Thomas of Metsoph

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Thomas of Metsoph (Armenian: Թովմա Մեծոփեցի, T'ovma Metsobets'i) (1378-1446) was an Armenian churchman and chronicler who left an account of Timur’s invasions of the Caucasus (1386-1403). What we know of Thomas’s life comes from a biography written by his own student Kirakos Banaser as well as a number of 15th-century colophons.

Born in Aghiovit, north of Lake Van, Thomas received his early education at the monastery of Metsoph north of the city of Archesh. He had to spend a peripatetic life fleeing the repeated attacks by the Timurid and Turkoman armies. He engaged in teaching and literary activity at several religious centers of Armenian, including Sukhara, Tatev, Lim, and Metsoph. He was also involved in the struggle against the influence of Roman Catholicism within the Armenian church, and helped transfer the Armenian catholicosate from Sis in Cilician Armenia to back to Echmiadzin in Greater Armenia (1441). His major work is The History of Timur and His Successors, which is essentially an eyewitness account written for the most part from memory. Although not flawless and sometimes inaccurate, it is an important source for Armenia and Georgia in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. The classical Armenian text was published K. Shahnazarian in Paris in 1860, translated into French by Felix Neve in 1855, and into English by Robert Bedrosian in 1977.^[1]

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