Ye who enjoy Paradise, come and weep over your king; ye who
are in Paradise planted by God, elected from the earth of
every kind and sort.
High above the hardiest saxifrage tower the three thousand feet of everlasting snows that crown Mount Ararat. The Armenians call it Massis or "Mother of the World," and old geographers held that it was the centre of the earth, an hypothesis supported by various ingenious calculations. The Persians have their own set of legends about it; they say that Ararat was the cradle of the human race, and that at one time it afforded pasture up to the apex of its dome; but upon man's expulsion from Eden, Ahriman the serpent doomed the whole country to a ten months' winter. As to the semi-scriptural traditions gathered round the mountain, there is no end to them. "And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat," so says the Bible, and it is an article of faith with the Armenian peasant that it is still somewhere up at the top, only not visible. He is extremely loth to believe that anybody has actually attained the summit. Parrot's famous ascent was long regarded as the merest fable. At the foot of Ararat was a village named Argoory, or "he planted the vine," where Noah's vineyard is pointed out to this day, though the village itself was destroyed in 1840, when the mountain woke up from its long slumbers and rolled down its side a stream of boiling lava; but we are told that, owing to the sins of the world, the vines no longer bear fruit. Close at hand is Manard, "the mother lies here," alluding to the burial-place of Noah's wife, and yonder is Eravan or "Visible," the first dry land which Noah perceived as the waters receded. Armenian choniclers relate that when after leaving the ark the descendants of Noah dispersed to different quarters, one amongst them, by name Haig, the great-grandson of Japhet, settled with his family in Mesopotamia, where he probably took part in the building of the Tower of Babel. Later, however, upon Belus acquiring dominion over the land, Haig found his rule so irksome to himself and his clan that they migrated back in a body of 300 persons to Armenia, much to the displeasure of Belus, who summoned them to return, and when they refused, despatched a large army to coerce them into obedience. Haig collected his men on the shores of Van, and thus sagaciously addressed them:
When we meet with the army of Belus, let us attempt to draw near where he lies surrounded by his warriors; either we shall be killed, and our camp equipments and baggage will fall into his hands, or, making a show of the strength of our arm, we shall defeat his army, and victory will be ours.
These tactics proved completely successful, and Belus fell mortally wounded by an arrow from Haig's bow. Having in this way disposed of his enemies, the patriarch was able before he died to consolidate Hayasdan into a goodly kingdom, which he left to the authority of his son Armenag.
After the reign of Haig the thread of Armenian annals continues without break or hitch; it must be admitted that no people, not even the Jews, boast a history which "begins with the beginning" in a more thorough way, nor does the work of any chronicler proceed in a more methodical and circumstantial manner than that of Moses of Khoren, the Herodotus of Armenia. As is well known, Moses, writing in the fifth century, founded his chronicle upon a work undertaken about five hundred years before by one Marabas Cattina, a Syrian, at the request of the great Armenian monarch Vagshaishag. Marabas stated that his record was based upon a manuscript he had discovered in the archives of Nineveh which bore the indorsement, "This book, containing the annals of ancient history, was translated from the Chaldean into Greek, by order of Alexander the Great." Whatever may be the precise amount of credence to which the Chronicle of Moses is entitled, all will agree that it narrates the story of a high-spirited and intelligent people whom the alternating domination of Greek and Persian could not cower into relinquishing the substance of their liberties, and whose efforts, in the main successful, on behalf of their cherished independence, were never more vigorous than at times when their triumph seemed farthest off. For nearly a thousand years after the date of Moses of Khoren, his people maintained their autonomy, and whether we look before or after the flight of the last Armenian king before the soldiers of the Crescent, we must acknowledge that few nations have fought more valiantly for their political rights, whilst yet fewer have suffered more severely for their fidelity to their faith. It is the pride of the Armenians that theirs was the first country which adopted the Christian religion; it may well be their pride also, that they kept their Christianity in the teeth of persecutions which can only find a parallel in those undergone by the Hebrew race.
Armenia is naturally rich in early Christian legends, of which the most curious is perhaps that of the correspondence alleged to have occurred between Our Lord and Abgar, king of Hayasdan. The latter, it is said, having sent messengers to transact some business with the Roman generals quartered in Palestine, received on their return such accounts of the miracles performed by Jesus of Nazareth as convinced him either that Christ was God come down upon the earth, or that he was the son of God. Suffering from a grave malady, and hearing, moreover, that the Jews had set their hearts on doing despite to the Prophet who had risen in their midst, Abgar wrote a letter beseeching Christ to come to his capital and cure him of his sickness. "My city is indeed small," this letter naïvely concludes, "but it is sufficient to contain us both." The king also sent a painter to Jerusalem, so that if Our Lord could not come to Edessa he might at least possess his portrait. The painter was one day endeavouring to fulfil his mission when he was observed by Christ, who passing a handkerchief over his face, gave it to the Armenian impressed with the likeness of his features. The response to Abgar's letter was written by St Thomas, who said, on behalf of his Divine Master, that his work lay elsewhere than in Armenia, but that after his Ascension he would send an Apostle to enlighten the people of that country. This correspondence, though now not accepted as authentic out of Armenia, was mentioned by some of the earliest Church historians, and it is asserted that one of the letters has been found written on papyrus in an Egyptian tomb.
Christianity seems to have made some way in Armenia in the second century, but to what extent is unknown. What is certain is, that in the third century, St Gregory the Illuminator, after having been tortured in twelve different ways by King Tiridates for refusing to worship the goddess Anahid, and kept at the bottom of a well for fourteen years, was taken out of it in consequence of a vision of the king's sister, and converted that monarch and all his subjects along with him. St Gregory is held in boundless reverence by the Armenians; he is almost looked upon as a divine viceroy, as will be seen from the following canzonette which Armenian children are taught to sing:
The light appears, the light appears!