14.06.2024


The article “Identification and Identity: Quest for the Armenian Martyrdom Sites in the Modern Times” by Shushan Khachatryan, AGMI senior researcher and Matenadaran senior researchers Hayk Hakobyan and Garnik Harutyunyan was published in the perstigious journal Scrinium: Journal of Patrology and Critical Hagiography (editor-in-chief: Basil Lourié), which is indexed in the international scientific databases (1 Quartile).

This article puts written and collected ethnographical material that appear in various sources and are the results of field work, as well as new conclusions, into circulation. This brings the canonisation of the victims of the Armenian Genocide forward, using the example of the discovery of relics and burial sites of the martyrs killed during the Lenin-Stalin repressions, their veneration by the public and examples of their parochialisation.

The authors, in this article, have brought together reference sources of a number of Armenian Genocide mass burial sites, emphasising the imperative of the search for them, the stories of the clergy who were targeted and killed for not denying Christianity during the Lenin-Stalin repressions, their burial places and the memories associated with them among Armenians.

The article refers, at the same time, to ancient Christianity, from the time it was accepted as the state religion, to Pan-Christian cultural, theological and ecclesiological aspects of the veneration of martyrs' relics, considering them in the context, in the case of the Armenians, of Medz Yeghern and, during the Soviet era, of the repression of the clergy.

The link: https://brill.com/view/journals/scri/19/1/article-p256_12.xml.