Father Gabriēl Ayvazean (Ayvazian, Ayvazovskij), even though an important figure in the Armenian world, is an understudied figure, especially in regards to his intense cultural activity. This is not only because the reputation of his painter brother Hovhannes Ayvazovskij has overshadowed his contributions, but also due to the controversial path of his life. Gabriēl Ayvazean was baptized in the Armenian Apostolic Church and transferred from the Crimea to Venice to join the Mechitarist Catholic Congregation, which he left after some decades to re-embrace the Armenian Apostolic Church. In this way, Ayvazean intertwined the religious denominations of his parents: his father Gevorg came from the south of Poland and belonged to the Armenian Catholic community, and his mother Hrip’sime was an Armenian Crimean of Apostolic confession. For a long time Gabriēl Ayvazean was considered as the most typical representative of clerical obscurantism, especially in the Soviet period. Instead, after Armenia’s independence, this perception has changed. This paper examines the various stages of the life and activities of the religious figure, translator, editor and teacher father Gabriēl Ayvazean, with the intent to analyze his contribution to Armenian culture and to bring to light some aspects of it that are little known.