The Hayr Mer: The Prayer Armenian Monks Painted and Preserved

Hayr Mer means "Our Father." It is the Lord's Prayer in Armenian, the prayer Christ taught his followers. For centuries it was one of the texts Armenian monks copied and painted by hand. This is where that prayer comes from, and why it still belongs in an Armenian home.

The prayer inside the manuscript

The Hayr Mer lives in the Gospel of Matthew. When Mesrop Mashtots created the Armenian alphabet around 405 AD, one of its first purposes was to carry scripture into Armenian. From then on, the Gospels, and the prayer within them, were copied by hand in the scriptoria of Armenian monasteries.

The finest of these manuscripts were illuminated. The text was written in careful script, then decorated with gold, color, and miniature paintings. Toros Roslin, working in the Cilician scriptorium at Hromkla in the 13th century, is the most celebrated of these illuminators. His Gospel books are counted among the highest achievements of Armenian art, and many survive today in the Matenadaran in Yerevan.

So the Hayr Mer did not reach us as plain text. It reached us inside objects made to be beautiful, sacred words that monks believed deserved gold, pigment, and years of labor.

From Armenia to Venice

Armenia's history did not make preservation easy. War, invasion, and displacement scattered its manuscripts and its people. That so many survived is largely the work of monks who guarded and copied them.

One of the great custodians sits on a small island in the Venetian lagoon. In 1717 the Republic of Venice gave the island of San Lazzaro to Mekhitar of Sebaste and his Armenian monks. There the Mekhitarist order built libraries, gathered manuscripts, and ran printing presses that helped keep the Armenian language alive through generations of exile.

The thread runs from the monastic scriptoria of historic Armenia to that island in Venice. Monks in both places decided this language and these prayers were worth saving. The Hayr Mer came down to us through their hands.

The prayer at home

This is why the Hayr Mer belongs on more than a page. For generations Armenian families have kept the words close, in the Divine Liturgy, at the table, at the bedside.

Our Prayer & Faith collection puts the Hayr Mer where you actually live with it, on a blanket or throw or a wall hanging. The design carries the Armenian text, so you read the prayer in the language it was preserved in, not a translation of it.

It also makes a considered gift for a housewarming, a wedding, or a godchild's first home, a present that carries the culture rather than only decorating a room. Pair it with a name from our Personalized & Monogram pieces if you want it to mark a particular family.

A blanket is not a manuscript. But it works from the same conviction the monks did: that these words are worth keeping close, and worth making beautiful. If you want the Hayr Mer in your home in Armenian, the Prayer & Faith collection is where to start.