"From the History of the Armenian Community in Zamość" (conclusion) - Mirosława ZAKRZEWSKA-DUBASOWA
The article by Mirosława Zakrzewska-Dubasowa "From the History of the Armenian Community in Zamość" (conclusion, publication of excerpts from the book "Armenians in the Former Poland") is devoted to the concluding topics in the history of the seventeenth-century Armenian colony in Zamość — the religious struggle, the political and diplomatic activity of its representatives, and the community's contribution to spiritual culture.
Introduction and Methodology
The material is based on an analysis of Armenian court records from Zamość and Kamianets-Podilskyi, royal privileges, chancellery instructions, and testamentary records, which makes it possible to reconstruct specific biographies and the institutional history of the community against the background of general Polish processes.
In Defense of the Faith of Their Fathers
The resistance of the Zamość Armenians to the church union with Rome is examined:
- it is shown that, unlike in Lwów, the conflict over the union in Zamość did not lead to open clashes and repressions by the authorities, but was accompanied by a schism and the departure of dissenters from the city;
- the role of Catholicos Melchizedek, invited in 1625 to the laying of the foundation of the stone Church of Our Lady, is noted;
- evidence of resistance from the local clergy is cited (the correspondence between the Lwów archbishop and the parish priest Jan Kistesterowicz, 1665);
- it is shown that the Armenians preserved their own institutions — in particular, the office of "erespokhan," who administered church property up to the end of the seventeenth century, confirmed by a 1697 court case invoking the Kamianets and Lwów privileges.
The Political Activity of Polish Armenians
This section is devoted to the biographies of two prominent members of the community:
- Mikołaj Gadzejewicz (Chadziejewicz) — a merchant, vogt of Zamość (1649–1654), a major trader in salt and potash, a supplier to the royal court, who later received nobility (szlachta) status for his services in negotiations with the Crimean khan;
- Kasper Sinanowicz Szymański — an interpreter and diplomat in the service of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, participant in an embassy to the Kalmyks (1653) and later missions to the Crimean khan, whose fate after his last journey (1656) remains unknown; an inventory of his possessions is cited as a source on the material culture of the period.
Spiritual Culture
The topic of the Armenian chroniclers of Zamość is briefly touched upon, in particular the little-studied figure of Zachariah Arakelovich, whose work, unlike that of Simeon Lehatsi, has still not received scholarly attention and is not even mentioned in the works of Sadok Barącz.
Conclusion
The author concludes that the Armenian community of Zamość, despite its smaller scale compared to Lwów, constituted an active and independent organism that managed to preserve elements of confessional and institutional autonomy, and that its representatives played a notable role in the trade, diplomatic, and cultural life of the seventeenth-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Based on archival documents, the article reconstructs the final episodes in the history of the 17th-century Armenian community of Zamość — its struggle for faith, the diplomatic service of its members, and its little-studied literary legacy.
Autonomy through resistance to Union