Please join us for our Christmas Open House, with a special lecture by Prof. Christina Maranci, Mashtots Chair, Harvard University.

Lecture Title: A Curious Connection: Worcestershire Sauce, Yeghishē T‘adēvosyan, and an Unpublished Armenian Hymnal [sharaknots‘] at Harvard

Date and Time: Thursday, December 18, 2025
7:00 PM ET / 4:00 PM PT

Location: NAASR Vartan Gregorian Building

This is a hybrid event. Click here to watch the lecture on Zoom.

Refreshments will be available at this event and a special 20% discount will be applied to all bookstore purchases!

Description

What connects Lea and Perrin’s famous condiment, the great modern painter Yeghishē T‘adēvosyan, and a fourteenth-century Armenian manuscript? This lecture will address the question, debuting a new acquisition at Harvard’s Houghton Library of an Armenian book of hymns, or sharaknots‘. The manuscript bears several full-page images, including a full-page portrait of its remarkable patron, Manuēl, the Bishop of Bjni, whose long colophon reveals an expansive network of family, friends, and fellow churchmen. The text closes with an acrostic diagram indicating the admiration of his scribe, Yovhannēs. This talk will also present research-in-progress concerning the manuscript’s movement from Sanahin to Germany, England, and finally to the United States. Known previously only through the indirect report of Garegin Hovsep‘yan, and thought to be lost to scholars by 1921-1922, the manuscript is presented here for the first time to the public.

Presented by NAASR.