PEOPLE OF THE ANCIENT WORLD: Mesrop Mashtots (Saint of the Armenian Church)
MESROP Mashtots (360/370 – c. 440 CE) invented the Armenian alphabet in 405 CE. Besides greatly increasing levels of literacy in the country, the language permitted ordinary people to read the Bible for the first time, thus helping to further spread and entrench Christianity in Armenia, which was the original intention behind the script’s invention. For these achievements Mashtots (Mastoc) was made a saint of the Armenian Church.
Mashtots came from a family of modest status living in Hatsekats, a provincial town in the Taron province of ancient Armenia. After an education focussed on Greek literature and an early career in the military, Mashtots served at the Armenian royal court before joining the Christian church and working as a missionary in the southeast of Armenia. It was then that the young evangelist realised how important it could be for his conversion rates if the people could read about the Gospel message in their own language, spoken Armenian not having, at that time, a written form. Christian texts were useless to common people as they were written in either Greek or Syriac, both of which only highly educated people could read. To do anything useful, though, Mashtots needed a powerful sponsor and state backing.
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