The greatest defect of the following Chronicle is its brevity. Vahram, of whose life little more is known than that he was a native of Edessa, a priest, and the secretary of king Leon III., exhibits almost all the faults of the common Chroniclers of the Middle Ages. He relates many barren facts, without stating the circumstances with which they were connected, and he mistakes every where the passions of men for the finger of God. The compilers of chronicles were in those ages ignorant of the true end, and unacquainted with the proper objects of history. But with all its defects, the chronicle of the Armenian kings of Cilicia, written by a contemporary writer, is valuable. The friend of history may now be enabled to form an estimate of the origin and the increase of an empire, which for want of materials has been overlooked by the most learned and acute historians. Gibbon, of whom it is doubtful whether we should most admire his genius or his erudition, in his celebrated work simply mentions the name of Cilicia, a kingdom, which carried on successful wars against the emperors of Constantinople; and which, from the beginning of the Crusades remained the friend and ally of the Franks, and to whom belonged a part of the sea-coast, that continued from the time of Ezekiel the theatre of the commerce of the world. The Venetians and Genoese were so impressed with the importance of Cilicia, that they made several commercial treaties with the Armenian kings; the Armenian original of one of these agreements, together with a translation and notes, has been printed by the learned orientalist, Saint-Martin.

The Crusaders were astonished to find within the frontiers of the Byzantine empire a powerful prince and ally of whom they had never before heard mention. Nicetas betrays a want of historical knowledge and research, in saying that the Armenians and Germans were united together, because they both disliked holy images.[1] The Germans and a great part of the Armenians, on the contrary, felt no aversion to the worship of images, but the latter, ever since the first division of the Arsacidian kingdom of Armenia between the Sassanides and the Greeks, in the year three hundred and eighty-seven, had been in perpetual warfare with the Byzantine empire; and this warfare caused a degree of animosity between the two people (Greeks and Armenians), of which traces may be seen even at the present time.

By the unjust and cruel division of the kingdom of Armenia, the largest and most fertile part of the country fell (as the contemporary historian Lazar of Barb observes) to the empire of Persia. The Byzantine emperors and the Sassanian princes for a while permitted native kings to hold a precarious sceptre; but they were speedily dismissed; and the Byzantine part of Armenia was governed by a Greek magistrate, and the Persian by a Marsban or Margrave. This state of the country, somewhat similar to that of the Maronites in our times, was on a sudden changed by the conquests of the Arabs; but the Armenians would not accept the Koran, and their condition became worse under the zealous and fanatical followers of the prophet of Mecca than under the descendants of Sapor the Great, while weak and dismayed by civil wars.

Ashod the Bagratide, an Armenian nobleman of a Jewish family, who had fled to Armenia after the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadanozor, at last gained the confidence of his Arabian masters; and in the year eight hundred and fifty-nine was appointed Emir al Omra, Ishkhan Ishkhanaz (prince of princes),—as the native historians translate the Arabian title—over all Armenia: and was soon after it (888) favoured with a tributary crown. The Bagratides and the rival kings of the family of the Arzerounians, were the faithful friends (or slaves) of the Arabs, and often suffered from the inroads and devastations of the Greeks. We learn from Vahram the means through which the Bagratian kingdom in Armenia Proper was extinguished; and that a new Armenian kingdom arose on the craggy rocks of Mount Taurus, and which gradually extended its boundaries to the sea-coast, including the whole province of Cilicia. Vahram carries his monotonous historical rhymes no farther down than the time of the death of his sovereign, Leon III. (1289); but the Cilicio-Armenian kingdom, which during the whole time of its existence perhaps never was entirely independent, lasted nearly a hundred years longer. Leon, the sixth of that name and the last Armenian king of Cilicia, was in 1375 taken a prisoner by the Mamalukes of Egypt, and after a long captivity (1382) released by the generous interference of King John I. of Castille. He was not however permitted to return to his own country; but wandered through Europe from one country to another till his death, which happened at Paris, the 19th of November 1393. He was buried in the monastery of the Celestines.

The Mamalukes did not long remain masters both of Cilicia and of a part of Armenia Proper; but yielded to the fortune and the strength of the descendants of Osman or Othman: when the Armenians again felt, as in former times, all the disasters to which the frontier provinces between two rival empires are usually exposed. The cruel policy of the Sophies transplanted thousands of Christian families to the distant provinces of Persia, and transformed fertile provinces into artificial deserts. The Armenians therefore, like the Jews, were obliged to disperse themselves over the world, and resort to commerce for the necessaries of life. Armenian merchants are now to be found in India, on the islands of the Eastern Archipelago, in Singapore, in Afghanistan, Persia, Egypt, in every part of Asia Minor and Syria, Russia, Poland, Austria, Italy; and even the present patriarch of Abyssinia is an Armenian. The valiant descendants of Haig are now, like the offspring of Abraham, considered every where clever and shrewd merchants: they were of great service to the East-India Company in carrying on their trade with the inland provinces of Hindostan; and it was once thought that they were fitter for this part of the mercantile business, than any agents of the Company itself.[2]

It is not more than half a century since the modern Armenian provinces began to look on Russia for succour and relief, when the Empress Catherine behaved in many instances most generously to the ruined house of Thorgoma. The fortunate wars of Russia against the Shah and the Sultan have within the last ten years brought the greater part of the old Parthian kingdom of Armenia under the sway of the mighty Czars. It seems probable, that we may see yet in our times a new kingdom of Armenia, created out of barbarian elements by the generosity and magnanimity of the Emperor Nicholas.

The following Chronicle is translated from an edition printed at Madras in the year 1259 of the Armenian era, that is the year 1810 Anno Domini. The volume is printed by the command of that great promoter of literature, Ephrem, archbishop and primate of the Armenians in Russia, and contains, besides the chronicle of Vahram, the Elegy of Edessa by Nerses Shnorhaly; and the elegy on his death, written by the most eminent of his disciples, Nerses of Lampron. It is said in the preface of the before-mentioned volume, that the work of Vahram, the secretary of Leon III., had been previously printed, though in a very negligent and careless manner. I have never however seen any other than the Madras edition, where the proper names of places and foreign nations are often incorrectly spelt. I am sorry to add, that I made the following translation in a place where it was impossible for me to refer to the well known works on the geography of Armenia, of Cilicia, and of Asia Minor generally; neither could I compare the narrative of Vahram with the statements of the contemporary Byzantine and Latin writers: but I trust the learned reader will easily supply these defects.

Vahram is nearly the latest author who is considered by the Armenian literati to write classically. The classical Armenian language had been preserved from the beginning of Armenian literature in the fifth century, amidst various political and religious disturbances, for a period of eight hundred years. During the course of the thirteenth century the language became corrupted; and in the fourteenth authors began to use in their writings the corrupted vernacular idiom. The ancient native writers were neglected, their classical translations and imitations of the celebrated Greek patterns became superseded by the barbarous literature of the Latins, and John of Erzinga, otherwise Bluz (1326), the last who wrote the language of Moses and ElisÆus, translated a work on the sacraments by St. Thomas Aquinas.

We thus find some orders of monks in Armenia, educated in the Latin schools and in latin manners, who corrupted the native Haican language by the introduction of many foreign scholastic expressions; and a new race of sanguinary barbarians, the Dominicans, became the authors of works worthy of their titulary saint. The Armenian literature remained in this abject condition, to which these holy fathers had reduced it, for nearly four hundred years; but about the middle of the eighteenth century the nation roused itself from this lethargy, and Madras, Calcutta, Djulfa, New Nakshivan, Etshmiadsin, Tabris, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Amsterdam, Smyrna, and principally Venice, bear witness to the literary energy of the far dispersed descendants of Haig. With the dawn of Armenian literature, history has been enriched by the Chronicle of Eusebius; yet more and weightier literary treasures may be expected from its meridian splendour. There are hints in the writers of the fifth century, of translations of Polybius, Diodorus Siculus, and the Chronicle of Julius Africanus. Besides these versions of the classical writers of Greece, there exist very valuable original histories, which have never been printed or translated, and many a chasm might be filled up in the history of the middle ages by these authors. We should, perhaps, be introduced to nations now totally lost, or so mingled with others, that it is impossible to distinguish them. There is a rumour of a manuscript history of the Albanians,—a nation well known to Strabo and to Moses of Chorene,[3] said to exist at a monastery in Armenia Proper,—of those Albanians, who lived between Iberia or Georgia and the confines of the Caspian Sea; but of which people no traces are to be found in our times.

A literary journey to Armenia, undertaken by an active laborious scholar, who unites the knowledge of the Armenian language with classical studies, would prove of the greatest importance to the knowledge of ancient history and to the advancement of general literature.

THE CHRONICLE OF VAHRAM.