Armenia and Her People; or, The Story of Armenia by an Armenian

by George H. Filian

THE INTERREGNUM.

Prominent Men; Literature; The Church and the Clergy.

From the time of the partition to the succession of the Pakradoonian dynasty there was not in name an Armenian kingdom; but it must not be supposed that there was not an Armenian nation. No matter how its neighbor nations changed, that country was always called Armenia, and the people held to their Armenian ways and feelings. The national feeling was as strong as before, and above all the feeling of church unity was very intense. No one will ever understand Armenian history, or indeed any Oriental history at all, who does not realize that religious questions come first, and political questions second. The Armenian church was, it is true, a Christian church; but it was the Armenian Christian church, not the Greek church, and the Syrian and African churches had their separate creeds and preferences, and the Greek church, which was the official church of the Greek Empire, was always trying to root out their “heresies” and make them Greek. That was one reason why the Mohammedans conquered those countries so easily. The Africans would rather be ruled by the Mohammedans than by the Greek church, the Syrians were angry because the Greek church wanted to take away their own church and give them the Greek. But the Armenians would not take either the Greek or the Mohammedan or the Zoroastrian; they wanted their own. So they were persecuted terribly by the Greek Christians and the Persian fire-worshipers alike. Just as before the partition, each country invaded the other’s part of Armenia whenever they got into war; and whichever won, the Armenians were the losers. When the Greeks won, they tortured the Armenians; when the Persians won, they tortured the Armenians; later, when the Mohammedans won, they also tortured the Armenians. The mediaeval history of Armenia is that of a battle-ground between contending races—Greeks, Persians, Scythians, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Ottoman Turks, Mongols, and so on. Millions of its people were slain; millions died of famine and disease; millions of its women were forced to embrace Mohammedanism and become the wives and mothers of Mohammedans,—half the blood of those who are called Turks at this day is Armenian; millions of its boys were forced into the Turkish service, so that many of the best-known names in Turkish history, and in the Turkey of to-day, are Armenian names. Yet through all these calamities and decimations Armenia has kept its national life and national religion.

From 390 to 640 the history of both sections of Armenia is little more than an account of religious persecutions and their results; the persecutors on the one side were Christians, and on the other side Zoroastrians, but the results to the Armenians were much the same. The Persian atrocities, however, were on the larger scale, and the outcome was a chronic state of revolt, which will be alluded to in the sketch of Vartan the defender. But the rise of the Saracen power changed Armenia’s greatest foe from the Persian to the Arab, from the fire-worshipers to the Mohammedans. Persia was invaded by the forces of the caliph Omar in 634, and about 640–2 the decisive battle of Nehavend annihilated the last great Persian army, though scattered places held out much longer. The Armenian highlands at once resumed their independence, and their chiefs, with those of the western section belonging to the Byzantine Empire, fought for their own hand in lack of a true national chief whom all could look up to, but allied themselves mainly with the Greek power against the barbarians; and for two entire centuries, and more, Armenia was a furious and bloody battle-ground between Greeks and Saracens, while internally in a state of feudal anarchy. Then a prince of the family of Pakrad or Bagrat (well-known to students of the last century’s history in the form of Bagration), of Jewish descent, as has already been mentioned, which had obtained power over the central and northern parts of Armenia, was recognized by the caliph as an independent monarch; and thus founded the Pakradoonian dynasty, which lasted till Armenia’s independence was once more extinguished by the Byzantine Empire,—a crime almost immediately punished by the overwhelming of Asia Minor by the Seljuk Turks.

PROMINENT MEN OF THE PERIOD.

Nierses The Great.

This was the great creator of Armenian scholarship. He was a descendant of St. Gregory; studied in the Greek schools of Caesarea during boyhood; later in those of Constantinople, where he became famous for learning, married a Greek princess of a distinguished house, and on his return to Armenia was made pontiff. (All the clergy were married then, as the Greek priests are now.) He founded over 2,000 schools, and benevolent institutions, as well as great numbers of churches, was a powerful and persuasive preacher, and a considerable writer, part of the Church history being his. From these schools went forth a very brilliant band of scholars, preachers and orators, the equals of any in the world.

It was during his pontificate that the affairs of Arshag and Bab took place, and he was intimately connected with them till his death at the hands of the latter. Previous to the desertion of Armenia by the Romans in 363, they had quarreled with Arshag, and sent an army to punish him; but on Nierses’ intercession with Valens it was recalled, and the Saint obtained high favor with the emperor. Arshag’s conduct, however, grew too bad for endurance; he had his father and a relative named Kuenel (or Gnel) killed, and married Kuenel’s wife, Parantzem (who afterwards met such a horrible fate), though his own wife, Olympias, was still alive. Nierses, finding admonition of no avail, quitted Vagharshabad and went into a convent. But Arshag, getting into fresh difficulties with the emperor and his own rebellious vassals, besought the saint to assist him once more, and once more Nierses complied. He first pacified the turbulent nobility; then interceded with the Roman commander to such effect that the general withdrew his army and went to Constantinople to justify himself to the emperor, taking a letter to him from Arshag, and hostages for the latter’s loyalty, and also inducing Nierses to accompany him. But Valens was enraged at the withdrawal, would neither read the letter nor see the saint, and ordered the hostages killed and Nierses banished. The former sentence was revoked on the general’s intercession, but Nierses was shipped for his place of exile; on the way a storm wrecked the vessel on a desert island, but he and the crew were saved. It was winter, and they could find no food but the roots of trees, but in a short time the sea miraculously cast abundance of fish on shore, and for eight months they never suffered for sustenance. At the end of that time the saint was set free.

After the restoration of Bab to the land, though not the acknowledged throne of his fathers, Nierses convened an assembly of Armenian princes and ecclesiastical heads, with the king, and swore them all to mutual concord and good behavior, to unite the land against the Persians; but Bab, like so many Eastern potentates and indeed his father, cared for nothing but to indulge his own passions, and would have sold his country to Shahpur if he could have got his price. Nierses in vain tried to turn him from his evil ways; Bab merely hated him for it, and finally had him poisoned, in the village of Khakh in the province of Eghueghiatz. Nierses had been pontiff eight years, but they were crowded with labors of immense variety and usefulness. He left one son (Isaac), who eventually became pontiff also.