The impact of medieval Armenian national-liberation eschatology on the psychology of the masses and military-political projects of the 16th and 18th centuries

A.M. Ayvazyan

Mesrop Mashtots Research Institute of Ancient Manus­cripts, Yerevan, 0009 Armenia

E-mail: armenayvazyan@gmail.com

Received April 22, 2018

Full text PDF

Abstract

In the 10th – 18th centuries, a number of popular prophecies, visions, and legends in Armenian written sources were united by the theme of the liberation of Armenia from Muslim rule with the military help of the great Christian powers. In Armenian historiography, these narratives received the cumulative name of the “liberation legend”.

After the destruction of the last Armenian kingdom in Cilicia (1375) and the final decline of the major Armenian principalities in the territory of Armenia (during the late 15th century), the liberation legend's impact on the psychology of the masses increased. The process of frustration in their own forces was directly proportional to the uncritically growing faith in the Christian powers' imminent military intervention for the liberation of Armenia. It seems that the national belief in the tenets of the legend was a kind of adaptive mechanism for the ethno-psychological self-defense and survival of the Armenian people.

The military-political projects for the liberation of Armenia drafted in the 16th – 18th centuries, were invariably taking into account both rational (military-strategic) and irrational (ethno-psychological) factors, including the widespread expectations from the liberation legend's narrative motifs. In the 1720s, however, the legend completely failed to hold out against the historical reality and disappeared forever from the political agenda of the Armenian leadership.

Keywords: Armenian liberation legend, visions, prophecies, collective psychology, ethno-psychological self-defense, foreign military aid, Christian powers, geopolitical conjuncture, military-political projects, strategic ally, secret negotiations

References

  1. Hovhannisyan A.G. Ocherki istorii armyanskoi osvoboditel'noi mysli [Essays on the History of the Armenian Liberation Thought]. Vol. I. Yerevan, Izd. Akad. Nauk Arm. SSR. 1957, 526 p. (In Armenian)
  2. Hovhannisyan A.G. Ocherki istorii armyanskoi osvoboditel'noi mysli [Essays on the History of the Armenian Liberation Thought]. Vol. II. Yerevan, Izd. Akad. Nauk Arm. SSR, 1959. 696 p. (In Armenian)
  3. Anasyan H.S. Osvoboditel'nye dvizheniya v Zapadnoi Armenii v XVII veke (istoricheskoe issledovanie) [The Liberation Movements of Western Armenia in the 17th Century (Historical Study)]. Yerevan, Izd. Akad. Nauk Arm. SSR, 1961, 442 p. (In Armenian)
  4. Ayvazyan A.M. Armyano-persidskaya voina 449–451 gg. Kampanii i srazheniya [The Armenian-Persian War of 449-451. Campaigns and Battles]. St. Petersburg, Aleteya, 2017. 516 p. (In Russian)
  5. Anasyan H.S. Armyanskaya bibliografiya V – XVIII vv. [The Armenian Bibliography of the 5th – 18th Centuries]. Vol. I. Yerevan, Izd. Akad. Nauk Arm. SSR, 1959. 1229 p. (In Armenian)
  6. Manandyan H. Trudy [The Works]. Vol. II. Yerevan, Izd. Akad. Nauk Arm. SSR, 1978, 646 p. (In Armenian)
  7. Charanis P. The Armenians in the Byzantine Empire. Lisboa, Livraria Bertrand, 1963. 63 p.
  8. Adontz N. Basil I. The Armenian (Emperor of Byzantium 867–886). Armenian Review, 1956, vol. 9, nos. 1–33, pp. 3–21.
  9. Adontz N. L'age et l'origine de l'empereur Basile I (867–886) (suite). Byzantion, 1934, vol. 9, no 1, pp. 223–260. (In French)
  10. Febvre M. L'état présent de la Turquie. Paris, Edme Couterot. 1675. 450 p. (In French)
  11. Ghougassian V.S. The Emergence of the Armenian Diocese of New Julfa in the Seventeenth Century. Atlanta, GA, Scholars Press, 1998. 326 p.
  12. Zulalyan M.K. Zapadnaya Armeniya v XVI – XVIII vv. [Western Armenia in the 16th – 18th Centuries]. Yerevan, Izd. Akad. Nauk Arm. SSR, 1980. 425 p. (In Armenian)
  13. Ricaut P. Histoire de l'état présent de l'Église grecque et de l'Église armenienne. Amsterdam, 1710. 444 p. (In French)
  14. Aivazian A.M. The Armenian Rebellion of the 1720s and the Threat of Genocidal Reprisal. Yerevan, Center for Policy Analysis, American Univ. Armenia, 1997. 87 p.
  15. Ayvazyan A.M. Hand firearms of the Armenian Army in 1720s (amounts, types, production, and production). Matamorfozy Istorii, 2016, vol. 8, pp. 176–200. (In Russian)
  16. Marx K., Engels F. Sochineniya [Essays]. Vol. I. Moscow, Izd. Polit. Lit., 1955. 699 p. (In Russian)
  17. Ayvazyan A.M. The secret meeting of Armenians on Lim Island in 1722 (concerning the possible involvement of Western Armenians in an all-Armenian liberation movement). In: Issues and Resources for the Study of Medieval Central and Eastern Europe. Bak J.M., Banyó P. (Eds.). Budapest, Cambridge, MA, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University and the Committee on Centers and Regional Associations of the Medieval Academy of America, 2001, pp. 59–68.


For citation: Ayvazyan A.M. The impact of medieval Armenian national-liberation eschatology on the psychology of the masses and military-political projects of the 16th and 18th centuries. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2018, vol. 160, no. 3, pp. 735–748. (In Russian)


The content is available under the license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.