the school in revitalizing Armenian Christianity—where the established priesthood had trouble making the people aware of the meaning of Bible and liturgy. As in the West at the end of the first millennium, monastic teachers brought the teaching of Christian thought to local Christian communities, and this practice created the conditions for Gregory’s wide acceptance and absorption in the Armenian theological tradition. He wrote many works still used in the liturgy.
The book’s main focus is, however, the book of Gregory’s known as Lamentations—or its alternate title taken from the first line of every poem—“Words to God from the Depth of My Heart.” It was Gregory’s last work, written when he was ill. This book has attained canonical status among Armenian Christians—seen not only as poetry on the level of Dante, but personally revered by generations of Armenian Christians—often kept in the home, like the Bible in the West, as a treasured holy book. It was traditionally taken by travelers as a talisman, for protection, and brought to the sickbed as a cure. Gregory’s work, in short, can hardly be contained between its covers; it is another expression, in Armenia, of the Gospel. Not least, the Lamentations inspired another genre entirely in having been set to music by the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke in the Concerto for Mixed Chorus.
P. organizes his discussion of Gregory in three parts. The first three chapters discuss the history of Christianity in Armenia, and the discussions and controversies in the church at the time of the monastery’s founding. A fourth reviews Gregory’s life and works. Other works—exegetical and controversial, joined by Odes, Litanies ad Encomia (now published in a fine English translation by Abraham Terian)—come from Gregory’s younger period, and they too reflect an astonishingly personal appropriation of the theology of the church. A marked strength of the book is its extensive quotations from Gregory, with explanatory footnotes. These generous quotations allow readers to hear Gregory in his own voice.
Narekats’i’s crowning achievement was the Lamentations, and P. devotes three chapters to the structure of the work, accepting Mahés’s analysis of the Lamentations as a Psalm of Ascent, in which the readers are drawn from narthex to nave to altar, repeating an ancient tradition interpreting the church as the fulfillment of the Temple. A final three chapters discuss Gregory’s understanding of theosis, his mysticism, and his understanding of universal salvation; his devotion to Mary; and his enrollment in the list of Doctors of the Church by Pope Francis. This work is a fine introduction for those who do not know Gregory, and it invites the reader to learn more.