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“Sitting as a Stranger”: Evagrius in the Desert & Beyond, June 4-6, 2026
2026 Second International Conference Held at St. Nersess Seminary Brings Scholars Together from Around the World
READ Recap of the Conference
To access a full recording of the conference sessions, please visit:
Day 1: https://youtu.be/FgznqxowuSM
Day 2: https://youtu.be/M62ZpDUnI4A
Day 3: https://youtu.be/WyLE2InO7ao
Click Here to download program schedule and speakers.
2025 International Conference
International Conference Held at St. Nersess Seminary Brings Scholars Together from Around the World
From May 8-10, 2025 St. Nersess Seminary hosted an international hybrid conference entitled, Nersēs Shnorhali in His Context / Շնորհալի եւ պարագայ իւր. Over the course of the two and a half day gathering, nearly twenty scholars from academic institutions around the world shared the latest insights from their research into the historical setting in which the beloved saint and catholicos wrote and the people who surrounded him.
After opening remarks, the conference began with a visual presentation of Shnorhali’s physical surroundings by the photographers Ted and Nune Studios. Abraham Terian, professor emeritus and former academic dean of St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, then delivered the opening keynote presentation, Shnorhali and the Challenge for Sublimity in Armenian Medieval Literature, contextualizing Shnorhali’s writings within the literary aspiration to sublime rhetoric worthy of writing inspired by the divine Logos.
The remainder of the first day was devoted to papers analyzing ideas of healing and ecumenical union, as well as philosophical themes, in Nerses’s works. The day closed with Maestro Dn. Haig Utidjian’s presentation on the musical transmission of Shnorhali’s odes, singing some of the treasured spiritual melodies that are extant.
Following a morning devoted to Shnorhali in the visual arts, day two of the conference focused on the writings and thought of Nersēs’s great-nephew, namesake and protégé, Nersēs Lambronats‘i. Especially noteworthy was the presentation on Lambronats‘i’s disagreements with the monastics of the Armenian homeland, Nersēs Lambronats‘i verses Monastic Heterodoxy by St. Nersess Seminary’s professor of liturgical studies and former dean, Bp. Daniel Findikyan.
The final morning of the conference viewed Shnorhali through two lenses. Sergio La Porta of CSU Fresno looked at Nersēs through the larger lens of Muslim-Christian relationships in Cilicia. Dr. Roberta Ervine brought a closer lens to Shnhorali through his relationship to his brother, Catholicos Grigor III Pahlavuni, followed by the latter’s unintended role in the formation of the independent catholicosate of Aght‘amar.
Prof. Peter Cowe, a former St. Nersess Seminary faculty member and now holder of the Narekatsi Chair at UCLA, closed the conference with a keynote lecture on Nersēs’ Shnorhali’s contemporary, Mkhit‘ar Gosh and His Connection with the Georgian Church.
In the coming months, St. Nersess Theological Review (SNTR) will publish the proceedings of this conference in two volumes.
Throughout the conference, those who attended in person enjoyed precious opportunities for scholarly and collegial interaction and table conversation. For those who could not be with us, recordings of all the conference presentations are available at the links below or on our website:
DAY 1 – https://youtu.be/jcxJp9mJoww
DAY 2 – https://youtu.be/pSM8mezG_8g
DAY 3 – https://youtu.be/kNqq3toXYjM
