Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 1 of 2) / The Russian Provinces

by H. F. B. Lynch

Fig. 47. Pilgrims’ Court, Edgmiatsin.

At last the hinges creak and the porter appears. We are ushered into a court, like that of a college at Cambridge, adjoining the great gate which is in the south wall. It is known as the pilgrims’ court (Fig. [47]). Low buildings, rudely built, with a continuous wooden verandah, compose the quadrangle. The windows are all lit up behind a line of young trees of which the foliage rustles in the night air. Several figures may be discerned on the steps of a basin of water in the centre of the court. The place is all bustle and stir. Every room, so we are told, in the whole monastery is occupied by as many people as it will hold. Quarters have been reserved for us in the principal court; but we are not expected until to-morrow. Sooner than disturb the peace of evening we retire to a room in the village where we erect our camp beds. It is quite a dormitory. My immediate neighbour speaks English and is a correspondent of the Daily News. He is an Armenian gentleman who has come all the way from Tabriz, partly in the capacity of delegate of his countrymen in the Persian city, and partly as the representative of the London newspaper. He talks incessantly; his companions do the same. The great event of the coming days will form an epoch in their lives, and every incident will be indelibly imprinted upon their memories. A thrilling and detailed narrative will be despatched to London, where it will filter through the brain of the sub-editor and issue in the form of a paragraph in small type.

But the newspaper will be to blame; for it is an event, this consecration of the latest pontiff of the Armenian Church. It is an event both by reason of the personality of the new katholikos and because within recent years the fact has slowly dawned upon Europe that the politics of Western Asia must react upon the Western peoples, and that in those politics the Armenians are destined to play a part. The Church is at the present day the only native institution which has been preserved to that people. All their aspirations as human beings desirous to live as human beings are focussed by that single organisation. The broad democratic basis upon which reposes the election of the patriarch invests him with a representative character. Moreover he is not chosen by a section of his countrymen but by the nation as a whole. The Armenians of Turkey and of Persia as well as those within Russian territory contribute their suffrages. It is therefore only natural that, in the absence of secular institutions, the head of the Church should be much more than a merely spiritual ruler, and should reflect and in no small measure be expected to instruct the temporal hopes and fears of his flock.

The Russian Government have not been slow in recognising this fact; nor does the anxiety with which it is regarded in official circles date from the contemporary prominence of the Armenian Question. In the heyday of their relations with this Christian nation which hailed them as liberators, and which was placed in the very centre of the Mussulman peoples over which they were slowly establishing their sway, the Russians lavished favours upon Edgmiatsin;[2] and rightly or wrongly they are now accused by their Armenian allies, become their subjects, of having excited hopes which, when they had served the ends of Russian policy, were rudely and almost brutally suppressed. It is certain that the Armenian inhabitants of the provinces which now belong to Russia favoured the Russians in their campaigns against Persia and Turkey at the risk of reprisals on the part of their Mussulman masters. They smoothed the way for the extension of the Russian Empire from the valley of the Kur to that of the Araxes. The first great step in this direction was effected at the commencement of the present century, when the kingdom of Georgia was organised into a Russian province. The acquisition of Georgia afforded the Russians a foothold upon the tableland, and brought them into direct contact with the Persians and with the Turks. Their first battle against the Persians was fought on the 20th of June 1804, and resulted in the repulse of the Shah’s forces, which were led by his son, the famous Abbas Mirza. This action took place in the immediate neighbourhood of Edgmiatsin, and on the same day upon which was celebrated the annual festival of St. Ripsime, one of the saints who are the special glory of the cloister. The Armenians did not disguise the direction of their sympathies, and attributed, the Russian victory to the intervention of their Saint.[3] Ten years later, when the monastery was visited by Morier, the patriarch was wearing a high Russian order, of which the star glittered on his purple robe.[4]

In 1828 Edgmiatsin was annexed to Russia after the capture of Erivan from the Persians and as a result of the Treaty of Turkomanchai. Throughout the wars which ensued with Turkey the Armenians espoused the Russian cause; and one cannot doubt that their assistance was of considerable benefit both to Paskevich during the campaigns of 1828–29, and to Loris Melikoff, himself of Armenian origin, in that of 1877.[5] Little by little a certain bitterness becomes appreciable in these honeymoon relations. The origin or perhaps the reflection of this new feeling may be found in the provisions of the important statute which defines the status of the Armenian Church in Russia and regulates the constitution of Edgmiatsin. This statute, which is generally known as the Polojenye, is headed by the signature of the Tsar Nicholas and bears the date of March 1836. It was translated for me by one of the monks. In some respects it deals most liberally with the national Church. Her congregations are accorded full liberty of worship, and her clergy are relieved from all civil burdens. The principle of the election of the katholikos by the whole Armenian people professing the national religion is expressly recognised. The method of his election is minutely prescribed. The national delegates assemble in the church of St. Gregory, and submit two names to the Emperor, who makes the appointment.[6] On the other hand, in true Russian fashion, what is given with one hand is taken away with the other. The synod of Edgmiatsin is an ancient institution which, according to Armenian traditions, advises the katholikos, and may even resist him should he desire to effect changes in matters intimately affecting the national faith.[7] The Polojenye emphasises and develops the constitutional importance of this body, and places it under the titular presidency of the Emperor. The decrees of the synod are headed “By order of the Emperor of Russia”; and they are submitted to a Russian procurator, resident at Edgmiatsin, who examines into their validity. In matters of a purely spiritual nature the katholikos takes counsel with the synod, but need not necessarily accept its recommendations. But in all the general business of the Church, as well as of the cloister, it is the synod which has jurisdiction subject to the approval of the Minister of the Interior. In the synod, which consists of eight priests resident at Edgmiatsin, the katholikos has no more than a casting vote. It is true that he might act by Bull. But such action, were it contrary to the resolutions of the synod, would, as matters now stand, be revolutionary. In this manner the katholikos is put into leading strings, of which the ends are held by the officials on the banks of the Neva, duly instructed by a professed and resident spy.

Nor are the remaining provisions of this double-faced instrument calculated to shed balm over the wounded dignity of the head of the Church. It is the Emperor who appoints the members of the synod, although the katholikos is entrusted with the important function of submitting two names for the Imperial choice. It is not legal for the pontiff to punish a member of the synod without the Imperial consent. The same authority is necessary should he desire to suspend a bishop. He may not leave the cloister for more than four months except with the sanction of the Tsar. When a bishopric falls vacant he submits names to the Emperor, with whom the appointment rests. Should the bishop desire to go abroad for more than four months, application must be made to the same high quarter. But perhaps the most serious because the most insidious weapon against the independence of the national Church is the provision which enacts that a year shall elapse between the death of a katholikos and the election of his successor. This clause was accepted with singular want of foresight at a time when travelling was even slower than it is at the present day, and when it was difficult to collect the delegates from Turkey and Persia within a lesser period. In practice it is not easy for the new katholikos to take up his duties until some time subsequent to his election; and, should further delay be of advantage to the Government, the Tsar can always defer confirming the choice of the representatives. Thus a vacancy in the Chair is always accompanied by a long interregnum, during which the Government plays off one party against the other, and succeeds in obtaining whatever concessions may have been resisted during the preceding pontificate.

An English traveller who visited Edgmiatsin the year after the conclusion of this enactment found the synod with its Russian procurator in full swing. The katholikos was at once reduced to a position of president of the synod, and the synod to one of subservience to Russian policy.[8] Von Haxthausen speaks of the procurator as a Russian and quite an autocrat; this was in 1843.[9] At that time the pontiff Nerses was in occupation of the Chair, and his conspicuous abilities were regarded with suspicion by the Russian authorities. His schemes for the higher education of the Armenians had come to nothing owing to Russian opposition. But the hardest blow was reserved for the year 1885, when the Katholikos Makar was appointed by the Emperor in defiance of the expressed sentiments of the delegates of the nation. It was then realised that the independence of the Church was at an end. The ukase of investiture confirmed this pessimist view. Instead of the usual wording “upon the recommendation of the Armenian people,” the appointment was based “upon the recommendation of the clergy.” Instead of the pictures from Armenian history which adorned the ukase of the pontiff George, Russian insignia and coats of arms enlivened the scroll. The constitutional phrase has been restored to the ukase confirming the present pontiff, but not the patriotic pictures![10]

Fig. 48. The Katholikos Mekertich Khrimean.

Still, in spite of the fetters which have been imposed upon the actions of the katholikos, as much by the manner in which the Polojenye is worked by the Russian bureaucracy as by the provisions which that statute contains, the average Armenian and especially the lower classes are immensely interested in the event of the coming days. At Batum, at Kutais, at Alexandropol, at Erivan—wherever we have been in the society of Armenians, talk has centred upon the triumphal journey and the approaching consecration of His Holiness Mekertich Khrimean. It is not only the ancient ceremony, and it is not merely the assembling of delegates from all parts of the Armenian world that appeals to the heart of the nation. It is the personality and reputation of the man. The people forgets, but it does not change. The imagination of the race still sees in the holder of the pontifical office not alone or so much an archbishop or katholikos—the keystone of the edifice of the Church—as a high priest in the old Biblical sense. Khrimean is the ideal of a high priest. He is a figure which steps straight out from the Old Testament with all the fire and all the poetry. At the ceremony of his consecration it seemed as if at the foot of Ararat the ancient spirit were still alive, and that the holy oil which descended upon that venerable head from the beak of the golden dove anointed a law-giver to the people who announced the Divine Word. This impression was in part derived from the Semitic cast of his features. The large brown eyes and aquiline nose above a long and full beard, are characteristics which we associate with the Jewish nation, but which are not uncommon among the Armenians. What is more rare among this people is the spirituality and refinement which is written in every line of this handsome face (Fig. [48]). But the whole character of the man would seem to have been moulded upon a Biblical model rather than upon that of the Christian hierarchy. He is the tried statesman to whom the people look for guidance in the abeyance of the kingly office. With him religion and patriotism are almost interchangeable terms; and the strong reality which he has given to the old Armenian history may be illustrated by an act which those who lack sympathy with such a character might almost regard as childish. In the cloister of Varag near Van, over which he has presided for many years, are buried the remains of Senekerim, king of the Van country, who abdicated his kingdom in favour of the Byzantine emperor, Basil II., and retired to the town of Sivas in Asia Minor, which he received in exchange. Over his tomb a wooden canopy had been erected and decorated in a manner befitting royal rank. But such honours, paid to so unworthy a monarch, shocked the keen sense of the patriot in Khrimean; he stripped the frame of its trappings and ornaments, and the structure stands bare to this day. The simple surroundings among which his life has been passed recall the setting of a Bible story. At a later stage of our journey, when we arrived in the town of Van, I was shown the house where he had resided and which he has now devoted to a school for girls. As I alighted to visit the school a man with the appearance and dress of a peasant stepped forward to hold the reins of my horse. Yet this individual was none other than the nephew of the Katholikos, and the brother of Khoren Khrimean, who has accompanied his uncle to Edgmiatsin, and who does the honours of the patriarchal household with so much dignity and natural grace. During our stay in Van, his native province, we were afforded an instance of the magnetic influence which through a long life Mekertich Khrimean has exercised upon his countrymen, and which takes the form of superstitious veneration among the humble and the poor. As we were winding up the slopes of Mount Varag on our way to the ancient monastery where he lived so long, teaching in the school which he had founded within its walls, and often taking this very path from the cloister to preach in the little church of Hankusner, on the outskirts of the gardens of Van, our attention was called to a spot where an assassin had lain in wait for him, deputed by his enemies to kill him as he rode unaccompanied towards the town. The story is told that when the man perceived him and raised his rifle to his shoulder, a sudden fear seized his limbs, his arm shook like a wand; and he fell upon his knees before his victim, whose look he had been unable to bear. As a writer Khrimean has expressed through the vehicle of a prose which is full of poetry and emotion conceptions of Scripture and thoughts upon the troubles of his time which might have sprung from the warm imagination of the early Christians in the East. He has often suffered for the fire of his sermons, and he possesses both the style of the consummate orator and the personal charm which keeps an audience under a spell. He has for many years been in the forefront of the Armenian movement; and it was he who pleaded the Armenian cause at the Congress of Berlin. A people whose spirit has been crushed and whose manhood has been degraded gather new life from such a teacher and learn to become men. But perhaps the most striking quality in a character which is at once complex and clear as the light of day is the ever-welling kindness and open-armed sympathy with which he shares the troubles of his fellow-men. As the throng press round him, the holder of their highest office, and endeavour to kiss his hand or gain a glimpse of his face, the mind travels back to that solemn scene in which the Greek king receives his stricken and distracted people: “O my poor children, known to me, not unknown is the subject of your prayer; well am I aware that you are sore afflicted all; yet, though you suffer, there is not one among you who suffers even as I. For the grief you bear comes to each one alone—himself for himself he suffers—and to none other else; but my soul mourns for the State and for myself and you.”[11]