The Tanzimat (1839-1876) brought forth a multitude of bureaucratic, legal, institutional and structural reforms to the Ottoman Empire. Many scholars argue that this marked the introduction of modernity as a cultural project to the empire. These reforms, promulgated by the government in the imperial center, often met resistance in the provinces. Still, many local actors in the periphery also embraced and implemented reforms. This paper will read the reform process from ‘below’ by concentrating on the early works of Mkrtitch Khrimian (1821-1907), a seminal intellectual and church leader among Ottoman Armenians. In the mid-1850s and early 1860s Khrimian was still rooted in the periphery of the empire, namely in Van, and not yet closely connected with the imperial center, as he eventually became – assuming a position of the Armenian Patriarch in Istanbul (r. 1869-1873). Throughout my paper I will try to explain whether Khrimian’s writings expressing his attitudes as an Armenian patriot, on the one hand, and Ottoman reformer, on the other hand, were really contradictory or complementary. In 1855, Khrimian had founded the journal “Artsvi Vaspurakan” (Eagle of Vaspurakan), in Istanbul, the publication of which, however, continued from 1857 to 1864 at the monastery in Varag, located just outside the city of Van. By providing a discourse analysis of his journal, I will show what is it that Khrimian considered to signify progress, what he thought inhibited progress through his representation of Armenian landscapes and what reforms were necessary for the future. Although his writing was overtly patriotic, Armenia and Armenian-centered, he did not indicate that a solution to the socio-economic condition of his flock would be achieved through independence or even political autonomy. In addition to the journal “Artzvi Vapurakan”, I will use a number of published works of Khrimian, along with archival documents on the Tanzimat reforms. This seemingly contradictory phenomenon of being an ethnic as well as Ottoman patriot was not just peculiar to Khrimian, but also to the Armenian revolutionaries who appeared later in the 19th centuries, and, as the latest scholarship has demonstrated, also among Arabs, Rums and Kurds. This paper will thus contribute to the recent arguments in Ottoman historiography that throughout the 19th century subaltern agents as well played a significant role in transforming the Ottoman social space and reveal what informed the multiple loyalties existing among the intellectual elite of the various Ottoman ethnic groups.