Recovering the Monastic Tradition: Publishing Trends in the Armenian Apostolic Church in Armenia and America

This study treats recent publications issuing from the Armenian Apostolic Church in the Republic of Armenia and the United States of America that pertain to the Armenian monastic tradition. The first part of the paper sketches the gradual decline and disappearance of monasticism in the Armenian Church from the late medieval period to the early twentieth century. Against this backdrop, recent publications of texts from the Armenian monastic tradition in modern vernacular languages (Armenian and English) are considered as part of a larger effort on the part of the contemporary Church to engage with its own monastic heritage from which it has been historically severed. In the Republic of Armenia, monastic texts are framed as items of cultural and historical value or for their literary interest, while in the United States, such texts are published with an eye to their value for enriching the spiritual lives of the faithful. This difference can perhaps be attributed to the very different contexts at play, the one post-Soviet and the other western diasporic.