Chapter XII: Applications (5)

The campaigns of Lucullus and Pompey brought Rome into delicate relations with Parthia. Armenia, although politically dependent upon Rome, was connected with Parthia by geographical position, a common language and faith, intermarriage and similarity of arms and dress. It had never been Hellenized, as the provinces of Asia Minor had been; the Roman provincial system was never applied to it; and the policy of Rome towards it was never consistent. The country became the field upon which the East and West contended for mastery, and the struggle ended for a time in the partition of Armenia, A.D. 387, between Rome and Persia. The Roman portion was soon added to the Diocesis Pontica. The Persian portion, Pers-Armenia, remained a vassal state under an Arsacid prince until 428. It was afterwards governed by Persian and Armenian noblemen selected by the "great king," and entitled _marzbans_. Before the partition, Tiridates, converted by St Gregory, "the Illuminator," had established Christianity as the religion of the state, and set an example followed later by Constantine. After the partition, the invention of the Armenian alphabet, and the translation of the Bible into the vernacular, 410, drew the Armenians together, and the discontinuance of Greek in the Holy Offices relaxed the ecclesiastical dependence on Constantinople, which ceased entirely when the Patriarch, 491, refused to accept the decrees of the council of Chalcedon. The rule of the _marzbans_ was marked by relentless persecution of the Christians, forced conversions to Magism, frequent insurrections and the rise to importance of the great families founded by men of Assyrian, Parthian, Persian, Syrian and Jewish origin, and in some cases of royal blood, who had been governors of districts, or holders of fiefs under the Arsacids. Amongst the _marzbans_ were Jewish Bagratids and Persian Mamegonians; and one of the latter family, Vartan, made himself independent (571-578), with Byzantine aid. In 632 the victories of Heraclius restored Armenia to the Byzantines; but the war that followed the Arab invasion, 636, left the country in the hands of the caliphs, who set over it Arab and Armenian governors (_ostikans_). One of the governors, the Bagratid Ashod I., was crowned king of Armenia by the caliph Motamid, 885, and founded a dynasty which ended with Kagig II. in 1079. A little later the Ardzrunian Kagig, governor of Vaspuragan or Van, was crowned king of that province by the caliph Moktadir, 908, and his descendants ruled at Van and Sivas until 1080. The Bagratids founded dynasties at Kars, 962-1080, and in Georgia, which they held until its absorption, 1801, by Russia. From 984 to 1085 the country from Diarbekr to Melasgerd was ruled under the suzerainty first of Arabs then of Byzantines and Seljuks, by the Mervanid dynasty of Kurds, called princes of Abahuni ([Greek: Apachouvaes]). The Arab invasion drove many Armenian noblemen to Constantinople, where they intermarried with the old Roman families or became soldiers of fortune. Artavasdes, an Arsacid, usurped the Byzantine throne for two years; Leo V., an Ardzrunian, and John Zimisces, became emperors; whilst Manuel, the Mamegonian, and others were amongst the best generals of the empire. In 991, and again in 1021, Basil II. invaded Armenia, and in the latter year Senekherim, king of Vaspuragan, exchanged his kingdom for Sivas and its territory, where he settled down with many Armenian emigrants. Basil's policy was to make the great Armenian fortresses, garrisoned by imperial troops, the first line of defence on his eastern frontier; but it failed in the hands of his feeble successors, who thought more of converting heretical Armenia than of defending its frontier. The king of Ani, Kagig II., was compelled to exchange his kingdom for estates in Cappadocia. The country was raided by Seljuks and harried by Byzantine soldiers, and the miseries of the people were regarded as gain to the Orthodox church. After the defeat and capture of Romanus IV. by Alp Arslan, 1071, Armenia formed part of the Seljuk empire until it split up, 1157, into petty states, ruled by Arabs, Kurds and Seljuks, who were in turn swept away by the Mongol invasion, 1235. For more than three centuries after the appearance of the Seljuks, Armenia was traversed by a long succession of nomad tribes whose one aim was to secure good pasturage for their flocks on their way to the richer lands of Asia Minor. The cultivators were driven from the plains, agriculture was destroyed, and the country was seriously impoverished when its ruin was completed by the ravages and wholesale butcheries of Timur. Many Armenians fled to the mountains, where they embraced Islam, and intermarried with the Kurds, or purchased security by paying blackmail to Kurdish chiefs. Others migrated to Cappadocia or to Cilicia, where the Bagratid Rhupen had founded, 1080, a small principality which, gradually extending its limits, became the kingdom of Lesser Armenia. This Christian kingdom in the midst of Moslem states, hostile to the Byzantines, giving valuable support to the leaders of the crusades, and trading with the great commercial cities of Italy, had a stormy existence of about 300 years. Internal disorders, due to attempts by the later Lusignan kings to make their subjects conform to the Roman Church, facilitated its conquest by Egypt, 1375. The memory of Kiligia (Cilicia) is enshrined in a popular song, and at Zeitun, in the recesses of Mount Taurus, a small Armenian community has hitherto maintained almost complete independence. After the death of Timur, Armenia formed part of the territories of the Turkoman dynasties of Ak- and Kara-Kuyunli, and under their milder rule the seat of the Catholicus, which, during the Seljuk invasion, had been moved first to Sivas, and then to Lesser Armenia, was re-established, 1441, at Echmiadzin.

Under Turkey.

In 1514, the Persian campaign of Selim I. gave Armenia to the Osmanli Turks, and its reorganization was entrusted to Idris, the historian, who was a Kurd of Bitlis. Idris found the rich arable lands almost deserted, and the mountains bristling with the castles of independent chieftains, of Kurd, Arab and Armenian descent, between whom there were long-standing feuds. He compelled the Kurds to settle on the vacant lands, and divided the country into small sanjaks which in the plains were governed by Turkish officials, and in the mountains by local chiefs. This policy gave rest to the country, but favoured the growth of Kurd influence and power, which by 1534 had spread westwards to Angora. Armenia was invaded by the Persians in 1575, and again in 1604, when Shah Abbas transplanted many thousand Armenians from Julfa to his new capital Isfahan. In 1639, the province of Erivan, which included Echmiadzin, was assigned by treaty to Persia, and it remained in her hands until it passed to Russia, 1828, under the treaty of Turkman-chai. The Turko-Russian War of 1828-29, which advanced the Russian frontier to the Arpa Chai, was followed by a large emigration of Armenians from Turkish to Russian territory, and a smaller exodus took place after the war of 1877-78, which gave Batum, Ardahan and Kars to Russia. In 1834 the independent power of the Kurds in Armenia was greatly curtailed; and risings under Bedr Khan Bey in 1843, and Sheik Obeidullah in 1880, were firmly suppressed.

Gregorian Armenians.

After the capture of Constantinople, 1453, Mahommed II. organized his non-Moslem subjects in communities, or _millets_, under ecclesiastical chiefs to whom he gave absolute authority in civil and religious matters, and in criminal offences that did not come under the Moslem religious law. Under this system the Armenian bishop of Brusa, who was appointed patriarch of Constantinople by the sultan, became the civil, and practically the ecclesiastical head of his community (_Ermeni millet_), and a recognized officer of the imperial government with the rank of vizier. He was assisted by a council of bishops and clergy, and was represented in each province by a bishop. This _imperium in imperio_ secured to the Armenians a recognized position before the law, the free enjoyment of their religion, the possession of their churches and monasteries, and the right to educate their children and manage their municipal affairs. It also encouraged the growth of a community life, which eventually gave birth to an intense longing for national life. On the other hand it degraded the priesthood. The priests became political leaders rather than spiritual guides, and sought promotion by bribery and intrigue. Education was neglected and discouraged, servility and treachery were developed, and in less than a century the people had become depraved and degraded to an almost incredible extent. After the issue, 1839, of the _hatt-i-skerif_ of Gul-khaneh, the tradesmen and artisans of the capital freed themselves from clerical control. Under regulations, approved by the sultan in 1862, the patriarch remained the official representative of the community, but all real power passed into the hands of clerical and lay councils elected by a representative assembly of 140 members. The "community," which excluded Roman Catholics and Protestants, was soon called the "nation," "domestic" became "national" affairs, and the "representative" the "national" assembly.

Roman Catholics.

The connexion of "Lesser Armenia" with the Western powers led to the formation, 1335, of an Armenian fraternity, "the Unionists," which adopted the dogmas of the Roman church, and at the council of Florence, 1439, was entitled the "United Armenian Church." Under the millet system the unionists were frequently persecuted by the patriarchs, but this ended in 1830, when, at the intervention of France, they were made a community (_Katoluk millet_), with their own ecclesiastical head. The Roman Catholics, through the works issued by the Mechitharists at Venice, have greatly promoted the progress of education and the development of Armenian literature. They are most numerous at Constantinople, Angora and Smyrna.

Protestants.

The Protestant movement, initiated at Constantinople by American missionaries in 1831, was opposed by the patriarchs and Russia. In 1846 the patriarch anathematized all Armenians with Protestant sympathies, and this led to the formation of the "Evangelical Church of the Armenians," which was made, after much opposition from France and Russia, a community (_Protestant millet_), at the instance of the British ambassador. The missionaries afterwards founded colleges on the Bosporus, at Kharput, Marsivan and Aintab, to supply the needs of higher university education, and they opened good schools for both sexes at all their stations. Everywhere they supplied the people with pure, wholesome literature, and represented progress and religious liberty.

Modern Armenian question.

When Abd-ul-Hamid came to the throne of Turkey in 1876, the condition of the Armenians was better than it had ever been under the Osmanlis; but with the close of the war of 1877-78 came the "Armenian Question." By the treaty of San Stefano, Turkey engaged to Russia to carry out reforms "in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Kurds and Circassians." By the treaty of Berlin, 13th of July 1878, a like engagement to the six signatory powers was substituted for that to Russia. By the Cyprus convention, 4th of June 1878, the sultan promised Great Britain to introduce necessary reforms "for the protection of the Christians and other subjects of the Porte" in the Turkish territories in Asia. The Berlin treaty encouraged the Armenians to look to the powers, and not to Russia for protection; and the convention, which did not mention the Armenians, was regarded as placing them under the special protection of Great Britain. This impression was strengthened by the action of England at Berlin in insisting that Russia should evacuate the occupied territory before reforms were introduced, and so removing the only security for their introduction. The presentation of identic and collective notes to the Porte by the powers, in 1880, produced no result, and in 1882 it was apparent that Turkey would only yield to compulsion. In 1881 a circular note from the British ministry to the five powers was evasively answered, and in 1883 Prince Bismarck intimated to the British government that Germany cared nothing about Armenian reforms and that the matter had better be allowed to drop. Russia had changed her policy towards the Armenians, and the other powers were indifferent. The so-called "Concert of Europe" was at an end, but British ministries continued to call the attention of the sultan to his obligations under the treaty of Berlin.

Russian policy.

Russia began to interest herself in the Armenians when she acquired Georgia in 1801; but it was not until 1828-1829 that any appreciable number of them became her subjects. She found them necessary to the development of her new territories, and allowed them much freedom. They were permitted, within certain limits, to develop their national life; many became wealthy, and many rose to high positions in the military and civil service of the state. After the war of 1877-78 the Russian consuls in Turkey encouraged the formation of patriotic committees in Armenia, and a project was formed to create a separate state, under the supremacy of Russia, which was to include Russian, Persian and Turkish Armenia. The project was favoured by Loris-Melikov, then all-powerful in Russia, but in 1881 Alexander II. was assassinated, and shortly afterwards a strongly anti-Armenian policy was adopted. The schools were closed, the use of the Armenian language was discouraged, and attempts were made to Russify the Armenians and bring them within the pale of the Russian Church. All hope of practical self-government under Russian protection now ceased, and the Armenians of Tiflis turned their attention to Turkish Armenia. They had seen the success of the Slav committees in treating disturbances in the Balkans, and became the moving spirit in the attempts to produce similar troubles in Armenia. Russia made no real effort to check the action of her Armenian subjects, and after 1884 she steadily opposed any active interference by Great Britain in favour of the Turkish Armenians. When Echmiadzin passed to Russia, in 1828, the Catholicus began to claim spiritual jurisdiction over the whole Armenian Church, and the submission of the patriarch of Constantinople was obtained by Russia when she helped the sultan against Mehemet Ali. Subsequently Russia secured the submission of the independent catholicus of Sis, and thus acquired a power of interference in Armenian affairs in all parts of the world. During 1900 Russia showed renewed interest in Turkish Armenia by securing the right to construct all railways in it, and in the Armenians by pressing the Porte to restore order and introduce reforms.

Revolutionary movement.

The Berlin treaty was a disappointment to the Gregorian Armenians, who had hoped that Armenia and Cilicia would have been formed into an autonomous province administered by Christians. But the formation of such a province was impossible. The Gregorians were scattered over the empire, and, except in a few small districts, were nowhere in a majority. Nor were they bound together by any community of thought or sentiment. The Turkish-speaking Armenians of the south could scarcely converse with the Armenian-speaking people of the north; and the ignorant mountaineers of the east had nothing in common, except religion, with the highly educated townsmen of Constantinople and Smyrna. After the change in Russian policy and the failure of the powers to secure reforms, the advanced party amongst the Armenians, some of whom had been educated in Europe and been deeply affected by the free thought and Nihilistic tendencies of the day, determined to secure their object by the production of disturbances such as those that had given birth to Bulgaria. Societies were formed at Tiflis and in several European capitals for the circulation of pamphlets and newspapers, and secret societies, such as the Huntchagist, were instituted for more revolutionary methods. An active propaganda was carried on in Turkish Armenia by emissaries, who tried to introduce arms and explosives, and represented the ordinary incidents of Turkish misrule to Europe as serious atrocities. The revolutionary movement was joined by some of the younger men, who formed local committees on the Nihilist plan, but it was strongly opposed by the Armenian clergy and the American missionaries, who saw the impossibility of success; and its irreligious tendency and the self-seeking ambition of its leaders made it unacceptable to the mass of the people. Exasperated at their failure, the emissaries organized attacks on individuals, wrote threatening letters, and at last posted revolutionary placards, 5th of January 1893, at Yuzgat, and on the walls of the American College at Marsivan. In the last case the object of the Huntchagists was to compromise the missionaries, and in this they succeeded. The Americans were accused of issuing the placards; two Armenian professors were imprisoned; and the girls' school was burned down. Outbreaks, easily suppressed, followed at Kaisarieh and other places.

One of the revolutionary dreams was to make the ancient Daron the centre of a new Armenia. But the movement met with no encouragement, either amongst the prosperous peasants on the rich plain of Mush or in the mountain villages of Sasun. In the summer of 1893, an emissary was captured near Mush, and the governor, hoping to secure others, ordered the Kurdish Irregular Horse to raid the mountain district. The Armenians drove off the Kurds,[1] and, when attacked in the spring of 1894, again held their own. The vali now called up regular troops from Erzingan; and the sultan issued a firman calling upon all loyal subjects to aid in suppressing the revolt. A massacre of a most brutal character, in which Turkish soldiers took part, followed; and aroused deep indignation in Europe. In November 1894 a Turkish commission of inquiry was sent to Armenia, and was accompanied by the consular delegates of Great Britain, France and Russia, who elicited the fact that there had been no attempt at revolt to justify the action of the authorities. Throughout 1894 the state of the country bordered upon anarchy, and during the winter of 1894-1895 the British government, with lukewarm support from France and Russia, pressed for administrative reforms in the vilayets of Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, Sivas, Memuret-el-Aziz (Kharput) and Diarbekr. The Porte made counter-proposals, and officials concerned in the Sasun massacres were decorated and rewarded. On the 11th of May 1895 the three powers presented to the sultan a complicated scheme of reforms which was more calculated to increase than to lessen the difficulties connected with the government of Armenia; but it was the only one to which Russia would agree. The sultan delayed his answer. Great Britain was in favour of coercion, but Russia, when sounded, replied that she "would certainly not join in any coercive measures" and she was supported by France. At this moment, 21st of June 1895, Lord Rosebery's cabinet resigned, and when Lord Salisbury's government resumed the negotiations in August, the sultan appealed to France and Russia against England. During the negotiations the secret societies had not been inactive. Disturbances occurred at Tarsus; Armenians who did not espouse the "national" cause were murdered; the life of the patriarch was threatened; and a report was circulated that the British ambassador wished some Armenians killed to give him an excuse for bringing the fleet to Constantinople. On the 1st of October 1895 a number of Armenians, some armed, went in procession with a petition to the Porte and were ordered by the police to disperse. Shots were fired, and a riot occurred in which many Armenian and some Moslem lives were lost. The British ambassador now pressed the scheme of reforms upon the sultan, who accepted it on the 17th of October. Meanwhile there had been a massacre at Trebizond (October 8), in which armed men from Constantinople took part, and it had become evident that no united action on the part of the powers was to be feared. The sultan refused to publish the scheme of reforms, and massacre followed massacre in Armenia in quick succession until the 1st of January 1896. Nothing was done. Russia refused to agree to any measure of coercion, and declared (December 19) that she would take no action except such as was needed for the protection of foreigners. Great Britain was not prepared to act alone. In the summer of 1896 (June 14-22) there were massacres at Van, Egin, and Niksar; and on the 26th of August the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Constantinople was seized by revolutionists as a demonstration against the Christian powers who had left the Armenians to their fate. The project was known to the Porte, and the rabble, previously armed and instructed, were at once turned loose in the streets. Two days' massacre followed, during which from 6000 to 7000 Gregorian Armenians perished.

The massacres.

The massacres were apparently organized and carried out in accordance with a well-considered plan. They occurred, except in six places, in the vilayets to which the scheme of reforms was to apply. At Trebizond they took place just before the sultan accepted that scheme, and after his acceptance of it they spread rapidly. They were confined to Gregorian and Protestant Armenians. The Roman Catholics were protected by France, the Greek Christians by Russia. The massacre of Syrians, Jacobites and Chaldees at Urfa and elsewhere formed no part of the original plan. Orders were given to protect foreigners, and in some cases guards were placed over their houses. The damage to the American buildings at Kharput was due to direct disobedience of orders. The attacks on the bazars were made without warning, during business hours, when the men were in their shops and the women in their houses. Explicit promises were given, in some instances, that there would be no danger to those who opened their shops, but they were deliberately broken. Nearly all those who, from their wealth, education and influence, would have had a share in the government under the scheme of reforms, were killed and their families ruined by the destruction of their property. Where any attempt at defence was made the slaughter was greatest. The only successful resistance was at Zeitun, where the people received honourable terms after three months' fighting. In some towns the troops and police took an active part in the massacres. At Kharput artillery was used. In some the slaughter commenced and ended by bugle-call, and in a few instances the Armenians were disarmed beforehand. Wherever a superior official or army officer intervened the massacre at once ceased, and wherever a governor stood firm there was no disturbance. The actual perpetrators of the massacres were the local Moslems, aided by Lazis, Kurds and Circassians. A large majority of the Moslems disapproved of the massacres, and many Armenians were saved by Moslem friends. But the lower orders were excited by reports that the Armenians, supported by the European powers, were plotting the overthrow of the sultan; and their cupidity was aroused by the prospect of wiping out their heavy debts to Armenian pedlars and merchants. No one was punished for the massacres, and many of those implicated in them were rewarded. In some districts, especially in the Kharput vilayet, the cry of "Islam or death" was raised. Gregorian priests and Protestant pastors were tortured, but preferred death to apostasy. Men and women were killed in prison and in churches in cold blood. Churches, monasteries, schools and houses were plundered and destroyed. In some places there was evidence of the previous activity of secret societies, in others none. The number of those who perished, excluding Constantinople, was 20,000 to 25,000.[2] Many were forced to embrace Islam, and numbers were reduced to poverty. The destruction of property was enormous, the hardest-working and best tax-paying element in the country was destroyed, or impoverished, and where the breadwinners were killed the women and children were left destitute. Efforts by Great Britain and the United States to alleviate the distress were opposed by the authorities, but met with some success. After the massacres the number of students in the American schools and colleges increased, and many Gregorian Armenians became Roman Catholics in order to obtain the protection of France.

The Armenian revolutionary societies continued their propaganda down to the granting of the Turkish constitution in 1908; and meanwhile further massacres occurred here and there, notably at Mush (1904) and Van (1908).

See Abich, _Geologie d. armenischen Hochlandes_ (Wien, 1882); Bishop,
_Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan_ (Lond., 1891); Bliss, _Turkey and
the Armenian Atrocities_ (Lond., 1896); Bryce, _Transcaucasia and
Ararat_ (4th ed., Lond., 1896); De Coursous, _La Rebellion armenienne_
(Paris, 1895); Lepsius, _Armenia and Europe_ (Lond., 1897); Murray,
_Handbook for Asia Minor_ (Lond., 1895); Parly. Papers, _Turkey_, I.
(1895); _Turkey_, I., II. (1896); Supan, "Die Verbreitung d. Armenier
in der asiatischen Turkei, u. in Transkaukasien," in Pet. _Mitt_. vol.
xlii. (1896); Tozer, _Turkish Armenia and Eastern Asia Minor_ (Lond.,
1881); Cholet, _Armenie, Kurdistan, et Mesopotamie_ (1892); Lynch,
_Armenia_ (2 vols., 1901). (C. W. W.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Armenians and Kurds have lived together from the earliest
times. The adoption of Islam by the latter, and by many Armenians,
divided the people sharply into Christian and Moslem, and placed the
Christian in a position of inferiority. But the relations between the
two sects were not unfriendly previously to the Russian campaigns in
Persia and Turkey. After 1829 the relations became less friendly; and
later, when the Armenians attracted the sympathies of the European
powers after the war of 1877-78, they became bitterly hostile.

[2] According to some estimates the number killed was 50,000 or more.

ARMENIAN CHURCH. No trustworthy account exists of the evangelization of Armenia, for the legend of King Abgar's correspondence with Christ, even if it contained any historical truth, only relates to Edessa and Syriac Christianity. That the Armenians appropriated from the Syrians this, as well as the stories of Bartholomew and Thaddeus (the Syriac _Addai_), was merely an avowal on their part that Edessa was the centre from which the faith radiated over their land. In the 4th century and later the liturgy was still read in Syriac in parts of Armenia, and the New Testament, the history of Eusebius, the homilies of Aphraates, the works of St Ephraem and many other early books were translated from Syriac, from which tongue most of their ecclesiological terms were derived. The earliest notice of an organized church in Armenia is in Eusebius, _H. E_. vi. 46, to the effect that Dionysius of Alexandria c. 250 sent a letter to Meruzanes, bishop of the brethren in Armenia. There were many Christians in Melitene at the time of the Decian persecution in A.D. 250, and two bishops from Great Armenia were present at the council of Nice in 325. King Tiridates (c. A.D. 238-314) had already been baptized some time after 261 by Gregory the Illuminator. The latter was ordained priest and appointed _catholicus_ or exarch of the church of Great Armenia by Leontius, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. This one fact is certain amidst the fables which soon obscured the history of this great missionary. Thus the church of Great Armenia began as a province of the Cappadocian see. But there was a tradition of a line of bishops earlier than Gregory in Siuniq, a region east of Ararat along the Araxes (Aras), which in early times claimed to be independent of the catholicus. The Adoptianist bishop Archelaus, who opposed the entry of Mani into Armenia under Probus c. 277, was also perhaps a Syriac-speaking bishop of Pers-Armenia. Almost the earliest document revealing anything of the inner organization and condition of the Armenian church in the Nicene age is the epistle of Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, to the Armenian bishop Verthanes, written between 325 and 335 and preserved in Armenian. Its genuineness has been unreasonably suspected. It insists on the erection of fonts; on distinction of grades among the ordained clergy; on not postponing baptism too long; on bishops and priests alone, and not deacons, being allowed to baptize and lay hands on or confirm the baptized; on avoiding communion with Arians; on the use of unleavened bread in the Sacrament, &c. We learn from it that the bishop of Basen and Bagrevand was an Arian at that time. By the year 450 these two districts already had separate bishops of their own. The letter of Macarius, therefore, if a forgery, must be a very early one.[1] The Armenians must, like the Georgians a little later, have set store by the opinion of the bishop of Jerusalem, or they would not have sent to consult him. It was equally from Jerusalem that they subsequently adopted their lectionary and arrangement of the Christian year; and a 9th-century copy of this lectionary in the Paris library preserves to us precious details of the liturgical usages of Jerusalem in the 4th century. We can trace the presence of Armenian convents on the Mount of Olives as early as the 5th century.

Tradition represents the conversion of Great Armenia under Gregory and Tiridates as a sort of triumphant march, in which the temples of the demons and their records were destroyed wholesale, and their undefended sites instantly converted into Christian churches. The questions arise: how was the transition from old to new effected? and what was the type of teaching dominant in the new church? Armenian tradition, confirmed by nearly contemporary Greek sources, answers the first question. The old order went on, but under new names. The priestly families, we learn, hearing that the God preached by Gregory needed not sacrifice, sent to the king a deputation and asked how they were to live, if they became Christians; for until then the priests and their families had lived off the portions of the animal victims and other offerings reserved to them by pagan custom. Gregory replied that, if they would join the new religion, not only should the sacrifices continue, but they should have larger perquisites then ever. The priestly families then went over _en masse_. How far the older sacrificial rules resembled the levitical law we do not know, but in the canons of Sahak, c. 430, the priests already receive the levitical portions of the victims; and we find that animals are being sacrificed every Sunday, on the feast days which at first were few, in fulfilment of private vows, in expiation of the sins of the living, and still more of those of the dead. No one might kill his own meat and deprive the priest of his due; but this rule did not apply to the chase. The earliest Armenian rituals contain ample services for the conduct of an _agape_ (q.v.) or love feast held in the church off sacrificial meat. The victim was slaughtered by the priest in the church porch before the crucifix, after it had been ritually wreathed and given the holy salt, by licking which it appropriated a sacramental purity or efficacy previously conveyed into the salt by exorcisms and consecration. In the canons of Sahak the priest is represented as eating the sins of the people in these repasts.

It is easy to underrate the importance in religion of a change of names. The old sacrificial hymns were probably obscene and certainly nonsensical, and the substitution for them of the psalms, and of lections of the prophets and New Testament, was an enormous gain. We do not know precisely how the eucharistic rite was adjusted to these sacrificial meals; but, in the canons of Sahak, 1 Cor. xi. 17-34 is interpreted of these meals, which were known as the Dominical (suppers). The Eucharist was, therefore, long associated with the _matal_ or animal victim, and only in the 8th century do we hear of an interval of time being left between the fleshly and the spiritual sacrifices, as the two rites were then called. The Basilian service of the Eucharist was used in the 5th century, but superseded later on by a Byzantine rite which will be found translated in F.E. Brightman's _Eastern Liturgies_. The Eucharist was no doubt the one important sacrifice in the minds of the clergy who had attended the schools of Constantinople and Alexandria; yet the heart of the people remained in their ancient blood-offerings, and as late as the 12th century they were prone to deny that the mass could expiate the sins of the dead unless accompanied by the sacrifice of an animal. Perhaps even to-day the worst fate that can befall a villager after death is to be deprived, not of commemoration in the mass, but of the victim slain for his sins. The keenest spiritual weapon of the Armenian priest was ever a threat not to offer the _matal_ for a man when he died.

Another survival in the Armenian church was the hereditary priesthood. None but a scion of a priestly family could become a deacon, elder or bishop. Accordingly the primacy remained in the family of Gregory until about 374, when the king Pap or Bab murdered Nerses, who had been ordained by Eusebius of Caesarea (362-370) and was over-zealous in implanting in Armenia the canons about celibacy, marriage, fasting, hospices and monastic life which Basil had established in Cappadocia. It may be remarked that Gregory's own family was a cadet branch of the Arsacid kin which had occupied the thrones of Persia, Bactria, Armenia and Georgia. His primacy therefore was in itself a survival of an earlier age when king and priest were one. He was in fact a _rex sacrificulus_, and later on, when the Arsacid dynasty fell in Armenia c. A.D. 428, the Armenian catholicus became the symbol of national unity and the rallying-point of patriotism. The line of Gregory was restored in 390 in the person of Isaac or Sahak, son of Nerses, and his patriarchate was the golden age of Armenian literature. But by this time the autonomy of the Armenian church was thoroughly established. On the death of Nerses the right of saying grace at the royal meals, which was the essence of the catholicate, was transferred by the king, in despite of the Greeks, to the priestly family of Albianus, and thenceforth no Armenian catholicus went to Caesarea for ordination. The ties with Greek official Christendom were snapped for ever, and in subsequent ages the doctrinal preferences of the Armenians were usually determined more by antagonism to the Greeks than by reflection. If they accepted the council of Ephesus in 430 and joined in the condemnation of Nestorius, it was rather because the Sassanid kings of Persia, who thirsted for the reconquest of Armenia, favoured Nestorianism, a form of doctrine current in Persia and rejected in Byzantium. But later on, about 480, and throughout the following centuries, the Armenians rejected the decrees of Chalcedon and held that the assertion of two natures in Christ was a relapse into the heresy of Nestor. From the close of the 5th century the Armenians have remained monophysite, like the Copts and Abyssinians, and have only broken the record with occasional short interludes of orthodoxy, as when in 633 the emperor Heraclius forced reunion on them, under a catholicus named Esdras, at a council held in Erzerum. Even then all parties were careful not to mention Chalcedon. The march of Arab conquest kept the Armenians friendly to Byzantium for a few years; but in 718 the catholicus John of Odsun ascended the throne and at the council of Manazkert in 728 repeated and confirmed the anathemas against Chalcedon and the tome of Leo, that had been first pronounced by the catholicus Babken in 491 at a synod held in Valarshapat by the united Armenian, Georgian or Iberian, and Albanian churches. The Armenians marked their complete disruption with the Greeks by starting an era of their own at the synod of Dvin. The era began on the 11th of July 552, and their year is vague, that is to say, it does not intercalate a day in February every fourth year, like the Julian calendar.

The two churches of Iberia and Albania at first depended on the Armenian for ordination of their primates or _catholici_, and in large part owed their first constitution to Armenian missionaries sent by Gregory the Illuminator. The Iberians still reverence as saints the Armenian doctors of the 5th century, but as early as 552 they began to resent the dictatorial methods of the Armenians, as well might a proud race of mountaineers who never wholly lost their political independence; and they broke off their allegiance to the Armenian see very soon afterwards, accepted Chalcedon and joined the Byzantine church. The Albanians of the Caucasus were also converted in the age of Gregory, early in the 4th century, and were loyal to the Armenians in the great struggle against Mazdaism in the 5th; but broke away for a time towards 600, and chose a patriarch without sending him to Armenia for ordination. Eventually this interesting church was engulfed by the rising tide of Mahommedan conquest, but not before one of their bishops, named Israel, had converted (677-703) the Huns who lay to the north of the Caspian and had translated the Bible and liturgies into their language. If the Albanian and Hunnish versions could be found, they would be of the greatest linguistic importance.

The mother church of Armenia was established by Gregory at Ashtishat in the province of Taron, on the site of the great temple of Wahagn, whose festival on the seventh of the month Sahmi was reconsecrated to John the Baptist and Athenogenes, an Armenian martyr and Greek hymn writer. The first of Navasard, the Armenian new year's day, was the feast of a god Vanatur or Wanadur (who answered to [Greek: Zeus xenios]) in the holy pilgrim city of Bagawan. His day was reconsecrated to the Baptist, whose relics were brought to Bagawan. The feast of Anahite, the Armenian Venus and spouse of the chief god Aramazd, was in the same way rededicated to the Virgin Mary, who for long was not very clearly distinguished by the Armenians from the virgin mother church. The old cult of sacred stones and trees by an easy transition became cross-worship, but a cross was not sacred until the Christ had been, by priestly prayer and invocation, transferred into it.

What was the earliest doctrine of the churches of Armenia? If we could believe the fathers of the 5th and succeeding centuries Nicene orthodoxy prevailed in their country from the first; and in the 5th century they certainly chose for translation the works of orthodox fathers alone, such as Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen, Cyril of Jerusalem and Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius, Julius of Rome, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, avoiding Origen and other fathers who were becoming suspect. However, we do hear of versions of Nestorian writers like Diodore of Tarsus being in circulation, and the _Disputation_ of Archelaus proves that the current orthodoxy of eastern Armenia was Adoptianist, if not Ebionite in tone. The Persian Armenians as late as the 6th century had not heard of the faith of Nicaea, and only then received it from the catholicus Babken. They sent a copy of their old creed to Babken, and it closely resembles the Adoptianist creed of Archelaus, the gist of which was that Jesus, until his thirtieth year, was a man mortal like other men; then, because he was righteous above all others, he was promoted to the honour and name of Son of God. He received the title by grace, but was not equal to God the Father. Because the Spirit worked with him, he was able to vanquish Satan and all desires, and because of his righteousness and good works he was made worthy of grace and became a Temple of God the Word, which came down from heaven in Jordan, dwelt in him and through him wrought miracles. From such a standpoint the baptism of Jesus was the moment of the divine incarnation. The man righteous above all others was then reborn of the Spirit, was illuminated, was spiritually anointed, became the Christ and Son of God. In effect the fathers of the Armenian church often fell back into such language, far removed as it is from orthodoxy; and they emphasized the importance of the baptismal feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January by refusing to accept the feast of the physical birth of the 25th of December. As late as 1165 their patriarch Nerses defends the Armenian custom of keeping Christmas on the 6th of January on the express ground that as he was born after the flesh from the Virgin, _so he was born by way of baptism from the Jordan_. The custom from the first, he says, had been to feast on one and the same day the two births, much as they differed in sacramental import and in point of time. We see how deep the early Adoptianism had struck its roots, when a primate of the 12th century could still appeal to the baptismal regeneration of Jesus. The same Nerses held that the second Adam, Jesus Christ, received a new body and nature and the sevenfold grace of the Spirit _in the Jordan_. The Armenian doctors also taught that John by laying hands on Jesus and ordaining him at his baptism sacramentally transferred to him the three graces or _charismata_ of kingship, prophecy and priesthood which had belonged to ancient Israel. After baptism, if not before, the flesh of Christ was incorruptible. It consisted of ethereal fire, and he was not subject to the ordinary phenomena of digestion, secretions and evacuations.

Monastic institutions were hardly introduced in Armenia before the 5th century, though Christian rest-houses had been erected along the high-roads long before and are mentioned in the _Disputation_ of Archelaus. The Armenians called them _wanq_, and out of them grew the monasteries. The monks were, strictly speaking, penitents wearing the cowl, and not allowed to take a part in church government. This belonged to the elders. At first there was no separate episcopal ordination, and the one rite of elder or priest (Armen. _Qahanay_, Heb. _cohen_) sufficed. There were also deacons, half-deacons and readers. Besides these there was a class of _wardapets_ or teachers, answering to the _didascalos_ of the earliest church, whose province it was to guard the doctrine and for whom no rite of ordination is found in the older rituals.

A few other peculiarities of Armenian church usage or belief deserve notice. In baptism the rubric ordains that the baptized be plunged three times in the font in commemoration of the entombment during three days of the Lord. In the West trine immersion was generally held to be symbolic of the triune name of "Father, Son and Holy Ghost." This name the Armenians have used, at least since the year 700; before which date their fathers often speak of baptism into the death of Christ as the one essential. As late as about 1300 a traveller hostile to the Armenians reported to the pope that he had witnessed baptisms without any trinitarian invocation in as many as three hundred parish churches.

The paschal lamb is now eaten on Sunday, but until the 11th century, and even later, it was eaten with the Eucharist at a Lord's Supper celebrated on the evening of Maundy Thursday after the rite of _pedilavium_ or washing of feet. On the morning of the same day the penitents were released from their fast.

The rite of extreme unction was introduced in the crusading epoch, although it was already usual to anoint the bodies of dead priests. The worship of images never seems to have taken root among Armenians; indeed they supplied the Greek world with iconoclast soldiers and emperors. The worship of crosses into which the Spirit or Christ had been inserted by the priest must have satisfied the religious needs of a people who, save in architecture, showed little artistic faculty. In their older rituals we find a rite for blessing a painted church, but no word of statues. Frescoes in their churches are rare, and mostly too high up for veneration to be paid to them.

On certain days the cross was washed, and the water in which it had been washed was a sovereign charm for curing sickness in men and animals and for bringing fertility to the land.

In the older rituals we find a rite of _exhomologesis_, for restoring those who had sinned after baptism. It was a medicine of sin that could only be used once and not a second time. In form it is a rehearsal of the first baptismal rite, but with omission of the water. It involved like the first rite open confession and repentance, and absolution by the church. In a later and less rigorous age this rite was abridged and adjusted to constant repetition, in such wise that a sinner could be restored to grace not once only, but as often as the clergy chose to accept his repentance and confession. Thus the whole development of the penitentiary system is traceable in the MSS.

The confession of a dying man might be taken by any layman present, and written down in order to be shown to the priest when he arrived. It then was the duty of the latter to supplicate for his forgiveness, and administer to him the Eucharist.

The clergy of all grades were originally married. The parish priests, or white clergy, are so still, except some of the Latinizing ones. But since the 12th century, or even earlier, the higher clergy, i.e. patriarchs and bishops, have taken monkish vows and worn the cowl.

There were abortive attempts to unite the Armenian church with the Byzantine in the 9th century under the patriarch Photius, and again late in the 12th under the emperor Manuel Comnenus, when a joint council met at Romkla, near Tarsus, but ended in nothing (A.D. 1179). Neither could the Armenians keep on good terms even with the Syriac monophysites. From the age of the crusades on, the Armenians of Cilicia, whose patriarch sat at Sis, improved their acquaintance with Rome; and more than one of their patriarchs adopted the Roman faith, at least in words. Dominican missions went to Armenia, and in 1328 under their auspices was formed a regular order called the United Brethren, the forerunners of the Uniats of the present day, who have convents at Venice and Vienna, a college in Rome and a numerous following in Turkey. They retain their Armenian liturgies and rites, pruned to suit the Vatican standards of orthodoxy, and they recognize the pope as head of the church.

The patriarchs of Great Armenia first resided at Ashtishat, on the Araxes. From 478 to 931 they occupied Dvin in the same neighbourhood, then Aghthamar, an island in the Lake of Van, 931-967, the city of Ani, 992-1054, where are still visible the magnificent ruins of their churches and palaces. Since 1441 the chief catholicus has sat at Echmiadzin, the convent of Valarshapat, now part of Russian Armenia. A rival catholicus, with a small following, still has his cathedral and see at Sis. The catholicus of Valarshapat is nominally chosen by all Armenians. A synod of bishops, monks and doctors meets regularly to transact under his eye the business of the convent and the oecumenical affairs of the church; but its decisions are subject to the veto of a Russian procurator. There are Armenian patriarchs, subject to the spiritual jurisdiction of Echmiadzin, in Constantinople and Jerusalem. In the latter place the Armenians occupy a convent on Mount Sion, and keep up in the churches of the Sepulchre and of Bethlehem their own distinct rites and feasts, the only ones there which at all resemble those of the 4th century.

The following list of councils was compiled by John, catholicus about the year 728, and read at the council of Manazkert, when the dogmatic and disciplinary attitude of the Armenian church was defined once and for all:--

1. In twentieth year of catholicate of Gregory and thirty-seventh of Trdat, the king, on return of Aristaces from council of Nice, bringing the Nicene creed and canons.

2. Council held by St Nerses on his return from the council of the 150 fathers at Constantinople against Macedonius.

3. Held by St Sahak and Mesrop on receipt of letters from Proclus and Cyril after the council of Ephesus, when the "Glory in the Highest" was adopted. Held against Nestorianism.

4. Held by Joseph, disciple of Mashdotz (Mesrop) and St Sahak, in Shahapiwan in the sixth year of King Yazkert (i.e. Yazdegerd) of Persia, for the regulation of the church. Forty bishops present. (The Massalians were anathematized.)

5. Held by Babken, catholicus, in the City-plain (i.e. Dvin), in the 18th year of King Kavat (i.e. Kavadh), against the heresy of Acacius and Barsuma (Bar-sauma), the friends of Nestorius. The true (Nicene) faith was sent to the Armenians of the farther East (shortly afterwards a slightly different creed was adopted, identical with a pseudo-Athanasian symbol used by Evagrius of Pontus and given in Greek in Patr. Gr. xxvi. Col. 1232).

6. At the beginning of the Armenian era, held by Nerses in Dvin, in the fourth year of his catholicate, in the fourteenth of Chosroes' reign and in the fourteenth of Justinian Caesar. Held against Chalcedon, uniting the Baptism and Christmas feasts on the 6th of January (Epiphany), declaring for mono-physitism, and adopting in the _Trisagion_ the words "who wast crucified for us." This settlement lasted for about seventy-four years.

7. After the retaking of Jerusalem and recovery of the Cross from the Persians in the eighteenth year of his reign, Heraclius called a mixed council at Karin (Theodosiopolis) of Greeks and Armenians under Ezr (Esdras), catholicus, at which the preceding council of Dvin was cursed, its reforms repudiated and the confession of Chalcedon adopted. This remained the official attitude of the Armenian church until the catholicate of Elias (703-717). John, catholicus, denies to Ezr's meeting the name of council, and so makes his own the seventh.

8. Under John, catholicus, in Manazkert, in the one hundred and seventieth year of the Armenian era (= A.D. 728) under the presidency of Gregory Asharuni Chorepiscopos (Gregory Asheruni). All the Armenian bishops attended, as also the metropolitan of Urhha (Edessa), Jacobite bishops of Gartman, of Nfrkert, Amasia, by command of the archbishop of Antioch. Chalcedon was repudiated afresh, union with the Jacobites instituted, use of water and leaven in the Eucharist condemned, the five days' preliminary fast before Lent restored, Saturday as well as Sunday made a day of feasting and synaxis, any but the orthodox excluded from the Maundy Thursday Communion, the first communion of the new catechumens; union of the Baptismal and Christmas feasts was restored, and the faithful forbidden to fast on Fridays from Easter until Pentecost. In general these rules have been observed in the Armenian church ever since.

For list of authorities on the Armenian church see the works
enumerated at the end of ARMENIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. For the
relations of the Armenian church to the Persian kings see PERSIA:
_Ancient History_, section viii. SS 2 and 3. (F. C. C.)

FOOTNOTE:

[1] If a forgery, why should this letter have been assigned to
Macarius, a comparatively obscure person whose name is not even found
in the menaea of the Eastern church? But convincing proof of its
authenticity lies in Macarius' reference to himself as merely
archbishop of Jerusalem, and his avowal that he was unwilling to
advise the Armenians, "being oppressed by the weakness of the
authority conceded him by the weighty usages of the church."
Jerusalem was only allowed to rank as a patriarchate in 451, and the
seventh canon of Nice subordinated the see to that of Caesarea in
Palestine. To this decree Macarius somewhat bitterly alludes.

ARMENIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.

Language.

The Armenian language belongs to the group called Indo-European, of which the Iranic and Indic tongues formed one branch, and Greek, Albanian, Italian, Celtic, Germanic and Baltic-Slavonic dialects the other great branch. Unlike most of these, Armenian lost its genders long before the year A.D. 400, when the existing literature begins. Modern Persian similarly has lost gender; and in both cases the liberation must have been due to attrition of other tongues which had a different system of gender or none at all. So the Armenians were ever in contact on the north with the Iberians of the Caucasus who had none, and with the Semitic races on the south and east which had other ways of forming genders than the Indo-European tongues.