Bernard Coulie, Répertoire des bibliothèques et des catalogues de manuscrits arméniens, Corpus Christianorum, Brepols-Turnhout, 1992, xiii, 265 pages.

Bernard Coulie, Répertoire des manuscrits arméniens/Census of Armenian Manuscripts. Liste des sigles utilisés pour designer les manuscrits, Association internationales des études arméniennes, n.p., n.d. [Leiden, 1994], pamphlet of 8 pages.

       Until this publication by Professor Bernard Coulie of the Université Catholique de Louvain, no separate collection of Armenian manuscript catalogues has been available equivalent to Marcel Richard's Répertoire des bibliothèques et des catalogues de manuscrits grecs, first published in 1948 and reissued in 1958 with a supplement (1958-1963) in 1964. Coulie was inspired by this work, as his title and his introduction clearly state. Previous to this work, scholars had to revert to bibliographies of published catalogues such as those in the Erevan catalogue, in H. Anasyan's Bibliology, or E. Rhodes list of New Testament manuscripts. The new Répertoire, though making no claim to being complete, includes 95% or more of earlier publications or lists of Armenian manuscripts. It is clear that now we can speak about 30,000 or more surviving manuscripts whereas just a decade ago 25,000 was the educated guess.

       The work is divided into four sections plus an index of manuscripts. Of these, the first three are short (pp. 1-11): I. Major bibliographies of manuscript catalogues, II. Specialized catalogues, for instance biblical or medical or illustrated manuscripts and collections of manuscript colophons, III. Catalogues of specific countries, e.g. Armenian manuscripts in the U.S. or Poland or France. Section IV (pp. 13-229) represents the body of the volume, an alphabetically arranged list of cities and localities where there are or there were preserved collections of Armenian manuscripts. Hundreds of places are listed, and cross listed under different or older spellings. Under each are found all catalogues, books, articles or other citations of manuscripts in the collection. Included are collections from western Armenia in cities like Armash, Bitlis, Sivas/Sebastea, etc.

       Not all references to manuscripts in a collection have been mentioned, it would be too much for a single volume. But Bernard Coulie has, for instance, given reference to most of the published albums of Armenian miniature painting from Erevan or Venice list of the manuscripts they describe. He has also undertaken a series of bibliographical publications that bring together articles with references to Armenian manuscripts and a databank of the manuscripts themselves.

       In this respect it is in order to mention his very useful guide of abbreviations for the various collections of Armenian manuscripts so that scholars will begin to use a uniform system when referring to Armenian codices. Répertoire des manuscrits arméniens/Census of Armenian Manuscripts. Liste des sigles utilisés pour designer les manuscrits, was published by the Association Internationale des Etudes Arméniennes in 1994 and distributed to its members. The major abbreviations are those which have been in current use: M for Erevan, Matenadaran, V for Venice, Mekhitarist Library, J for Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate, but W (=Wien) for Vienna, Mekhitarists Library. Some old designations have been changed like FGA, Free Gallery of Art is now WAF (Washington, Freer), The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, is now BAL, British Library in London is now LOB, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris is now P.

       At the end of the book, a large Index of Manuscripts provides references to codices that have found their way into collections different than the work cited placed them in. All but four of its thirty-four pages are devoted to the provenance of manuscripts in the Matenadaran in Erevan.

       This is a first edition and already Coulie has collected corrections and updates that will eventually appear as monographs or in subsequent editions. For years the author carried around a loose-leaf binder with the essential information and asked scholars to review and emend sections with which they were familiar. Rather than wait many more years to correct and add, he made the wise decision to bring the work out so that scholars working with manuscripts would have a useful and powerful guide, even though imperfections would be inevitable.

       Some problems of organization occur. An asterisk is used after localities which no longer house the collections that once exited, for instance cities of eastern Anatolia formerly heavily populated by Armenians. Thus, an asterisk is perfectly reasonable for Ankara or Vaspourakan, but why not for Arabkir, Aydin, Bayburt, Cesarea/Kayseri, Divrik, Taron, Monastery of St. John, etc. Perhaps it was used only when Coulie was absolutely sure that these manuscripts were destroyed or turned up elsewhere. Also, under Chapter II, Specialized Catalogues, the section for illuminations ("Manuscrits illustrés") contains Sirarpie Der Nersessian's work of 1937 on the Mekhitarist Library in Venice (Manuscrits arméniens illustrés etc., as well as her study of 1986 with A. Mekhitarian on the illustrated Armenian manuscripts of New Julfa, Isfahan, but neglects the catalogues of the Chester Beatty Collection in Dublin, the Freer Gallery and the Walters Art Gallery (they are cited under Baltimore and Washington elsewhere in the book), probably because the word "illustrated" or "miniature" does not appear in the title. All of the manuscripts in the Freer and Walters and most of them in the Beatty collection are illustrated and the catalogues are focused on the art in these manuscripts.

       Below are noted some corrections for future editions: to the section "Collections of Colophons," pp. 5-7, A. S. Mat'evosyan, Hayeren jeragreri hisatakaranner, V-XII dd (Colophons of Armenian manuscripts, Vth to XIIth Centuries) , Erevan, 1988, 357 colophons should be added, and to complete the numbers of colophons in various volumes cited by Coulie, Khacikyan, XIVth century, 845 colophons, the first three volumes of the XVIIth century, 1600-1660, 3,775 colophons; under A. K. Sanjian, Colophons of Armenian Manuscripts, p. 6, the following review article should be added D. Kouymjian, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Cambridge, vol. 3, no. 1 (1971), pp. 81-89; reply by Sanjian in vol. 3, no. 3 (1971), pp. 365-371; Kouymjian's reply to Sanjian, vol. 4, no. 2 (1972), pp. 238-9; on p. 37 under Beyrouth, tonikean hastatut'ean is not "l'établissement des fêtes," a correct literal translation, but a proper name, Donikian, a very popular publishing house in Beirut; the important collection of Armenian manuscripts in the Alex Manoogian Museum attached to St. John's Church in Southfield, Michigan is not listed under Detroit or Southfield, though a hand list is available by writing to the Alex Manoogian Foundation; under the John Rylands Library, Manchester, one ought to mention the articles of D. Talbot Rice and S. Der Nersessian in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library vols. 43 and 44 (1961-2) on ms. No. 10, a Gospels of 1313; p. 189, a typographical errors places Tabriz in Turkey rather than Iran; the new collection of the Catholicosate at Ejmiacin, p. 69, reports "plus de 300 mss," but already in 1986-7, there were over 600 manuscripts, many catalogued in the pages of the month Ejmiacin; the famous illustrated Gospels of 974 which was in the village of Cughrut' in Akhaltskhay, Georgia before world war I as reported by G. Yovsep'ean, is still in that village.

       The thousands of citations in this extreme valuable volume make of Coulie's Répertoire a handbook for Armenian manuscript study. No serious scholar can be without it, and all serious scholars should help this endeavor along by communicating to Prof. Coulie additions and corrections as they are noted.

Dickran Kouymjian
Haig & Isabel Berberian Professor of Armenian Studies
California State University, Fresno