CHAPTER LXII.
[(1.)] “Karawag.”—This must have been the plain of Karabagh, between the rivers Kour and Araxes, where Shah Rokh spent the winter of 1420, being accompanied by his vassals; Khalyl Oullah, the shah of Shirwan, and Minutcher, his own valorous brother, being among his guests (Dorn, Versuch einer Gesch. d. Schirwan-Sch., vi, 4, 549). Like Schiltberger, Barbaro and Contarini have called the Kour, Tigris, and the Tigris, Shat or Set.—Bruun.
[(2.)] “they call the Germans, Nymitsch.”—This term is borrowed from the Slaves, who have applied it to the Germans from the earliest times, either because the latter spoke an incomprehensible, a dumb language, or, as Schafarik explains (Slawische Alterthümer, i, 442), because they followed the example of the Celts, who called certain German tribes settled in Gaul, Nemetes.[1]—Bruun.
[1] Nyemoï is the Russian adjective for dumb. Ed.
[(3.)] “then did the sultan of Alkenier conquer it.”—Sis became finally subject to the Egyptians in 1374–75, having fallen into their hands upon several previous occasions, to wit, in 1266, 1275, and 1298 (Weil, Gesch. der Chal., iv, 55, 78, 213, 233). They had frequently appeared in force in its neighbourhood, notably in 1278 (Makrizi by Quatremère, I, i, 166), a date which nearly corresponds with the year in which the city was taken; a statement that would have been communicated to the author by his friends the Armenians, the most interested in the fate of their capital. It need not in this case be supposed that Schiltberger confounded the Mahomedan with the Christian year, and that he conceived 655 of the Hegira to correspond to 1277. In 655 or A.D. 1257, Egypt was in too disturbed a state for the sultan to trouble himself about the conquest of Sis.—Bruun.
CHAPTER LXIII.
[(1.)] “when Saint Silvester was Pope at Rome.”—The Armenian Church teaches that St. Thaddeus, one of the seventy-two disciples of our Lord, and St. Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, were the first to preach the gospel in Armenia; but the actual conversion of the Armenians to Christianity was not effected until the reign of Tiridates in the 4th century, by St. Gregory, thenceforth named Lousarovitch—the Enlightener. He was the son of a prince of Parthia, the assassin of Chosroes, king of Armenia, who, though not a kinsman of Gregory, belonged to the race of the Arsacidæ of Parthian origin; St. Gregory’s own ancestors, the Surenians, being also a branch of the same royal race. St. Gregory was, therefore, indeed a kinsman of Tiridates, who was the son of Chosroes.
[(2.)] “this same king who built the large church at Bethleen, as has been already stated.”—It is singular that Bethlehem is not mentioned at all in the chapter devoted to a description of the holy places, so that it is just possible the Nuremberg MS. is a copy of the MS. at Heidelberg, in which that city is not named. Opinions are greatly divided upon this statement of Schiltberger. In a communication from Bishop Aïvazoffsky, I am assured that no church whatever was constructed prior to the king’s conversion; but it is stated in an apocryphal writing, that Tiridates caused a church to be built at Jerusalem after his conversion. On the other hand, Vaillant de Florival (Dictionnaire Historique, sub vocem, Dertad) inserts that, after his conversion, the king ordered the construction of many churches, one being at Bethlehem, and dedicated to the nativity of Christ.—Bruun.
[(3.)] “The king again became a man, and was, with all his people, again a Christian.”—This tradition in regard to Tiridates and St. Gregory is told with considerable accuracy. Armenian chroniclers relate that Gregory, having refused to worship the idol set up by the king, was by his orders taken to the fortress in the town of Ardashat, and there thrown into a stinking pit, to be consumed, as we read in the text, by serpents and other reptiles, but where he nevertheless remained miraculously preserved from all harm during the space of fourteen, or, according to others, fifteen years. The place situated in the valley of the Araxes, is now called Khorvyrab—Dry well—the site of a monastery in which is shown the saint’s dungeon.