Saint Mesrop Mashtots

Mesrop Mashtots (listen ; Armenian: Մեսրոպ Մաշտոց, romanized: Mesrop Maštoc' 362 – 17 February 440 AD) was an Armenian linguist, composer, theologian, statesman, and hymnologist. He is venerated as a saint in the Armenian Apostolic Church. He is best known for inventing the Armenian alphabet c. 405 AD, which was a fundamental step in strengthening Armenian national identity. He is also considered to be the creator of the Caucasian Albanian and, possibly, the Georgian script, though it is disputed. The chief sources for the life and work of Mashtots are Koriun, Ghazar Parpetsi, and Movses Khorenatsi. The Life of Mashtots (Վարք Մաշտոցի), a hagiography by Koriun, a disciple of Mashtots, is the primary and most reliable source. The oldest fragments of the incomplete The Life manuscript are dated 12th century and are kept in Paris's Bibliothèque nationale (Arm. 178), two shorter versions of The Life dated to middle of the 14th century and one longer version of The Life is dated to the late 17th century. Hrachia Acharian, who authored the most comprehensive study on Mashtots and the Armenian alphabet, defended Koriun's work as the only accurate account. It was commissioned by Catholicos Hovsep I, also a student of Mashtots, and written c. 443–450/451. The work has two versions: long and short. The former is considered by most scholars to be the original. Parpetsi and Khorenatsi largely relied upon Koriun's work. The oldest extant manuscript of Koriun's Life of Mashtots has been dated to the 12th century. It was first printed in Armenian by the Mekhitarists in San Lazzaro degli Armeni, Venice in 1833, and has been translated thrice into Modern Armenian and several foreign languages. While Koriun, his chief biographer, only refers to him as Mashtots, Movses Khorenatsi and later Armenian historiography predominantly calls him Mesrop. It was not until the 20th century that he came to be referred to by both names, sometimes spelled with a hyphen.