Armenian Christianity

JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

Although there may have been missionaries working in Armenia from earlier times (Dionysius of Alexandria speaks in a letter of 260 ce about Bishop Meruzanes of Arme­nia [Eusebius, H.E. 6.46.2] and also tells that the Armenians were Christian in the time of Maximin’s persecution in 312: H.E. 9.8.2.), the Armenian Church symbol­ically traces its evangelization to the work of St. Gregory the Illuminator, who was ordained by the archbishop of Cappadocia in Caesarea in 314 and who baptized the Armenian King Trdat IV (Tiridates, r. 298–330). Later traditions also speak of the mission of the apostles Bartholomew and Thaddeus in the country. The Armenian relationship with Cappadocia was always close in ancient times, which itself was a see that had strong links with Syrian Church traditions. The history of the Church of Georgia was at times also closely bound up with it, until divergences over the Council of Chalcedon in the 6th century drove them apart. The chief see of the new Armenian Church was settled by Gregory at Ashtishat near Lake Van, and for a considerable time after him the office of senior bishop, or Catholicos, was held in succession by members of his own family. In 390 the Byzantine and Persian empires subjugated Armenia, which lay at the critical juncture between both of them (a liminal fate which accounted for many of its later vicissitudes) and divided its territories among themselves, in the ratio of 20 percent western regions falling to Byzantine control, and 80 percent enclosed in the Persian Empire. At this time the pri- matial see was removed to Etchmiadzin near Mount Ararat, as recounted in the history of Agathangelos. The name derives from the Armenian for “Descent place of the Only Begotten” and relates to a story that St. Gregory the Illuminator had once had a vision of the Lord and an instruction that this site would one day become important for the church. The impressive cathedral built at this site was erected on the base of an ancient Zoroastrian fire temple.

After its inclusion in the two world empires of the day, the Armenian kingly line in the Byzantine (western) territories of Armenia was suppressed first, followed by the forced ending of the kingly line in the Persian territories in 428. Since that time Armenia has been the subject of a long line of subjugations: to the Persians, Arabs, Turks, and most recently the Russians. The first three overlords had no regard for the Christian traditions of the people, and the last had little desire for any cultural independence or (in communist times) for any religious renais­sance. The religious literary and political aspirations of the Armenians have been sustained through long centuries of endur­ance in extraordinary ways. In the 20th cen­tury this involved the survival of genocide under Turkish rule (1915–22) and political suffocation under the Soviets. The reestablishment of a free political base in the modern Republic of Armenia (much diminished in territorial size from Antiq­uity) and the well-developed Armenian diaspora in the United States have proven to be bright lights in the turn of Armenian fortunes in modern times.

Among many outstanding Armenian Christian leaders throughout the ages must be counted St. Nerses (d. 373), who was the sixth catholicos and a direct descendant of St. Gregory. He was educated in Cappadocian Caesarea and served at the royal Armenian court before becoming a priest after the death of his wife. After his election as catholicos ca. 363, he initiated a large-scale reform of the church; issuing many canons after the Council of Ashtishat in 365, concerning fasting regulations, and the forbidding of marriages in kindred degrees. His stand against the Arians, the resistance of many of the court nobles to the spread of Christianity, and the use of monastics in the evangelization process, are described in the 5th-century historical writings of P’awstos Buzand. Nerses founded hospitals and orphanages set under church supervision. King Arshak III deposed him after being the focus of Nerses’ criticism for a dissolute life. His successor King Pap restored him in 369, but in turn decided to dispose of him when he too was criticized for immorality; which he did by the expedient of poisoning Nerses during a banquet. He was succeeded by his son, St. Isaac (Sahak) the Great, who was cathol­icos between ca. 397 and 438 and who was the last descendant of the bloodline of Gregory the Illuminator. It was during the reign of Pap that Armenia first stopped seeking the recognition of the metropoli­tans of Cappadocian Caesarea for the appointment of its catholicoi, and thus assumed an autonomous ecclesiastical existence.

St. Mesrob Mashtots (ca. 361–439) was for a long time the assistant bishop to St. Isaac and became the locum tenens after his death, for six months before his own death. He invented the distinctive national Armenian script, which was widely adopted after 406, as part of his lifelong concern to remove Syrian dependence in Armenian church life and establish national traditions and styles. From the 5th century onwards there was a large effort led by St. Mesrob and his disciples to translate Christian liter­ature from other cultures into it, chief among which were the translations of the Bible in 410 (using Syriac manuscripts and later Greek exemplars) as well as key litur­gical texts. In patristic times many of the church’s writings were translated into Armenian, and as a result some theological texts now survive only in the Armenian versions that were made in Antiquity. Important examples of this are the Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching of St. Irenaeus and several of the opera of St. Ephrem the Syrian. Armenia first entered international Christian debate in the time of Mesrob, whose disciples had been to Melitene to study Greek, and who were well aware that the city’s bishop, Acacius of Melitene, had written in the strongest terms after the Ephesine council of 431 to protest the Constantinopolitan and Alexandrian denigration of the works of Mar Theodore Mopsuestia, a leading light of the Syrian Church. Proclos, patri­arch of Constantinople 434–46, wrote a Tome to the Armenians which became an important standard of Christological orthodoxy in Armenia and was long used afterwards as a significant reason to negate the influence of Chalcedon.

Because of the political unrest in the country during a rebellion of 451, there were no Armenian representatives at the Council of Chalcedon, though the Arme­nian Church authorities were kept apprized of developments and approved the Henoticon of Emperor Zeno at the Council of Dvin in 506. In 518 the Byzantine Church condemned the Henoticon, but it was not until 555, two years after Justinian’s revi­sionist christological council, that the Armenian hierarchy decided that it would not endorse Chalcedon as a significant, ecumenical synod, nor adopt the “two- nature after the Union” theology which it had proposed as a standard. At that time the Armenian synod issued a censure of the Byzantine Church, explicitly condemning the theological errors of “both poles” of the debate: namely, Severus of Antioch, and Eutyches, on the one hand, and Theodore Mopsuestia, Nestorius, and the Council of Chalcedon, on the other. Since that time Armenian Christianity has often been categorized by commentators in the Byzantine Orthodox tradition as among the “Oriental Orthodox” anti-Chalcedonians, or “Monophysites,” but this is a mislead­ing oversimplification on both fronts. The formal christological position of the church is to endorse the Christology of the first three ecumenical councils, prioritizing St. Cyril of Alexandria’s early formula: “One Physis of the Word of God Incarnate” (Miaphysitism, which meant in Cyril’s hands “One concrete reality of the Incarnate Word of God,” not so much an endorsement of a “singularity of nature” which is often meant by the later term “Monophysitism”). Seventh-century Byzantine emperors tried to reconcile the ecclesiastical division with Armenia, but their efforts were hindered by the Arab Islamic overrunning of the regions after the late 8th century. The ecumenical moves to rapprochement from this time are described in a very important Armenian Church history known as the Narratio de rebus Armeniae (Garitte 1952).

Although Persian followed by Arab suzerainty covered the country for most of the next 700 years, the Bagratids managed to establish an independent Christian king­dom in Armenia from the end of the 9th century until the 11th. In the 10th century the Byzantine Empire regained control over much former Armenian territory and began to consecrate Chalcedonian bishops, but this did not have much effect in bringing about church union. This renewed political influence from the empire came to an end after the devastating Byzantine defeat by the Turks at Manzikert in 1072. After that time increasing contacts with the Crusader forces in Asia Minor and Cilicia, where large Armenian settlements had been established, caused the Armenian Church to look more than it had done hitherto to the Latin Christian world.

St. Nerses IV (1102–73), known as Nerses Snorhali the Graceful, was catholicos in 1166 at Cilicia and is one of the most renowned Armenian Church writers, producing lyrical poetry on the events of salvation his­tory, including a masterpiece widely known in Armenia from its opening lines: “Jesus Only Son of the Father.” In his lifetime St. Nerses was a strong advocate of union between the Armenian and Byzantine Orthodox. His negotiations with the emperors Manuel and Michael I were continued after his death by Catholicos Gregory IV (1173–93), who summoned a council at Hromkla in 1179 where Armenian bishops from Greater Armenia, Cilicia, Syria, and Asia Minor responded favorably to the prospect of reunion. Nerses the Graceful’s nephew, Nerses of Lambron, another of the great ecclesiastic poets of Armenia, also advocated the idea of union.

The Armenian Prince Leo was instru­mental, however, in seeking closer ties with the West, hoping that Armenian polit­ical independence, and a kingly line, might be reestablished with western military assis­tance. Leo was crowned, with the support of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI and Pope Celestine III, on January 6, 1198, and this small independent kingdom, known as Little Armenia, lasted from the end of the 12th century until 1375. The Latinization process led by the king and the catholicos, chiefly in the Cilician region, met with con­siderable opposition from the churches in Greater Armenia. Knights Templars and the Teutonic Knights supplied military protec­tion to Armenia against the Turks, but the Mamluk Muslims won a decisive victory in 1260 and, when Hromkla, the ecclesiastic center, was captured in 1292, Catholicos Stephen moved to exile in Egypt. His suc­cessor, Catholicos Gregory VII, transferred the central seat of the catholicate to Sis (Antelias in Lebanon) and summoned a council there in 1307 which accepted many of the terms Rome had dictated for union. Resulting schisms among the Armenians over this issue caused among other things the institution of a separate Armenian patriarchate of Jerusalem, which has had a distinguished history up to pre­sent times in the Armenian quarter of the Old City. In the later 14th and early 15th centuries there was a flowering of Armenian theology and philosophy, especially among pro-Roman Armenian writers, seen most notably in the works of Gregory Tat’evaci and his Book of Questions, which has a similar status in Armenian Church literature that John of Damascus had among the Byzantines, summing up a long tradition synthetically.

In 1307 the hierarchy of Little Armenia entered into formal relations with the patri­archate of Rome following the Council of Sis, a union that was reaffirmed at the Council of

Florence (1438–9), though this settlement was not endorsed at the time by any Arme­nian council. The clergy and people of Greater Armenia, however, did not accept the union, and after their experience of dis­cussions at the Council of Florence, where the westerners had set out a program for sacramental observance by the Armenians (the text of the Pro Armenis), they decided to reestablish the line of independent catholicoi at Etchmiadzin in 1441. The catholicate at Sis entered a long period of relative political decline. The site was destroyed after the genocide in the early 20th century, and from the 1930s Antelias in Lebanon became the administrative center of the catholicate of Cilicia.

The Armenian Church in the period after the Middle Ages continued to be influenced by both Latin and Byzantine currents. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Armenian bishop of the city rose in impor­tance. After the 18th century he was recog­nized by the sultans as ethnarch of all the Armenian peoples in the Ottoman Empire. By this time Constantinople had become a major city where Armenian culture flourished. Venice, too, which provided printing presses for Armenian literature, was particularly significant in the 16th and 18th centuries in consolidating the Armenian religious and literary culture anew. After the Ottoman collapse, Constan­tinople quickly dwindled in significance, although Jerusalem remained until the 20th century as a significant center of Armenian affairs and pilgrimage center until demographic changes reduced its Armenian population drastically.

The issue of having disparate catholicates continued into the modern era, providing a polarized “sense of belonging” in the affairs of the Armenian Church, which has only had the occasion of being addressed more strenuously among the Armenians in very recent times. Apart from the Catholic

Armenian communities, the Armenian Orthodox Church currently has the cathol- icate of Etchmiadzin in the Armenian Republic, as the dominant leadership center, and the catholicate of the Great House of Cilicia (currently with a jurisdictional remit over Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Greece, Iran, and parts of Canada and the Americas), along with two subordinate patriarchates (Constantinople and Jerusalem).

Armenian Church art used the fresco extensively, but the cult of icons was never developed as significantly as in Byzantium, and the cross (especially in the form of distinctive stone carvings) received a higher focal symbolism. Armenian Church build­ing styles are very distinctive. The balance of pro-Roman Armenians to the Greater Armenian Church (sometimes called the “Gregorian Armenians” by Latin commen­tators) is now estimated as in the ratio of approximately 100,000 to something over 5 million.

The Armenian clergy are divided into two classes, the vardapets (doctors) from whose ranks the bishops are normally selected, who are easily recognized from their high-pointed cowls, and the parish priests who marry before ordination unless they chose the monastic lifestyle. Liturgically, they follow the ancestral liturgical tradition of the Church of Cappadocia, following the Gregorian calendar since 1923 (except at Jerusalem) and using St. Basil’s Liturgy in Armenian. Unleavened bread is used and communion is given under two species by intinction. There are several later Latin influences in the ritual. The common priestly vestment is the shurjar, which is reminiscent of the Latin cope, and the bishops wear the pointed mitre. In accordance with the earliest level of Eastern Christian liturgical observances, Christmas is not celebrated in late December as a separate festival, but is part of the Theophany celebrations that last over the week following January 6.

The catholicate of Etchmiadzin operates two seminaries at present, one at Lake Van and the other at Etchmiadzin; while the Great House of Cilicia organizes a seminary in Lebanon. There are other seminaries at Jerusalem and in New York State (St. Nerses, at New Rochelle, which collab­orates in its instructional program with St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary).

SEE ALSO: Georgia, Patriarchal Orthodox Church of

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Arpee, L. (1946) A History of Armenian Christianity from the Beginning to Our Own Time. New York: Armenian Missionary Association of America.

Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E. A. (eds.) (1997) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Garitte, G. (ed.) (1952) Narratio de Rebus Armeniae: Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Orientalium. Vol. 132, Subsidia. 4. Rome.

Ormanian, M. (1910) L’Eglise armenienne: sonhistoire, sa doctrine, son regime, sa discipline, sa liturgie, son present. Paris: E. Leroux. Sarkissian, K. (1975) The Council of Chalcedon and the Armenian Church, 2nd edn. New York: Armenian Prelacy Press.