On This Day

The Yaysmawurk‘ is a liturgical collection of brief saints’ lives arranged according to the day on which they were celebrated in the annual church calendar. The name comes from the first words of most of the daily entries: Y-aysm awur, that is, “On this day . . .” The collection was part of the great and varied Armenian liturgical tradition from the turn of the first millennium. The first Yaysmawurk‘ was translated from an existing Greek liturgical collection (the Synaxarion, “where the lives are all collected”). In fact, it is common knowledge that this Greek collection was the basis for nearly all such liturgical collections of the lives of the saints throughout the early Christian world. However, it was not a mere translation. Rather, it constituted a logical culmination of a long and steady development in the Armenian Church of what scholars today like to call the cult of the saints.