Saint Armenag Haigazian

Armenag Haigazian (Armenian: Արմենակ Հայկազեան; 1870–1921), was an Armenian theologian, educator, scientist, linguist and musician. He was born to Harutune Haigazian and Mary Tavonkian on September 22, 1870, in Hadjin, Cilicia, Ottoman Empire, now Turkey. After completing his high school education in his native Hadjin in 1885, he moved to Antab and attended the Central Turkey College. During his junior and senior years, he was also a tutor in mathematics in the same institution. He earned the B.A. degree in 1889 at the age of nineteen. He then entered the Marash Theological Seminary, where he graduated in 1892 and was licensed as a preacher of the Armenian Evangelical Church. He spent the next two years, 1892-1894, as an instructor of Mathematics and Physical Geography at St. Paul’s Institute in Tarsus. In 1894, he moved to the United States of America to continue his education. After a year’s study at the University of Chicago in Semitics and Comparative Religion, with a focus on Assyrian archeology, he took postgraduate courses at the Hartford Theological Seminary, where he studied ancient Near Eastern languages. In 1896, the S.T.B. degree was conferred on him, in recognition of special advanced post-graduate work and high academic standing. He earned a scholarship for doctoral study at Yale Divinity School. He received the Ph.D. degree from the Graduate School of Yale University in 1898 at the age of 28 after a two-year study in Semitic Languages and Biblical Literature. His thesis is entitled “The Text of Zephaniah”. For a short period after graduation he studied music and harmony at the University of Toronto. In 1899, he went back to Chicago where he received ministerial ordination at the University Congregational Church. That same year he returned to Turkey and joined the faculty of the Apostolic Institute in Konia – also known as Jenanyan College (founded in 1892) as academic Dean.