Gregory Ananian is a peculiar figure: apparently very modern, yet full of contradictions, much closer to the modern age than to the nineteenth century, to the legacies of the Ottoman Empire than to the enlightenment of the nineteenth century. Ananian was born in Istanbul (1770), within the community of Armenians of Catholic faith. From a wealthy family, Ananian was thus able to attend the faculty of medicine at the University of Padua, then completing his internship in Paris, where there was a school run by Capuchin friars aimed at training Armenians as interpreters and missionaries. Yet, after this immersion in late eighteenth-century Europe, Ananian chose to...