There’s a little book on my shelf that I can’t read. It is in Armenian, and I cannot even make out the attractive curly alphabet. Byron, by all accounts, did rather better, taking lessons in the language, from 1816, at the monastery where my book was printed.
This is at San Lazzaro, an island in Venice, between San Giorgio and the Lido. It was granted to the Armenian monks in 1717. The little community was brought there in that year by their first abbot Mechitar of Sebaste, after whom the monks are called Mechitarists.
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