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CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF ARMENIA 269
village, singing to the accompaniment of a sa% (violin) songs
which were partly religious, but which also told of the life
of the people, of joy and sorrow, battle and murder, nature
and love. These minstrels were patronized by the monastery
of Surb Karapet, at Taron, near Mush, where they held
competitions every year. Here there had once been the
famous old place of sacrifice with its three heathen temples ;
and St. Gregory built the first Armenian church there, at
Ashtishat. The custom went back, no doubt, to pagan times ;
the patron samt of singers was now John the Baptist (Karapet),
but he inherited his title from the gods of heathenism.
Out of this popular cult of poetry there arose several poets
of real merit. Already in the twelfth century the Katholikos
Nerses Klayetsi, known as Shnorhali (i.e. the graceful), wrote
fine poetry in the language of the people, in addition to hymns
and religious works. In the thirteenth century, under the
Mongols, a remarkable poet appeared who called himself by
the pseudonym of Frik, and who strikes many a deep chord
in telling of joy, suffering, and sorrow, as well as in satirizing
the futility of life. Another poet of importance, who perhaps
may be placed in the fifteenth century, was Nahabed Kutjak.
He loves to depict the gloom of sorrow and suffering, but can
also use brighter colours when painting the joy of life. In
all this Armenian poetry there is an undertone of wistful
melancholy.
In other directions also, notably in architecture and art,
the intellectual life of Armenia bore fruit during these cen
turies. As a Turkish writer expresses it, Armenians left their
artistic stamp upon magnificent mosques both in Anatolia
and in European Turkey, and upon various kinds of applied
art. Most of the artistic and intellectual achievements in that
strange and mentally apathetic empire can be traced to the
Armenians ; they were actors and clowns on the Turkish
stage, they were Turkey’s public singers and musicians, and
to a large extent they even created Turkish music.
The Mekhitarists.—Of great importance for the rise of
Armenian intellectual culture were the so-called Mekhitarists,
an order founded by the monk Mekhitar (i.e. the comforter)
Manuk from Sivas, who first lived with his fellow-monks at
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