[MISSAL]

Scarce first edition, only the second work to be printed in Armenian by the press of the Catholic Church’s Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fidei, with Armenian and Latin texts in parallel, translated by the Ottoman Armenian interpreter Giovanni Molino (c.1592-1643).

‘The Roman Church … saw the Eastern Christians as a fruitful field for proselytism … In the C17th the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, established by the Roman Catholic Church in 1622 as part of the Counter-Reformation, undertook a printing programme in Armenian and other languages designed to provide missionaries and new converts alike with texts to support evangelisation and Catholic devotion’ (Nersessian, The Parikian Collection of Early Armenian Printing at Eton College Library (Eton: 2016), p. 7). Molino, born in Ankara, was from the Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire. Sent to Rome as a child, as was common for talented Armenian and other non-Muslim boys, he was educated at the College of Neophytes, a school for Jewish and Muslim converts. He evidently returned to his native Ankara, since he arrived in Venice from there in 1626, where he began work as an interpreter. Molino was heavily involved in the project to print an Armenian Bible in Rome on behalf of the Sacra Congregatio; and travelled to Rome in order to study printing and advance this ultimately fruitless work: ‘I put myself … to learn the art of printing … I went with hope and desire to the city of Rome, where for four years, with hard work, pain and torment … that it is not possible to explain in writing and [only] my Creator knows … I procured punches and matrices, ornaments and floral initials, with sizeable hardship’ (in Elżbieta Święcicka, ed., Dictionary of Italian-Turkish (1641) by Giovanni Molino (Leiden: 2020), p. 52). Molino returned to Venice in October 1641, having completed work on the Missal, taking with him a set of Armenian type. In 1642 he was able to produce an Armenian Psalter and in 1643 the Yisus Ordi of Nerses IV. He died in 1643 in Milan, endeavouring to return to Constantinople and his family. He left behind his Armenian types, which were used in numerous Venetian publications (ibid., p. 53).  

This was the second production using Armenian type from the press of the Sacra Congregatio, after Cardinal Robert Bellarmine’s catechism, Dichiaratione piu copiosa della dottrina Christiana, published in parallel Italian and Armenian in 1630, extremely rare and apparently unknown to Mahé (see below); an Armenian alphabet was issued under the auspices of the Sacra Congregatio around this time, but not by their press. Meanwhile, the first printed Armenian missal had been issued the previous year in New Julfa, Isfahan. ‘Around 1623 a new phase began in the relations between the Armenian Church and the Roman Church, followed by a new expansion of Catholic publishing, due notably to the founding of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide and its printing house. Also at this time, the Armenian religious authorities appealed to Rome for the creation of a printing house and school for the use of Armenians … The work of the commission set up … and charged with correcting the Armenian version was not crowned with success. It was necessary to wait until 1642 for a new … Ordo divinae missae Armenorum to be printed’ (Kevorkian, p. 154). All the Armenian types used by the Sacra Congregatio were those cut by Robert Granjon in 1579 (ibid., p. 153).

Giuseppe Renato Imperiali (1651-1737) was an Italian cardinal and bibliophile who amassed a vast library of over 15,000 items, which was dispersed at the end of the C18. This book appears on p. 33 of the printed catalogue, Bibliothecae Josephi Renati Imperialis, prepared by his secretary and published in Rome in 1711.

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