Mkhitar Gosh

Mkhitar Gosh was a scholar, teacher and monk of the twelfth century, the author of the Armenian Law Book and the Fables. He was born in Gandzak in the 1130s and died in 1213.¹

He was ordained a celibate priest as a young man and studied under Hovhannes Tavushetsi, who gave him the rank of vardapet, a teacher of the Church. He then studied at the Armenian monastic community on the Black Mountain in Cilician Armenia and received the rank again.¹ He taught and wrote in Gandzak until envious clergy drove him out. He found shelter with the princes of Khachen, and about 1184 he joined Prince Kurd at Kayen, where he lived in the monastery of Getik until an earthquake destroyed it.¹

With the support of General Ivane Zakarian, the princes of Khachen and the Artsruni family, he founded the new monastery of Nor Getik, also called Goshavank.¹ He went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1196 or 1198, and in 1205 and 1207 he took part, as the senior vardapet, in the assemblies called by Zakare Zakarian, whose father-confessor he was.¹

A prince of eastern Armenia asked him to compile the Armenian Law Book, and Armenians in Cilicia, the Caucasus and elsewhere used it afterward. Gosh also wrote the Fables, prayers, sermons, works of theology and a short chronicle.¹ The main source for his life is the History of the Armenians by Kirakos of Gandzak.¹