Anania Shirakatsi

Life

Background

Anania Shirakatsi lived in the 7th century. The dates of his birth and death have not been definitively established. Robert H. Hewsen noted in 1968 that Anania is widely believed to have been born between 595 and 600; a quarter-century later he settled on c. 610 as a birthdate and 685 as the year he died. Agop Jack Hacikyan et al. place his birth in early 600s but agree on 685. Sen Arevshatyan, James R. Russell, Edward G. Mathews, and Theo van Lint also concur with 610–685, while Greenwood suggests c. 600–670. Vardanyan places his death in the early 690s.

Anania is the only classical Armenian scholar to have written an autobiography. It is a brief text, characterized as "somewhat self-congratulatory" and "more a statement of academic pedigree" than autobiography. It was probably written as the preface to one of his scholarly works, possibly the K’nnikon. He was the son of Yovhannes and was born in the village of Anania/Aneank’ (Անեանք) or in the town of Shirakavan (Yerazgavors), in the canton of Shirak, in the central Armenian province of Ayrarat. Aneank' may be connected to the later city of Ani, the Bagratid Armenian capital.

Anania probably came from a noble family. Since his name is sometimes spelled as Shirakuni (Շիրակունի), Hewsen argued that he may have belonged to the house of the Kamsarakan or Arsharuni princes of Shirak and Arsharunik’, respectively. Greenwood suggests that it is more likely that Anania came from the lesser nobility in Shirak, who served the house of Kamsarakan. Broutian describes his father as a "minor Armenian nobleman." Vardanyan believes he either came from the Kamsarakan family or that they were his patrons.

Anania is traditionally thought to have been buried in the village of Anavank’; however, the tradition probably originated from the name of the village.

Education

Anania received his early education at the local Armenian schools, possibly at Dprevank’ monastery, where he studied sacred texts and earlier Armenian authors. Due to the lack of teachers and books in Armenia, he decided to travel to the Byzantine Empire to study mathematics. After first traveling to Theodosiopolis, then to the Byzantine-controlled province of Fourth Armenia (probably Martyropolis), where he studied under the mathematician Christosatur for six months. He then left to find a better teacher and learned about Tychicus, who was based at the monastery (or martyrium) of Saint Eugenios in Trebizond. Redgate dated this to the 620s.

Anania devoted a significant part of his autobiography to Tychicus (born c. 560), with whom he spent eight years in the 620s or 630s. Tychicus had studied the Armenian language and its literature while serving in the Byzantine army in Armenia. Wounded by the Persians, he retired from the military and later studied in Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople. Tychicus later returned to his native Trebizond, where he established a school c. 615. Tychicus taught many students from Constantinople (including from the imperial court) and was renowned among Byzantine kings. He provided Anania special attention and taught him what Anania called a "perfect knowledge of mathematics". In Tychicus's vast library, Anania found "everything, exoteric and esoteric", including sacred and secular Greek authors, including works on the sciences, medicine, chronology, and history. Russell believed his library may have included Pythagorean and alchemical books. Anania considered Tychicus to have been "predestined by God for the introduction of science into Armenia."

Educator and scientist

Anania himself established a school in Armenia upon his return. That school, the first in Armenia to teach quadrivium, is presumed to have been located in his native Shirak. He was disappointed with the laziness of his students and their departure after learning the basics. Anania complained about Armenians' lack of interest in mathematics, writing that they "love neither learning, nor knowledge." Nicholas Adontz considered it an exaggeration, "if not an absolute slander, to deny the Armenian innate love of investigation." The 12th-century chronicler Samuel of Ani listed five of Shirakatsi's students, who are otherwise unknown. Anania financed his research in several fields with the money he earned teaching.

Relationship with the church

Thomson wrote that as a lay scholar, Anania was a "rarity in early Armenia." Hewsen termed him the only lay classical Armenian author besides Grigor Magistros, adding that he had a close relationship with the Armenian Church. Hacikyan et al. describe Anania as a "devout Christian and well versed in the Bible" who "made some attempts to reconcile science and Scripture." In his later years, Anania may have been a monk in the Armenian Church. This is based on his religious discourses and attempts to date the feasts of the church. John A. C. Greppin doubts that Anania was ever in any religious order. Several scholars consider him a church ideologist akin to Cosmas Indicopleustes, whom he actually criticized.

Hewsen noted that some of Anania's "more revolutionary ideas" were suppressed by the Armenian Church after his death. Greppin suggested that Anania, a largely secular author, had fallen into a "bad clerical odor." S. Peter Cowe disagreed with Ashot G. Abrahamian's hypothesis that his name was "censored in the Middle Ages because of ecclesiastical disapproval" and argued that it is "more applicable to Soviet practice than that of the relatively tolerant Armenian and other eastern churches." Soviet historians represented him as a founder of irreligious and anti-clerical thought in Armenia, who pioneered double-truth theory. Vazgen Chaloyan called him a "progressive representative of the feudal period of Armenian science." Gevorg Khrlopian went as far as to argue that Anania was an enemy of the Armenian Church and fought against its obscurantism. Hewsen opposed this view, suggesting that, instead, he was an "independent thinker of sorts."

Philosophy

Anania is considered by modern scholars to be a representative of the Hellenizing School since many of his works were based on classical Greek sources. He was the first Armenian scholar to have "imported a set of scientific notions, and examples of their applications, from the Greek-speaking schools" into Armenia. He was well versed in Greek literature, and the influence of Greek syntax is evident in his works. Anania was also knowledgeable about native Armenian and Iranian cultural traditions; several of his works provide important information on late Sassanian Iran.

James R. Russell describes him as an alchemist and a Pythagorean who "does not usually rely on mythology to explain natural phenomena." Anania accepted the importance of experience, observation, rational practice and theory, and was influenced by the ideas of the 5th-century Neoplatonist philosopher Davit Anhaght (the Invincible), and Greek philosophers Thales of Miletus, Hippocrates, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno of Citium, Epicurus, Ptolemy, Pappus of Alexandria, and Cosmas Indicopleustes. Aristotle's On the Heavens had a significant influence on Anania's thought. According to Gevorg Khrlopian, Anania was heavily influenced by Yeghishe's An Interpretation of Creation, the anonymous Interpretation of the Categories of Aristotle, and the works of Davit Anhaght, who had established Neoplatonism in Armenian thought. Anania was also the first Armenian scholar to quote Philo of Alexandria by name.

Anania was the last known lay scholar in Christian Armenia until Grigor Magistros Pahlavuni in the 11th century. He advocated rationalism in studying nature and attacked superstitious beliefs and astrology as the "babblings of the foolish." He adopted the classical theory of four elements, which considered all matter to be composed of four elements: fire, air, water, and earth. He believed that while God directly created these elements, He did not interfere with the "natural course of the development of things." He asserted that the creation, existence, and decay of natural bodies and phenomena occurred through the union of these elements—without the interference of God. Both living and non-living matter came into existence from a synthesis of the four elements.

Anania accepted that the Earth is round, describing it as "like an egg with a spherical yolk (the globe) surrounded by a layer of white (the atmosphere) and covered with a hard shell (the sky)." He accurately explained solar and lunar eclipses, the phases of the Moon, and the structure of the Milky Way, describing the latter as a "mass of dense but faintly luminous stars." Anania also correctly attributed tides to the influence of the Moon. He described the topmost sphere as the aether (arp’i), the source of light and heat (through the Sun).

Traditions and legends

Anania also wrote on herbal medicine, though none of his medical writings have survived. He is traditionally credited with the discovery of the miraculous flower called hamasp’iwṙ or hamasp’iur (համասփիւռ). One 16th century manuscript mentions that he dealt with its therapeutic properties. It has been identified by modern scholars as Silene latifolia (white campion). He is credited with discovering the plant in Dzoghakert (near modern Taşburun, Iğdır, Turkey) and using it medically.

The authorship of the "Book of the Six Thousand" (Vec‘ hazareak), the "most important Armenian magical text of the Middle Ages", has traditionally been attributed to Anania. According to a later legend, Anania taught alchemy to the king of Venice.

Influence in the Middle Ages

Anania laid the foundations of the exact sciences in Armenia and greatly influenced many Armenian scholars who came after him. Robert H. Hewsen argued that Anania failed to create a true intellectual school with disciples who continued his legacy and his isolated genius exposes the dire state of medieval Armenian science. Hovhannes Imastaser (Sarkavag) and other medieval scholars extensively cited and incorporated Anania's works. In a 1037 letter, Grigor Magistros, a scholar from the Pahlavuni noble family, asked Catholicos Petros Getadardz for Anania's manuscripts of his K’nnikon, which were locked up at the catholicosate for centuries. Grigor used these as a textbook at his school at Sanahin Monastery. Anania may have also influenced Byzantine scholars of Armenian origin, namely Leo the Mathematician in the 9th century and Nicholas Artabasdos Rhabdas in the 14th century.

Reemergence in the modern period

In the printed age, passing references to Anania were made as early as 1742 by Paghtasar Dpir, but it was not until the latter half of the 19th century that Anania and his work became a subject of scholarly study. In 1877 Kerovbe Patkanian published a collection of Anania's works in the original classical Armenian at St Petersburg University. Titled Sundry Studies (Մնացորդք բանից, Mnats’ordk’ banits’), it is the first-ever print publication of his works. Galust Ter-Mkrtchian published a number of Anania's works in 1896. The Russian Academy of Sciences published Joseph Orbeli's Russian translation of Anania's Problems and Solutions in 1918.

Systematic study and publication of his works began in the Soviet period. Ashot G. Abrahamian, who began his research at the Matenadaran in the 1930s, first published one of Anania's arithmetical texts in 1939, followed by a complete compilation of Anania's work in 1944. One critic objected to his compilation for attributing disputed works to Anania. Abrahamian and Garegin Petrosian published an updated edition in 1979. Some criticism persisted: Varag Arakelian noted a number of errors in translations from classical Armenian and concluded that a new translation of his works was needed. Another Soviet scholar, Suren T. Eremian, studied the Geography. He insisted on Anania's authorship and published his research in 1963.

The first translation of Anania's work into a European language was done by the British Orientalist Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, who translated into English Anania's On Christmas, in 1896, and On Easter and Anania's autobiography, in 1897. Lemerle noted that Conybeare translated Anania's autobiography from a Russian translation, and it contains numerous serious errors. Renewed interest in Anania's work emerged in the West since the 1950s, with a series of English articles in the Armenian Review. A French translation of his autobiography appeared in 1964 by Haïg Berbérian. Robert H. Hewsen authored an introductory article on Anania's life and scholarship in 1968. Hewsen dedicated his monumental atlas of Armenia (2001) to Anania, whom he called "Armenia's First Scientist."

Modern assessment

Hailed as a polymath, Anania is considered by modern scholars as the "father of the exact sciences in Armenia." Modern historians consider him as the greatest scientist of medieval Armenia and, possibly, all Armenian history, up to the 20th century astrophysicist Viktor Ambartsumian. He is widely regarded as the founder of the natural sciences in the country. He was the first classical Armenian scholar to study mathematics and several scientific subjects, such as cosmography and chronology. Nicholas Adontz argued that Anania "occupied the same position in Armenian education as Leo [the Mathematician] did in Byzantine education. He was the first to sow the seeds of science among the Armenians." Robert H. Hewsen called him "one of the most original" and "one of the most curious figures in Armenian cultural history." Hacikyan et al. wrote in The Heritage of Armenian Literature: "Shirakatsi was an educator and an organizer of ideas and materials rather than an original thinker. He was often in the forefront of scientific thinking, but at other times he repeated the accepted theories of his time."

Suren Yeremian named Anania, along with historian Movses Khorenatsi and philosopher David the Invincible, one of the prominent thinkers of the "great cultural flourishing" in Armenia of the fifth to seventh centuries, when Hellenistic traditions were still strong and continued to bear the influence of the secular thinking of the pre-Christian times. Sen Arevshatyan argued that the "Christian spirit" is more prominent in Anania than in earlier figures of the Hellenizing School as he aims to bridge Hellenistic science and church doctrine. "Nevertheless, despite his inconsistencies, he emerges as the greatest representative of natural knowledge and natural philosophy in early feudal Armenia."

In Soviet reference books, Anania was often mentioned as the earliest astronomer among its peoples. Greenwood argues that studying Anania and his works "resonated with twentieth-century political beliefs and offered a suitable subject for academic research in ways that works on medieval theology or Biblical exegesis did not. Anania came to be projected as a national hero from the distant Armenian past, linking and affirming past and present identities."

Tributes

• Statuettes of Anania were created by Nikolai Nikoghosyan (c. 1945) and Yervand Kochar (gypsum, 1952). Ara Sargsyan crafted a plaquette of him in 1957.
• Anania was one of six medieval scholars whose statue was erected in front of the Matenadaran, the museum-institute of Armenian manuscripts in Yerevan, in the 1960s. Sculpted by Grigor Badalyan in basalt, it was erected in 1963. A bust of Anania by Badalyan stands inside the Matenadaran.
• A statue, sculpted by Aram Gharibyan, was erected in the front yard of Yerevan State University in 1999. Another basalt statue of Anania by Samvel Petrosyan was erected in Gyumri in 2009.
• A crater on the Moon was named Shirakatsi in 1979.
• The Anania Shirakatsy Lyceum, an International Baccalaureate school in Yerevan, was established in 1990.
• In 1993 the Medal of Anania Shirakatsi, a state award, was established. It is awarded for "significant activities, inventions, and discoveries in the spheres of economy, engineering, architecture, science, and technology."
• In 2005 the Central Bank of Armenia issued a commemorative coin, while HayPost issued a stamp dedicated to him.
• A short 2016 documentary by Armenian Public TV.