"New Light from the East": Chronography and Ecclesiastical History through a Late Seventh-Century Armenian Source

The Anonymous Chronicle is a little-studied Armenian text, compiled between September 686 and 689/690 c.e. It comprises two parts, both translated from unknown Greek texts. The first is an epitomized universal chronicle related to the missing Chronography of Annianus of Alexandria. Remarkably it appears to preserve the lost Roman imperial sequence from Eusebius's Chronographia. The second is a synoptic ecclesiastical history, written from a miaphysite perspective. It records all six Ecumenical Councils, often supplying new details. Conditions in mid-sixth-century Jerusalem and a new tradition associated with St Simeon Stylites also feature. Its conclusion supports the proposition that monotheletism proved to be of much greater significance among Armenians than previously recognized. The study is prefaced by an investigation of the Armenian version of Eusebius's Chronicle and a call for its diminished standing to be re-evaluated.