Primary source · Classical Armenian
The Epic Histories (Buzandaran Patmut'iwnk')
P'awstos Buzand (attributed) · c. AD 470
What this text is
The great Armenian history of the Arsacid kingdom and the house of Gregory the Illuminator — the earliest narrative source for Vrtanes, Husik, Grigoris, and Nerses the Great, written a century and more after their deaths.
Public-domain translations
Summarized (from the Classical Armenian)
[P'awstos relates the martyrdoms of the Illuminator's line: Grigoris dragged to death on the Vatnean plain; Husik beaten to death at the church door he had barred to the king; Nerses the Great poisoned at the royal table at Khakh.]
Manuscript witnesses
Matenadaran and Venice Armenian manuscripts
17th c. copies (medieval tradition)The Histories survive in late copies; the editio princeps was printed at Constantinople in 1730.
Venice Mekhitarist edition
1832 / 1889The standard pre-critical Armenian text.
Provenance
Armenia; the national history of the fourth-century kingdom
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- The Epic Histories Attributed to P'awstos BuzandNina G. Garsoïan, 1989The standard English translation and commentary (Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies).
- The Formation of the Armenian Church Tradition(in) Garsoïan, Church and Culture in Early Medieval Armenia, 1999Studies of the fourth-century catholicate.