About Etchmiadzin

Etchmiadzin

Etchmiadzin is the official monthly magazine of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the supreme centre of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and one of the longest-running Armenian periodicals still in publication. Issued from Vagharshapat in Armenia's Armavir Province, the city long known by the same name as the journal itself, it has appeared since 1944 and is regarded as the continuation of Ararat, the monthly founded in 1868. Its full title, the Etchmiadzin Journal of Religious and Armenological Studies, states its dual character plainly: it is at once a church record, printing the official acts and life of the Armenian Church, and a scholarly journal carrying research in theology and Armenian studies. Few Armenian publications combine those two functions, and fewer still have done so without interruption across the late Soviet period, the restoration of Armenian independence in 1991 and the decades since. This profile sets out what can be verified about the journal's origins, organisation, contents and archive, and notes openly where the published record runs thin.

Identity, titles and publisher

The journal's official title in English is the Etchmiadzin Journal of Religious and Armenological Studies, and its own publisher also styles it the Official Monthly of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin's Catholicosate of All Armenians. The Armenian title is given by the publisher in its traditional orthography, and a Russian version of the title is also registered, reflecting the multilingual scholarly world in which Armenian studies has long operated. The short title in all three languages is simply Etchmiadzin. The publisher is the Publishing House of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, and the journal's address is the Mother See itself, at Araratyan 2 in Vagharshapat, postal code 1101. According to the publisher, the journal appears by decision of the Academic Council of the Gevorgyan Theological Seminary, the Mother See's seminary, which ties the magazine formally to the Church's own teaching institution as well as to its central administration. Its working language is Armenian, as recorded in standard reference listings.

Origins in the Ararat monthly

Etchmiadzin presents itself, and is described by reference works, as the direct successor to Ararat, the monthly journal of the Mother See published from 1868 until 1919. The McGill University Library's account of the journal's archive records that Ararat was founded in 1868 by the Catholicos Gevorg IV, while the Mother See's own history says Ararat was published until the establishment of Soviet power in Armenia. Ararat was a journal of religious, historical, philological and moral learning, and its run of more than five decades made it one of the principal organs of Armenian church scholarship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When Etchmiadzin was founded a quarter of a century after Ararat ceased, it consciously resumed that inheritance: the publisher describes the modern journal as the direct successor to Ararat's traditions rather than as an unrelated new title. That claimed continuity, from 1868 through 1944 to the present, is central to how the journal understands its own place in Armenian publishing.

Foundation in 1944

The monthly periodical Etchmiadzin was founded in 1944, in the closing phase of the Second World War and deep in the Soviet period, when the Armenian Church operated under severe state restriction. The Mother See's own account states that it was founded at the instigation of the Catholicos of All Armenians George VI Chorekchyan, whose catholicosate the same source dates to 1945 to 1954, meaning the initiative belonged to the period immediately surrounding his election. The founding is recorded in the Christian Armenia encyclopedia, the source cited by Wikipedia's entry on the magazine, and the date of 1944 is consistent across the publisher, the encyclopedia tradition and library accounts. For its first seventeen years the journal was published not at the Mother See itself but in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia, from 1944 to 1961. The circumstances of an official church monthly appearing at all in the Stalin-era Soviet Union were exceptional, and the journal's early decades should be understood against that background of constraint, even though detailed English-language accounts of its earliest editorial history are scarce.

The move to Vagharshapat and the printing house

Two changes in the late 1950s and early 1960s put the journal on the footing it still occupies. In 1956, according to the publisher, Catholicos Vazgen I, whose catholicosate ran from 1955 to 1994, allocated a separate office to the journal and formed an editorial board for it, giving the monthly a dedicated institutional home rather than leaving it as an adjunct of other church offices. Then, on 15 October 1961, he restored and completely renovated the printing house of the Holy See so that printing could continue without hindrance. That printing house itself was an historic foundation, established by Catholicos Simeon Yerevantsi in 1771, and its restoration anchored the journal's production at Etchmiadzin. The journal's place of publication moved accordingly: after the Yerevan years of 1944 to 1961, it has since been published in Vagharshapat, the city of the Mother See, as reference works record. Since 2018, by the initiative of Catholicos Garegin II, the work of the journal has been coordinated by the publishing department of the Holy See.

What the journal publishes

The journal's contents fall into the two broad fields named in its title. On the religious side, it serves as a record of the Armenian Church, publishing official material of the Mother See alongside theological writing. On the Armenological side, it carries scholarly articles in Armenian studies, the interdisciplinary field covering Armenian history, language, literature, art and culture. The publisher's guidance to authors requires that submitted material correspond to the format and direction of the journal, defined as theology or Armenology, and that it present a proper literary and scientific essay with some scientific innovation or a treatment of topical issues. Reference descriptions likewise summarise the magazine as publishing records of the Armenian Church and articles related to theology and Armenian studies. This mixture distinguishes Etchmiadzin from a purely academic journal on one side and a purely devotional or news publication on the other: the same monthly that documents the institutional life of a worldwide church also functions as a peer-reviewed venue for research, a combination the publisher explicitly maintains.

Editorial structure and leadership

The publisher's current information page names the journal's working leadership. The director of the Publishing House of the Mother See is Father Ararat Poghosyan, who holds a doctorate in history and also sits on the editorial board. The editor-in-chief is Gevorg Madoyan, with Arman Maloyan as deputy editor-in-chief, Nare Sargsyan as stylistic editor and Gor Grigoryan as technical editor. The editorial board combines senior clergy and academic specialists: it includes Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan and Bishop Hovnan Hakobyan, Proto-Archimandrite Zakaria Baghumyan, Archimandrite Ruben Zaragaryan and the Reverend Husik Smbatyan, who holds a doctorate in theology, alongside lay scholars Azat Bozoyan and Karen Matevosyan, both doctors of history, and Vahe Torosyan, who holds a doctorate in history. That composition mirrors the journal's double remit, placing bishops and theologians on the same board as professional historians. Because editorial personnel change over time, these names should be read as the leadership recorded by the publisher at the time of research rather than as a permanent roster.

How articles are reviewed and prepared

Etchmiadzin describes itself as a peer-reviewed, open-access periodical, and its published rules give an unusually full picture of how a small church scholarly journal operates. Materials must never have been published before in any form. They must follow a set structure of introduction, main body and conclusion or summary, carry summaries in Armenian, English and Russian of between 150 and 300 words, and include a list of literature. Authors who do not hold a scientific degree must attach a letter of recommendation from a scientific supervisor or institution. Articles may run to at most 20 pages, or 36,000 characters, and must be supplied in Word format in the Sylfaen typeface, with the author's name transliterated and the title translated into English and Russian. Reviews are accepted in printed form and certified by signature, the decision on publication is made within 60 days, and only papers that fully meet the journal's requirements and receive a positive review are accepted. Before printing, the author must approve the edited version, in person at the editorial office or from a PDF, and sign a certificate form. The board also states that it follows Armenian and international standards on the copyright of scientific works, while responsibility for the views expressed rests with authors.

Frequency, identifiers and print run

The journal is a monthly, and the publisher states its frequency precisely as 12 issues per year. Its print ISSN is 1829-4243 and its online ISSN is 2953-7843, identifiers that allow libraries and indexes to distinguish the print and electronic editions. The publisher lists a print run of 150 copies. That is a strikingly small figure by the standards of general magazines, and readers should understand it for what it is: the stated print run of a specialist scholarly and ecclesiastical journal whose real reach is now substantially digital, through the digitised archive described below, rather than a mass-circulation figure. No independently audited circulation or readership figures for Etchmiadzin were found in the sources consulted for this profile, and none are claimed here. The journal can be contacted through the Mother See's publishing house in Vagharshapat, and its editorial email address is published by the Mother See's library site.

The digitised archive and open access

The most significant modern development in the journal's life is the digitisation of its complete run. All issues of Etchmiadzin have been digitised and are accessible through the Mother See's library website, where, as the McGill University Library blog describes, users can browse by year, by subject using English search terms, or by author, and can search the whole archive through a search box or an advanced search feature. The documents are provided as high-definition colour PDFs and are published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, permitting download, printing, reuse, modification and distribution provided the original authors and source are properly cited. The publisher also lists the journal's presence in several online repositories, including the Matenadaran of Holy Etchmiadzin, the Pan-Armenian Digital Library, the Union Catalog of Armenian Continuing Resources and the Fundamental Scientific Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, as well as published bibliographies of the journal covering 1944 to 1973 and 1974 to 2008. For a journal founded in wartime 1944, that open digital archive converts a scarce print run into a research resource available to Armenian studies scholars anywhere in the world.

Place in Armenian religious and scholarly life

Etchmiadzin occupies a distinctive position among Armenian periodicals. It is the official organ of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the seat of the Catholicos of All Armenians and the spiritual centre of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which gives its church records an authority no independent publication could claim. At the same time, its Armenological articles, its peer-review procedures and its seminary connection place it within Armenia's academic ecosystem. Its claimed lineage from Ararat gives it a pedigree reaching back to 1868, longer than almost any continuously claimed tradition in Armenian periodical publishing. Its survival through the Soviet period, its relocation to the Mother See in 1961, its reorganisation under the publishing department in 2018 and the open digitisation of its archive together describe a journal that has repeatedly adapted its production arrangements while keeping its founding remit intact. Researchers should nonetheless note the limits of the available record: detailed independent accounts of the journal's editorial history, its circulation beyond the publisher's stated print run, and its citation impact are not published in the sources consulted, and this profile makes no claims on those points. What is firmly documented is sufficient: a monthly journal of religious and Armenological studies, published by the Mother See since 1944, heir to an 1868 predecessor, and now openly archived for readers worldwide.