Professor Thomson deals here with the origins of Armenian Christian literature and its development as an individual literary culture. At the same time, these studies make available to students of Patristics and Byzantine history some of the wealth of information preserved in the Armenian sources. One set of articles, focusing on the question of origins, looks at the influence and use made of Christian Syriac and Greek writings, both theological and historical, as well as those of late classical antiquity. Others examine how the Armenians viewed themselves in their ambiguous position between...

This Lawcode is the first Armenian legal text to cover secular as well as ecclesiastical matters. Although the Armenians had been concerned with canon law since the fifth century, secular law was not codified until Greater Armenia was under Muslim domination. Mxit'ar Gosh began his work in 1184 in an attempt to provide Armenians with a comprehensive code based on traditional practice. He did not use the Greek and Syrian lawcodes that were being translated into Armenian during his lifetime. Mxit'ar's code formed the basis for all later Armenian lawcodes, both that of Smbat in Cilican Armenia...