A collection of mostly unpublished materials related to the liturgy and worship services of the Armenian Church is now available for the interested public to view at the Zohrab Information Center. The Liturgy and Liturgical Materials Collection was processed by Andrew Kayaian, librarian of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, and Nareg Seferian, who completed his doctoral studies at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs in 2023.
The collection consists of four series. The first brings together a number of documents pertaining to the Badarak or the Divine Liturgy – that is, the service with which the faithful are most familiar from ordinary Sundays. Armenian churches tend to have books in their pews with the text and order of the Badarak, often in Armenian with translation and transliteration so that parishioners can follow along. These official pew books are usually published by the various dioceses of the Armenian Church and have made their way into library collections around the world. What makes the Zohrab Information Center’s collection unique is that it consists of more ephemeral or local materials put together by individual priests, parishes, or others for specific occasions and local needs, which otherwise would be lost or unknown if not gathered together here. This series in the collection also includes materials related to the various aspects of Sunday worship, such as Gospel readings, the confession, and the creed.
The collection also contains items in various foreign languages, such as this translation of the Badarak into Russian by Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian, reflecting the wide geographical footprint of the Armenian people and the attempt to make the service intelligible in the local vernacular of various diasporan communities.
The second series of the collection brings together other services and ceremonies of the Armenian Church, ranging from the Washing of the Feet which takes place on Holy Thursday, to wedding and funeral rites, to the Blessing of the Grapes which is celebrated during the Feast of the Assumption of Mary in late summer, the traditional season of the grape harvest. This series also has a number of texts of the canonical hours of daily prayer (morning service, evening service, etc.).
In this series, likewise, the spread of the Armenian Diaspora is represented by five texts (based on the Diocesan Liturgical Series prepared by the Eastern Diocese of the United States) produced by the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Brazil – in Armenian, translated and transliterated for a Portuguese-speaking community – for parishioners to follow the Chrorhnek or Blessing of the Water service, Trnpatsek or the Opening of the Doors, and other rituals.
The Liturgy and Liturgical Materials Collection includes instructional documents in its third series. It consists of a number of works of various lengths aimed at children or young adults, the general public, or textbooks for specialized audiences outlining historical aspects of the Armenian Church and information on many of the worship services listed above, including explanations of the Badarak.
The oldest document in the collection is a prayer book for use in Armenian Sunday schools in America, prepared by Mrs. Azniv Nedurian of Philadelphia.
Among the texts in this series are three booklets from the Diocese of the Armenian Church of Germany, prepared by Archbishop Karekin Bekdjian, about the rites of baptism, matrimony, and burial. The texts are in Armenian, German, and Turkish, reflecting the geographical origins and linguistic make-up of the Armenian community that has come together in Germany over the course of the preceding decades.
The fourth and final series of this collection includes a number of choir books and other documents with musical notation for church services. Many of them are for the Badarak. Some are for other services or are otherwise collections of sharagans and chants.
There are more specific and unique works as well, such as the ceremony for the dedication of a church or a volume for use by clergy in order to learn or practice the prayers and chants to be recited out loud during the Divine Liturgy.
There are also two sets of scores of the Badarak translated into English. Around the turn of the century – the turn of the millennium – there was an initiative to adapt the Divine Liturgy of the Armenian Church for an English-speaking audience. The two versions in this collection were arranged by members of neighboring Armenian and Orthodox communities in Connecticut: Michael, now Father Haroutiun Sabounjian and James Nicholas, a polyglot, multi-cultural musician and scholar.
The Badarak is celebrated in Classical Armenian (Գրաբար) throughout the world, carrying a centuries-long musical legacy as well across continents. As seen elsewhere in this collection, efforts to make the Badarak and other services more accessible are a feature of the life and times of the Armenian Church. Given modern realities, it is only natural to observe such endeavors accommodating the rich roots of the Armenian tradition within the demands of a local time and place, regardless of their practical outcomes.
The Liturgy and Liturgical Materials Collection of the Zohrab Information Center thus offers some unique insights into worship traditions of the Armenian Church. It can serve as a valuable resource for researchers examining Armenian Church practices, especially at the local parish level.