Travels and Studies of Stephen of Siwnik' (c.685–735): Re-defining Armenian Orthodoxy under Islamic Rule

I shall discuss the contacts between the Byzantine and the Armenian Churches in the span of time between the Quinisext Council (691-692) and the beginning of Iconoclasm (724-726). At the centre of our attention will be the career of Stephen of Siwnik (c. 685 – 735), a learned Armenian ecclesiastic who notably translated Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius the Areopagite into Armenian. Stephen’s activity falls within the period that shortly follows the suppression of the Armenian political autonomy by the Caliphate (699-705) and the ensuing change in the status of the Armenian Church within the Armenian society. Stephen’s travel to Byzantium corresponds to the reign of Bardanes Philippicos (711-713) who, in a renewed search of rapprochement with the Eastern ‘Monophysites’, revoked the decisions of the Sixth Oecumenical Council. During his protracted sojourn in Constantinople, Stephen made acquaintance with Patriarch Germanus (715-730), and was also engaged in a theological exchange with him. Stephen’s lengthy Response to Germanos’s appeal to the Armenians to join the Orthodox Church allows us to learn about the development of Armenian theology and the stabilisation of the Armenian doctrinal positions in the period following the Muslim conquest of the Christian East. A special attention will be given to the examination of the notion of ‘incorruptible’ humanity, which the Armenians employed in order to describe both the condition of Adam and Eve in Eden and Christ’s nature.

Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Armenian History and Culture at SOAS. He received his PhD from the EPHE (Sorbonne) in 2002, and Habilitation in 2009. Before coming to SOAS, he taught Biblical languages and the History of Oriental Christianities in the Universities of Rome, Montpellier and Durham. His monograph Arméniens et Byzantins à l’époque de Photius (Peeters 2004) has been awarded the Charles et Marguerite Diehl Prize by the French Academy. He has contributed to the Cambridge History of Christianity and other collective volumes and leading international journals in Armenian and orientalist studies.