New Documents on the Armenian Presence and Printing Activity in Early Modern Rome: the Family and the Professional Network of Marcantonio Abagaro (Sult‘anšah T‘oxat‘ec‘i)

Despite the long-standing attention of scholarship towards the beginnings of the Armenian press, the biographical details of the first printers remain largely mysterious. Until the rediscovery in the last decades of the nineteenth century of the obscure figure of Yakob Mełapart, scholars had long believed that Abgar dpir of Tokhat was the first to have published two complete books in the Armenian language: a “jumble” calendar and the Psalms of David, printed in Venice in 1565-1566, which included an engraved portrait of Abgar together with his adolescent son Sult‘anšah. While Abgar left Italy shortly after, continuing his publishing activity in Constantinople for some years, Sult‘anšah remained in Rome, where in 1584 he began to collaborate with another poorly known Armenian printer, Yovhannēs Terznc‘i, giving to the press (with different fonts) the Armenian versions of the new calendar and of the profession of Catholic faith prepared under Pope Gregory XIII. More than a century of studies have not helped much to illuminate the life of these two men. My current research intends to provide new details on the biography and activities of Sult‘anšah and Terznc‘i, thanks to sources hitherto not considered by the Armenian and non-Armenian historiography. Based on documents recently discovered in the pontifical and Roman archives (which will be published in a forthcoming article), this intervention seeks to shed new light on three key issues: 1) the career of Sult‘anšah T‘oxat‘ec‘i (or Marco Antonio Abagaro, as he was known in Italian sources) and his involvement in the network of Roman printing workshops thanks to his hitherto unknown wife; 2) the demonstration that Marco Antonio Abagaro was a different person from his younger relative and successor at the helm of the Armenian Hospice, Bartolomeo Abagaro; 3) the fate of the Armenian types cut by Abgar dpir in 1565.