«Աշխարհիկ միաբանների» ինստիտուտը միջնադարյան Հայաստանում

Abstract

– Expressions like “miabanel” (“to join the monastery community”), “miabanecay”, “miaban egha” (“I joined” or “I became a member of monastery community”) often occur in epigraphic texts and manuscripts. This phenomenon is of great interest, and this article is an attempt to arrive at some conclusions concerning this item: a. in some cases the notion “miabanel” expresses the meaning of presenting anything to a monastery, to be useful for it, b. it is obvious from some sources that probably the head-priest of the monastery in some way gave a legitimate status to the process of presenting, while presenters acquired the status of a “brother” or of a monk (“miaban”), which slightly reminds the institute of a “worldly monk” of the Catholic church. In the 12-15th centuries gift-inscriptions containing the term “miabanecay” become even more frequent. It is important to note that the word is not used exclusively by “paronters” (clergymen-feudals) but by ordinary people as well. Nevertheless, the examined sources witness that the institute of “paronters” in that period underwent evolution to a more complicated level and in this sense “miaban” may be considered as a
representative of a medium stage leading to the status of a feudal.