Leading authors: Nerses Shinorhali is the foremost of Armenian poets,
and a thoroughly converted and consecrated man of God. His hymns were
intensely spiritual, and the Armenians still chant them in their
churches. They are worthy to be translated into English. Nerses
Lampronatzi, the greatest scholar ever born in Armenia, was a
distinguished commentator on the Old Testament, and wrote many other
books. Another is Yeremia.
Again I quote from the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia:--"Another
nourishing period falls in the twelfth century, during the Rubenian
dynasty. Nerses Klagensis and Nerses Lambronensis belong to this
period; also Ignatius, whose commentary to the Gospel of St. Luke
appeared in Constantinople in 1735 and 1824; Sargis Shnorhali, whose
commentary on the Catholic Epistles was published in Constantinople in
1743, and again in 1826; Matthew of Edessa, whose history, comprising
the period from 952 to 1132, and continued by Gregory the Priest to
1163, contains many interesting notices concerning the Crusaders;
Samuel Aniensis, the chronologist; Michael Syrus, whose history
has been edited with a French translation by V. Langlois, Paris,
1864; Mekhitar Kosh, of whom a hundred and ninety fables appeared
at Venice, 1780 and 1812. A most powerful impulse the Armenian
literature received in the eighteenth century by the foundation of
the Mekhitarist monastery in Venice, from whose press the treasures
of the Armenian literature were spread over Europe, and new works,
explaining and completing the old, were added. The Armenian liturgy
was published in 1826, the breviary in 1845, the ritual in 1831."