Armenian diaspora in Europe
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In the early Middle Ages, many Armenians travelled to countries neighboring Armenia, such as Syria, Egypt and Iran, into West Asia, Southern Europe and since the 1920's France had a large Armenian community. By the 16th century, Armenians created wide-scattered communities and a commercial network spanning from Western Europe to the Indies.
[edit] Religious union
The preservation of Armenian linguistic and religious identity depended on relations of the diaspora with their new homelands. This was especially so in the 17th century, when Armenians were pressured into religious assimilation by Catholic rulers. Also, during the 13th century, Armenians in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia returned into communion with Rome, maintaining their ecclesiastic traditions. After the Council of Trento (1545-1563), these efforts were strengthened with the help of the Jesuits. One of the most important personalities of the Armenian Catholic Church was Mekhitar of Sebasteia (1676-1749). Mekhitar converted to Catholicism as a member of the clergy of the Armenian patriarchy of Constantinople and founded, in 1717, the Catholic Congregation of Mekhitarism on the Island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni in Venice. Mekhitar and his monks played major roles in the development of the Armenian language and culture.
[edit] Armenia Maritima
During the Middle Ages, Crimea (south eastern Ukraine) became the first center of the Armenian Diaspora on European ground. The Armenians here performed services as commercial agents and soldiers for the Italians. The number of Armenians in this area grew to several ten thousand by the 14th century due to further immigration from Armenia and the south of modern day Russia. Therefore, in West Europe, the south of Crimea was commonly known as Armenia maritima, Latin for "Marine Armenia"
In the middle of the 14th century an Armenian diocese was established in Crimea, and in the town of Kaffa alone, there were 44 Armenian churches and 46,000 believers. However, the explusion of the Genoese by the Ottomans, allied with the Crimean Tatars, brought the blooming period of 1475 to an end. As a result, many Armenians emigrated to Constantinople, Bulgaria, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and another wave of Armenians settled in the Republic of Venice, now Venice, Italy, had a sizable Armenian community with a regional archdiocese of the Armenian Catholic Church to this day.[citation needed]
[edit] In Kyivan Rus and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Since the 11th century, Armenians have immigrated to areas of the Ruthenian principalities. After the Mongolian conquest of 1240, its municipalities concentrated in the western areas of Galicia, Volhynia and Podolia - which were attached to the Polish kingdom in 1340 by Casimir III of Poland. Casimir III granted the Armenians the right to carry out their own beliefs and to receive their own courts.
Since 1364, Armenians in Central Europe formed an eparchy in Leopolis, covering the land of Ruthenian, Moldavia and Wallachia. After 1475, those Armenian communities were strengthend by further immigration especially from the Crimea. At the beginning of the 17th century, 2500 Armenians lived in the town of Leopolis. The leading layer of Armenians, accompanied by excellent craftsmen, were the rich businessmen who played a significant role in trade with Russia, the Ottoman empire and Persia. They also made important contributions to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth military, actively participating in defending the south-eastern frontier from the Ottomans as well as serving its diplomacy in the Levant.
Galicia became a center of early Armenian press and literature. In the 17th century, the Jesuits founded a seminar in Leopolis to help support the Armenians studies and literature. However, pressures of religious assimilation were rising from the Polish authorities. In 1630 a conflict erupted between the Armenian bishop of Leopolis who sought to reestablish the union and a large part of the faithfull, settled only in 1660 through the mediation of Theatines. However, due to dwindling ecomonomic and political posperity of the Polish-Lithuanian state, many Armenians chose to emigrate to Russia, Constantinople, Persia, and Wallachia.
After the Partitions of Poland, the Armenian community in Poland was divided between Austria and Russia. In Galicia, the Armenian-Catholic religious life continued under Austrian rule. In the lands of Volhynia and Podolia, occupied by Russians a separate eparchy was created in Mohyliv-Podilskyi in 1807, which also included parishes in Mykolaiv, Odesa, Crimea and outside Ukraine in Mozdok, Kizlar and Astrakhan. This diocese however operated only until 1828 and in 1848 the Armenian faithfull were transferred along with all Catholics in Russia to the diocese of Tiraspol.
When Poland regianed its independence at the beginning of the 20th century, it contained 5500 Armenians in Galicia, 8 Armenian churches (in Leopolis, Stanisławów, Kuty, Brzeżany, Łysiec, Tyśmienica, Horodenka and Śniatyń), and 15 chapels. Located outside the borders of the Second Republic of Poland, there were also churches in Cernăuţi, Suceava, Kamieniec Podolski, Ploskirów and an Armenian chapel in the Latin church in Kharkiv. Due to a low number of clergy, most priests were biritualists.
During World War II, much of the Armenian community was murdered by Soviets and Germans. Most of the few who remained chose to move to Poland's Recovered Territories in northwest Poland. The Nazis might had accepted Armenians among other Slavic and Latin peoples in Eastern Europe as "Aryans", except Nazi racists compared Armenians (they are of Indo-European linguistic and Middle Eastern origins) with that of "non-Aryan races" like Jews, Greeks, Roma (Gypsies) and inaccurately, with Africans since there are light-skinned Armenians.
[edit] In Romania
Since the 14th century, Armenians have been living in the principality of Moldavia. The community's first church was established in 1350 in Botoşani, and the second in 1395 in Iaşi. In 1401, Alexandru cel Bun permitted the establishment of an Armenian diocese in Suceava. While immigration from the Crimea strengthened the municipalities after 1475, they were decimated by Ottoman deportations, the Moldavian Magnate Wars during the 16th and 17th centuries; in 1790, about 4,000 Armenians emigrated to the Russian Empire.
While many Armenians immigrated into Wallachia in 1475, the community's first church was built in Bucharest in 1620. As in other regions, they played a critical role in trade. In the 19th century, Armenians actively took part in the intellectual, artistic, and political life of the developing Romanian state.
However, these municipalities weakened due to the repatriation, promoted by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, of Armenians from the Eastern Bloc to the Armenian SSR from 1946 to 1948 (which was stopped after the immigration of more than 100,000 Armenians to the diaspora once again, as well as the emigration to Western Europe and the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s). In 1956 6,400 Armenians were counted, and in 2002 only 1,780 remained, mainly in Bucharest, Constanţa, and Tulcea.
[edit] In the land of the Crown of St. Stephen (pre-1918 Hungary)
The Armenian diaspora of Europe was centered in the Hapsburg empire of Austria-Hungary in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the origins of this community dates back to the time of Hungary, known as the land of the Crown of St. Stephen when it was an independent kingdom in the late 14th and 15th centuries.
[edit] Present-day Armenian diaspora communities in Europe
You may edit the sections with your entries, but include verifiable sources and web links on research of the Armenian diaspora in Europe then and now.
[edit] In Austria
[edit] In Belarus
[edit] In Belgium
[edit] In Bulgaria
[edit] In Croatia
[edit] In Czech Republic
[edit] In Denmark
[edit] In France
[edit] In Germany
[edit] In Great Britain
[edit] In Greece
[edit] In Hungary
[edit] In Italy
[edit] In Macedonia (the Republic of)
[edit] In Moldova
[edit] In the Netherlands
[edit] In Poland
[edit] In Portugal
[edit] In Serbia
[edit] In Slovakia
[edit] In Spain
[edit] In Sweden
[edit] In Switzerland
[edit] In Turkey
[edit] In Ukraine
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