Seeing the Salvation of God

In eighth-century Armenia a new genre of literature emerged consisting of commentary on the artwork that usually accompanies the Eusebian paratext. This chapter examines what these sources reveal about the way these images functioned paratextually in relation to the fourfold gospel. It first surveys the artistic developments that occurred across the diverse cultural traditions that transmitted the Eusebian apparatus. It next introduces Step‘anos of Siwnik’ and Nerses Šnorhali, the authors of the two treatises under consideration, and gives an overview of their interpretative approach. The latter part of the chapter turns to explain the functioning of the method and purpose of these commentaries by comparison with the theorization of memory in the classical rhetorical tradition. It argues that the commentaries model the use of the artwork as a mnemotechnical program intended as a preparatory exercise instructing the reader in the proper theological context within which the fourfold gospel is situated.