This khachkar, standing in the entrance hall of the theological academy at Haghpat Monastery, continues and further enriches the tradition of the “needle-carved” (aseghnagorts) stones developed by Mkhitar Kazmogh at Sanahin Monastery.
At the very foot of the central cross appear two discs filled with intricate geometric ornamentation. These symbolize the universe, continuity, and the earth from which the tree of salvation springs forth. From the lower part of the shaft of the cross, lush vegetal motifs curl upward on both sides. This is not the instrument of death, but the Tree of Life — a symbol of resurrection and eternal life. The background surrounding the cross is covered with a delicate, multilayered geometric “needle-carved” pattern resembling an elaborate woven carpet.
Along the upper cornice of the khachkar runs the following inscription in Old Armenian:
ՔՐԻՍՏՈՍ ԱՍՏՈՒԱԾ ՅԻՇԵԱ ԶՏԷՐ ԲԱՐՍԵՂ Ի ԳԱԼԸՍՏԵԱՆ ՔՈՒՄ – Krisdos Asduadz, hisia zter Barseg i galusdean kum, “Christ God, remember Ter Barsegh at Thy coming.”
This inscription offers a wonderful opportunity to illustrate the abbreviations and ligatures commonly used in Armenian epigraphy:
• Abbreviations: Instead of writing the full word ՔՐԻՍՏՈՍ (Christos / Christ), only the letters ՔՍ (kʻe and se) appear, marked above with the pativ sign.
• Instead of ԱՍՏՈՒԱԾ (Asduadz / God), only the letters ԱԾ (ayp and tsa) are shown, likewise abbreviated with a pativ mark.
• Ligatures: In ordinary words, the stone carver merged the vertical strokes of neighboring letters so that two or three characters become a single visual unit.
• In the word “ՅԻՇԵԱ” hisia (“remember”): the letters Յ (hi) and Ի (i) completely fuse together — the right vertical stroke of the hi simultaneously becomes the opening stroke of the i.
• In the word “ԳԱԼԸՍՏԵԱՆ” galustean (“coming”): this is the longest word in the inscription and therefore contains the greatest number of modifications. The letters Տ (t) and Ե (e) are stacked above and below one another, while the letters Ա (a) and Ն (n) share a single vertical stem at the end of the word.
• Diphthong contraction: In Armenian, the “U” sound is written with two separate letters in sequence: ՈՒ (an o plus a viw). To save space, in words such as ՔՈՒՄ kum (“thy”) and ԱՍՏՈՒԱԾ asduadz, the two letters were not carved side by side but fused into one another: the smaller U-shaped sign was inserted directly into the upper “belly” or vertical shaft of the O, creating what looks like a single character.
Because of these compressions, the inscription appears to the untrained eye more like a continuous ornamental pattern than a readable text.
We already encountered Barsegh, abbot of Haghpat — known in Georgian sources as Archbishop Basileios — in the previous post as well. He was the brother of Prince Kurd Artsruni, patron of the Sanahin gavit, and as a younger son had been directed toward an ecclesiastical career (among other reasons, to help keep the estates donated to the monastery under family control, as discussed in the earlier post). Already at a relatively young age — perhaps around thirty — he became abbot of the highly prestigious Monastery of Haghpat. His tenure laid the foundations for the remarkable intellectual flourishing that elevated the twin monasteries of Haghpat and Sanahin above the other monasteries of northern Armenia and, ultimately, helped secure their status as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Barsegh founded the famous academy, scriptorium, and library of Haghpat, together with the hidden storage spaces that allowed many manuscripts — including the celebrated Haghpat Gospels — to survive centuries of destruction. It was also during his tenure that the construction of the gavit in front of the main Church of the Holy Sign was completed in 1185. The project had been financed by Mariam, daughter of the last Kyurikid prince, and according to the inscription it was Barsegh who brought it to completion. From this magnificent gavit opened the double-winged wooden door leading into the main church — the very door whose left wing was recently repurchased by the Armenian state at a London auction, and whose iconography I analyzed in detail. Knowing Barsegh and the intellectual world he created helps us better understand the refined symbolism of that extraordinary door.
The lecture hall of the Haghpat academy. The wine amphorae (karases) buried in the floor were not there to create some modern intellectual idyll of students sipping wine while reading, but served as quick hiding places for frequently used books, since Muslims despised wine and rarely searched inside them. In Parajanov’s film The Color of Pomegranates, which is partly set here in the late 18th century, we see damp manuscripts being pulled out of these vessels and laid in the sun to dry (see the beginning and end of the trailer below).
Barsegh’s family, the Artsrunis, had once ruled the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan south of Lake Van; they were also the patrons who built the monastery of Akhtamar. His father Vahram was a high-ranking military commander (amirspasalar) serving under the Kurdish-Armenian Zakarian generals of Queen Tamar of Georgia, while his elder brother Kurd was Georgian governor (amir) of Tiflis and Kartli. In the hands of this single family rested much of the military, civil, and ecclesiastical leadership of the region. Barsegh himself was an exceptionally skilled politician who balanced with remarkable tact between the old Armenian Kyurikid princes and the new Georgian royal court. Because of his diplomatic abilities, Queen Tamar appointed him both as her personal adviser and as Armenian Archbishop of Kartli (central Georgia), which meant he would have represented Georgia at the great Armenian church council held at Rumkale in 1178–79 to discuss possible union between the Armenian and Orthodox Churches — had the so-called “Eastern Fathers” not ultimately boycotted the entire council in rigid opposition. Back in 1081, another churchman bearing the same name, Saint Barsegh, had been elected Catholicos — supreme head of the Armenian Church — right here at Haghpat Monastery, a distinction that brought enormous prestige to the monastery.
Rumkale (Armenian: Hromkla), standing at the confluence of the Euphrates and the Merzimen (Armenian: Barzuman), served as the seat of the Armenian Catholicos and the center of the Armenian Church between 1149 and 1292. One of the greatest Armenian manuscript painters, Toros Roslin, worked here between 1256 and 1268.
The Council of Hromkla (1178–79) was the greatest and most dramatic attempt at union between the Armenian and Orthodox Churches. The initiative came from the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia — founded in 1080 and squeezed between the Seljuks and the Crusader states —, the only independent Armenian state of the period. The Cilician rulers hoped to gain Byzantine military support, while Emperor Manuel I Komnenos (1143–1180) saw in them the possibility of a new vassal ally. Through an exchange of letters, Catholicos Saint Nerses Shnorhali and the emperor worked out a compromise formula that the council was meant to ratify. Yet the catholicos died at the beginning of the council and the emperor at its conclusion, so by the time the conciliatory letter of agreement reached Constantinople, the moderate policy had already been abandoned there. The Byzantines now demanded humiliating conditions that the Armenians could not accept. The Cilician kings therefore turned toward the neighboring Crusader states and in 1197 entered into union with Rome instead. This led to the creation of the Armenian Catholic Church, whose seat is today in Lebanon.
The so-called “Eastern Fathers,” led by the monasteries of Haghpat, Sanahin, and Ani, found themselves in a very different geopolitical situation. They would have gained little from such a union, while they still remembered all too well the imperialist and assimilationist policies pursued by Byzantium before the Battle of Manzikert (1071). For them, the Armenian Church itself was the principal guardian of national identity. Intellectually they were conservative, defending what they regarded as the “pure doctrine” of the 5th-century fathers of Miaphysitism. Moreover, they possessed enormous landed estates and an autonomous legal order, both of which they would likely have had to surrender under a church union. The leading spokesmen of this anti-union movement were Abbot Barsegh of Haghpat and Abbot Grigor of Sanahin.
Barsegh also cultivated strong relationships and practical cooperation with the local noble families. His brother Kurd financed the construction of Haghpat Monastery’s outer defensive walls in 1220. As we have seen, he helped Princess Mariam build the great gavit that served as the funerary chapel of the Kyurikid dynasty. But after the decline of the Kyurikids, it was him who selected the rising Ukanian family — likewise serving in the Georgian armies of the Zakarians — as the monastery’s principal new patrons, a role that brought them enormous prestige (see the previous post on the relationship between monasteries and noble families). In gratitude, the Ukanians built a triple funerary chapel beside the monastery, reserving the central and most prestigious burial chamber for Barsegh, the right-hand chamber for Prince Kurd, and using only the left-hand chamber for themselves. To this day, richly carved khachkars still stand above the two side chambers. It is entirely possible that Abbot Barsegh’s own khachkar originally stood above the central chamber.
The khachkar standing above the right-hand chamber of the Ukanian funerary chapel
The funeral rites of medieval Armenian bishops and nobles were highly ceremonial and deeply symbolic, following a strict ritual order:
• The spiritual warrior: According to Armenian theology, the believer — especially a church leader — was seen as a spiritual warrior whose earthly battle ended only in death. The ceremony had three main parts: the vigil, the funeral liturgy inside the church, and the blessing of the grave.
• Knocking at the gate: Before the coffin was carried out, the procession traditionally knocked three times on the closed church door. According to belief, this symbolically signaled Saint Peter, guardian of Heaven’s gate, to open the doors for the soul of the departed.
• Chants and incense: The rite was accompanied by litanies, elaborate polyphonic liturgical hymns (sharakans), and thick clouds of incense. At the end of the service, mourners paid their final respects by kissing either the bishop’s hand or the Gospel book placed upon the coffin.
Lighting candles for the dead in the great gavit of Haghpat
The khachkars were almost certainly commissioned by the Ukanians during the Mongol period, in the second half of the 13th century, as memorial stones — a common practice in the Armenian Church. This was the era when Armenian auxiliary troops fighting alongside the Mongols against the Seljuks won a series of victories and returned home with enormous spoils of war, part of which was invested in religious foundations and artistic commissions. One famous example is the celebrated Amenaprkich (“Saviour of All”) khachkar, carved in 1273 by Master Vahram, about which I will write separately. During the 1270s, Vahram became the brilliant leading master of the Haghpat monastic workshop, bringing the “needle-carved” style to its peak there and pioneering increasingly sophisticated figurative compositions. It is almost certain that Barsegh’s memorial khachkar was commissioned from him as well.
The entrance to the Haghpat academy, with the Amenaprkich khachkar standing before it
One of Vahram’s pupils must have been the master sculptor Poghos, who in 1291 created at the nearby Monastery of Goshavank the most perfect masterpiece of the “needle-carved” style: the famous Aseghnagorts khachkar, one of the absolute high points of medieval Armenian art. That will be the subject of the next post.
The valley of the Debed River as seen from Haghpat Monastery. On the plateau beyond the river stand the monastery and small town of Sanahin. In the background rise the mountains of today’s Armenian-Georgian borderland.
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