Текст песни Григор Нарекаци - Книга скорбных песнопений. Григор Нарекаци

Grigor Narekatsi
(about 951 - 1003) - Grigor Narekatsi (i.e. Grigor from Narek), the great Armenian theologian, poet and thinker. He is revered as possibly the main representative of the ancient Armenian Renaissance. "The Book of Sorrowful Chants" by Grigor Narekatsi is a masterpiece of world literature, in Armenia it is valued perhaps not as much as the Bible.
It is interesting that Grigor Narekatsi, although he belonged to the Monophysite church, apparently sympathized with the Diophysites (Orthodox). At least Grigor Narekatsi adhered to a conciliatory position in the dogmatic disputes of those years (which in the case of Armenia, I must say, were not so much dogmatic in nature as ethnic). The author of the life of Grigor Narekatsi writes in this regard: “Between the bishops and the vardapets (learned monks, preachers) there was a strife over various issues in the affairs of the Chalcedonites (that is, the Diophysites). in which the soundness of doctrine was damaged by differences of opinion, he exhorted everyone to be meek in soul and peaceable, to be in love and unanimity. "
The human soul aspires to God through repentance and God saving the soul is the main theme of Grigor Narekatsi.
It is difficult to compare the "Book of Sorrowful Chants" with anything, both in its literary perfection and in spiritual depth (both in the "mystical" and in the "theological" meanings of the word). Perhaps with the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete: the "Book of Sorrowful Chants" has the same repentant attitude, the same immersion in the elements of Scripture, the same simultaneously personal and universal tone.