Join the Zohrab Information Center next Thursday, December 6th at 7PM for the final enrichment evening of 2018. Dr. Roberta Ervine, Professor of Armenian Studies at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, will present “Armenian Commentaries on the Church Building,” in the Guild Hall. A reception will follow.

This will be the conclusion of our series of presentations celebrating the 50th anniversary of the consecration of St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral. Dr. Ervine, an expert on the Armenian medieval intellectual tradition, will discuss newly translated material and the practice of writings commentaries about the physical structure of the Church itself. Vartabeds, the monk-scholars of the Armenian Church, wrote commentaries not only on Scripture itself, but on liturgical services, philosophical texts, and grammatical works. As we saw with Dr. Christina Maranci’s talk last month, there were commentaries written about the Rite of Foundation for a new church. Dr. Ervine will discuss how the physical church structure itself was given a Christian interpretation by Armenian monks and theologians. The talk promises to be a wonderful bookend to our focus on the physical building of St. Vartan on the 50th anniversary of its consecration and will offer spiritual enrichment for anyone who enters an Armenian church building.

After informal lessons in Armenian language from the late Rev. Fr. Levon Arakelian at Holy Ascension parish in Trumbull, CT, Roberta Ervine enrolled in the newly-reopened Armenian Studies Program at Columbia University, where she studied with Profs. Nina Garsoïan, James Russell, and Very Rev. Fr. Krikor Maksoudian. She holds her PhD from Columbia University. Dissertation research led her to Jerusalem, where she lived in the Armenian Monastery of St. James as a disciple of His Grace Abp. Norayr Bogharian, curator of manuscripts. For sixteen of her twenty-one years in the Holy City, Prof. Ervine taught for the Holy Translators Academy; she also lectured for several other Jerusalem institutions, including the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2001 she returned to the United States to teach at St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, where she lectures on topics related to the history of Armenian Christianity and Armenian Christian thought. Prof. Ervine pursues topics related to the history of Armenians in Jerusalem and the intellectual tradition of the Armenian middle ages (particularly the thinking of Vanakan Vardapet, Vardan the Great and Hovhannēs of Erznka). She is also interested in medieval Armenian grammatical texts.

Please join us for this final enrichment evening of 2018! A poster will follow. Please contact zohrabcenter@armeniandiocese.org with any questions about the event. We look forward to seeing you!