CHAPTER XVI

EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

At five o'clock in the afternoon of the 4th of October we set out for Edgmiatsin. It is a drive of about thirteen miles across the plain. Our luggage was consigned to a waggon of the post, and we ourselves enjoyed the luxury of a light victoria, drawn by four horses abreast. They covered the distance in an hour and forty minutes, although the road is in many places a mere track.

What a drive! It is so well within reach of Europe that it ought to be included, like the journey to Italy, in the programme of a liberal education. The railway will before long arrive at Erivan, and then the pilgrimage will be still easier to undertake. Not all the tourists in the world will disturb the harmony of this landscape; the screeching trains, the loud hotels, the Babel of tongues will be lost, like a flight of starlings, in this expanse. It is here that the spirit of Asia is most intensely present--an inner sanctuary to those outer courts through which the traveller may have wandered and never crossed the threshold of this plain. And it is a spirit and an influence which arouse deep chords within us and send them sounding through our lives.

The landscape at once combines and accentuates the salient features of the Asiatic highlands. There is the plain which was once the bed of an inland sea. It stretches west and east without visible limits; and this evening it has all the appearance of water. In the west it is mirage which produces this effect. The long north-western slope of the Ararat fabric assumes the character of a dark and narrow promontory rising on an opposite shore. From the east, beyond the train of the Little Ararat, a cold mist--may it be from the Caspian?--is slowly wafted over the steppe, and the illusion is complete. Into those liquid spaces sweep the basal vaultings of Alagöz--the boulder-strewn declivities which we keep on our right hand, and which seem to embody on a typical scale that quality of hopeless sterility which is characteristic of vast portions of the continent. But the same vague distance receives the Zanga, diffused into many channels, and lost beneath luxuriant foliage. For over a quarter of an hour after leaving Erivan we pass at a rapid trot between the walls of orchards; and in places the water gushes from the conduits across the road. Once outside this intricate zone the track wanders over the idle soil, skirting the stony slopes in the north. In the opposite direction the plain blooms with fields of cotton and rice, sustained by a small canal which pursues a westerly course before it falls into the Araxes, if indeed it flow so far.

And there are the mountains of Asia--the volcanoes with their vaulted summits, as well as those long ridges with their serrated outline which represent the operation of less impetuous forces through longer spaces of time. To this second category belongs the fine chain on the west of Ararat which gains in definition as we proceed. It stands a little back and behind the fabric of Ararat, and volcanoes too have built themselves up upon this wall. But its rugged and tumbled appearance is the feature which predominates, in striking contrast to the symmetry of the mountain of the Ark. That giant overpowers the lesser Ararat and appropriates their common base. One stands in wonder at the force which could have rent that massive pedestal and opened the yawning chasm which fronts the plain. Night creeps into those recesses, where the blaze of a Kurdish camp-fire calls attention to the extraordinary transparence of the air. The snow-fields, bare and cold above the amber of the sunset, are already free of their coronal of cloud. One full-puffed vapour still floats behind the uppermost pinnacle; another clings to the bastion on the north-west. While we admire this stately scene, made more impressive by the heavy silence, a grove of trees rises from the steppe on our point of course. Two little conical shapes just emerge above their outline, and are recognised as the domes of Edgmiatsin.

We pass through the thin plantation, sustained by runnels derived from Alagöz, and come to a halt before the doorway of a lofty mud wall with round towers at intervals. It might belong to a Persian fortress; but it is the outer wall which surrounds the cloister with the cathedral of St. Gregory. The massive gate is closed, and we thump and thump for some time in vain. The parapet with its crumbling surface betrays no sign of the life within. But there is just sufficient light to reveal the surroundings of the fortified enclosure--a straggling village of above-ground houses, outlying churches, poplars, dust. [130]

At last the hinges creak and the porter appears. We are ushered into a court, like that of a college at Cambridge, adjoining the great gate which is in the south wall. It is known as the pilgrims' court (Fig. 47). Low buildings, rudely built, with a continuous wooden verandah, compose the quadrangle. The windows are all lit up behind a line of young trees of which the foliage rustles in the night air. Several figures may be discerned on the steps of a basin of water in the centre of the court. The place is all bustle and stir. Every room, so we are told, in the whole monastery is occupied by as many people as it will hold. Quarters have been reserved for us in the principal court; but we are not expected until to-morrow. Sooner than disturb the peace of evening we retire to a room in the village where we erect our camp beds. It is quite a dormitory. My immediate neighbour speaks English and is a correspondent of the Daily News. He is an Armenian gentleman who has come all the way from Tabriz, partly in the capacity of delegate of his countrymen in the Persian city, and partly as the representative of the London newspaper. He talks incessantly; his companions do the same. The great event of the coming days will form an epoch in their lives, and every incident will be indelibly imprinted upon their memories. A thrilling and detailed narrative will be despatched to London, where it will filter through the brain of the sub-editor and issue in the form of a paragraph in small type.

But the newspaper will be to blame; for it is an event, this consecration of the latest pontiff of the Armenian Church. It is an event both by reason of the personality of the new katholikos and because within recent years the fact has slowly dawned upon Europe that the politics of Western Asia must react upon the Western peoples, and that in those politics the Armenians are destined to play a part. The Church is at the present day the only native institution which has been preserved to that people. All their aspirations as human beings desirous to live as human beings are focussed by that single organisation. The broad democratic basis upon which reposes the election of the patriarch invests him with a representative character. Moreover he is not chosen by a section of his countrymen but by the nation as a whole. The Armenians of Turkey and of Persia as well as those within Russian territory contribute their suffrages. It is therefore only natural that, in the absence of secular institutions, the head of the Church should be much more than a merely spiritual ruler, and should reflect and in no small measure be expected to instruct the temporal hopes and fears of his flock.

The Russian Government have not been slow in recognising this fact; nor does the anxiety with which it is regarded in official circles date from the contemporary prominence of the Armenian Question. In the heyday of their relations with this Christian nation which hailed them as liberators, and which was placed in the very centre of the Mussulman peoples over which they were slowly establishing their sway, the Russians lavished favours upon Edgmiatsin; [131] and rightly or wrongly they are now accused by their Armenian allies, become their subjects, of having excited hopes which, when they had served the ends of Russian policy, were rudely and almost brutally suppressed. It is certain that the Armenian inhabitants of the provinces which now belong to Russia favoured the Russians in their campaigns against Persia and Turkey at the risk of reprisals on the part of their Mussulman masters. They smoothed the way for the extension of the Russian Empire from the valley of the Kur to that of the Araxes. The first great step in this direction was effected at the commencement of the present century, when the kingdom of Georgia was organised into a Russian province. The acquisition of Georgia afforded the Russians a foothold upon the tableland, and brought them into direct contact with the Persians and with the Turks. Their first battle against the Persians was fought on the 20th of June 1804, and resulted in the repulse of the Shah's forces, which were led by his son, the famous Abbas Mirza. This action took place in the immediate neighbourhood of Edgmiatsin, and on the same day upon which was celebrated the annual festival of St. Ripsime, one of the saints who are the special glory of the cloister. The Armenians did not disguise the direction of their sympathies, and attributed, the Russian victory to the intervention of their Saint. [132] Ten years later, when the monastery was visited by Morier, the patriarch was wearing a high Russian order, of which the star glittered on his purple robe. [133]

In 1828 Edgmiatsin was annexed to Russia after the capture of Erivan from the Persians and as a result of the Treaty of Turkomanchai. Throughout the wars which ensued with Turkey the Armenians espoused the Russian cause; and one cannot doubt that their assistance was of considerable benefit both to Paskevich during the campaigns of 1828-29, and to Loris Melikoff, himself of Armenian origin, in that of 1877. [134] Little by little a certain bitterness becomes appreciable in these honeymoon relations. The origin or perhaps the reflection of this new feeling may be found in the provisions of the important statute which defines the status of the Armenian Church in Russia and regulates the constitution of Edgmiatsin. This statute, which is generally known as the Polojenye, is headed by the signature of the Tsar Nicholas and bears the date of March 1836. It was translated for me by one of the monks. In some respects it deals most liberally with the national Church. Her congregations are accorded full liberty of worship, and her clergy are relieved from all civil burdens. The principle of the election of the katholikos by the whole Armenian people professing the national religion is expressly recognised. The method of his election is minutely prescribed. The national delegates assemble in the church of St. Gregory, and submit two names to the Emperor, who makes the appointment. [135] On the other hand, in true Russian fashion, what is given with one hand is taken away with the other. The synod of Edgmiatsin is an ancient institution which, according to Armenian traditions, advises the katholikos, and may even resist him should he desire to effect changes in matters intimately affecting the national faith. [136] The Polojenye emphasises and develops the constitutional importance of this body, and places it under the titular presidency of the Emperor. The decrees of the synod are headed "By order of the Emperor of Russia"; and they are submitted to a Russian procurator, resident at Edgmiatsin, who examines into their validity. In matters of a purely spiritual nature the katholikos takes counsel with the synod, but need not necessarily accept its recommendations. But in all the general business of the Church, as well as of the cloister, it is the synod which has jurisdiction subject to the approval of the Minister of the Interior. In the synod, which consists of eight priests resident at Edgmiatsin, the katholikos has no more than a casting vote. It is true that he might act by Bull. But such action, were it contrary to the resolutions of the synod, would, as matters now stand, be revolutionary. In this manner the katholikos is put into leading strings, of which the ends are held by the officials on the banks of the Neva, duly instructed by a professed and resident spy.

Nor are the remaining provisions of this double-faced instrument calculated to shed balm over the wounded dignity of the head of the Church. It is the Emperor who appoints the members of the synod, although the katholikos is entrusted with the important function of submitting two names for the Imperial choice. It is not legal for the pontiff to punish a member of the synod without the Imperial consent. The same authority is necessary should he desire to suspend a bishop. He may not leave the cloister for more than four months except with the sanction of the Tsar. When a bishopric falls vacant he submits names to the Emperor, with whom the appointment rests. Should the bishop desire to go abroad for more than four months, application must be made to the same high quarter. But perhaps the most serious because the most insidious weapon against the independence of the national Church is the provision which enacts that a year shall elapse between the death of a katholikos and the election of his successor. This clause was accepted with singular want of foresight at a time when travelling was even slower than it is at the present day, and when it was difficult to collect the delegates from Turkey and Persia within a lesser period. In practice it is not easy for the new katholikos to take up his duties until some time subsequent to his election; and, should further delay be of advantage to the Government, the Tsar can always defer confirming the choice of the representatives. Thus a vacancy in the Chair is always accompanied by a long interregnum, during which the Government plays off one party against the other, and succeeds in obtaining whatever concessions may have been resisted during the preceding pontificate.

An English traveller who visited Edgmiatsin the year after the conclusion of this enactment found the synod with its Russian procurator in full swing. The katholikos was at once reduced to a position of president of the synod, and the synod to one of subservience to Russian policy. [137] Von Haxthausen speaks of the procurator as a Russian and quite an autocrat; this was in 1843. [138] At that time the pontiff Nerses was in occupation of the Chair, and his conspicuous abilities were regarded with suspicion by the Russian authorities. His schemes for the higher education of the Armenians had come to nothing owing to Russian opposition. But the hardest blow was reserved for the year 1885, when the Katholikos Makar was appointed by the Emperor in defiance of the expressed sentiments of the delegates of the nation. It was then realised that the independence of the Church was at an end. The ukase of investiture confirmed this pessimist view. Instead of the usual wording "upon the recommendation of the Armenian people," the appointment was based "upon the recommendation of the clergy." Instead of the pictures from Armenian history which adorned the ukase of the pontiff George, Russian insignia and coats of arms enlivened the scroll. The constitutional phrase has been restored to the ukase confirming the present pontiff, but not the patriotic pictures! [139]

Still, in spite of the fetters which have been imposed upon the actions of the katholikos, as much by the manner in which the Polojenye is worked by the Russian bureaucracy as by the provisions which that statute contains, the average Armenian and especially the lower classes are immensely interested in the event of the coming days. At Batum, at Kutais, at Alexandropol, at Erivan--wherever we have been in the society of Armenians, talk has centred upon the triumphal journey and the approaching consecration of His Holiness Mekertich Khrimean. It is not only the ancient ceremony, and it is not merely the assembling of delegates from all parts of the Armenian world that appeals to the heart of the nation. It is the personality and reputation of the man. The people forgets, but it does not change. The imagination of the race still sees in the holder of the pontifical office not alone or so much an archbishop or katholikos--the keystone of the edifice of the Church--as a high priest in the old Biblical sense. Khrimean is the ideal of a high priest. He is a figure which steps straight out from the Old Testament with all the fire and all the poetry. At the ceremony of his consecration it seemed as if at the foot of Ararat the ancient spirit were still alive, and that the holy oil which descended upon that venerable head from the beak of the golden dove anointed a law-giver to the people who announced the Divine Word. This impression was in part derived from the Semitic cast of his features. The large brown eyes and aquiline nose above a long and full beard, are characteristics which we associate with the Jewish nation, but which are not uncommon among the Armenians. What is more rare among this people is the spirituality and refinement which is written in every line of this handsome face (Fig. 48). But the whole character of the man would seem to have been moulded upon a Biblical model rather than upon that of the Christian hierarchy. He is the tried statesman to whom the people look for guidance in the abeyance of the kingly office. With him religion and patriotism are almost interchangeable terms; and the strong reality which he has given to the old Armenian history may be illustrated by an act which those who lack sympathy with such a character might almost regard as childish. In the cloister of Varag near Van, over which he has presided for many years, are buried the remains of Senekerim, king of the Van country, who abdicated his kingdom in favour of the Byzantine emperor, Basil II., and retired to the town of Sivas in Asia Minor, which he received in exchange. Over his tomb a wooden canopy had been erected and decorated in a manner befitting royal rank. But such honours, paid to so unworthy a monarch, shocked the keen sense of the patriot in Khrimean; he stripped the frame of its trappings and ornaments, and the structure stands bare to this day. The simple surroundings among which his life has been passed recall the setting of a Bible story. At a later stage of our journey, when we arrived in the town of Van, I was shown the house where he had resided and which he has now devoted to a school for girls. As I alighted to visit the school a man with the appearance and dress of a peasant stepped forward to hold the reins of my horse. Yet this individual was none other than the nephew of the Katholikos, and the brother of Khoren Khrimean, who has accompanied his uncle to Edgmiatsin, and who does the honours of the patriarchal household with so much dignity and natural grace. During our stay in Van, his native province, we were afforded an instance of the magnetic influence which through a long life Mekertich Khrimean has exercised upon his countrymen, and which takes the form of superstitious veneration among the humble and the poor. As we were winding up the slopes of Mount Varag on our way to the ancient monastery where he lived so long, teaching in the school which he had founded within its walls, and often taking this very path from the cloister to preach in the little church of Hankusner, on the outskirts of the gardens of Van, our attention was called to a spot where an assassin had lain in wait for him, deputed by his enemies to kill him as he rode unaccompanied towards the town. The story is told that when the man perceived him and raised his rifle to his shoulder, a sudden fear seized his limbs, his arm shook like a wand; and he fell upon his knees before his victim, whose look he had been unable to bear. As a writer Khrimean has expressed through the vehicle of a prose which is full of poetry and emotion conceptions of Scripture and thoughts upon the troubles of his time which might have sprung from the warm imagination of the early Christians in the East. He has often suffered for the fire of his sermons, and he possesses both the style of the consummate orator and the personal charm which keeps an audience under a spell. He has for many years been in the forefront of the Armenian movement; and it was he who pleaded the Armenian cause at the Congress of Berlin. A people whose spirit has been crushed and whose manhood has been degraded gather new life from such a teacher and learn to become men. But perhaps the most striking quality in a character which is at once complex and clear as the light of day is the ever-welling kindness and open-armed sympathy with which he shares the troubles of his fellow-men. As the throng press round him, the holder of their highest office, and endeavour to kiss his hand or gain a glimpse of his face, the mind travels back to that solemn scene in which the Greek king receives his stricken and distracted people: "O my poor children, known to me, not unknown is the subject of your prayer; well am I aware that you are sore afflicted all; yet, though you suffer, there is not one among you who suffers even as I. For the grief you bear comes to each one alone--himself for himself he suffers--and to none other else; but my soul mourns for the State and for myself and you." [140]

Side by side with personal relations of greater freedom than I had anticipated towards this remarkable man, there grew up at Edgmiatsin and during the course of subsequent travel a fairly intimate acquaintance with the events of his life. He was born on the 5th of April 1820; and it is therefore in his seventy-fourth year that he ascends the throne of St. Thaddeus and of St. Gregory. His father and uncle were well-to-do citizens of Van, who had come to be known under the name of Khrimean because of a trade which they had conducted with the Crimea. The young Mekertich had a single brother and no sisters; and he appears to have been educated with some care by his uncle. His youth and early manhood were devoted to secular pursuits. For five or six years he acted in the capacity of an overseer in a weaving business. But already in 1841 he had become a traveller and a thinker; in that year he made a journey in the province of Ararat and visited Edgmiatsin. At the age of twenty-five he married and in due course became a father; but his wife died after giving birth to a daughter who only lived to be six or seven years old. To a layman of intellectual tastes among the Armenians of Turkey there is scarcely any other profession open than the honourable but ill-paid calling of a teacher. Shortly after his marriage Khrimean proceeded to the capital and earned his living by private tuition. His first book appeared in 1850, and consisted of a description in poetry of his travels in Ararat. The period of his residence in Constantinople was diversified by further journeys; to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, of which he published an account; and to Cilicia, the seat of the latest Armenian dynasty, where he remained some time as a teacher in the convent of Sis. In 1854 he returned to his native city, and in the following year took orders and became a vardapet or monastic priest. It is at this date that the more conspicuous portion of his life may be said to have commenced. The pulpit gave full scope to his natural eloquence; while the qualities of the student and writer, which he had carefully cultivated, were displayed in the columns of a journal which he founded about 1856 and named the Eagle of Vaspurakan, or of the province of Van. The proceeds of the sale of this periodical, which was at first printed at Constantinople, whither he had returned in 1855, enabled him to purchase an instrument of great rareness in Turkey, which the Armenians prize with the same childish affection and reverence as the Persian highlanders value a rifle or sporting gun. Khrimean re-entered Van with the title of abbot of the famous monastery which overlooks the landscape of the city and the rock and the waters from the slopes of Mount Varag. He came the proud possessor of a printing press, with which to conquer the sloth of the faint-hearted among the laymen and edify the crass ignorance of the priests.

In the good old times in Turkey one might read or write what books one liked, and the freedom which was enjoyed by the average individual might have excited the envy of the citizens of some of the European states. When the abbot of Varag cast his stone into the stagnant waters, the report woke little echo beyond the borders of his native province and the ranks of his countrymen. But the waves which he set in motion have never yet subsided; and who can tell upon what shore of promise or disappointment they are destined to break and disappear? If ever there was a good cause, such was the cause which he championed, and no advocate could be more pure-minded than himself. His avowed object and real aim was the elevation of the Armenians and their preparation for the new era which he foresaw. That era he conceived as one of national activity in the rapid decline of the Mussulman peoples and the approach of new influences from the West. If we tax him with having resuscitated a realised and played-out ideal--that national ideal which is still the bane of our modern Europe, but which, except perhaps in the case of some paradoxical German Professors, has lost its hold upon educated minds, he might reply that it is the only talisman with which to touch the Armenians, the most obstinate nationalists which the world has ever seen. He might further point to the almost hopeless condition of the Ottoman Empire, and under his breath he might suggest that the methods of Russian despotism were not such as to excite the enthusiasm of a strongly individual people capable of assimilating Western culture at first hand. Lastly, he might dwell upon the fact that the Armenians have a long history, and that their progress, to be solid and permanent, must be based on a revival of consciousness in the dignity of their past.

But the inculcation of such doctrines in the minds of his countrymen was sure to produce a ferment among a people who have been regarded as the inferiors and almost as the slaves of the Mussulmans for upwards of eight hundred years. It was imputed to him that he was working to revive the old Armenian kingdom--a consummation which a sensible Turk should regard with equanimity, since the time necessary to attain this end would far exceed all possible limits which he might assign to his solicitude for posterity. But sensible people are a minority of the inhabitants of this globe, and they are not numerous in the governing circles of the Ottoman Empire. The great activity of the Abbot of Varag, who trained his youths in the school of the cloister to conduct unaided the redoubtable magazine, slowly aroused the suspicion of the authorities. His own party in the Church supported him with much zeal, and another monastery, still more famous, that of Surb Karapet above Mush plain, was added to his spiritual administration. No sooner was he installed than a second printing press was set up and another school founded. The Armenians of the plain of Mush were edified by a new local journal, the Little Eagle of Taron. In 1869 he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople, a dignity which he only held for four years. The Turkish Government had become alive to his great and growing popularity, and it was found expedient that he should resign. Then came the tribulations of the Russo-Turkish war, during which the new movement among the Armenians cost them several little massacres and untoward events. When the Congress met at Berlin the ex-patriarch, who had been busy with literature, undertook, in concert with an archiepiscopal colleague, a mission on behalf of his nation to the German capital. This was his first visit to the West, and he extended his journey to Italy, France and England. The result of his efforts and of those of Nerses, Patriarch of Constantinople, was the insertion of the well-known clause in the Treaty of Berlin pledging Europe to supervise the execution of reforms in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey inhabited by Armenians. Khrimean returned to his native country the object of the resentment of the Ottoman authorities; much of this portion of his life was spent in Van. But Armenian discontent was spreading; the alarm of Government was increasing; and in 1889 the eloquent preacher was sent to Jerusalem in honorary exile. In the month of May 1892 he was elected to the primacy of the Armenian Church. The Russian bureaucracy perhaps reflected that their safeguards at Edgmiatsin were quite sufficient to bridle the vigour of a septuagenarian. These shrewd diplomats therefore humoured the Armenians in the matter, and the election was allowed to stand. The Sultan raised difficulties about releasing the exiled prelate from his Ottoman nationality and oath of allegiance. When this objection had been overcome his consent was qualified by the condition that the katholikos-elect should not pass through Constantinople. A year elapsed in these parleyings. For two years the Armenian Church had been without a head. During that period it had been ruled by the Russian procurator. Now in the autumn the elect of the nation is at length presented to the delegates who have assembled from all parts of the Armenian world. And he comes from Russia, from the north, released from exile in Turkey at the pressing instance of the Tsar. One must admire the extraordinary cleverness of these Russian bureaucrats!

The sun was already high when we sallied forth from our lodging, having with great difficulty prepared our breakfast in the crowded room. We passed down the long and dusty street of the village, which is dignified by the historical name of Vagharshapat. Nothing remains of the capital of King Tiridates, which was built upon this site or in the immediate neighbourhood. You are shown the remains of an old bridge which spanned the Kasagh, or river of Vagharshapat, some little distance north-west of the present settlement. The river has changed its course since it was erected. But the character of the masonry is rather that which was prevalent in the Middle Ages--conglomerate piles, faced with carefully hewn and jointed blocks of stone. Several shops bestow a modern appearance upon the street, having windows and being disposed as in Europe. A commonplace edifice with many windows and standing in private grounds recalls an Institute in one of our provincial towns. It is the Academy or Seminary. We entered the cloister from a door on the north, through which we issued into an open space on the west of the great court. A covered way conducted us to the quadrangle, in the centre of which rises the cathedral (Fig. 49, taken from south-west).

Imagine the Old Court of Trinity College at Cambridge without the gateway, the hall and chapel, and with a church of some size placed in the centre where the fountain stands. All four sides of the figure are defined by low buildings, resembling the dwellings which constitute two sides of the Cambridge court. I had always understood that our quadrangle at Trinity was the largest in the world; although I believe some American university was building one a few inches bigger not so very long ago. But the great court of Edgmiatsin perhaps already makes the record; it has a length, from west to east, of 349 feet 6 inches, and a breadth of 335 feet 2 inches. These measurements I took myself, much to the astonishment of the crowd which assembled; they were at a loss to find a theory which might explain so strange an act. The length will be very much increased in a short while, when the condemned east side has disappeared. A fine row of stone buildings is in course of erection, which will enlarge that dimension by many yards. Our cousins across the Atlantic must bestir themselves.

The western side of the court on the south of the covered way is devoted to the residence of the Katholikos, while the block on the north of the same passage is occupied by the bishops. There is no style or pomp about the pontifical dwelling; and it would bear the same relation to the Master's Lodge at Trinity as a four-roomed cottage to a mansion. At the back is a little garden. The north side consists of the rooms inhabited by the monks, and a terrace, raised on pointed arches, extends from end to end. The building on the east is in process of demolition, and, like its fellows on the two sides which have already been described, is composed of comparatively fragile material. I was given to understand that it had once housed the seminary and printing press; a little bakery still occupies the junction with the buildings on the south. These are constructed of stone, and, although very plain, lend an air of solidity to the entire quadrangle. Beginning on the west of this block we have first a long refectory on the ground floor. Its dimensions are a length of 155 feet, and a breadth of 16 feet 6 inches. But it is a very humble place when compared to the magnificent dining halls at Cambridge, and it is not more than 14 feet in height. The ceiling is vaulted, and like the walls is whitewashed over; the apartment is well lit and is cool in summer. Two rows of narrow tables extend down it, and on the west side is the throne and the canopy of the Katholikos, both in carved wood. Should he join the monks at dinner, his table is spread beneath the canopy. Parallel with this refectory and facing the outhouses on the south is placed a similar chamber for the servants, a part of the space upon the east being occupied by the kitchen. The storey above the refectories is tenanted by the library, while the eastern portion of the buildings is taken up by granaries and store rooms both on the ground and upper floors.

Except for the pilgrims' court, with adjacent structures, and the garden of the Katholikos--the one on the southern, the other on the south-western side--the space between the outer wall and the great court is for the most part vacant ground. What edifices there have been raised within it are of an unsubstantial character, and may have been allowed to fall into ruin. The fine sites which are thus forthcoming are being rapidly utilised, and I have already referred to the row of buildings which will extend the great court upon the east and which at the time of our visit were approaching completion. In a line with this new block, in which red and grey stones diversify the masonry, is situated further south the house which lodges the printing press, a solid stone structure. The transformation of Edgmiatsin from a residence of ignorant monks into a seat of education, the home of cultured men, is proceeding year by year; and it is even possible that the bricks and mortar, or, to speak more correctly, the excellent masonry is in advance of the needs which it is intended to supply. Wealthy Armenians are fond of endowing the famous cloister, for which they do not need the incitement of meetings at some Devonshire House. But the form of gift dearest to them is the erection of a building, which stands there so that all may see. This preference for the concrete and visible is deeply ingrained in them, and they are able to gratify it owing to the great skill of the Armenian masons. Plans were shown me which provided a palace for the Katholikos and the rebuilding of the north side of the quadrangle. These, I believe, have already been decided upon, one of our party at the private table of the Katholikos having provided the greater part of the funds. I was also invited to look at some very elaborate drawings for the enlargement and adornment of the church. No sooner had they been handed round than one of the guests of His Holiness expressed his readiness to defray the cost. Speaking as one who came fresh to Edgmiatsin, I did my best to dissuade the acceptance of this last project. To enlarge the church would be to dwarf the fine proportions of the court; indeed the contrary course would be well-advised. One would not very much regret the abolition of the portal, while the excrescence on the east, containing the treasury and room of relics, should certainly be pulled down. His Holiness favoured the idea of erecting a new church outside the walls, to supplement the space available in the present building.

We were assigned a room in the condemned block on the east of the quadrangle, wherein we spread our rugs and erected our camp beds. It was 26 feet square, with a lofty wooden ceiling, supported by two pillars of the same material. The adjoining apartment was in process of demolition, but, although without a roof, it served admirably as a kitchen, while the flooring provided fuel for our fire. When all was in order we should not have exchanged the results of our improvisation even for the creations of the Cambridge upholsterer, mellowed in the hands of the Cambridge bedmaker; while, as for living, was it not preferable to possess the whole of our scapegrace cook than to share the services of the most virtuous of gyps? Each day as we mounted our staircase, which exactly recalled its sad Cambridge counterparts, I was struck by the resemblance of my new surroundings to those among which I had grown up in the Old Court of Trinity, with the sky and the fountain and the adjacent cloister, where the glory of the foliage and lawn and river is spread in mystery beyond the trellis screens.

Even beneath this tropical sun the mind of man has surpassed his difficulties; and just as the Cam has been converted from a melancholy ditch into a brimming waterway, threading a landscape of lawn and forest, so the Kasagh has been impressed into the service of an artificial lake, bordered by shady avenues. Extremely pleasant is the stroll round this spacious basin, which is due to the refinement of Nerses V. (1761-1857). It is situated just outside and south of the cloister; and while from one side the view discloses the dome and a cupola of the cathedral (Fig. 50), on the other it is the vault of Ararat and the pyramid of the Lesser Ararat that are outlined above the soft foreground of water and trees (Fig. 51). It was a pleasure to instance this work to General Frese and my Russian acquaintances as bearing testimony to the sense of security inspired by Russian rule. The cloister and even the bazar are surrounded by walls worthy of a fortress, a relic from the old Persian times. The Russians appear on the scene, and the imprisoned monks disport in the open, which they make to bloom with luscious groves.

On the morning following a restful day which introduced us to our new environment I was invited to visit His Holiness. He had arrived within the walls of the cloister during our sojourn on Ararat, and it appeared that he had scarcely been able to leave his apartments owing to the enthusiasm of the humbler among his admirers, who could not be restrained from pressing round him whenever he walked abroad. This enforced seclusion had developed a tendency to asthma; but with this exception I found him in excellent health. Even the garden had been invaded by the peasants, who would wait hour after hour to catch a glimpse of their Hayrik--a term of endearment, signifying little father, under which Khrimean is very generally known. Two footmen in scarlet robes with blue sashes stood upon the flight of steps or busied themselves with errands. I was ushered into a long apartment, modestly furnished in European style, where I was received by an Armenian gentleman, of the handsome aquiline type of face, who addressed me in fluent English. He had been interpreter to the delegates to the Berlin Congress, and more recently had been much in the society of the Katholikos, residing at Jaffa (Jerusalem). Baron Serapion Murad--the first name is the equivalent of Mr.--holds a position of the first importance in the counsels of His Holiness at this juncture in his career. He is the shrewd man of the world, who weighs you in the balance with a single glance of his intelligent eyes. I appear to have emerged on the right side of the scale; for his formidable scrutiny rapidly relaxed into an amiable smile. We passed from this outer room into a chamber with a daïs at the further side; and presently the Katholikos entered and mounted the daïs, begging us be seated on two chairs which were placed on the floor below, but quite close to his own arm-chair.

I do not remember having ever seen a more handsome and engaging face; and I experienced a thrill of pleasure at the mere fact of sitting beside him and seeing the smile, which was evidently habitual to those features, play around the limpid brown eyes. The voice too is one of great sweetness, and the manner a quiet dignity with strength behind. The footmen and the daïs and the antechamber were soon forgotten in this presence--forms necessary to little men and perhaps useful to their superiors, though they are always kicking them off when they are not stumbling among their folds. Happily the temperament of His Holiness is averse to all baubles; the cross of diamonds was absent from his conical cowl, and his black silk robe, upon which fell a beard which was not yet white, was unrelieved by the star of his Russian order. These ornaments are strangely out of place on such a figure, and their formulas out of keeping with this character. I was closely questioned upon all the incidents of our climb on Ararat; nor was it doubted that we had reached the summit. In the old days such a pretension would have been met with a smile. Then we passed to his sojourn in England, and I asked his opinion of Mr. Gladstone, with whom he had enjoyed some intercourse. He had been impressed, like so many others, with the theological cast of that supple mind. The face contracted when we came to speak of his life in the Turkish provinces; and he laid stress upon the terrible reality of the sufferings of the Armenian inhabitants. All the struggles and hopes and anguish of his strenuous days and sleepless nights seemed to rise in the mind and choke the voice. Then he sank back, with a sigh which seemed to regret them. "I have come," he said, "to the land of Forgetfulness."--And from the quadrangle came the sound of a slowly-moving Russian anthem, and the measured step of a detachment of Russian soldiers.

His Holiness invited me to take my meals in his private dining-room, and expressed his regret that he would not be present himself. It happened to be a fast day, and nothing was offered but lentils and peas. But on the day following quite a banquet was spread before us--salmon trout from Lake Sevan, delicious dolmas of minced meat and rice bound together by tender cabbage leaves, and the usual not very tasty chickens. At the head of the table sat the vicar or substitute of the Katholikos, with M. Pribil on a special mission representing the Emperor on his right hand, and General Frese on his left. One or two Armenian notables were of the party, which, however, consisted for the most part of bishops resident at Edgmiatsin. All wore their black silk cowls during the meal. As one looked down the line of clerics the aquiline type of face predominated--fine human animals they seemed, with their pronounced features and limpid eyes and the long beards which keep their colour and speak of a mind at ease. One of the monks present spoke French fluently; but he had been imported from the Crimea by the present Katholikos. His name was Khoren Stephaneh. Many a pleasant talk I had with him, but not during dinner; they have too much respect in the East for their food and cook to divert the tongue at such a time from its proper function. What little ripples of conversation diversified the natural sounds of the meal were due to that restless spirit of the West, which is always asking questions and living several hours in advance of the actually present time. I do not know that either of the high Russian functionaries were much troubled by this particular product of Western culture; but, if they were, they must have suffered from the inability of their hosts to comprehend their language. The wine of the cloister flowed freely, and was supplemented by European liqueurs. Then the restless spirit broke bounds, attacking first the taciturnity of the Governor of Erivan. The formula I had heard so often was the first to take wing; and "How long are you staying here?" came across the table in a somewhat loud voice. It was not the least unkindly meant. Next the same little sprite perched upon M. Pribil, and extracted several questions, which it let fly. When we rose from table he engaged me in a discursive conversation which ranged freely over the Armenian Question. He affirmed that the Armenians did not compose more than one-fifth of the population of the Russian provinces south of Caucasus.

The apartment was soon empty, every one retiring to their siesta; but I strolled out and made my way to the humble monastic buildings which adjoin the lonely church of Saint Gaiane. There I found a new friend whom I had learnt to value, a young monk recently ordained. Mesrop Ter-Mosesean belongs to the new school of clerics who will before long remove that stigma of crass ignorance which still attaches to the bulk of the Armenian priesthood. Men like Khrimean have long perceived that in matters of education Germany occupies the first position among the nations of the world. With greater insight than the Turks, who send their young men to Paris--the very worst school for the full-blooded Oriental--they encourage their promising scholars to study in Germany, and find the necessary funds. The monk of Gaiane had just returned from the German University, and he does credit to the solid attainments which it supplies. He is a splendid physical example of his race. Tall, with the bold features of the handsome type which I have described, with a massive forehead and teeth white as snow, he combines with these outward advantages a manner which is most winning and a simple, straightforward character. Hours I spent in his little sitting-room during my sojourn, and I was always sorry to come away. He occupies the post of librarian at Edgmiatsin, and he is now busy with the compilation of a new and comprehensive catalogue. [141] On this occasion we walked across to the library, and found it full of people. It is entered from the side of the Katholikos' garden. I was shocked by the spectacle of valuable manuscripts lying open on a long table, and being fingered by a promiscuous crowd. Such was the license of this national festival. I noticed among them a New Testament of the tenth century, bound in richly carved ivory sides. The type and pose of the Christ in the centre of the one panel recalled that of a Roman emperor. [142] Beautiful manuscripts of the thirteenth century and a minutely illuminated missal of the seventeenth figured among the treasures which any hand was allowed to soil.

Evensong was at hand, and my companion and myself entered the dimly-lit church. The Katholikos was already seated in the throne with the canopy, attired in a rich white satin robe. The cross of diamonds flashed from his cowl. Bishops and monks composed two rows, extending to the daïs of the apse; they wore robes of yellow silk, embroidered with coloured garlands of flowers. The congregation was very numerous, but clustered in groups about the Katholikos; there was no order or assignment of places, as with us. They sat or knelt upon the floor. On either side of the lines of clerics were gathered the choir, in gorgeous dresses, holding large and cumbrous books of Armenian music. The priests conducting the service stood upon the pavement of the church with their backs to the daïs. Above them rose the shapes of crosses and gorgeous eikons, held aloft by their attendants. Incense was scattered at intervals. I noticed that His Holiness twice changed raiment, although I was at a loss to discover when and where the transformation had taken place. The strongly nasal chants hurt my unaccustomed ear, and I found it impossible to educate my sympathy into communion with this show.

An hour or two later symbols and eikons and tight little formulas were all blissfully asleep; and the great court flooded over with good, healthy human spirits, released from the restraints of the day. Bonfires were lit within it, from which the leaping flames shot into the shadows of the church of the Illuminator and revealed the circles of the dancers. From many a brightly-lit room, given over to the pilgrims, came the shrill sounds of the flute and the beats of the small drum. Hai-this and Hai-that--the refrain and burden of every song celebrated the glories of the sons of Hayk. In the street of Vagharshapat our friends the musicians from Alexandropol were reaping a golden harvest. Was there ever collected together a more motley crowd? They must have come great distances. There were ladies from Akhaltsykh, with the pretty fillets across the brow; there were frock-coats and uniforms. The bright calicoes of peasant women enlivened the scene; some of the men, the poorest class, wore their rough sheepskin hats, while the better-to-do had donned low caps with a peak, like that of a naval officer. Long before midnight quiet had settled upon the great quadrangle, and nothing was heard but the plash of the fountain. But sombre patches marked the spots where whole families were encamped; while the steps all around the church and every niche and doorway were black with the forms of serried human beings in every attitude of slumber.

Next morning, the 8th of October, popular excitement was at its highest, the central event which they had come to celebrate being imminent. From the earliest dawn throngs of sheepskins and peak hats and coloured calicoes had been busy reconnoitring the most suitable positions; and, when the hour approached, all the roofs which commanded a view of the portal, and a good part of the quadrangle enjoying the same advantage, were densely packed with spectators. Rows of Russian soldiers kept clear the approaches to the western or principal entrance of the church. They wore dark green uniforms with shoulder-straps of a faded pink, and peaked caps of white canvas. Wesson and I made our way with difficulty to the residence of the Katholikos, where, in the private room of Baron Murad, we set up the camera right in face of the scene of the approaching ceremony. It had been decided to perform the rite of consecration upon a daïs in front of the portal. This improvised wooden structure was covered with carpets and costly embroideries. Over the doorway of the portal were emblazoned large Armenian letters upon a ground of cloth or canvas. The inscription reminded us that we were assembled upon the actual site where Jesus Christ is believed to have descended from heaven. The name of the cloister and cathedral is said to signify "The Only-Begotten has descended"; and the text over the doorway may be translated "The Only-Begotten has descended from the Father, and the light of glorification with Him." Upon a higher plane, from the tower of the belfry, was suspended a banner, embroidered with the device of the Katholikos and with the eagle of Vaspurakan (Van). The device consisted of a mitre, surmounting the figures of two angels, one carrying a cross and the other a pastoral staff. These emblems crossed one another, and at the intersection was placed an ornament of diamond shape peculiar to the Katholikos. The eagle with the wings outspread was purely personal to Khrimean, recalling the many links which attach him to Van. The scroll was to the following effect:--"O God, the knower of hearts, protect for long years our chief of shepherds (Hovapet) Mekertich Hayrik." Left and right of the daïs, in niches of the façade of the portal, were exhibited two eikons, or religious pictures, richly framed, of which that on the left--a Virgin and Child--was a painting of very high merit, said to be of Byzantine origin.

At a quarter to nine the procession is formed, and proceeds from the pontifical residence down the avenue of soldiers to the church door. The service which is held within the cathedral of the Illuminator lasts for over an hour. The party assembled in our upper chamber spend the time with conversation and in gazing down upon the multitude. It consists of a nun from Tiflis, a frock-coated teacher in a school of that city, and a pretty woman of the rich Armenian bourgeoisie of Tiflis, attired in a dress of Parisian model. The nun is a charming woman, and we make great friends. She informs me that she is almost an unique specimen of her order; the convent at Tiflis is perhaps a solecism. Nunneries are not popular with the Armenians. I think my reader may appreciate the magnificent robes which belong to her office, and of which, by her kindness, I am able to supply an illustration (Fig. 52). I notice that among the women assembled in the quadrangle the Armenian national dress is not often seen. The Georgian head-dress--a band of black velvet, embroidered with beads or jewels, across the temples, and a white silk kerchief over the head--appears to predominate. This fact would show that the greater number of those present have come from Tiflis and the northern districts.

Just as we are getting a little bored with the finicking architecture of the portal there is a movement and a rustle, and the procession issues from the church. First to appear are the high Russian officials in Court dress--M. Pribil, General Frese and the rest. They take up position on the floor of the quadrangle in front of the crowd, and face the still vacant daïs. Between them and this central object room is left for the choir and deacons, who are presently introduced. Hats are doffed in spite of the fierce sun. A brief, intense pause, and the twelve bishops [143] in gorgeous attire mount the daïs from behind. They escort the venerable form of the Katholikos, over whose head two attendants support a canopy of crimson material, embroidered with gold lace. For a short space the aged patriarch fronts the multitude in a standing posture; then sinks on the carpet with his feet beneath his body in Eastern fashion. Erect beside him, a bishop reads from a heavy volume. From time to time you detect a movement of the deeply-bowed head of the seated figure, as a particular passage is recited. Next a bishop advances, bearing in his hands the image of a dove, wrought in gold. It is the receptacle of the holy oil. In the southern apse of the cathedral stands a chest containing a vase, in which is preserved oil blessed by St. Gregory. It is nothing, they say, but a mass of dry material. Of this substance they take a pinch and mix it with consecrated oil, specially prepared and scented with essence of flowers. Such is the liquid which is allowed to flow from the beak of the dove upon the head of the father of the nation. The bishops gather round, and each with his thumb spreads the oil over the scalp, making the figure of a cross at the same time (Fig. 53). Then a mass of wool is applied to the crown of the head, in the folds of a muslin veil which is adjusted to fall over the face. The Katholikos rises after a brief interval, places his feet in his embroidered slippers and with the bishops re-enters the church. The ceremony has occupied a quarter of an hour.

Some little time elapses, and the same procession leaves the building, accompanying the anointed pontiff to his residence. The choir sing from their great books the old Armenian chants [144] with their loud lamentations and long shakes. The band of the Russian regiment play a slow and solemn music, of which the sweetness puts to shame the nasal choristers. They are mostly Armenians in this band. These strains bring the rite to a conclusion, and we all disperse to our various amusements or occupations.

The dinner "in hall" upon this festival of the consecration was a very interesting incident. We were all to dine in the refectory. When I entered, the long apartment was crammed. The scholars of the Academy partook of the meal in the parallel chamber. The bishops, the monks, the delegates composed a sombre assembly, stretching in rows of long perspective down the tables. A single exception to this dark apparel was furnished by a delegate from Karabagh, who was seated next myself. He wore his national dress--a spare black tunic, fastened at the neck, displaying the front and sleeves of a light blue silken vest. His face was large and expressive of great resolution, especially the chin, which, like the cheeks, was shaved. The bronze complexion heightened the whiteness of the bold moustache. One was reminded of the best type of peasant proprietors in Europe; and, indeed, a view of the faces round one confirmed that favourable impression which one receives from the society of Armenians in their native country. There is depicted a striking union of force of character with intelligence. In the midst of these reflections the Katholikos enters the building, and we all rise from our seats. He sits on his throne beneath the canopy, and a monk ministers to his needs. On either side stands a scarlet footman with a blue sash; the choir are drawn up behind. After the first course His Holiness rises, wearing his cowl and the glittering cross, and proposes the toast of the Emperor. It is a delight to hear him speak. He has all the personal fascination of Mr. Gladstone. Dinner proceeds as the catalogue of toasts is gone through, and between each toast European melodies are sung by the choir, and songs by an Armenian tenor of repute. The health of the Emperor is received with cries of Oura; but the remaining toasts without exception with the Armenian cheer of Ketsze! the equivalent of the French Vive! In proposing the health of M. Pribil His Holiness recites the various occasions upon which that functionary has come to Edgmiatsin to attend the consecration or the funeral of a Katholikos. Turning to his guest with a winning smile, he begs him to defer his next ceremonial visit until after the lapse of a moderate interval.

In the evening the whole quadrangle was illuminated with strings of coloured glasses containing candles. They made a very pretty show. At intervals huge firebrands threw a lurid light upon the buildings. The numerous choir of the Academy was marshalled in the court, including many ladies. The programme comprised several cantatas and some concerted music, and the standard was fairly high. But it appears difficult to eliminate the nasal pronunciation. The music-master was a great swell with his inspired look and flowing hair. The band discoursed the waltzes of the immortal Strauss. Before eleven all sound was hushed save the plash of the fountain, and darkness unrelieved had settled upon the scene. I made my way to the rooms of His Holiness and ascertained that he would receive me in spite of the lateness of the hour.

I found him reclining on a wooden couch in a bare white-washed apartment; a single rug was suspended upon the wall beside the couch. Such is the bed and such the furniture natural to the object of all this pomp, which I do not doubt is profoundly distasteful to such a character. He took my hand in his, and we sat together for some time, the office of interpreter being, I think, performed by Dr. Arshak Ter Mikelean. Our talk ranged over many subjects; but I should have preferred to sit still, look in those eyes and hear that voice. I think we both felt that we were very near each other; and religion is a subtler thing than can be defined in creeds and dogmas or embodied in what the world calls "views."

On the following days the state of tension was gradually relaxed; the cloister settled down to ordinary life, and it was possible to examine the churches at one's ease. These are actually four in number, although in Mohammedan times the district was known under the name of Uch Kilisa, or Three Churches. [145] Their origin is bound up with a legend which plays such a considerable part in the history of the Armenian Church that, before passing to a description of them, it may not be inappropriate to instruct or amuse my readers with this curious story. [146]

Towards the close of the third century, while Tiridates was on the throne of Armenia, the Emperor Diocletian (284-305), [147] in search of a beauteous spouse, sent artists into all parts of his empire to depict the charms of suitable candidates for the imperial embrace. Now there happened to be in Rome a convent of nuns of austere life, of which the superior was called Gaiane. Under her charge was a virgin of surpassing beauty and of royal lineage, whose name was Ripsime. The artists entered her retreat by force, committed her lineaments to their tablets, and sent the portrait with several others to their master. The emperor had no sooner gazed upon the image of the high-born virgin than he fell violently in love. No pains were spared to hurry forward the preparations for the marriage, and the wretched bride was in despair. Her vow of chastity and the hatred she felt for the persecutor of her sect encouraged her to adopt the counsels of despair. She took to flight, attended by Gaiane and a numerous company of the nuns; and after many wanderings the band arrived upon the banks of the distant Araxes, in the outskirts of the Armenian capital of Vagharshapat. There they discovered a secluded retreat in a place which served as a store for vats, the city possessing extensive vineyards. One of their number was versed in the art of the manufacture of glass objects; she made glass pearls, and their price defrayed the cost of their daily sustenance.

Meanwhile the emperor had despatched messengers in every direction, and a Roman ambassador arrived at the court of the Armenian king. He was the bearer of a letter to that monarch from his master, who related how the Empire was suffering from the misdeeds of the Christians, and in particular how a beautiful virgin whom he himself had desired to marry had been abstracted by her infatuated co-sectaries and taken into the territory of his Armenian ally. The emperor begged his beloved colleague to track the party out, and, with the exception of the wondrous virgin, to put them all to death. As for the lovely fugitive, it would only be necessary to send her back; but the missive added, with an amiability truly worthy of an emperor, that the king might keep her if overcome by her charms.

As might be expected, no time was lost on the part of Tiridates to institute and elaborate the search. The band was found; the beauty of Ripsime needed no identification; and the fame of it attracted a multitude of all ranks--princes and nobles, shoulder to shoulder with the common people, closing round her under the sting of licentious desire. The nuns raised their hands to heaven and drew their veils about their faces; and perhaps this display of modesty averted their ruin. Early on the following morning there arrived from the palace magnificent litters and costly robes, the design of the king being to take to wife the Christian maiden and make her queen of the Armenians. But at this juncture a peal of thunder carried terror into all hearts, and a voice was heard descending from the sky. It was the voice of the Saviour, adjuring the nuns to take courage and remain firm for the glorification of His name among the peoples of the north. "Thou Ripsime," it proceeded, "hast been cast out (exerriphthês) with Gaiane and thy companions from the realm of death into that of eternal life." Meanwhile the thunder had caused a panic among the assembled people, and the king's officers hastened to the royal presence, bringing a written report of all they had heard. But the monarch hardened his heart, and, since she refused the pomp he offered, gave orders that the maiden should be taken by force and brought to the royal apartments.

These directions were executed, but not without difficulty; the pious virgin was of stalwart frame, and the soldiers were obliged to drag her along the ground, or carry her struggling in their arms. When they had placed her in the king's chamber, and it was announced that the king had entered, the people outside the palace feasted and danced and sang. But their rejoicings were premature; for the intrepid Roman maiden was more than a match even for the powers of so redoubtable an antagonist. Tiridates was widely famed for physical strength and deeds of prowess; yet, although he persisted in his suit for not less than seven hours, he was at last compelled through sheer exhaustion to give in. The offices of Gaiane were invoked; she consented to speak, but her counsels were addressed to confirming the courage of her companion. Her Latin speech was understood by some among those present; they took stones and tore her face and broke her teeth. After a brief repose the king returned, and again endeavoured to overcome the girl's obstinacy; but after a long struggle the inspired amazon was a second time victorious; she threw the king (erripsen), destroyed his diadem, and dismissed him from the chamber, fainting and gathering around him his tattered robes.

A tender respect for the honour of women is a virtue of Christian origin, which the romance of Western chivalry converted into a cult of the fair sex. But the king of Armenia was an Oriental, a heathen and a barbarian; nor had he been instructed in the code which precludes the sentiment of humiliation in the vanquished where the victor is possessed of a female form. His passion as a lover was overcome by his fury as a thwarted despot; the virgin had fled from the palace, but his savage emissaries were soon on her track. The unfortunate maiden directed her steps to the retreat where the vats were stored, and gave the alarm to her companions. All those present, excepting one who was stricken with illness, accompanied her flight. But when they had reached some rising ground near the road which led to Artaxata, they were overtaken, bound with cords and put to death with great cruelty. With Ripsime there perished thirty-two of her attendants, while the poor nun who had been left behind presently met the same fate. The martyrdom of Gaiane and of two companions took place on the following day and was attended with tortures which I should shudder to commit to paper.

Not many days after this tragedy its author was visited by the vengeance of heaven; a demon entered his body, and, like his prototype of Babylon, the king of Armenia was turned into an animal eating grass. In the form of a wild boar he resisted all attempts to confine him; and similar punishments overtook the royal family and attendants. At length the sister of the king, by name Khosrovidukht, beheld in the watches of night a vision. A man with a radiant face appeared and addressed her, to the effect that the only remedy was to send to the town of Artaxata and summon thence a prisoner named Gregory. When she related the vision people shook their heads, and attributed it to the incipient madness of the princess. For Gregory, who was once an honoured servant of King Tiridates, had been cast by the tyrant into a deep pit, on account of his profession of Christianity, not less than fifteen years ago. Would even his bones be forthcoming from such a place? But when several times the vision had been repeated, and the princess renewed her insistence, a great noble was despatched to the place where the pit was situated, near the town of Artaxata. A rope was let down into the cavern; and, to the astonishment of all, there emerged a human form, blackened to the colour of coal. It was none other than St. Gregory.

The saint was met by the king and nobles, foaming and devouring their flesh, as he approached the city along the road from Artaxata. Sinking on his knees, he obtained from heaven the restoration of their reason, although not of their human forms. His next care was the burial of the martyrs; he found their bodies, lying where they fell, and still untouched by corruption after the lapse of nine days. No dog or beast or bird had approached the remains. St. Gregory took them with him to the place where the vats were stored; and for sixty-six days he sojourned in that place, instructing the king and nobles. After the lapse of that period he related to them a vision which he had beheld during the middle watches of the night. The royal party had come at sunrise to prostrate themselves before the holy man.

During his vigil, while his mind was revolving the recent acts of Divine grace, a violent peal of thunder, followed by a terrible rumbling sound, had fallen upon his startled sense. The firmament opened as a tent opens, and from the heaven descended the form of a man, radiant with celestial light. The name of Gregory was pronounced; the saint looked upon the face of the man, and fell trembling to the ground. Enjoined to raise his eyes, he beheld the waters above the firmament cloven and parcelled apart like hills and valleys, extending beyond the range of sight. Streams of light poured down from on high upon the earth, and, with the light, innumerable cohorts of shining human figures with wings of living flame. At their head was One of terrible face whom all followed as the supreme ruler of the host; He bore in his hand a golden mallet, and, alighting on the ground in the centre of the city, struck with His mallet the crust of the broad earth. The report of the blow penetrated into the abysses below the earth; far and near all inequalities of the surface were smoothed out, and the land became a uniform plain.

And the saint perceived in the middle of the city, near the palace of the king, a circular pedestal made of gold and of the size of a large plateau, upon which was reared an immensely lofty column of fire with a cloud for capital, surmounted by a flaming cross. As he gazed he became aware of three other pedestals. One rose from the spot where the holy Gaiane suffered martyrdom; a second from the site of the massacre of Ripsime and her companions; and the third from the position occupied by the magazine of vats. These pedestals were of the colour of blood; the columns were of cloud, and the capitals of fire. The crosses resembled the cross of the Saviour, and might be likened to pure light. The three columns were equal in height one with another, but a little lower than that which rose near the royal palace. Upon the summits of all four were suspended arcs of wondrous appearance; and above the intersection of the arcs was displayed an edifice with a dome, the substance being cloud. On the arcs stood the thirty-seven martyrs, figures of ineffable beauty attired in white robes; while the crown of the figure above the edifice was a throne of Divine fashioning surmounted by the cross of Christ. The light of the throne mingled with the light of the cross and descended to the bases of the columns.

When Gregory had related this vision he bade all present gird up their loins and lose no time in erecting chapels to the martyred virgins, where their remains might be deposited. Thus the saints might intercede for the afflicted king and people and assist them to become healed. Forthwith the multitude set to work, collected stones and bricks and cedar-wood; and, under the guidance of the saint, constructed three chapels after a prescribed design. One was placed towards the north and on the east of the city, on the spot where Ripsime and her companions met their death. The site of the second was further south, where the Superior Gaiane was massacred; while that of the third was close to the magazine of vats. These they built and adorned with lamps of gold and silver, with candelabra of which the flames were never quenched. Coffins were made for the remains of the martyrs; but no man was suffered to touch these relics, for none had been baptized. The saint himself and in solitude consigned the bodies to their receptacles. And when this was done he fell on his knees and prayed for the healing of the king, that haply the king might share in the work. The prayer was granted, and the horn fell from the royal hands and feet. To the monarch was assigned the task of digging tombs in the chapels to receive the coffins of the martyrs; and his consort, the queen Ashkhen, together with his sister Khosrovidukht, were associated with him in the work. The return of his vigour was signalised on the part of the king by a labour worthy of the patriarch Hayk. He made a journey to the summit of Ararat, which the compiler rightly observes would occupy seven days. [148] When he had completed this feat, he was seen bearing upon his shoulders eight blocks of stone of gigantic size which he had taken from the crest of the mountain. These he placed before the threshold of the chapel of the martyred Ripsime in expiation of the unholy battle which he had waged. [149] In this manner all was accomplished according to the vision of St. Gregory; while, as for the locality where had stood the column of fire on the golden pedestal, it was surrounded by the saint with a high wall and heavy gates; the sign of the cross was erected within it, that the pilgrims might there worship the all-powerful God. Upon his return from Cæsarea, and after the baptism of king and people, St. Gregory completed his task by building the cathedral upon this site.

Such is the legend which, with variations, has supplied the patent of the famous monastery, and invested the pilgrimage to the church of Christ descended and to the chapels of the martyrs with the character at once of a religious and of a patriotic act. The first of these edifices stands in the centre of the great quadrangle of the cloister, and, as we have seen, is believed to have been originally raised by St. Gregory the Illuminator, to whom the Armenians attribute their conversion to Christianity. The spot where the Saviour alighted and struck the broad earth with the mallet is situated about the middle of the building; and in the old days was indicated by a slab of hewn stone, 3 feet square and 5 feet in thickness. [150] This stone was said to have been substituted for the original marble slab which was reputed to have been due to St. Gregory himself and to have been carried off by Shah Abbas. [151] In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, during the pontificate of Astvatsadur, an elaborate altar was placed upon this hallowed site, and still stands there beneath the dome. It is surmounted by a canopy supported by four pillars of Tabriz marble, and is well seen in my illustration of the interior (Fig. 55). It appears to have replaced one of simpler design erected by the Katholikos Eleazar.

I cannot invite my reader to admire the architecture of this cathedral, although the interior, with its spacious body, central dome and four apses, one at each point of the compass, is sufficiently remarkable. Much the same design is seen in the church of St. Ripsime; but in that building it underlies important developments which probably argue a later date. The original form of the exterior is rather difficult to unravel owing to the excrescences, of which I may safely say that none are improvements, that have been added at various times. But let me briefly undertake the work of demolition, addressing myself to the illustration, which was taken from the south-west (Fig. 49).

The portal on the left of the picture is a work of the seventeenth century; it was commenced by the Katholikos Philip and completed by his successor Jacob in 1658. It is probably due to the mania for portals prevalent in Armenia at that period and not to a feature of the earlier plan. Just east of and adjoining the balcony of this structure is seen a window with a richly carved column in the centre, surmounted by a cross and supporting two ornamental arches. This window and the upper portion of the building to which it belongs are in subservience to the portal, with which they are in architectural harmony, and which they link with the main edifice. The lower part, including the frieze or quasi-classical moulding, which runs right round the church, is in a different style and of a different form of masonry, being indeed an integral member of the body of the church. You have only to remove the window and pointed roof, build up the wall above the cornice and cover it with a flat roof, and you obtain precisely the same projection which the picture shows on the south side and which is necessitated by the south apse.

We have now obtained the figure of a body with four projecting members, each of which represents an apse. The roof would appear to have been always built at a very low angle; it is, as usual, of stone. But we have yet to disencumber the apse on the east, which is completely hidden by the stupid building which contains the treasury and room of relics--an annexe which from outside lengthens and perverts the original edifice. We owe this feature to the Katholikos George IV., who died in 1882. This apse had a lesser projection than its fellows from the wall of the church, owing to the incidence of the two indispensable side chapels, which were small and merely entailed a slight advance of the rectangular walls. Over each apse it has been customary to have a belfry; when the portal was added this feature of the apse on the west was transferred to that structure. The open cupolas with belfries which are at present seen over the three apses were built in the year 1682 by the Katholikos Eleazar. They are of bright red stone, of which the hue contrasts in a displeasing manner with the dull grey of the body of the church.

The central dome, which is supported on piers in the interior, consists of a polygonal drum with a window in each face surmounted by a conical roof. A false arcade with slender columns and pointed arches enriches, together with a carved cornice, the simplicity of the design. This dome is believed to date from the seventh century, and to be the work which the Katholikos Komitas (617-625) erected in place of an earlier structure in wood. If this be the case we have an example of this form of dome in Armenia a hundred years before the time when it is supposed by Fergusson to have been developed. [152] It is a pity that some vandal has daubed it over with plaster and paint, which invests it with a grotesque appearance. Above each window is a medallion containing the head of a saint, and I saw traces of spiral carving on the columns. An almost flat-roofed building with this dome in the centre, with four projecting apses, one at each point of the compass and each surmounted by a little belfry--such would appear to have been the original exterior of the edifice which we see at the present day.

An ingenious traveller, whose judgment was influenced by the cornice of the building, and perhaps too by certain stone slabs with Greek inscriptions which are inserted in the walls, has conjectured that this exterior, with the exception of the dome and belfries, dates at least in part from the reign of King Tiridates (end of the third and commencement of the fourth century). [153] He has gone so far as to present us with an illustration, showing what he conceives to have been the original form. [154] We know from Moses of Khorene that this monarch erected at Garni in the district of Erivan a building of surpassing beauty to his sister Khosrovidukht; and it is almost certain that the remains of a purely classical building which have been seen by modern travellers upon that site belong to this monument or to one of the same period. [155] The presumption of Dubois is therefore justified that a building of the reign of Tiridates would be likely to display classical features and ornaments. But his conjecture as regards this particular church must at present be considered to belong to the realm of hypothesis. The presence of the slabs with the Greek inscriptions would prove nothing; they may have been taken from an earlier building, or they may quite well be later in date than the invention and use of the Armenian alphabet in the fifth century. Dubois indeed is inclined to ascribe them to a period earlier than the conversion of Tiridates, and to see in them memorials of a Christianity practised in Armenia prior to the preaching of St. Gregory. This conjecture, which is adopted with complacency by Ritter, is probably quite baseless. The inscriptions have quite recently been subjected to the critical scrutiny of a scholar in Byzantine lore. I may refer my reader to his work. They are incised upon two slabs inserted in the wall, rather high up and a little east of the northern apse. The slabs are close together. I was unable to decipher the writing with the aid of my glasses, as the stone has been much worn. The slab with the figures of Paulos and Thekla is attributed by this scholar to the fifth or the sixth century, and its companion to about the same date. His opinion is based upon internal evidence. [156]

It would take too long to pursue a study relying on this kind of testimony into the approximate date of the cathedral. It must suffice to have placed my reader in possession of the leading facts. As regards the evidence of literature as to restorations and additions it is summarised in the accompanying note. [157] If the essential features of the present building be due to the restoration of Vahan Mamikonean (A.D. 483), it will be a work anterior to Justinian. At that time the Armenian architect would not have enjoyed the advantage of studying the designs of the several churches which, according to Procopius, that emperor erected in Western Armenia. [158] It would appear preferable to ascribe these features to the restoration under Komitas (618), if we were obliged to choose between the two. But this and kindred questions respecting the origin of the church and monastery are wrapped in obscurity. At what date did Edgmiatsin become the residence of the katholikos? This cardinal question still remains without a certain answer. We know that he transferred his seat from Vagharshapat to Dvin in the year 452, and that he did not return until 1441. We also know that the seventh century was a period of building activity; after Komitas we have the Katholikos Nerses III. (640-661), surnamed the builder, who erected a magnificent church in close vicinity to the churches of Edgmiatsin and buried the relics of St. Gregory beneath its four colossal pillars. [159] There is no reason to doubt that the four Byzantine capitals which are preserved in the Academy belonged to this edifice. [160] The independence of the national church, so jealously guarded by the Armenians, was intimately bound up with the Edgmiatsin legend; and the pontiffs appear to have spared no pains during the earlier centuries to maintain the holy places and prevent them sharing the fate of the temporal capital, Vagharshapat.

The entrance from the portal to the church is through a rather low doorway, conducting you into the apse-formed projection on the west. The stone panels about and above this doorway are richly carved and show traces of gilding (Fig. 54). In the south wall of the building you are shown an old door, long walled up, which is supposed to date from a hoar antiquity and is called the door of Tiridates. Lastly you will probably be taken to the belfry above the portal and be shown the famous Tibetan bell. It bears the thrice repeated legend Ôm a hum, the mystic formula of the Buddhists. [161] Before the portal are several tombstones, commemorating deceased pontiffs, and among them that of the enlightened Nerses V. One in marble is raised over the remains of Sir John Macdonald, British envoy to the court of Persia. The bald inscription contrasts with the eloquence of the situation under the shadow of this St. Peter's of distant Armenia and among the graves of the highest dignitaries of her national church. [162]

Passing now to the interior (Fig. 55 and plan), it is the form which is impressive--the quadruple apse with a canopy altar in each of these recesses, except that on the west. In the centre, beneath the dome, stands the altar which I have already described; there are therefore four altars in this church. In front of the apse on the east rises the parapet of the daïs, as usual; but the higher level of the floor in those on the north and south is approached by steps which extend from wall to wall. The lateral chapels on the east, which are so constant a feature in Armenian churches, are scarcely noticeable in this building, being, I think, incorporated in the additions which were made by George IV. at the back of the church. The space on the floor of the edifice is railed off in two places from north to south. There is of course no pulpit, and there are no pews. The light falls from twelve little windows in the spacious dome upon a scene which is rendered dim by the darkness of the mural paintings, and which serves to enhance the flashing ornaments on the central altar. I am told that there are in all no less than thirty-five windows; but they are small and insignificant. Their distribution is not subordinate to any plan. The paintings on the walls are of no merit; they represent Biblical subjects, and while some are in fresco, others are on canvas applied to the stone. They must have been added at a comparatively recent date; for we are expressly told by Chardin that in his time the interior was quite bare. The dome has been pleasantly decorated in the Persian style with coloured arabesques. These and the various frescos are attributed to an Armenian artist who lived during the reign of Nadir Shah (1736-47). [163]

The church is large if compared to other ancient Armenian temples, but small if judged by a Western standard. The area enclosed must be rather less than in the case of the cathedral at Ani, although the dimensions are about the same when the four projections are included. The measurements of the interior, which I took myself, give an extreme length of 108 feet 4 inches, and an extreme breadth of just over 98 feet. Each apse has a depth of about 15 feet 3 inches--a dimension which I have included in my totals. [164] In the south apse stands the chest containing the vessel with the holy oil, and beside it a little lamp which flickers night and day. The recess of its opposite counterpart is adorned with mural paintings representing eight full-length portraits of the pillars of the Armenian Church. They are identified as St. Gregory, with his sons Aristakes and Verthanes, and his grandson Grigor; as Yusik, Nerses the First, Sahak and Mesrop. The ceremony of ordination of bishops takes place in this northern apse. A cistern has been sunk below the floor in front of the recess to serve in time of siege. Two thrones are conspicuous in the body of the church, both of which may be discerned in my illustration. The first, which adjoins the central altar, is inscribed with the name of Petros Katholikos (Peter II. 1748) and is said to have been a present from the Pope. [165] The second, situated further east, is that which was occupied by the Katholikos during the service which I attended. It is the gift of Armenians during the pontificate of Astvatsadur (1715-25).

The treasury and room of relics contain many interesting objects. To these chambers is allotted the building on the east of the church. Both are entered from the interior and through doors in the east wall, that on the north of the apse communicating with the treasury, and that on the south with the apartment containing the relics. Among the treasures are several objects which deserve the attention of the student of art, examples of mediæval Armenian craft being, I imagine, none too frequent. I observed a crystal cross, said to belong to the Bagratid period, and some other crosses reputed to have come from Ani. A gold crown, inlaid with jewels, is ascribed to King Tiridates, and, whatever its origin, is a very interesting object. The same may be said of a silver saucer with repoussé figures dating from the pontificate of Nerses IV. (1166-73). There are a quantity of jewelled mitres and embroidered stoles and ornaments for the church. There are seals of the pontiffs and coins of the Rupenian (Cilician) dynasty. Some store is set upon a head of Dionysus which is believed to be of Egyptian origin. The monastery has become possessed of a most curious object in the shape of a huge caldron, standing on three legs, and having as handles four tigers in the act of climbing. It was found not many years ago in a cloister near Tiflis; buried within it was a bell. An inscription round the rim gives the date of the Armenian era 781 or A.D. 1331. In the chamber of relics are preserved a fine collection of episcopal staves surmounted by a cross above a knot of hissing serpents' heads (Fig. 56, Nos. 1 and 2). Many are of exquisite workmanship.

The principal relics are the hand and arm of St. Gregory, preserved in a silver gilt case; the head of the holy spear, reputed to possess the power of staying epidemics; [166] a fragment of the Ark, to which is attached a jewelled cross; the head and arm of St. Thaddeus, the apostle; the hand and arm of St. Jacob of Nisibis; a panel carved with a crucified Christ, said to be the work of St. John the Apostle and to have been procured by Ashot Patricius; finally a box containing relics of St. Ripsime.

The chapels of the martyrs, which are churches rather than chapels, are situated within short walks from the monastery. Thus St. Gaiane is not more than about a quarter of a mile distant in a southerly direction. St. Ripsime is a little further, say three-quarters of a mile; it is placed to the east of Edgmiatsin and is the first building which you see as you drive from Erivan, on the very outskirts of the trees and greenery. Shoghakath is a near neighbour of Ripsime on the side of the great cloister.

Of these the largest and certainly the most interesting is that which commemorates the brave deeds of the beautiful virgin from Rome. In designing the church of the Holy Ripsime the architect has been faithful to the essential features of that of Edgmiatsin--the quadruple apse and the central dome. But the problem before him was how to eliminate the unsightly projections of the apsidal arms, and how to rear the whole fabric by successive stages to the crown of the dome. His solution of the problem, if somewhat rudimentary and fantastic, is certainly successful from the point of view of looks (Fig. 57 and plan). My reader will of course eliminate the portal and belfry in appreciating this piece of architecture. They were added, the portal in 1653 by the Katholikos Philippos, and the belfry in 1790. He will observe that the outer walls compose a rectangular figure; and a moment's reflection will show him that such a figure could only be presented by a stupendous thickening of the wall on either side of each apse. This difficulty has been in part surmounted by the introduction of niches, two for each apsidal recess. These external niches are nearly six feet deep on the north and south sides, a little shallower on the west and east. The treatment of this feature is quite inchoate; but we shall see it in perfection at Ani. At the same time it is evident that provision had to be made for a side chapel on either side of the apse on the east. These have been supplied according to a design which I have not seen elsewhere, although it appears to be repeated in the church of Sion in the valley of the Tana, a tributary of the Kur, erected at the end of the tenth century. [167] Between the four apsidal recesses of the interior are inserted the narrow openings of four circular and much smaller cavities, communicating by doors which are almost imperceptible with rectangular chambers or chapels. Of these chambers the two on the east provide the requirements of the church, while those on the west were probably added for uniformity. [168] The effect of the eight recesses, crowned by a dome of unusual diameter for the size of the structure, [169] is extremely pleasing to the eye; and St. Ripsime is the most impressive ecclesiastical edifice which I have yet presented to my reader. The drum of the dome has sixteen sides; besides the windows which it contains, light is admitted through bold apertures in each of the apsidal recesses. Standing beneath the dome, one admires the great height of the building. The interior measurements are a length of 74 feet 1 inch and a breadth of 58 feet 4 inches.

The question of the date of Ripsime is again not free from difficulty. We know that the Katholikos Komitas rebuilt the church in A.D. 618; [170] nor, so far as I have been able to ascertain, do we possess records of any subsequent change in the plan. Students of architecture may be inclined to assign it to a later period. The tomb of the martyr is placed in a grotto beneath the apse on the east. [171] Just west of the portal there is a low building, serving as a residence for monks, and, adjoining it, an enclosure for cows. Church and cloister are surrounded by a high mud wall, with round towers at the angles.

St. Gaiane is an edifice of much humbler architectural pretensions, which is said to date from the pontificate of Ezra (A.D. 628-640) (Fig. 58 and plan). [172] The porch was added, as we learn from an inscription, in the year 1687 by the Katholikos Eleazar. It serves as a place of burial for the pontiffs and contains many alabaster slabs. On the north side have been inserted in the archway of a wide aperture two old Armenian crosses, framed within an ornamental trophy. Entering the building from this portal we are impressed with its simplicity; and this feeling is enhanced by the absence of all decoration, the beautiful masonry being left without any covering of lime. The architect has wisely dispensed with the quadruple apse, and has contented himself with one. But he has retained the rectangular form of the side chapels, and he has separated them by a wall from the body of the building. Four detached piers support a dome which is much smaller than that of Ripsime, but resembles it in the sense of great height which it lends to the interior. The length of the building is 70 feet 2 inches, and the breadth 47 feet. The vault, containing the grave of Gaiane, is approached from one of the side chapels, and is covered by a simple stone with a little carpet, upon which devotees offer coins. The adjacent cloister consists of a humble building on the south-west. The church is surrounded by tombs. Lying against the north wall are some interesting old stones, one of which is exquisitely sculptured (Fig. 59). It probably constituted a boundary-stone, and may have been brought hither as an offering to the saint. The two figures which are seen in my illustration of the building represent opposite types among the inhabitants of Edgmiatsin. The white-headed abbot on the left belongs to the old school, with habits and standards which are not agreeable or exalted. That on the right is the figure of Dr. Arshak Ter-Mikelean, fresh from the atmosphere of a German university.

The third and smallest of the churches marks the site of the wine-press, where the holy martyrs sojourned and where St. Gregory resided after his release from the pit at Artaxata. It is situated to the north-east of Edgmiatsin and to the west of St. Ripsime. It bears the name of Shoghakath, or Effusion of Light. I was informed that the attendants of Saints Ripsime and Gaiane were buried in a vault on the south side of the apse. [173] In disposition the building resembles St. Gaiane; but it is much longer (58 feet 2 inches) in comparison with its breadth (24 feet 8 inches). We learn from an inscription over the door of the church that the portal was added by the Katholikos Nahapet in A.D. 1693. The belfry is due to the same pontiff; [174] his grave is conspicuous within the portal (Fig. 60 and plan). The dome rests on four massive piers attached to the wall. The joints of the pink and grey stone are visible in the interior, as in the case of the two buildings described; and so admirably are they fitted that one would regret the introduction of any internal decoration. A scrutiny of the exterior reveals the fact that the church has been most carefully restored, stones having been removed here and there and replaced. Brosset informs us that mention is made in certain records of Armenian Councils of the construction by Nerses III. (A.D. 640-649) in the town of Vagharshapat of a church of Shoghakath; but he supposes--it would appear upon inconclusive evidence--that this name is intended to designate the cathedral, Edgmiatsin. [175] If it be taken to refer to the wine-press chapel, then all three edifices will have been rebuilt in the seventh century by the testimony of records. I may add that according to an inscription in the monastery of Uch Kilisa, near Diadin, that cloister was also restored in the seventh century. [176] If the buildings as we now see them were erected in that century, the framework at least of Edgmiatsin must be attributed to an earlier date.

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. [177] 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. [178] 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; [179] 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. [180] 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. [181] 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. [182] The legend of Abgar and his correspondence has provoked the attack of modern criticism and has perished in the unequal affray. [183] 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. [184] 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. [185]

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. [186] 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. [187] 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. [188] 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. [189] 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. [190] 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. [191] 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. [192] 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. [193] 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. [194] 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). [195] 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. [196] 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. [197] 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. [198]

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. [199] 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. [200]

For a period of ten years the war was continued by the Armenian potentate; his capital, Vagharshapat, [201] 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. [202] 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). [203]

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. [204] 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). [205] 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. [206] 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. [207] 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. [208] 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. [209] 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. [210]

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. [211] 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. [212]

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). [213] 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 Chaldia [214] 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, [215] 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; [216] 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, [217] 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. [218] 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. [219] 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. [220]

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. [221] 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. [222] 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. [223] Yet Gregory preached to the Armenians in the Armenian language. [224] Under the shadow of night the devotees of the old religion would adore their divinities and chant the tempestuous epics of their native land. [225] Years elapsed before they would abandon their lamentations for the dead, a practice specially repugnant to the Christian spirit. [226] 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; [227] 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. [228] 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. [229] 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. [230] 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. [231] 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. [232] 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). [233] 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. [234]

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. [235]

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. [236] 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. [237] 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. [238] 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 troops [239] 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. [240]

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.

A deputation of the great barons was forthwith despatched to Constantinople in order to obtain succour from the emperor. Before their return a Persian army was let loose upon Armenia, and those of the inhabitants of every rank who were able to make good their escape took refuge upon Greek territory. The arrival of imperial troops--it is said with the emperor at their head--was shortly followed by a decisive victory and the capture of the harem of the Persian king. That potentate was summoned to restore Tiran to his native country; but, upon the refusal of his blind prisoner to undertake the office, the son of Tiran, Arshak, was placed upon the throne. Two occurrences in the reign of this prince, as it is described by Faustus, may be identified with known events. The one is his connection with the great massacre of Christians in Persia which took place during the reign of Shapur. [241] Our historian attributes the wrath of the Persian monarch to the monstrous perfidy of the Christian sovereign of Armenia. The other is the conclusion of a treaty between the Roman and Persian empires, of which a provision was the engagement on the part of the former power not to offer any assistance to Arshak. These terms are familiar to us from other sources as having been wrung from the commander of the luckless Roman army after the death of Julian. [242]

The reign of Arshak is, indeed, contemporary with the great wars which were waged by Shapur with the power which disputed his supremacy over the East. However little credit we may attach to the narrative of the Armenian historian, it is at least plain that a king who owed his throne to the Cæsars was often their enemy and never their loyal ally. We are told, indeed, that on one occasion his armies violated the Roman territory and advanced as far as Angora; on another that the king himself led his troops against those of the Empire, and fell upon them as they were preparing to receive a Persian attack. When the duel was being waged most fiercely he maintained an attitude of expectant neutrality, waiting to see which of the antagonists would offer him the best terms. The only palliation which we may discover for such a course of outrageous conduct is derived from the obscure notice of a religious persecution, directed against the Armenian pontiff, Nerses, by one of the successors of Constantine. Yet that prelate with true wisdom enjoined resistance to the Persians at a moment when it might well have seemed a desperate course. The king, left to his fate by the provision in the Roman treaty, maintained for awhile a courageous front to the Persian onslaught. But he was at length compelled to sue for peace and to place his person in the power of his enemy under a guarantee of security. His former treachery was requited, as it deserved, by the same treatment; and, while he himself was taken to Persia and consigned to the castle of oblivion, his queen, after a brief resistance, was brought to the presence of Shapur and outraged before the eyes of his army until she expired.

A series of massacres on a large scale and organised by Shapur in person was the sequel of these events. The unfortunate Armenians were collected into large bodies and trampled down under the feet of elephants. The number of the victims is said to have amounted to thousands and tens of thousands of either sex and every age. The great cities, including Artaxata and Vagharshapat, were ruthlessly destroyed. Whole populations, among which were conspicuous the numerous Jewish colonies, were driven off into captivity. From this calamity, which must have occurred after the year 363 and before 379, the Arsakid dynasty does not appear to have recovered. The son of Arshak, by name Pap, was indeed placed upon the throne by the emperor, and reigned for several years. But, like his father, he turned his arms against his protectors the moment they had cleared his frontiers of the inveterate foe. Like his father he coquetted with the Persian power, forgetting the unspeakable insults to which his family had been subjected. He even possessed the effrontery to despatch to the emperor an insulting message, summoning him to restore Edessa and Cæsarea and ten other cities which he averred had belonged to his ancestors. Pap was put to death by imperial order, and another member of the Arsakid family sent to reign in his place. But that prince was expelled by the most valiant of the Armenian chieftains, who proceeded to administer the country in the interests of the sons of Pap. When these had come of age the royal authority was divided between them, while the numerous Persian party among the Armenians selected a rival Arsakid and enlisted in his favour Persian support. Armenian politics were becoming a farce when the rulers of the two great powers arrived at a solution to which both had been provoked. The buffer state was divided between them, the Persians taking the greater portion, and the smaller, including the valley of the Western Euphrates, falling to the Roman Empire (A.D. 387). Phantom kings of Arsakid descent were set up by either power, until in the course of time Persian governors and Greek prefects administered the government in either sphere.

I have anticipated in this brief summary upon the sequel of the ecclesiastical policy pursued by King Tiran. After the murder of the bishop of Taron, whose diocese included Astishat, a priest of the church in this religious centre was elevated to the pontifical dignity and duly consecrated at Cæsarea. He was succeeded by a scion of the House of Albianus--a House of which the founder is mentioned first in the list of bishops chosen by St. Gregory from the ranks of the children of the heathen priests. [243] Meanwhile the sons of Yusik--the terrible progeny given to the world by his bride of a single night--had reached an age which permitted the full indulgence of their wicked appetites in every kind of vice. They are said to have met their death in the pontifical palace, where their wassail was cut short by the angel of God. One of the twins, by name Athenogenes, had already produced an heir; and it was this child who, when he had reached the estate of manhood, was acclaimed katholikos by army and nation during the reign of King Arshak. Nerses--such was his name--had been brought up at Cæsarea, the native city of his contemporary, St. Basil the Great. After an early marriage he adopted the military profession and became chamberlain and counsellor to his king. He is delineated as the ideal of a perfect cavalier--tall and supple of figure, with a face of great beauty, which enlisted the sympathy of both sexes and all classes. Yet the youth wore the flower of a blameless private life; and his high capacities were from the first bestowed upon the intimate care of the poor or afflicted, and the protection of the oppressed. His function at court was to stand behind the person of the king, attired in a rich and elegant robe, and bearing in his hand the royal sword of tried steel with its golden scabbard and belt inlaid with precious stones. Such was the station which he was fulfilling when the nobles and assembled troops approached the steps of the throne. They had come to demand his acceptance of the high office, hereditary in his family; but the embarrassed chamberlain waved them aside. His profession of personal unworthiness was received with laughter; his indignant protests by the clash of shields. Upon his persistence King Arshak gave orders that he should be bound in his presence, and shorn of his long and abundant hair. Many of the bystanders shed tears when the ruthless scissors severed those silky and floating locks. Stripped of his gay apparel, he was made to assume the garb of a priest; and it was difficult to recognise in the face of the deacon, who was being ordained by a venerable bishop, the brave soldier and princely courtier of a few minutes ago. [244]

The national character of the Armenian Church is mainly derived from the institutions of St. Gregory; but it was this Nerses, his direct descendant, who brought it into line with the Church of the Empire in the important sphere of internal development and discipline. The family likeness which it still presents to the neighbouring Greek Church is largely due to this prelate. The monastery is still the pivot of the ecclesiastical organisation; and it was this contemporary, perhaps this disciple of St. Basil of Cæsarea, who spread broadcast cloisters and convents over the land. A single rule was established for the several orders of monks; and the laity were bidden to observe certain wholesome regulations, among which was included abstention from animal food. The poor and the sick were lodged in hospices, and were not allowed to beg; a humane enactment provided that their neighbours should bring them food to their public or private dwellings. In each district was founded a school for the instruction of the people in the Greek and Syriac languages. Every action of the great katholikos bears the imprint of a high purpose, and overwelling zeal. That purpose was to conquer the lusts of a full-blooded and intemperate people by subduing their unruly bodies and fanning into life the spark of the soul. But just in the execution of this lofty project he was brought into conflict with the king, and the fate of his grandfather stared him in the face. The son of Tiran was indeed the son of that obstinate sinner, nor was Nerses less inflexible than Yusik. Perhaps the monarch acted with design, and wished to divide his people into separate communities of the black and the white sheep. The saints might be handed over to the sway of their prince-prelate; over the sinners his own prerogative would remain supreme. He proclaimed an edict which enacted that every debtor or accused person, those who had shed the blood or taken the property of their neighbours, should assemble in an appointed place, where no law would be allowed to touch them and each man might lead his life after his own guise. [245] To that haven beyond their dreams flocked the company of the unrighteous--women with the husbands of other women, and men with the wives of other men. The brigands and the assassins and the unjust judges and the perjured witnesses, all collected at the given tryst. The place was at first a village; but it soon prospered, and became a town, which again extended until it filled an entire valley. Then the king built a palace in the midst of his congenial subjects and called the city by his own name (Arshakavan). Upon the return of the katholikos--he is said to have been exiled by a Roman emperor; but his vicar during his absence had not betrayed his trust--this truly original and royal solution of the problem of joint government was vigorously arraigned. The pontiff taxed the monarch with having founded a second Sodom; but, relenting to a mood of greater amiability, he suggested that the sovereign might continue to reside in his city if he would entrust its management into the hands of the katholikos. The rejection of this kind proposal was shortly followed by the outbreak of a malady, which decimated the inhabitants. The king was constrained to sue for pardon from the saint and to disband his colony. The quarrel broke out anew when the inveterate profligate shed the blood of a subject and espoused his beautiful wife. Nerses left the court and did not return. Arshak, in open defiance, appointed a katholikos in his stead--a certain Chunak, who was nothing better than one of his minions. He could not hope that his action might be endorsed at Cæsarea; so he summoned all the bishops of his own country and bade them consecrate the object of his choice. Only two could be persuaded to perform the ceremony; and these were perhaps pensioners of the king. [246]

The full activity of the lawful pontiff was not resumed until after the calamity which resulted in the bondage of his old enemy and the seclusion of Arshak in the castle of oblivion. The accession of Pap was attended by the presentation of a solemn petition, in which sovereign and nation craved the assistance of their true pastor. Nerses devoted his energies to the restoration of the churches which had been destroyed by Shapur. But the son of Arshak was quite as licentious, although less capable than his father; and he is said to have added to the sum of the delinquencies of his predecessor the habitual practice of unspeakable vice. The monster was forbidden entry even into the porch of the church; and he retaliated by poisoning the katholikos with a cup of peace which, in token of repentance, he tendered with his own hand. The death of Nerses, which occurred not later than the year 374, [247] marks an epoch in the history of the Church.

On the one hand its emoluments were considerably curtailed; on the other--and this is a fact with the most far-reaching consequences--it was dissevered for good and all from the Church of the Empire. It is quite evident that Nerses failed to gauge correctly the temper of his countrymen; and it was the defect of his undoubted virtues that he at once endeavoured to go too far and to accomplish too much. The reaction from his severe ordinances enabled the king to proceed unhindered in the work of overthrowing the structure which his victim had reared. The hospices were abolished, the convents were destroyed and their inmates given over to prostitution. Moreover the greater portion of the lands bestowed upon the Church by Tiridates were appropriated by the State. Of each seven domains belonging to the former institution the revenues of five were allotted to the Treasury. Nor can we doubt that popular support was forthcoming for the revolution which the monarch initiated in the relations with the Greek Church. The Armenians have at all periods approved a national policy, and preferred to perish than unite with their neighbours. A bishop of the House of Albianus, always obsequious to the throne, was invested with the vacant primacy. The consent of Cæsarea was not even applied for, nor was the bishop despatched to the capital of the province of Cappadocia for consecration in accordance with the usual custom. With the possible exception of the two sons of St. Gregory and, of course, of the pseudo-katholikos, Chunak, each successive holder of the pontifical office, including the Illuminator, had been in the habit of proceeding with great pomp through the territory of the Empire to the steps of the episcopal throne in the Greek city. It was there that the chosen of the Armenians bowed his head before a prelate who loomed in the eyes of his countrymen as the living embodiment of the authority of the Church of Christ. The defiance offered him by the king was accepted by Basil in a similar spirit. He called together all the members of the provincial synod of Cæsarea, without inviting the nominee of King Pap. A violent despatch was addressed to the Armenian bishops and a similar one to the king. The right of consecrating bishops was taken away from the katholikos, and he was left the single prerogative of blessing bread at the court of the king. The result of this hot temper upon either side was a bitter conflict in the Armenian Church itself. The clergy were divided into followers of the king and the House of Albianus, and those who held to the necessity of consecration in Cæsarea and to allegiance to the House of Gregory. [248] The subsequent lapse of the greater part of Armenia under Persian influence promoted the policy initiated by Pap; and when, towards the close of the century, the chair was again occupied by a descendant of St. Gregory, the link with Cæsarea was not restored.

There can, I think, be no doubt that the story of the foundation of the Armenian Church by a direct mandate of Christ Himself was invented not earlier than the period at which we have now arrived. The mandate is said to have taken the form of an injunction to St. Gregory to build the church of Vagharshapat. Neither the author of the Life of the Illuminator, as we can trace that source through the Agathangelus treatise, nor the historian who continues his narrative, displays any cognisance with such a momentous event. The former tells us that it was at Astishat in the south of Armenia, the country of the Murad, that Gregory built the first Christian church. The cult of martyrs which he first introduced was not the cult of the Ripsimians but that of St. John the Baptist and Athenogenes. We learn from the latter that after the death of the saint, and at least down to the murder of Nerses, the mother-church of Armenia was situated at Astishat and not at Edgmiatsin. Faustus, indeed, expresses himself not once alone or in a doubtful manner upon this important point. Astishat contains the "first and great mother of Armenian churches," "the first and greatest of all the churches of Armenia, the principal and most honoured seat of the Christian religion." It was at Astishat that was situated the palace of the katholikos. The great synod which was convoked by Nerses of all Armenian bishops was held at Astishat. When that prelate wished to chide the chief of the king's eunuchs for casting covetous glances upon the wide domains which surrounded the church, he quoted the scriptural injunction against such ignoble conduct, and added that such was the will of Jesus Christ, "Whose choice had first fallen upon the church at Astishat for the glorification of His Name." [249] On the other hand, I cannot help detecting in these passages indications that their author was aware of the growing rivalry of the church at Edgmiatsin. Faustus wrote after the severance from Cæsarea and after the partition of Armenia (A.D. 387). He displays acquaintance with the Ripsimian legend. But there is no trace in his pages of a knowledge of the vision of St. Gregory upon which Edgmiatsin has founded her claim.

As time went on, several causes, which perhaps we may distinguish, contributed to widen further the breach with the Church of the Empire. The Persian occupation and the ultimate removal of the Arsakid dynasty, whose hereditary blood feud with the House of Sasan had long embittered the antagonism of the peoples, were no small factors in an estrangement from Greek influences which the policy of Persia lost no occasion of promoting. The invention by Mesrop of an Armenian alphabet, [250] and the institution of a school of translators during the pontificate of the son of Nerses, Isaac the Great (c. 390-439), constitute elements which, while they worked for the attachment of the Armenians to Greek culture and for the wider propagation of Christianity, were yet calculated to foster the strong proclivities of this people towards complete religious independence. Lastly--if indeed there be an end to such a catalogue, in which each item is as much an effect as a cause--the peculiar genius of the Armenian nation imprinted a stamp upon the dogma of their Church which was not the stamp sanctioned by that of the Empire.

The Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) addressed itself to the solution of the problems which were the natural outcome of the dogma adopted at the Council of Nice. What was the true view of the mystery expressed by the words of the formula: Son of God, of one nature with the Father, Who came down from heaven and took flesh and became man? How explain the character of the union of God with man in the person of Christ? Over the answer which should be returned to this question conflicts arose which destroyed thousands of innocent people, and which prepared the way for the disappearance of the Roman Empire from the map of Asia, and for the triumph of Islam. The compromise adopted at Chalcedon is difficult to place in a short sentence; but perhaps no essential feature is omitted in the following phrase: Christ according to His Godhead is of one nature with the Father, according to His humanity is, apart from sin, of one nature with us. This one and the same Christ is recognised in two natures indissolubly united but yet distinct. The Armenians were not represented at this Council; [251] and, indeed, it is contemporary with the fierce religious persecutions directed against them by Yezdegerd II. But, when once the unfortunate nation, or what remained after the orgy of the fire-worshippers, had settled down to a more peaceful routine, they proceeded to hold a synod of their own, which assembled at Vagharshapat (A.D. 491), and which with all solemnity cursed the Council of Chalcedon. This procedure was repeated at several subsequent synods; nor has the bitterness which was consequent upon this open breach with the Church of the West subsided at the present day. At Edgmiatsin, the seat of this synod, held fourteen centuries ago, I was informed that the Armenian Church expressly rejects Chalcedon; and the emphasis of language was underlined by the tone of the voice. The Armenians therefore differ both with the Greek and with the Roman Church in their expression of the mystery of Christology. They will not hear of two natures. They hold that in Christ there is one person and one nature, one will and one energy; and their liturgy presents this dogma in an impressive manner in the Trisagion, which runs: "O God, holy God, mighty God, everlasting God, who wast crucified for us." [252] At the same time they deny and denounce the teaching of Eutyches, protagonist against the Nestorians. Eutyches held that the body of Christ is not to be regarded as of one nature with ours; the Armenians maintain that God became man in the fullest sense. [253]

One might argue this question to all eternity; but one feels that the Greeks were the subtler disputants. The Armenians, like the Persian Mohammedans, would appear to be averse to abstractions; they go, perhaps, to extremes in the concreteness of their conception of God--a God-man in the crudest sense. This Christology has probably embodied the sentiments of the people; but it had the effect of estranging them not only with the Church of the Empire, but also with the great body of their fellow-Christians of different nationality within the Persian dominions. At the synod of Beth Lapat (A.D. 483 or 484) the old Christian Church of Persia welcomed into its bosom the flying forces of Nestorianism, and adopted the Nestorian confession. The Georgians, it is true, followed the lead of the Armenians, with whom their Church was directly connected. But these allies broke away before the close of the sixth century, and went over to the teaching of Chalcedon. As the centuries rolled by, these various breaches became wider, and they are still marked features in the Christianity of the East. Martyrdom and political slavery were alternatives which were gladly accepted rather than compromise dogmatic and doctrinal differences. When Heraclius visited Armenia after replacing the Cross in the churches of Jerusalem, the Armenians refused to camp with his troops. In the Middle Ages, when the Sasanians were already forgotten, when the caliphs, their successors, were approaching their doom, the stubborn hierarchy insisted upon baptizing babes a second time if the ceremony had been performed by a Greek priest. All attempts to effect a union--and they have been many and serious--have invariably failed. The more attractive the offers of the Greeks, the greater grew the hatred of them; nor have the popes met with better success. They have added costly objects to the treasury at Edgmiatsin; the result remains a blank. When we reflect that this obstinate people are as intelligent as any in the world in the various pursuits of civilised life, our anger at such conduct, which gave away the cause of civilisation, may be tempered by a different feeling. The Armenians have fought at all hazards to preserve their individuality, and the bulk of the nation have perished in the attempt. The remnant may be destined, like the son of Anak, to redress the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the common Christian weal. On the other hand, the lesson which is taught by history is that no nation and no Christianity will succeed with the Armenians which endeavours to deflect them from their own opinions and to preclude them from working out their own salvation in their own way. [254]