Preces Sancti Nersetis Claiensis Armeniorum Patriarchae viginti quatuor linguis Editae

Venice: In Insula S. Lazari, 1837. Hardcover. Very Good. Signed. Full leather binding with gilt lettering & decoration to spine, gilt ruled borders on both boards, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers, engraved frontispiece and title page, 6-1/4" x 4â€, 434 pp. Aucher’s name appears in three different versions on the first leaf: Armenian, transliterated Armenian and Latin, dated 1847. George Gordon, Lord Byron, traveled to the Island of St. Lazar where Father Pascal Aucher (1774-1854) taught him Armenian. Together, they published Grammar of the English and Armenian Languages in 1819 and contributed to Aucher’s 1821 English Armenian Dictionary. Byron was devoted to the Armenian language, writing: “I learned the language of the Armenians in order to understand how and what language the Gods spoke, for the Armenian language is the language of the Gods, and Armenia is the homeland of the Gods, and the Gods come from the Ararat valley.â€A translation of twenty-four prayers (one for each hour of the day) of St. Nerses the Graceful, translated into twenty-four languages. This is the culmination of an effort that first had 6, 10, 14, and then 16 translations. This effort was likely from many of the Mekhitarist monks at San Lazzaro degli Armeni. The monastery was founded in 1715 by twelve monks; when Byron visited, there were 70; today there are 12 monks and five novices. Despite the small population, St. Lazzaro has been a major center of Armenian studies for centuries, and still maintains the third-largest library of Armenian materials in the world. This polyglot prayer book is notable not just for its place in Armenian history and the spread of Orthodoxy, but it is also a typographic success in acquiring the various fonts.