[86] The king himself preached (Agathangelus, Life of St. Gregory, in p. 253 of the Italian translation). [↑]
[87] I insert the word “years” in deference to Professor Gelzer, who argues (Die Anfänge, etc., p. 166) that if the conversion took place about the year 280, the journey to Cæsarea could scarcely have been undertaken before 285–290. He is wishing to show that the statements contained in a portion of the Agathangelus treatise ascribed by Von Gutschmid to the less reliable source, viz. the Acts, to the effect that St. Gregory was ordained by Leontius, archbishop of Cæsarea, may quite well be true. We know that Leontius subscribed the Council of Nice (325); and his pontificate must have covered a period of forty-five years if St. Gregory was ordained by him in or about the year 280. The Life mentions the visit of Gregory to Cæsarea but not the name of Leontius; and Von Gutschmid, while he regards the visit as historical, views with suspicion the connection with that particular prelate (Kleine Schriften, iii. pp. 415 and 418). That seems to me the sensible view. We learn from an independent source (Gelas. Cyzic. ii. 36, ap. Mansi, ii. p. 929) that in the year 325 and during the lifetime of Saint Gregory and Leontius, Great Armenia was in ecclesiastical subordination to Cæsarea; and the link with the capital of Cappadocia was maintained until the death of the Katholikos Nerses I. about the year 374 (cp. Faustus, v. 29). The later story, to the effect that Tiridates received Christianity from the bishop of Rome (so in the petition of the Armenians in the year 450 to Theodosius, ap. Elisœus in Langlois, ii. 206), is plainly a story with a purpose and must therefore be viewed with suspicion. [↑]
[88] The car with the white mules is mentioned in the Life, and the escort of sixteen princes in the Acts. [↑]
[89] A bishop of Sivas with this name was martyred under Diocletian; but this saint will not suit our chronology. Certain features in connection with the cult of the saint—a hind is offered up to him on his name day—have suggested to Von Gutschmid (Kleine Schriften, iii. 414) that Athenogenes was a heathen god of the chase, converted in comparatively remote times into a Christian martyr. A local cult of this nature seems to have attached to Herakles in certain countries; therefore it might quite well have been natural for Gregory to supplant the worship of his Armenian counterpart, Vahagn, at Astishat with that of Athenogenes, the saint corresponding to the god of the chase. This is ingenious but not convincing. The hunting features in the cult of Athenogenes may surely have been derived from his worship at Astishat in place of Vahagn (Herakles). [↑]
[90] I adopt the Greek version of Agathangelus in this passage in preference to the Armenian text, which has “he laid the foundations of the church and erected an altar to the glory of Christ. It was here that he first commenced to build churches, and erected an altar in the name of the Holy Trinity and added a baptistery.” See Gelzer (Die Anfänge, etc., p. 129). [↑]
[91] After a second perusal of the passages in Agathangelus and Faustus (in Langlois: Agathangelus, cxiv. and cxv.; Faustus, iii. and iv. 14), I do not hesitate to identify the site of the temples of Astishat—Mount Karke, in face of the great range, Taurus—with the immediate surroundings of the present cloister of Surb Karapet (see Vol. II. p. 177). The view which I shall offer from the terrace of that famous monastery (Fig. 157) will be the view which excited the cupidity of the eunuch Hair; the ash trees in the foreground may be the descendants of the hatzeatz-drakht or garden of ash trees; finally, the confluence of rivers, overgrown with thick forest, to which the eunuch descended and where he met his death, may be represented by the still wooded banks of the Murad in the valley of Charbahur. The identification of the scene of the events narrated in the text with the present monastery of Surb Karapet may be found in the geography attributed to Vardan in Saint Martin (Mémoires, etc., vol. ii. p. 431).
The baptism of Tiridates probably took place on the banks of the Upper Murad upon the site of another existing cloister of Surb Karapet, also called Uch Kilisa, near Diadin (see Smith and Dwight, Missionary Researches, p. 417). [↑]