Review by Dickran Kouymjian, California State University, Fresno
published in Speculum 77/3 (July 2002, pp. 1026-27
Robert W. Thomson, The Lawcode [Datastanagirk'] of Mxit'ar Gosš, translated with Commentary and Indices, Dutch Studies in Armenian Language and Literature, No. 6, Amsterdam-Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, 2000, 359 pages, hardbound.

In a continuing series of English translations of classical Armenian texts, started more than 30 years ago, Robert Thomson, Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenia at Oxford University, turns to the first native collection of laws in Armenia. Mxit'ar Gosš was a vardapet, a scholarly monk, who in the last decades of the twelfth century, in the remote regions of northeastern Armenia, compiled in a single work both religious and secular law. His patron was not a king for Armenians were under foreign, for the most part Muslim, rule and had been since the fall of the Bagratid kingdoms of Ani and Kars in 1064-5. At the moment of the Lawcode's inception, 1184, even Cilicia, heavily populated by Armenians from the eleventh century on, was only ruled by princes in alliance or in competition with the Crusaders and the Byzantines. It was only in 1199 that Levon was crowned the first king of Cilician Armenia, but Mxit'ar's concern was less with Armenians in the distant southwest and more with the heavy concentration of monasteries and their dependent population to the north and east of Lake Sevan.
There cannot be many examples of nations devising or consolidating legal tradition while under foreign occupation. When in the following century Smbat the Constable compiled his own Armenian law book, he was working under a state structure run by his own brother, King Het'um. His own Law Code of 1265 was designed to accommodate local Cilician circumstances, as underlined by his later translation of the Assizes of Antioch, a French crusader work. Mxit'ar makes it quite clear in the long introduction to his work that the most compelling reason for composing the Lawcode was to have a rational and national instrument by which to judge consistently both religious and secular transgression without having to revert to the courts of the occupiers, the Muslims. Though he recognized sharia law as appropriate for Muslims, he felt that it was prejudiced against Christians, who need rules administered and interpreted by their own authorities. Thomson points out clearly that Mxit'ar did not turn to Christian Byzantine law because the region where Mxit'ar lived had always been far removed from imperial practices.
Thus, the Lawcode represents jurisprudence for a minority developed by the minority itself. Though quite different, it is interesting to note that seven centuries later, the Armenian minority living in the Ottoman Empire compiled an Armenian national constitution for the internal governing of their ethno-religious community in 1860, ratified by the sultan three years later. Neither of these works, Mxit'ar's Lawcode and the Constitution, are dead relics of the Armenian historical past, even in the twenty-first century their contents are respected and followed, the former in religious governance and the latter, in the Armenian communities in the Middle East, especially Lebanon and Syria.
The Dastanagirk' was innovative because in addition to bringing together religious law from various sources, it also incorporated secular rules that were of common usage in the feudal structure of Armenia society, but which had never been formally organized or written down. Armenian canon law had already been codified in the Kanonagirk' of Yovhannes Ojnec'i, a learned eight century catholicos. Later Armenian law books, those compiled in Armenian communities in Poland and Russia, were essentially dependent on and variants of Mxit'ar's work. Though Mxit'ar almost randomly combines religious precepts and secular do's and don'ts, he sees their functions differently, even though they are part of a larger whole. As Thomson points out (p. 24), canon law is directed toward the diminishing of sin whereas secular law serves to curtail evil. The first is punished by excommunication or penance, the second by punishment or jail.
The sources of this legal treatise are discussed in detail by the translator and by Mxit'ar himself. First there is natural law, then the Old Testament law of the Pentateuch, church canon as formulated by early council, including those of the Armenian church, but excluding the Council of Chalcedon and others not recognized by the Armenians, and finally traditional practice. Thomson traces the source for each of the 251 chapters, essentially the same number of laws, and points out a large number of cases where Mxit'ar formulated new law based on local tradition and sometimes modified biblical ruling again on the same basis. He was often more lenient of women's rights then earlier codes and in general reduced harsh sentences in line with canon law, which relied heavily on confession and penance.
Gosš's work was for the people of his region, that is lands of southern Caucasian Albania and northeastern Armenia; his patron was Step'annos, Catholicos of Aghuank' (1155-1195). Since in his time there was no Christian state structure, no Armenian kings, the law was to be administered by the bishops, who were to be advised by vardapets, who he considered the only legitimate interpreters of the law.
Mxit'ar saw his work as a beginning, something that was vitally needed by an active community under foreign rule. He hoped, in fact pleaded, that mistakes he may have made would be corrected and omissions would be added. His outlook was very modern, seeing the law as an organic whole that changed and had to be changed as circumstances evolved.
The work at hand is a model of translation technique, based on a standard largely developed and perfected by Robert Thomson himself, offering a completely annotated translation of the original text (the A Text of Mxit'ar; there is also a B Text, which is essentially the same, but with a reorganization of the laws, and a G Text, a shortened version, all three rescensions probably dated to before 1300). The copious footnotes are philological, historical, biblical, and legal, though Thomson makes it clear that he, like Mxit'ar himself, is not a legal scholar. There is an index of names (for the Lawcode text only), a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, a very complete list of terms, legal and other, which serves as a convenient guide to the various laws treated, a long list of biblical citations, and cross indices between the recensions of the Mxit'ar text and between it and Smbat's law book.
The sixty-page introduction puts the work in its medieval context while discussing the life of Mxit'ar and the development of Armenian law, both canonical and secular. The text itself is preceded by Mxit'ar Gosš's own remarkable introduction, pp. 69-104, which helps the reader understand the motivation behind its composition. The work itself is fascinating and Thomson's limpid translation makes it a pleasure to read. The book also offers a remarkable view into the essentially agricultural and pastoral life of the Armenian population in what is today the Karabagh and the adjoining regions to the north. And though Gosš realizes that in the absence of an Armenian state structure enforcement of the Lawcode is problematic, he is certain that as a body of regulations of daily life it will make men and women more compassionate, more responsible.