Simeon I of Yerevan

Simeon I of Yerevan or Simeon Yerevantsi (Armenian: Սիմեոն Ա Երևանցի "Simon of Yerevan"; 1710–1780) was the Catholicos of All Armenians from 1763 to 1780. In 1771, he founded a printing press at the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the first in Armenia. According Rouben Paul Adalian, the pontificate of Simeon I of Yerevan marked the reemergence of Etchmiadzin as a "truly important center of Armenian national affairs".

Biography

Simeon I was born in 1710 in Yerevan, then under the Safavid Iranian sway. He received his education in Etchmiadzin. As a legate of the Holy See of Etchmiadzin, he travelled to Istanbul and Madras, the latter which was an important center of Armenian intellectual activity at the time.

He was elected catholicos at Etchmiadzin in 1763. However, by that time, with the remoteness of Etchmiadzin in a frontier province of Iran, the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul had become the most important see of the Armenian Church. Simeon took active efforts in order to increase the role of the see of Etchmiadzin by establishing a printing press in 1771, the very first on the territory of historical Armenia. He furthermore improved the monastery school, which would later, in the 19th century, become an major center of theological learning.

Sources

• Adalian 2010, p. 300.
• Adalian 2010, p. 543.
• Floor & Herzig 2012, p. 376.