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Document Details :

Title: The Impact of the Protestant West on the Nineteenth century Armenian Enlightenment
Author(s): MERGUERIAN, B.J.
Journal: Journal of Eastern Christian Studies
Volume: 52    Issue: 3-4   Date: 2000   
Pages: 221-249
DOI: 10.2143/JECS.52.3.565602

Abstract :
The recorded contacts between Armenian people and the Protestant West can be traced back to one of the most significant events in modern Armenian intellectual history, the printing of the Armenian Bible, which took place in Amsterdam in 1666. At that time pioneering Armenian editors, unprepared technically to print the Bible in their own religious centres and frustrated by the unwillingness of the Pope in Rome to permit such a publication in any Catholic country, were thankful for the opportunity provided in the Protestant Netherlands, where the long arm of the Church of Rome was unable to intervene. Armenians were familiar with the situation in the Netherlands because their merchants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had expanded their routes to the far corners of the earth, establishing small trading centres throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Asia; as part of this process they had developed a lively trade with the Dutch East India Company, which in 1611 established a branch in the Armenian-populated centre of New Julfa, Iran. The resulting contacts familiarized Armenians with the outstanding printing facilities available in Amsterdam and facilitated the realization of such an ambitious project as the printing of the Bible in the classical Armenian language. The expertise available in this Dutch centre in such fields as dye making and engraving enabled a small number of talented and determined Armenians to produce a remarkably handsome and much admired publication of the Bible. As one scholar has pointed out, the Amsterdam Armenian press “inaugurated the golden age of book production among Armenians”.