VARDAPET. - Also written "vartapet" or "vartaped," it is an ecclesiastical title of the Armenian Church, entailing an office and also a certain dignity, initially reserved to hieromonks, who constituted the only class of the celibate clergy.

In the course of history the title was accessible also to widowed secular clergy and, from the 17th century, to celibate secular clergy formed in the seminaries of the West. The origin of the title would go back to the 5th century. The first v. would have been the hieromonk St. Mesrop.

The office of the v. is: a) the preaching of the word of God; b) sacred teaching in institutes of ecclesiastical formation; c) doctrinal assistance to residential bishops; d) the exercise of the power of absolving and binding in the internal sacramental and extrasacramental forum. The conferral of this title is done by the v. masters, after a long apprenticeship of sacred studies and according to a certain ceremony.

One may assert some initial analogy between the Armenian v. and the Canons Regular of the Latin discipline, but that they then developed differently.

Bibliography

BIBL.: G. Amaduni, Monachismo, in Cod. Can. Or., Fonti, 2ª serie, fasc. XII, Venezia 1940, pp. 77-124.

Garabed Amaduni

@incollection{ec12_vardapet, author = {Amaduni, Garabed}, title = {Vardapet}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {1030--1031}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/vardapet} }

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