Agathangelos

This article is about the biographer of Gregory the Illuminator. For other uses, see Agathangelos (disambiguation).

Agathangelos (in Old Armenian: Ագաթանգեղոս Agatʿangełos, in Greek Ἀγαθάγγελος "bearer of good news", c. 5th century AD^[1]) is the pseudonym of the author of a life of the first apostle of Armenia, Gregory the Illuminator, who died about 332.^[2] The history attributed to Agathangelos is the main source for the Christianization of Armenia in the early 4th century.

A relief of Agathangelos on the Armenian Cathedral of Moscow

The "standard" version of Agathangelos' history accepted in the Armenian tradition dates to the second half of the 5th century. This version was soon translated into Greek; on the basis of this Greek translation, a translation into Arabic was made, as well as many secondary Greek, Latin and Ethiopic versions. Another, earlier Armenian version of the history, now lost, was the basis for two Greek, two Arabic, and a Karshuni translation.^[3] The earliest surviving manuscript containing text from Agathangelos is a palimpsest kept in the Mekhitarist library in Vienna; the original text on the palimpsest dates to earlier than the 10th century. Other fragments are dated to the 10th and subsequent centuries. The earliest manuscripts containing the complete history of Agathangelos date to the 12th and 13th centuries.^[4]

He claims to be a secretary of Tiridates III, King of Armenia in the early 4th century, but the life was not written before the 5th century.^[2] It purports to exhibit the deeds and discourses of Gregory, and has reached us in Armenian, Greek, Georgian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Latin and Arabic.^[5] The text of this history has been considerably altered, but it has always been in high favor with the Armenians.^[6] Von Gutschmid maintains that the unknown author made use of a genuine life of St. Gregory and of the martyrdom of Saint Rhipsime and her companions. Historical facts are intermingled in this life with legendary or uncertain additions, and the whole is woven into a certain unity by the narrator, who may have assumed his significant name from his quality of narrator of "the good news" of Armenia's conversion.^[7] It has been translated into several languages, and Greek and Latin translations are found in the Acta Sanctorum Bollandistarum, tome viii.^[6]