In 1550 – before the Great Armenian Flight – Istanbul was not an important centre of Armenian intellectual, cultural or ecclesiastical life. The city had never produced a significant native-born Armenian author or thinker; it did not have an Armenian printing press; and it was not a centre of Armenian manuscript production. The Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul was an institution of limited regional influence, which was dwarfed in prestige by the traditional Armenian religious centres at Ējmiatsin and Sis. Moreover, Armenians in Istanbul did not have prose traditions in vernacular languages.

By the end of the seventeenth century the landscape had fundamentally changed, as Istanbul had become a major Armenian cultural and demographic centre. Bolstered by the arrival of the Armenian refugees, the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul gradually rose from regional obscurity to become an influential ecclesiastical see in the seventeenth century, expanding to official jurisdiction over territories from Rumeli to Tokat by 1695. In the same period, Istanbul became a major centre of Armenian manuscript copying and the site of experimentations with book printing. Most importantly, seventeenth-century Istanbul produced its first great Armenian author and intellect, Eremia K‘eōmurchean, establishing its tradition in Armenian letters and scholarship composed in both classical and vernacular languages. For this reason, I propose in this chapter that the life and work of Eremia K‘eōmurchean constitute the most logical point of origin for charting a distinct intellectual and cultural tradition in the Western Armenian Diaspora centred around Istanbul, which would come in time to pride itself on its rich Armenian literary life. Eremia was such a significant figure in the second half of the seventeenth century that a study of his life and work can serve as the basis for considering intellectual and cultural developments in the Western Armenia Diaspora in general during his lifetime.

The life and works of Eremia have been studied by multiple scholars, mostly in Western and Eastern Armenian language studies, and by some Turkologists interested in his Armeno-Turkish corpus. These authors include Nersēs Akinean, Vahram Y. T‘orgomean, Mesrop Nshanean, Hasmik Sahakyan, Zhozef Avetisyan, Gevorg Bampuk‘chean, Edmond Schütz, Andreas Tietze, Avedis K. Sanjian and, most recently, Gayane Ayvazyan. In this chapter, I will first rely on this Armenian-language secondary literature and Eremia's corpus to provide a broad picture of his life and works.