Lord Byron at the Armenian Monastery on San Lazzaro

George Gordon, Lord Byron, arrived in Venice on November 11, 1816, a bitter and unhappy man at age 28. He had left England on April 24 in a cloud of controversy and scandal attending the breakup of his short-lived and unsatisfactory marriage. Immediately after installing himself and his attendants in an apartment in Venice, the young poet sought solace and diversion, finding both in congenial social life and in what became an over-lapping series of ardent love affairs, all well known to the more tolerant Venetians. Eager, too, for mental exercise to distract him from his painful memories, Byron, with characteristic vigor, plunged into the study of the Armenian language. Byron\u27s brief Armenian episode and his association with the Armenian monks of the Mekhitarist Order on the island of San Lazzaro near Venice may be traced in an unusually large collection of books on Byron, constituting an important segment of John S. Mayfield\u27s library of more than 50,000 rare books and manuscripts, housed in the Syracuse University Library. The Mayfield collection includes several rare volumes relating specifically to this experience

From Academia Armena Sancti Lazari to the Establishment of Armenian Studies at Ca’ Foscari

The Armenian Studies have a very long tradition in Italy. However, the establishment of the official teaching of Armenian at Ca’ Foscari is particularly significant. It is a direct continuation of many Armenian traces present in the lagoon city for centuries, such as the birth of the first Casa Armena in Europe in 1245, the prosperous diplomatic relations between the Republic of Serenissima and the Kingdom of Armenia, the printing of the first Armenian book in 1512, the arrival of Armenian merchants from Julfa, who highly contributed to the economy of Venice, and finally the institution of the Mekhitarist Congregation of the Armenian monks on the island of San Lazzaro, recognised by Napoleon as Academia Armena Sancti Lazari. After an historical excursus, the paper will go on to detail some significant periods of Armenian Studies at Ca’ Foscari