Армянская гимнография в честь мучеников-воинов

Вестник Православного Свято-Тихоновского гуманитарного университета. Серия 3: Филология. 2025. № 85. С. 69–86.

Rogozhina A. A.

The questions of the origins of liturgical hymns, their themes, imagery, and place in the worship of Eastern Christian communities are still severely understudied in the field of historical liturgics and have only recently begun to attract the close attention of scholars. This paper attempts to examine the development of the hymnographic tradition of the Armenian Church dedicated to a specific group of saints – warrior martyrs – whose veneration in early Christianity is attested in the earliest martyrologies and lists of saints. Scholars often emphasize the distinctiveness and uniqueness of the Armenian hymnography, which is indeed noticeable in certain works dedicated to Biblical episodes or the Mother of God. However, hymns in honor of martyrs differ from these better-known sharakans and exhibit a certain similarity to Syriac and Byzantine hymnography, particularly to such early works as the hymns of St Ephrem the Syrian and the kontakia of St Romanos the Melodist. This similarity is most clearly emphasized by the imagery used in these texts, which will be discussed in this paper.

Keywords: гимнография, hymnography, средневековая Армения, medieval Armenia, мученики, Martyrs, sharakan, шаракан