I return from this detailed description of the cathedral and the chapels of the martyrs to the more general tenour of the contents of this chapter. Edgmiatsin is rapidly developing into a home of the higher education, and it enjoys the proud privilege of possessing an institution which is unique in all Armenia for the comparatively exalted standard of the course of study which it provides. The Academy at once dispenses the usual curriculum of a seminary and supplies a higher course, extending over three years. Such an excessive disporting in the realms of dangerous knowledge was only sanctioned by the Russian Government on the understanding that the privilege should be confined to candidates for the priesthood. The nature of their profession may have appeared a sufficient guarantee that the learning imparted would be strictly subordinated to “views.” Besides, there was always the safeguard that the curriculum must be submitted to the Russian bureaucracy, and approved in due course by these aureoled arbiters, enthroned above the shifting mists and slippery quagmires among which poor Knowledge often faints and sometimes sinks. Her youngest and hardiest offspring, pertinacious Natural Science, has been excluded from these intellectual preserves; and I was assured that the mere mention of the name of this arch-enemy in a prospectus would produce the same effect among the august censors as a challenge from the prince of devils among the blessed. The course is confined to theology, history and literature, foreign as well as Armenian. To these subjects is added a study which the Germans have developed under the name of Pädagogik. Within this formula, I was given to understand, are included at Edgmiatsin, besides the art of the teacher, a certain general knowledge of philosophy and psychology. The students are obliged to pass a certain standard by examination at the end of each year.

The idea of founding such an institution was conceived by Nerses V. (d. 1857), whose liberal mind sought to satisfy by this project the needs of his countrymen both in secular and religious education.48 His proposal was rejected by the Russian Government, and he was himself sent into honorary exile. Better fortune attended the instances of George IV.; and the Academy was actually founded during his pontificate in 1873 or 1874. An inscription over the door records that the principal aim of the founder was the encouragement of the study of Armenian theology and literature. It is interesting to note that the bulk of the scholars do not in fact become enrolled in the priesthood. As a rule there are about 150 to 200 students in the various grades of the seminary and the academy; but I was informed that during the last ten years only about 15 had taken orders. The rest have become teachers in the Armenian schools, or migrated to universities in Russia, or adopted professional or commercial pursuits. I enquired as to the nature of the instruction in theology, and learnt that until the year 1892 that pompous term had been applied to a simple course of religious instruction. In that year a promising scholar who had been sent to Germany for education appeared upon the scene. I have already mentioned the name of Dr. Arshak Ter-Mikelean; he took his degree in the University of Jena, and now presides over the theological course. At the time of my visit two young Armenians were studying theology at Leipzic at the expense of the Armenian Church. At the same date the students in the academical course numbered about forty.

My reader is aware that in Russian Armenia the word seminarist does not necessarily apply exclusively to candidates for the priesthood. The seminary is nothing more than the highest grade in the Armenian school system, with the single exception of the more exalted course provided by this Academy. The great majority of the pupils are maintained out of the revenues of the cloister; but those who are able pay what they can. A youth enters the seminary when about thirteen or fourteen years old, and the academy at about nineteen or twenty. Both institutions are housed in the same building. Each diocese is invited to make a certain number of presentations; and boys and young men are encouraged to come from the Turkish provinces. As a matter of fact few are able to avail themselves of the offer. The scholars reside within the building, one dormitory being allotted to the academy and another to the seminary. These dormitories are kept scrupulously neat and clean. There is a fine music room with a grand piano, and there is also a nice library with casts of the immortal works of Greek sculpture illuminating the shadows above the shelves. How strange they seem in this distant land, where the study of the classics is not included even in the higher education!

The effect which is being produced upon the character of the monastic priests by the wise solicitude for education which has characterised the Armenian movement is almost incalculable. In old days the monks were chosen by the bishops from among their attendants; and this custom obtained even after the development of seminarial instruction within the cloister. But in 1892 the synod issued a decree enjoining that, except in very special circumstances, no person should be ordained monk who had not passed through a seminary. He is nominated by the bishop, but must be approved by the synod. It is a pity that hitherto no steps have been taken to raise the standard of the ordinary clergy. But we must admit that it would not be easy to effect such a reform from above. For all practical purposes we may count three grades in the hierarchy of the Armenian Church. In the first figure the bishops, the second comprises the monks and parish priests, and the third includes the deacons. Over all three is exalted the authority of the katholikos, the keystone of the dome of the edifice. Celibacy is imposed upon the bishops and monks, while marriage is rendered obligatory upon the parish priests. Thus a sharp division exists between the two orders of clergy, arising out of a complete difference in mode of life. Moreover the ordinary clergy are elected by the laity—a custom to which the people jealously cling. The inhabitants of a town or village select their future pastor from among their own number. Of course the bishop might refuse to ordain. But such a course would only be warranted in very special circumstances; the same being predicated of the right of the bishop to depose a priest. Thus the parish clergy occupy a special and somewhat independent position. In the rural districts the spread of education has not yet commenced to touch them; nor will they emerge from their present deplorable debasement until a general quickening of public opinion shall take place.

The monks or celibate priests are, I believe, always connected with convents; they are known under the style of vardapet, or doctor, which is attached to their individual names. They are governed according to the rule of St. Basil of Cæsarea, the contemporary and monitor of the Armenian pontiff, Nerses the Great (A.D. 340–374). They do not practise the tonsure, and they wear their beards. They are attired in long black robes with conical cowls. Their numbers must have considerably diminished since 1700, at which date we are informed this convent alone contained over a hundred monks.49 At present there are in all not more than some fifty vardapets within the wide limits of the Russian provinces. Of these about half reside at Edgmiatsin. As members of the synod or as bursars, as overseers of the printing press or as editors of the official journal, Ararat, their profession is no sinecure. All monks in Russian territory are ordained at Edgmiatsin, and it is the custom for all bishops, whether in Russian Armenia or abroad, to be consecrated in the church of the Illuminator.

The revenues dispensed by the katholikos are derived from several sources. There is the property of the monastery, consisting of lands and villages in the valley of the Araxes and elsewhere, to which, in the absence of statutes of mortmain, additions are constantly being made. The income from this source and from offerings and contributions of various kinds amounts, I believe, to about £8000 a year. The general property of the Church is also administered from Edgmiatsin, the synod being specially invested with this important function. Donations in lands or money are frequently forthcoming, and are devoted to the support of the various institutions. The accounts of the monasteries and bishoprics in Russia are audited and passed by the synod. But the clergy are supported by their own flocks; and, beyond submitting their accounts to the proper authority, the parishes are practically autonomous.

There can be little doubt that the overseeing by the katholikos and synod of the administration of the funds of the Church in Russia has already effected a salutary change. Should Russia become possessed of the Turkish provinces, and should her counsels incline to the sounder policy of encouraging the Armenians to work out their salvation in their own way, this concentration is likely to promote a general reform of the Armenian clergy. The authority of the katholikos at the present day extends to practically all Armenians professing the national religion. That authority suffered division during the troubled period of long duration which followed the overthrow of the Bagratid dynasty (A.D. 1045) and the gradual dispersal of the Armenian people. But the Katholikos of Sis has quite recently professed his spiritual allegiance to Edgmiatsin;50 and the recluse of Akhtamar, that beauteous island in the lake of Van, alone continues pretence to the title and station of a supreme pontiff. His jurisdiction is confined to his rock and a few villages on the mainland. The patriarchate of Constantinople is an institution which is the result of political exigencies, and which in no way derogates from the spiritual supremacy of the successor of St. Gregory, enthroned in the cloister near the banks of the Araxes.

My reader has perhaps divined from a perusal of the foregoing paragraphs that an interesting feature of the Armenian Church is the power enjoyed by the laity, which indeed may be described as predominant. With them rests the choice of the ordinary clergy, and in practice their voice prevails in the selection of a katholikos. That Church is indeed a compromise, so far as her ministers are concerned, between opposite principles in the organisation of Christianity. The monastic priests represent the principle of elevating a hierarchy into a position of lofty independence. From among their ranks are taken the bishops. But the great body of the clergy are strictly the ministers of the people, supported by their voluntary contributions. From these conclusions, derived from a study of contemporary conditions, I pass to a brief examination of the Edgmiatsin legend, and of the history and character of that interesting ecclesiastical edifice which rises in the background of all that I have written in the present chapter.

---

The Armenians boast that the Gospel was preached to their ancestors by the first apostles, and that they were the first people to adopt Christianity as the religion of the State. They separate these two events by a respectable interval, for they attribute the conversion of king and people to a miracle performed by St. Gregory towards the close of the third century. We have seen that the current version of that miracle comprises a vision by which Jesus Christ becomes in effect the Founder of their cathedral church. The inference is perhaps legitimate that they hold their own Church, as an organisation, to have been established by Christ Himself; and its independence of all hierarchies, whether of the East or of the West, to be based upon the same supreme sanction.51 We are carried back by a discussion of these claims to the very dawn of the Christian religion; and it will be wise to keep them before us as prominent landmarks to control the discursiveness of an enquiry which must also be brief.

I. The apostles mentioned by Armenian writers as having carried the Gospel into Armenia are St. Bartholomew, St. Thaddeus—the son or brother of St. James—St. Simon and St. Jude.52 Of these the two first named are alone in general repute. But the fame of St. Thaddeus reposes upon no less a title than that of having executed a commission from Jesus Christ Himself to the court of an Arsakid king of Lower Armenia or Mesopotamia, whom the Armenians claim as one of their own royal line. King Abgar of Edessa is said to have corresponded with the Saviour and to have begged Him to come to his capital and heal him of a malady. The letter is preserved which purports to contain the reply of Jesus, to the effect that after His ascension He would despatch one of the disciples. With this epistle came a portrait of the features of the Redeemer, which in subsequent times was the peculiar pride of Edessa. In due course the disciple arrived in the person of St. Thaddeus, and the king was restored to health. Monarch and people embraced the Christian faith. After the death of Abgar, which appears to have taken place at no long interval, his dominions were divided between his son and nephew. The former returned at once to the religion of his ancestors and reopened the temples of the gods. The latter, who seems to have reigned over a portion of Armenia proper, and who bore the name of Sanatruk, was visited by the apostle and embraced the faith. But fear of the Armenian nobles compelled the ruler to apostatise; the disciple was overwhelmed by the storm which he had himself aroused, and perished in the border province of Armenia on the side of Persia, in the country which receives the eastern slopes of Ararat.53 The legend of Abgar and his correspondence has provoked the attack of modern criticism and has perished in the unequal affray.54 But the preaching and martyrdom of St. Thaddeus at the hands of King Sanatruk are well known to one of the earliest and most reliable of Armenian historians; and the same authority of the fourth century speaks of the throne of the Armenian pontiffs as the chair of St. Thaddeus.55 In the absence of conclusive evidence that this saint did not preach in Armenia I shall prefer to suppose that he did. The name of St. Bartholomew is often mentioned in connection with that of St. Thaddeus; he is said to have been active in the mountainous region to the south of Lake Van, and to have been flayed alive by the same monarch who put his colleague to death.56

These stories were perhaps invented at a comparatively late period. We are on surer ground when we surmise that Christianity was professed in Armenia long anterior to the miraculous cure of King Tiridates and his conversion by St. Gregory. Indeed it would be strange if such had failed to be the case. The interposition of one vast desert between the Holy Land and Armenia is a comparatively modern geographical fact. It is due entirely to bad government. In the first century the two countries were united by a long string of cities, the populous capitals of the low-lying districts. From such centres as Edessa and Nisibis the religion was carried into the border ranges, and over the passes to the plains of the tableland. There the first regions designated by Nature to receive the new culture were situated in the fertile country about the shores of Lake Van, and further east around the margin of Lake Urmi. As early as the middle of the third century we hear of an Armenian bishop, whose name, that of Merujan, would naturally connect him with the great Artsruni family, which possessed extensive territories in the neighbourhood of Van and subsequently furnished to that country a line of mediæval kings.57 It is also probable that the Archelaus, in whose mouth is placed a disputation with Mani towards the close of the same century (c. A.D. 275–277), was bishop of a see not far removed from Van.58 These early ecclesiastics would almost certainly have made use of the Syriac character, and it is more than likely that many among them were Syrians. Their activity and the circle of their disciples may not have extended to Northern Armenia; although there is presumptive evidence to show that the Christianity of Albania (Eastern Caucasus or Daghestan) and Siunik (country around Lake Gökcheh and part of Karabagh) dated back to pre-Gregorian times.59 It seems at first sight strange that the earliest historians, such as Agathangelus and Faustus, maintain silence upon this older Christianity of their native land; but the edict of Tiridates against the enemies of paganism, preserved in the earliest source of the first of these works, implies the existence of Christians within the limits of his dominions whom the king persecutes after the example of his colleagues at Rome; and the luminous argument of one of the latest scholars in this field carries conviction that the priestly compiler Agathangelus and the monk Faustus had good reasons to ignore this pre-Gregorian Christianity, as being opposed to the character of the later orthodoxy.60 The big gap left by Armenian writers between the preaching of the apostles and the advent of St. Gregory in narrating the religious history of their country is in itself a suspicious fact; Armenian vanity was satisfied by the connection of their ancestors with the first disciples, and would not be wounded by a temporary relapse; but the laborious methods of modern research are year by year illuminating the interval, and removing the shroud which is perhaps due to ecclesiastical prejudice or fraud.

What was the nature of this early Christianity which made its way in despite of persecution among a barbarous people, professing a crude and perhaps unamiable form of paganism? It is difficult to believe that the religion of the first Christians resembled even remotely the later State religion of the Roman Empire, which under the name of Christianity was spread over the world by the imperial armies and has been bequeathed as a troublesome legacy to the modern world. The origins of this great spiritual movement are veiled in twilight; but from the shadows and uncertain glimmer shines forth a Personality which no doubts and no disappointments can assail. Round this Personality centred many and diverse spiritual conceptions, old as time itself and young as time. They were quickened into new life by the emotional quality of a great example; and they were kept alive and made to focus upon the domain of morality by the daily and intimate intercourse of the members of a brotherhood which should embrace all the creatures of God. It is essential to the fruitfulness of such a community that they should maintain, not internal discipline nor even the agreement of the members upon matters of doctrine among themselves, but the enthusiasm which prompted their first efforts, a high sense of individual responsibility among the members, and the habit of mutual tolerance, mutual help, mutual consolation, and, above all, of mutual love. The simple ceremonies of the early Church were calculated to promote this spirit. The candidate was admonished by the rite of baptism of the serious nature of the resolve which he had taken to break with the world of sense and appearance, and to become initiated into the higher meaning and purpose by which it is supported and inspired. The fast redressed the balance between the soul and the unruly flesh; and the agapes or love-feasts induced a close communion among the brothers, the necessary corollary to communion with God.

It is scarcely open to doubt that the theoretical side of the religion was not defined by any rigid formula. “Tell me,” says Archelaus, “over whom it was that the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. Who is this one whom John baptizes? If He was already perfect, if He was already the Son, if He was already Virtue, the Holy Spirit could not have entered into Him; a kingdom cannot enter into a kingdom. Whose was the voice which came from heaven and bore testimony to Him: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’?” It is clear that the theory of Archelaus was of an adoptionist nature, or, in other words, that he believed Jesus to have been adopted as the Son of God by the descent of the Holy Spirit at the baptism. It is also plain that he was not arguing as an irresponsible disputant, but as giving voice to a strong current of orthodox opinion in his Church, as opposed to the docetic teaching of Mani, representing Jesus as a heavenly spirit assuming the mask of man. Other currents there certainly were in other dioceses than that of Archelaus, and perhaps even among his own flock. But there seems strong reason for believing that the adoptionist Christology was firmly established towards the close of the third century in outlying portions of the Roman Empire and among the Christian communities outside its pale.61 In Antioch it had been suppressed in the person of Bishop Paul of Samosata after the overthrow of his patron, Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, by the Emperor Aurelian in the year 272. The weight of the Empire was placed in the scale of those tendencies which were to crystallise in the celebrated formula of Nice (A.D. 325): Christ a very God, begotten of God, but not a creature of God; Son of God, of one nature with the Father; Who came down from heaven, and took flesh, and became man, and suffered and ascended into heaven; Who was before He was begotten and Who has always been. The same Council of Nice enjoined that the followers of Bishop Paul, or Pauliani, should be re-baptized before admission to the Church. The recalcitrant were driven out into the mountain fastnesses, where after the lapse of several centuries and under the Armenian terminology of Paulicians (Paulikean), the inheritors of their spirit again emerge as a sharp thorn in the side of the orthodox Churches both of Constantinople and of Armenia. The history of the wholesale persecutions of this hardy people by the successors of the Cæsars during the ninth century, and of the successful reprisals which they made, is outside the scope of these remarks; they were driven into the arms of the Mohammedan Power, and their decimation by the imperial armies drove another nail into the coffin which was being prepared for the cancerous body of the Roman Empire.

The connection of the assailants of Armenian orthodoxy, who were known as Paulicians, with their namesakes in the more westerly provinces of the Empire, and of these with Paul of Samosata, has not yet, perhaps, in spite of the luminous researches of the scholar I have quoted, been sufficiently worked out. But we rise from a perusal of his work with the conviction that this connection was at least of the nature of a strong family resemblance dating back to apostolic times. The important document which he has disinterred from the library at Edgmiatsin, and of which the title suggests the hopes that were excited in the breast of Socrates by the pretensions of a certain work of Anaxagoras, affords us a full and detailed, if partially mutilated account of the religious profession of the descendants of these Armenian heretics, as copied from previous copies by a member of the sect in 1782. The same voice which found expression in the disputation of Archelaus rings out from the pages of the Key of Truth not less clearly than of old. Jesus is human, though free from sin, until He is baptized by John in the Jordan when He has reached His thirtieth year. Then the Spirit of the Father, descending upon Him, fills Him with the Godhead. After adoption the elect Christ is forthwith led up to the mountain, where He enjoys the mystery of intercourse with the Father for forty days. Baptism must therefore constitute a central event in the life of the Christian, or imitator of Christ. He must come to baptism after the full awakening of his individual conscience to a knowledge of sin and to the nature of repentance. He must come at mature age, when the heats of youth are passed and his natural instincts have been brought under control. No remission of sins can be effective until he shall have reached this age; nor is baptism under other circumstances more than an empty form. Through baptism he becomes a Christian; and the meal which follows baptism is the symbol of that feast of divine converse with God of which the Son of God, after His adoption, partook. The Holy Ghost enters the catechumen immediately after baptism, and he in effect becomes filled with the spirit of God. The note of aversion to hierarchical grades which is struck in this treatise was no doubt accentuated by the opposition of the sect to the methods of their natural enemies, the Orthodox Church. But their polity—if the word may stand—could in this respect be based on Scripture; and it encouraged that sense of individual responsibility and that habit of self-reliance which are not less effective qualities in the domain of evangelical enterprise than the opposite methods of the Jesuits. The elect of God composed a body of which each member was sublimely conscious of his resolve to pursue a life of ideal justice by communion with the spirit which resided in himself. The example which they set was not that of a selected and exotic hierarchy, but was the example of simple peasants and artisans. When we meet such people, whatever the proximate origin of their particular tenets, we take farewell with a tear and perhaps with a sigh. The Dukhobortsy, of whom I have spoken, would find much in the manual of these Armenian adoptionists with which those resolute children of the Reformation in Europe would cordially agree.

Traces of adoptionism are to be found in the teaching of St. Gregory himself and in the early institutions of the Armenian State Church. We must regret that what is probably the earliest source for our knowledge of that teaching has not yet been translated into one of our Western tongues.62 In one passage the saint instructs us that the Spirit, coming down at the Baptism, gave to Jesus the glory which became His. John the Baptist is represented as the depositary of the Divine favours conferred of old upon Israel; and it was he who conferred these favours—priesthood, prophecy and kingship—upon our Lord Jesus Christ.63 It is, I think, scarcely fair to argue from such passages that the Christianity of Gregory was, as a whole, of an adoptionist type. But it is interesting to remember in this connection that the Armenians celebrate the birth and the baptism of Christ upon one and the same day, the 6th of January. And we may perhaps be surprised to read that in the canons of St. Sahak, one of the pillars of the early State Church (390–439), the feast of the birth of Christ is not included in the list of festivals which are formulated in some detail.64 We know that St. Gregory himself brought to Armenia with great pomp certain relics of St. John the Baptist; and the number of monasteries in Armenia which are dedicated to the hermit on the Jordan testify to the peculiar veneration in which he has been held. But the influence of orthodoxy in the West must early have restrained these adoptionist tendencies; and it is not improbable that they became identified with that stubborn heresy of their native land which is often mentioned and deplored by Armenian writers.65 There are reasons for supposing that the Messalianism (meteslenuthium) against which is directed a cruel canon of the Armenian Council of Shahapivan, convened in about the middle of the fifth century, was in effect a manifestation of this native heresy, and was identical with the Paulicianism which was specifically stigmatised by a canon of the Council held in Dvin (valley of the Araxes) in the year 719. The first of these synods enacted that priests convicted of Messalianism should be branded on the forehead with the figure of a fox. This particular punishment was the same which was meted out to the Paulicians of Armenia during the persecutions of the eleventh century. The Council of Dvin forbade all intercourse with members of this sect under pain of heavy punishments. The pontiff of the day, John the Philosopher, composed a tract against them, in which he speaks of them as dregs of the incestuous flock of the Paulicians, and informs us that they had been placed under a ban by Nerses Katholikos, under which name he is probably alluding to Nerses III. (640–661).66 He represents them as joining hands with certain refugees from the Albanian Church (Eastern Caucasus) who were opposed to the use of images. There is at least a family resemblance between these sectaries of the eighth century and those who, under the name of Thonraki (Thonraketzi), suffered persecution in the tenth and eleventh centuries at the hands of the Armenian State Church. Their fiercest adversary, Gregory Magistros, who in the middle of the eleventh century carried fire and sword into their mountain retreats, alludes to them as having imbibed the poison of Paul of Samosata, and adds the important statement that their proximate founder was one Sembat, and that for 170 years they had been continuously admonished and anathematised by successive patriarchs and bishops of Armenia as well as of Albania.67 Their seats in Armenia were in the radial mountain mass of the Ala Dagh (Thonrak), in Sasun, south of Mush, and in the neighbourhood of Khinis, whence were derived the band who were the object of perhaps the latest persecution, that of 1837–45. It was on this occasion that the documentary proof of their professions was wrested from them and taken to Edgmiatsin. It is the book entitled the Key of Truth. The plain of Khinis contained members of this sect into quite recent times; but they suffered severely owing to the customary powers possessed by the heads of the Gregorian community in Turkey to inflict corporal punishment upon members of their own flock. The sectaries were not recognised by the Government as an independent religion. Not many years ago the remnant came over to the American missionaries and embraced the Protestant faith.

II. What does my reader know about the ancient history of Armenia? At least he remembers the wonderful march of Xenophon (401–400 B.C.), who crossed the entire block of the Armenian tableland from the plains of Mesopotamia to the Black Sea. At that time the country was under the overlordship of the Achæmenian king of Persia—that splendid dynasty which was at length destroyed by a great wave from Europe, and of which the latest champion was murdered by a satrap of Bactria after his decisive defeat in the belt of mountains south of Lake Van by Alexander the Great (331 B.C.). The name of the Greek hero is still alive in Southern Armenia, sharing the honours in this respect with Solomon. Perhaps our next familiar memory will be the visit of Hannibal to the court of Artaxias, one of the numerous governors in the empire of the successors of Alexander, and a ruler whose territory embraced the scene of these travels.68 Nor are we likely to have forgotten the recoil of the East upon the West which took place under the leadership of the picturesque Mithradates, that strangely composite embodiment of two diverse cultures. Behind Mithradates looms the power of a great king of Armenia, whom, again, we know as a scion of a new dynasty which had arisen in Asia—the Arsakid or Parthian dynasty. With these Arsakid kings of Armenia we are fairly familiar; the Parthian archers ride unrevenged through the polished verse of Horace, and the Arsakids of Persia and Armenia supply the pages of Tacitus with several lively interludes to his throbbing narrative. Some acquaintance with these various events is part of the equipment of most among us—a little less or a little more. We may learn a great deal more of the subsequent history of Armenia; but from what sources shall we collect material for a fuller knowledge of the older period? The Armenian historians are all but worthless; the West was little inquisitive; and even now we can scarcely answer the leading questions: whence the Armenians came to the seats which they have occupied throughout the historical period, and how they fared in culture, in art, or in arms. Upon these subjects the Fool is almost as well instructed as the Wise Man; we search the mists in vain for any definite image; till from among them emerge the thrones of these Arsakids—a Northern or Scythian dynasty, holding Persia as well as Armenia, and crowning a polity which was of a strongly feudal type.69

The last of the kings of this dynasty who ruled over Persia was the ally and kinsman of the father of King Tiridates, who was destined, after much vicissitude of fortune, to embrace Christianity and to adopt it as the religion of the State. Ardavan and Chosroes were seated on the thrones of Persia and Armenia, when a prince of the Persian province which is now known under the name of Fars (Shiraz, Persepolis) overthrew the former of these monarchs by a decisive battle, in which Ardavan himself was slain (A.D. 227). The victor, Ardashir, became master of the great Persian monarchy in which the king of Armenia held the second place. His dynasty, the Sasanian, supplanted the Arsakids in Persia, and continued to rule until the middle of the seventh century, when it succumbed to the Arabs and to Islam. The Sasanians are familiar to all of us as the permanent enemies of the Roman Empire; and the traveller may be said to be on terms of intimacy with them, for they have left him several monuments of great solidity and architectural merit which mock the squalor of their surroundings at the present day. These, it is true, they erected with the aid of architects and artisans taken captive in their wars with the Empire.70 Fars was in those days a centre of Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism; and Ardashir was the champion of the fire-worshippers, leaned on their support and closely identified them with his dynasty.

When the news of the death of his kinsman and ally was brought to the Arsakid king of Armenia, profound grief filled the soul of Chosroes. For the moment he was powerless to arrest the triumph of the usurper; but in the following year (A.D. 228) he had matured extensive preparations, and, at the head of an army which comprised Huns from beyond Caucasus as well as other nomads, marched to the frontiers of Persia and laid waste her provinces to the gates of Ctesiphon. Thirsting to avenge his race, he endeavoured to enlist the Parthian satraps in the empire of Ardashir; but these temporising or jealous princelets had thrown in their lot with the Sasanian monarch and could not be induced to stir. He was, however, assisted by a portion of the Medes and by the sons of Ardavan.71

For a period of ten years the war was continued by the Armenian potentate; his capital, Vagharshapat,72 was filled with the booty of successful raids; and, while the temples of the gods throughout Armenia were adorned with costly offerings, their priests received munificent largesses. His fortunes were assisted by an alliance with the Empire; the reigning Cæsar, Alexander Severus, was alarmed by the rise of the new dynasty, and may have been stung by impertinent messages on the part of Ardashir. A Roman army attacked Persia from the side of Armenia, while two more divisions, one under the leadership of the emperor, assailed other portions of the dominions of the king of kings.73 If the result of the various engagements may appear ambiguous (231–233), it at least ensured the quiescence of the Persian during several years. Ardashir continued to be harassed by the Armenian ally of the Romans, and resolved to rid himself by any means of his inveterate foe. A Parthian of the blood royal volunteered to execute his desire; he went over with his family as a refugee to the court of Chosroes, who received him with the greatest warmth as a valuable ally. After much pleasant intercourse, when spring came on and the king was preparing to take the field, Anak—for such was his name—bethought himself of the pledge which he had given and of the reward promised by Ardashir. In company with his own brother he succeeded in drawing the king aside, when the two villains despatched him with their swords. The crime was committed at Vagharshapat; the guilty pair fled down the valley, hoping to cross the Araxes at the bridge of Artaxata. But they were cut off by the Armenian horsemen and precipitated into the river. The king, before he expired, gave orders that the family of Anak should forthwith be massacred. Only two little children were rescued from the carnage; one was brought up in Persia, and the other, Gregory, in Greece (A.D. 238).74

This unnatural treachery on the part of a Parthian towards the Parthian King of Armenia in the interests of a dynasty which had supplanted the Parthians on the throne of Persia came near to costing the Armenians the permanent loss of their independence. But Ardashir appears to have contented himself with the enjoyment of his personal revenge and of a few raids into Armenian territory. His death occurred a few years after the date of the tragedy (in 241 or 242); and the government of Armenia appears to have been conducted by the nobles, under the nominal sovereignty of the son of Chosroes, by name Tiridates, a child of tender years. It was not until the year 252 or 253 that the successor of Ardashir was enabled to establish his sway over Armenia with the assistance of the uncles of Tiridates, whose cruel treatment compelled the youthful king to take refuge in the Empire.75 But the triumph of Shapur was not destined to be of long duration; the young Tiridates grew up and prospered in the territory and under the protection of the Romans; and, after distinguishing himself by personal bravery in a campaign of the emperor against the Goths, was restored to his native dominions with the support of a Roman army and perhaps in consequence of the victory of Odaenathus, prince of Palmyra, over the armies of the Persian king (264 or 265).76 It was in the first year of his restoration that occurred an event which no Armenian can hear related without experiencing a thrill of emotion.

When the son of Anak, the murderer, who was being educated in Roman territory, at Cæsarea, the capital of Cappadocia, had come to years of discretion, he was informed—perhaps after his marriage and the birth of two children—by the faithful guardian or governess under whose care he had grown up, of the crime committed by his father. Forthwith the pious youth—for he had been brought up in the Christian faith—sallied forth in search of the son of the murdered monarch, and attached himself to the person of the exiled Tiridates, whom he commenced to serve with the utmost zeal. Upon the subject of his origin and parentage Gregory maintained a wise silence; but he was unable or unwilling to conceal his religion, which at that time happened to be not only unpopular, but subject to persecution.77 Tiridates in vain endeavoured to wean his servant from the Christian faith; time after time he assailed his constancy with reproach and even with imprisonment; but the decisive moment arrived when he had recovered his long-lost dominions, and stood within the famous temple of Anahid, hard by the present town of Erzinjan. At the feast which followed the sacrifice he gave vent to his emotion in words characteristic of a king. Addressing his trusty counsellor among the assembled guests, he commanded him to make an offering of garlands and leafy branches to the shrine of the great goddess; and, upon his refusal, “How dare you,” exclaimed the king, “adore a God whom I do not adore?” The resources of persuasion and torture were without effect upon the will of the Christian; and the monarch was meditating some fresh inducement when one of the nobles approached and said: “Sire, this Gregory is not deserving of life, and hence his unwillingness to live and see the light. We knew not who he was, this long while that he has sojourned among us—but now we know: he is son of that Anak who killed thy royal father, and to whom Armenia owed her exhaustion and captivity.” When Tiridates heard these words, he gave orders to bind the martyr and to conduct him to the castle of Artaxata. There he was cast into a pit of great depth, where he was left to perish.

For thirteen years Gregory languished in this noisome dungeon, forgotten by the world but saved from death by the ministrations of a widow who resided in the castle. The hatred or fear of the Christians, so early manifest in the new reign, was emphasised by Tiridates in a pompous edict, which admonished his subjects to beware of the resentment of the gods—of Aramazd, who gave fertility; of Anahid, the goddess defender; of Vahagn, the courageous god. The king had been a witness—so it proceeded—during his sojourn in the Empire, of the great solicitude of the Cæsars for the cult of the national divinities, to the prosperity and glory of their people. Following the example of his august instructors, he bade his subjects, nobles and peasants, to lay hands on any offender against the gods. They should bind him, hand and foot, and bring him to the gate of the palace. His lands and possessions would be bestowed upon the denouncer. The religious policy of a Decius and a Valerian was at least extended by Tiridates to the holier sphere of legitimate homicide. At the head of the Roman cavalry he rode down the Persian cohorts, and among his levies were reckoned a contingent of Huns. Of lofty stature and broad shoulders, his appearance was the signal of victory; and it became a proverb that Tiridates would destroy the dams in his impatience, and in his courage arrest the rivers in their course towards the sea.

At the point where the historian I have been following was perhaps about to change his theme, and to present the opposite picture of a king and people overtaken by calamities which could only be attributed to the wrath of heaven, the priestly compiler of the Agathangelus treatise has gone to work with his scissors, and has substituted for the more straightforward account of the authority he was using one of those prolix and portentous legends, familiar to the student of hagiographical literature, which were at once the outcome of the diseased fancy of the cloister and the food with which it was sustained. The tale of the advent of the Roman virgins, of the assault upon the modesty of the fairest among them, of their martyrdom and of the transformation of the royal violator into a wild boar, wallowing in mud and eating grass, bears the imprint at every phase of a monkish invention, which was probably stolen in its essential features from the literature of Greek monasteries and adapted to the local conditions at Vagharshapat.78 But carelessness or want of skill on the part of the compiler has happily preserved for us a fragment of the original story, from which we learn that the Armenians were afflicted by an extraordinary outbreak of diverse diseases: leprosy, palsy, dropsy, madness.79 We are given to infer that the king himself was visited by some grave malady, and that he was cured in a miraculous manner upon the appearance and at the hands of Gregory, who had long been numbered among the dead.80 We are told how, from all parts of Armenia, the people flocked to the province of Ararat, to Vagharshapat, the royal residence; how they were cured of their various disorders; and how king and people embraced the faith in the service of which the saintly doctor had effected their cure. The testimony of the historian is supported by a Greek writer of the fifth century, who attributes the conversion of King Tiridates to a miracle.81

It is not unlikely that the mind of the monarch was influenced by some occurrence of the nature deducible from the mangled narrative of the original biographer. Tiridates was a full-blooded heathen, prone to all forms of superstition, and free from any taint of rationalising tendencies. Yet we may suspect that the number and power of the Armenian Christians prior to his conversion loomed much larger in the consciousness of himself and of his contemporaries than we are led to suppose by Armenian histories. Was he desirous of finding a counterpoise to the Mazdaism of his Persian enemy, which had been elevated by the Sasanians into a strongly organised State religion and identified with the throne? Was he impressed with the cohesion of the Christians among themselves, and by the contrast thus offered to the fissiparous tendencies of his feudal polity? Was the widow in the castle of Artaxata a Christian, and was the old authority of the prisoner in the king’s counsels exploited by her co-religionists at an opportune moment, when his wisdom should appear restored, as by a miracle, to a necessitous land? If such questions be mere matters of surmise, we at least know that at the date of the conversion the Roman Empire was hesitating in a policy towards the Christians, and that the repressive measures of a Valerian were no longer in repute.82 The Armenian king became a convert before their revival under Diocletian (284–305); and Christianity was adopted as the religion of the State in Armenia some thirty years prior to its triumph in the West by the decisive action of the Milvian Bridge (312), and over a hundred years before the edicts of Theodosius the First against the practice of paganism.83

The measures taken by Tiridates and his statesman and mentor, Gregory, to supplant polytheism by Christianity were such as might have excited the envy of a Cæsar, and which only an Eastern despot could hope to enforce. From Vagharshapat the king proceeded down the valley to Artaxata at the head of the troops which garrisoned the capital. On the way he set fire to the temple of the god Dir, from whom he is said to have derived his name (Dirtad or gift of Dir).84 In a graphic figure our historian likens the priests and their followers to demons; and he relates how, some on horseback, others on foot, and all fully armed, they hurried hither and thither, gesticulating and screaming, until they were put to flight. But the swarm took refuge in the temple of Anahid at Artaxata, where from the roof they discharged arrows and precipitated a hail of stones upon the advancing host. Gregory, making the sign of the Cross, ran to the gate of the edifice, which dissolved into its foundations, wreathed in flames. The dusky troop vanished like a puff of smoke from the face of the land, to Caucasus and Chaldia85 in the north. The treasures of the temple were distributed among the needy; some of the priests were selected or accepted for the service of the Church, to which body was also allotted the confiscated land.

King and minister travelled the country in all directions, preaching,86 overthrowing temples and endowing the Church with their rich possessions. One after another the most famous sanctuaries succumbed to the royal zeal: the fane of Aramazd, father of the gods, at Ani, the modern Kemakh, the burial-place of the kings; that of Nanea, daughter of Aramazd, at Til, beyond the Western Euphrates; the temple of Mithra, son of Aramazd, at Pakharij in Terjan, and the temple of Barshamin at Tortan. A more personal delight may have thrilled the saint—if saints be capable of such emotions—as he shattered the golden statue of the goddess Anahid at Erzinjan, and watched the lofty walls of her numerous shrines sinking to the level of the ground. They were the most magnificent of all the sacred edifices in Armenia, and they were defended to the last by quite an army of dusky foes. Within the vacant enclosures was erected the sign of the Cross.

Months and perhaps years were occupied in the overthrow of these strongholds of paganism;87 but it was not until after the return of Gregory from ordination at Cæsarea of Cappadocia, whither he was escorted by sixteen of the great nobles and conducted in a car drawn by white mules,88 that king and people received at the hands of the minister, no longer a layman, the crowning benefit of baptism. The first act of Gregory upon his return to his native country was to destroy the temples of Astishat in the province of Taron (Mush), which lay upon his road and which were still frequented. These were three in number and dedicated to three gods. The first was the shrine of Vahagn, destroyer of serpents; the second belonged to Anahid, the golden mother; while the third preserved the cult of the goddess Astghik, the Aphrodite of the fair mythology of Greece. They were situated on the summit of Mount Karke, close to the Euphrates, and in full view of the chain of the Taurus mountains. The place was called Astishat because of the frequent sacrifices which were offered up; and it was there that the kings of Armenia had been wont to appease the gods. The saint was carrying with him certain relics obtained in Roman territory, namely a parcel of the bones of St. John the Baptist and of those of the holy martyr Athenogenes.89 When his numerous party had arrived in front of the temples, and were not further from the Euphrates than a space which a horseman would cover in two careers of his steed, the white mules of the car with the relics came to a standstill in the hollow of a valley, where there was a little water and which still remained to be crossed. Efforts were being made in vain to induce them to proceed, when an angel appeared to Gregory and signified the Divine Will. The relics should be deposited upon the spot where they were stationed. Forthwith the entire company busied themselves with the erection of a chapel, where in due course the bones of the saints were laid to rest. The next care of pontiff and princes was to demolish the temples of the idols which stood above the valley. In their place Gregory laid the foundations of a church, and erected an altar to the glory of God.90 It was here that he first commenced to build churches, and to erect altars in the name of Christ. For twenty days he sojourned on the spot; and having prepared fonts for baptism, baptized first the great princes who had journeyed with him, and next the people to the number of over a hundred and ninety thousand. In the chapel of St. John and Athenogenes he dispensed the holy sacrament; and it was ordained that an annual festival should be celebrated in that place in honour of the saints and in commemoration of the first foundation of Christian churches and ordination of Christian priests. From Astishat the Illuminator journeyed to Bagaran in the province of Ararat; but it was at the foot of Mount Nepat and on the banks of the river Euphrates that the son of Anak administered to king and assembled army the regenerating rite. A church was erected upon the site and endowed with a remnant of the relics; and a festival was appointed in honour of the saints in place of that of Amanor, at the season of first fruits.91

It would not be easy to find an account equally graphic and circumstantial of the methods employed to substitute Christianity for polytheism, which, although, no doubt, they were less violent and more gradually operative in more civilised countries, were yet essentially similar. We learn from the Armenian writer how the churches rose on the sites of the temples, how the ancient festival in honour of the god was converted into the festival of a martyr, and how, in fact, while the myth was new and unfamiliar, much of the ritual and all the surroundings remained the same. The sacred groves were taken by storm amid scenes of carnage which our historian skilfully veils by the use of metaphor. The lands and slaves of the heathen fanes were made over to the Church; the number of the chapels exceeded that of the shrines which had been demolished, and separate endowments were made to all by royal decree. The children of the priests were distributed among the newly founded seminaries, where they were instructed in the Greek and Syriac languages and introduced to the literature of the Church. Their loyalty to the new religion was stimulated by an annual salary; and the most deserving among them were consecrated bishops. Such was the nature of the revolution accomplished by St. Gregory with a thoroughness and decision which we cannot but admire. The old cult was not extinguished, but irremediably disabled; it lurked even in the highest places, and we hear of a queen of Armenia who encouraged the polytheists to assassinate Verthanes, the son and successor of St. Gregory.92 Many Armenians practised Christianity as a mere matter of form, regarding it as an aberration of the human intelligence to which they had been compelled to subscribe.93 Those who had embraced the faith with conviction were limited to the circles which spoke Greek or Syriac, or were at least fairly familiar with those idioms.94 Yet Gregory preached to the Armenians in the Armenian language.95 Under the shadow of night the devotees of the old religion would adore their divinities and chant the tempestuous epics of their native land.96 Years elapsed before they would abandon their lamentations for the dead, a practice specially repugnant to the Christian spirit.97 Still, in spite of the constant undercurrent and frequent ebullitions of paganism, the institutions of the Illuminator were never jeopardised by a decisive relapse. The religion which he invested with all the authority of the State became inextricably interwoven with the self-consciousness of the Armenian nation, and derived from their inveterate obstinacy or admirable heroism a stability which hardened the more it was threatened from without.

Then, as now, the keystone of the ecclesiastical edifice was the person of the katholikos. I do not know that we can instance among Christian organisations any counterpart of this high office. Beside it that of the king seems mere fable and tinsel. The title itself was unimportant and unpretentious, designating as it did among the Christians of the East an archbishop with plenary powers (ad universalitatem causarum), such as were necessary in countries removed by distance from the hierarchical centres. It is applied by our earliest extant authority to St. Gregory;98 and, so moderate are the claims or pronounced the hierarchical spirit of his successor, Faustus, that he coins the cumbrous superlative, katholikos of katholikoi, to express the superior dignity of the metropolitan of Cæsarea.99 But, whatever grade in the army of the Church may have been assigned to him by his clerical colleagues, the position occupied in his native country by the katholikos of Armenia was one of extraordinary glamour. The office was hereditary in the family of the Illuminator; and that family had been endowed with territories extending over fifteen provinces and comprising several princely residences.100 The pontifical palace was at Astishat, in the neighbourhood of the mother-church of Armenia and the chapels of St. John the Baptist and of St. Athenogenes. From the spacious terrace expanded a landscape which aroused the envy of the richest laymen and which was only commensurate with a fraction of the pontifical possessions. When the scions of the family were unwilling to sustain the burden of the office it was entrusted to prominent clerics of the church at Astishat, while the unworthy heirs pursued the vocation of arms or the attractions of pleasure, surrounded by a court which polluted the sanctity of the pontifical residence.101 It was customary for the descendants of Gregory to marry into the king’s family, and they were accorded many of the honours due to royalty alone. As often as the king aroused and probably deserved the censure of the katholikos, that spiritual castigation was unflinchingly enforced. In a vacancy of the Chair, owing to failure in the line or renunciation on the part of the heirs, it was not the priesthood who chose the successor but the king, the nobles and the army.102 In these several respects the office was identified with the existing institutions of the country, and it was perhaps indeed modelled upon that of the high priest among the polytheists and the Jews.103 But, however great was the prestige derived from such a splendid establishment and from the fame of the first occupant of the Chair, the hold of the pontificate upon the imagination of later generations was derived from a less antique and more constantly operative source. Two descendants of the Illuminator, one in the fourth, the other in the fifth century, added new and peculiar lustre to the institution. Nerses the First introduced the refinements of hierarchical government; Sahak the Great gave to the people an alphabet of their own. The throne of the successors of Tiridates crumbled away in the course of about a century from the death of the first Christian monarch; that of the successors of St. Gregory has weathered the storms of sixteen centuries and remains a solid and impressive monument at the present day.

Two events of high importance remain to be mentioned in this brief survey of the momentous revolution carried through by the great king and his great minister. The first is the journey to Europe. The reciprocal advantage of the ancient alliance between Tiridates and the Empire had been experienced in the campaigns which were waged by the Cæsar Galerius against the Persians (A.D. 296 and 297); and the memory of comradeship in arms may have preserved the first Christian State from incurring the active displeasure of the colleague of Diocletian during the subsequent onslaughts upon the Christian religion (303–311). But the Cæsar Maximin was less patient or more oblivious, and their new faith cost the Armenians a war (312).104 The advent of Constantine averted their ruin and set the seal of political wisdom upon the spiritual policy of their monarch; and it was only natural that the two exalted instruments of the Christian profession should desire to profit in every sense by the Christian sympathies of so great a prince. The journey of Gregory and Tiridates to the court of Constantine has been regarded as unauthentic by a competent authority; yet it probably took place. The meeting perhaps occurred in Serdica, a residence of the emperor in Illyria, and it was attended by the friend and relation of Constantine, Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia. The highest honours were paid to the aged visitors, and the emperor prostrated himself at the feet of the saint. The pair were escorted with much pomp to their native country, having still further strengthened the link which attached them to their powerful neighbours, and perhaps concluded a formal treaty.105

The second event reposes upon less questionable evidence; it is the participation of the Armenian Church in the deliberations of the Council of Nice (325), and her formal subscription of its acts. The great age of Gregory may well have deterred him from personal attendance; his younger son Aristakes represented the Armenians in the famous assembly. Upon his return he communicated the canons to his father, who accepted them and contributed a few additions. The formula of Nice with its uncompromising identification of Christ with God was adopted as the dogmatic base of the State religion.106

III. A general impression which one receives from the perusal of the early histories is that the Armenians of the fourth century were not far removed from barbarism. The king might here and there set up a copy of a classical building; but I should doubt whether he could have left us any monument which might approach the originality of the creations of the Bagratid sovereigns in the Middle Ages. Very few among his subjects had a knowledge of Greek and Syriac, still less of Latin, the languages of the literature of their day. The Scriptures—that mine of knowledge—were read in the Syriac or Greek versions to congregations of which not even the most intelligent members could profit by the service.107 Identity of interests with the Empire on the score of culture was a bond which, I suppose, scarcely existed in that age; and, alas, when at length it became a reality, how fragile it proved—how fragile such bonds have always proved! Still, although we must be careful in thinking of the Armenians of the fourth century as we might think of their descendants in the tenth, the ties which should have united them to their powerful neighbours on the west were of a nature which could appeal to all. There was the tie of a common religion, which either nation had recently adopted and subscribed at a joint conference. Both were threatened by a common enemy—the fire-worshippers of Persia, enlisting all the resources of the further East. From that Persian dynasty the Armenian monarchs were separated by difference of origin and by a blood feud, unmitigated by the lapse of time. They had been restored to their possessions by the Roman power. A great king and a great statesman, in whom they recognised a saint, had crowned their life work by the conclusion of an alliance with Rome which in no previous age could have reposed upon so stable a base. Shall we therefore be edified by the spectacle of their successors following in their footsteps, patiently waiving differences, insisting upon elements of union, ranging themselves upon the side of Christianity and civilisation and fighting their battles in such sacred causes as these?

King Tiridates was followed on the throne by his son Chosroes the Little, to whom is ascribed a reign of nine years.108 If perhaps his stature was small and his body feeble, he at least possessed the merit of keeping well with the successor of Gregory, whom his queen in vain endeavoured to remove from the world. His name is therefore in favour with the priestly historian, who indeed narrates the events of this period in a somewhat fabulous manner, but presents us with a picture of contemporary society which is lifelike and full of movement and colour.109 That the early years of the reign were not disturbed by a war with Persia was perhaps due to the youth of the Persian monarch; but the storm burst before its close. After sustaining with success the brunt of a Hunnish invasion—in which, however, the capital, Vagharshapat, was temporarily lost—Chosroes was called to the defence of his eastern frontiers by the approach of a Persian army. The first encounter took place near the shores of Lake Van, and resulted in a victory for the Armenians. The assistance of imperial troops110 may have nerved the king’s resistance, which continued until the close of his life. With Chosroes is contemporary the pontificate of Verthanes, the eldest son of the Illuminator. That saintly personage did not long survive the successor of Tiridates; but he may have lived to confirm the reign of his son Tiran, and he was perhaps instrumental in placing him upon the throne.111

It is during the rule of Tiran that we observe for the first time manifestations of that bitter rivalry between the head of the Church and the head of the State which was destined, as much, perhaps, as any other cause, to bring about the downfall of the dynasty. Such an outcome of the ecclesiastical institutions of the first Christian monarch might indeed have been foreseen. Had Armenia not been exposed to a struggle for life and death with enemies from without, her statesmen might well have solved the problem of this dangerous dualism without endangering the safety of the nation. Enveloped as they were in such a struggle, the only policy was to postpone the issue; King Tiran chose the opposite course. He had given his daughter in marriage to the son of Verthanes, Yusik; but after the experience of a single night the youth deserted his bride, in apprehension, it is said, of the terrible progeny which she was destined to give to the world. Such conduct and such explanations could scarcely have satisfied her royal parents; but the princess died after giving birth to twin sons. Upon the death of Verthanes, Yusik was placed in the pontifical chair, the ceremony of his installation being performed at Artaxata. The king was a lukewarm Christian and, perhaps, an inveterate sinner; the katholikos was at once pious and severe. A long feud and partial estrangements resulted in an open rupture; and, when the sovereign on a certain feast day was about to attend divine service, he was publicly denounced by the enraged prelate and forbidden to enter the church. Yusik was beaten to death under royal orders; and a similar fate befell the saintly bishop of Astishat, who, although a Syrian and not a member of the family of St. Gregory, was summoned by king and nobles to fill the vacancy in the Chair. We are told that King Tiran lived on friendly terms with Persia; however this may be, he contrived to fall into the hands of these powerful neighbours, who put out his eyes and led him to the feet of their master.