Side by side with personal relations of greater freedom than I had anticipated towards this remarkable man, there grew up at Edgmiatsin and during the course of subsequent travel a fairly intimate acquaintance with the events of his life. He was born on the 5th of April 1820; and it is therefore in his seventy-fourth year that he ascends the throne of St. Thaddeus and of St. Gregory. His father and uncle were well-to-do citizens of Van, who had come to be known under the name of Khrimean because of a trade which they had conducted with the Crimea. The young Mekertich had a single brother and no sisters; and he appears to have been educated with some care by his uncle. His youth and early manhood were devoted to secular pursuits. For five or six years he acted in the capacity of an overseer in a weaving business. But already in 1841 he had become a traveller and a thinker; in that year he made a journey in the province of Ararat and visited Edgmiatsin. At the age of twenty-five he married and in due course became a father; but his wife died after giving birth to a daughter who only lived to be six or seven years old. To a layman of intellectual tastes among the Armenians of Turkey there is scarcely any other profession open than the honourable but ill-paid calling of a teacher. Shortly after his marriage Khrimean proceeded to the capital and earned his living by private tuition. His first book appeared in 1850, and consisted of a description in poetry of his travels in Ararat. The period of his residence in Constantinople was diversified by further journeys; to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, of which he published an account; and to Cilicia, the seat of the latest Armenian dynasty, where he remained some time as a teacher in the convent of Sis. In 1854 he returned to his native city, and in the following year took orders and became a vardapet or monastic priest. It is at this date that the more conspicuous portion of his life may be said to have commenced. The pulpit gave full scope to his natural eloquence; while the qualities of the student and writer, which he had carefully cultivated, were displayed in the columns of a journal which he founded about 1856 and named the Eagle of Vaspurakan, or of the province of Van. The proceeds of the sale of this periodical, which was at first printed at Constantinople, whither he had returned in 1855, enabled him to purchase an instrument of great rareness in Turkey, which the Armenians prize with the same childish affection and reverence as the Persian highlanders value a rifle or sporting gun. Khrimean re-entered Van with the title of abbot of the famous monastery which overlooks the landscape of the city and the rock and the waters from the slopes of Mount Varag. He came the proud possessor of a printing press, with which to conquer the sloth of the faint-hearted among the laymen and edify the crass ignorance of the priests.
In the good old times in Turkey one might read or write what books one liked, and the freedom which was enjoyed by the average individual might have excited the envy of the citizens of some of the European states. When the abbot of Varag cast his stone into the stagnant waters, the report woke little echo beyond the borders of his native province and the ranks of his countrymen. But the waves which he set in motion have never yet subsided; and who can tell upon what shore of promise or disappointment they are destined to break and disappear? If ever there was a good cause, such was the cause which he championed, and no advocate could be more pure-minded than himself. His avowed object and real aim was the elevation of the Armenians and their preparation for the new era which he foresaw. That era he conceived as one of national activity in the rapid decline of the Mussulman peoples and the approach of new influences from the West. If we tax him with having resuscitated a realised and played-out ideal—that national ideal which is still the bane of our modern Europe, but which, except perhaps in the case of some paradoxical German Professors, has lost its hold upon educated minds, he might reply that it is the only talisman with which to touch the Armenians, the most obstinate nationalists which the world has ever seen. He might further point to the almost hopeless condition of the Ottoman Empire, and under his breath he might suggest that the methods of Russian despotism were not such as to excite the enthusiasm of a strongly individual people capable of assimilating Western culture at first hand. Lastly, he might dwell upon the fact that the Armenians have a long history, and that their progress, to be solid and permanent, must be based on a revival of consciousness in the dignity of their past.
But the inculcation of such doctrines in the minds of his countrymen was sure to produce a ferment among a people who have been regarded as the inferiors and almost as the slaves of the Mussulmans for upwards of eight hundred years. It was imputed to him that he was working to revive the old Armenian kingdom—a consummation which a sensible Turk should regard with equanimity, since the time necessary to attain this end would far exceed all possible limits which he might assign to his solicitude for posterity. But sensible people are a minority of the inhabitants of this globe, and they are not numerous in the governing circles of the Ottoman Empire. The great activity of the Abbot of Varag, who trained his youths in the school of the cloister to conduct unaided the redoubtable magazine, slowly aroused the suspicion of the authorities. His own party in the Church supported him with much zeal, and another monastery, still more famous, that of Surb Karapet above Mush plain, was added to his spiritual administration. No sooner was he installed than a second printing press was set up and another school founded. The Armenians of the plain of Mush were edified by a new local journal, the Little Eagle of Taron. In 1869 he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople, a dignity which he only held for four years. The Turkish Government had become alive to his great and growing popularity, and it was found expedient that he should resign. Then came the tribulations of the Russo-Turkish war, during which the new movement among the Armenians cost them several little massacres and untoward events. When the Congress met at Berlin the ex-patriarch, who had been busy with literature, undertook, in concert with an archiepiscopal colleague, a mission on behalf of his nation to the German capital. This was his first visit to the West, and he extended his journey to Italy, France and England. The result of his efforts and of those of Nerses, Patriarch of Constantinople, was the insertion of the well-known clause in the Treaty of Berlin pledging Europe to supervise the execution of reforms in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey inhabited by Armenians. Khrimean returned to his native country the object of the resentment of the Ottoman authorities; much of this portion of his life was spent in Van. But Armenian discontent was spreading; the alarm of Government was increasing; and in 1889 the eloquent preacher was sent to Jerusalem in honorary exile. In the month of May 1892 he was elected to the primacy of the Armenian Church. The Russian bureaucracy perhaps reflected that their safeguards at Edgmiatsin were quite sufficient to bridle the vigour of a septuagenarian. These shrewd diplomats therefore humoured the Armenians in the matter, and the election was allowed to stand. The Sultan raised difficulties about releasing the exiled prelate from his Ottoman nationality and oath of allegiance. When this objection had been overcome his consent was qualified by the condition that the katholikos-elect should not pass through Constantinople. A year elapsed in these parleyings. For two years the Armenian Church had been without a head. During that period it had been ruled by the Russian procurator. Now in the autumn the elect of the nation is at length presented to the delegates who have assembled from all parts of the Armenian world. And he comes from Russia, from the north, released from exile in Turkey at the pressing instance of the Tsar. One must admire the extraordinary cleverness of these Russian bureaucrats!
The sun was already high when we sallied forth from our lodging, having with great difficulty prepared our breakfast in the crowded room. We passed down the long and dusty street of the village, which is dignified by the historical name of Vagharshapat. Nothing remains of the capital of King Tiridates, which was built upon this site or in the immediate neighbourhood. You are shown the remains of an old bridge which spanned the Kasagh, or river of Vagharshapat, some little distance north-west of the present settlement. The river has changed its course since it was erected. But the character of the masonry is rather that which was prevalent in the Middle Ages—conglomerate piles, faced with carefully hewn and jointed blocks of stone. Several shops bestow a modern appearance upon the street, having windows and being disposed as in Europe. A commonplace edifice with many windows and standing in private grounds recalls an Institute in one of our provincial towns. It is the Academy or Seminary. We entered the cloister from a door on the north, through which we issued into an open space on the west of the great court. A covered way conducted us to the quadrangle, in the centre of which rises the cathedral (Fig. [49], taken from south-west).
Imagine the Old Court of Trinity College at Cambridge without the gateway, the hall and chapel, and with a church of some size placed in the centre where the fountain stands. All four sides of the figure are defined by low buildings, resembling the dwellings which constitute two sides of the Cambridge court. I had always understood that our quadrangle at Trinity was the largest in the world; although I believe some American university was building one a few inches bigger not so very long ago. But the great court of Edgmiatsin perhaps already makes the record; it has a length, from west to east, of 349 feet 6 inches, and a breadth of 335 feet 2 inches. These measurements I took myself, much to the astonishment of the crowd which assembled; they were at a loss to find a theory which might explain so strange an act. The length will be very much increased in a short while, when the condemned east side has disappeared. A fine row of stone buildings is in course of erection, which will enlarge that dimension by many yards. Our cousins across the Atlantic must bestir themselves.
Fig. 49. Edgmiatsin: The Great Court and the Cathedral.
The western side of the court on the south of the covered way is devoted to the residence of the Katholikos, while the block on the north of the same passage is occupied by the bishops. There is no style or pomp about the pontifical dwelling; and it would bear the same relation to the Master’s Lodge at Trinity as a four-roomed cottage to a mansion. At the back is a little garden. The north side consists of the rooms inhabited by the monks, and a terrace, raised on pointed arches, extends from end to end. The building on the east is in process of demolition, and, like its fellows on the two sides which have already been described, is composed of comparatively fragile material. I was given to understand that it had once housed the seminary and printing press; a little bakery still occupies the junction with the buildings on the south. These are constructed of stone, and, although very plain, lend an air of solidity to the entire quadrangle. Beginning on the west of this block we have first a long refectory on the ground floor. Its dimensions are a length of 155 feet, and a breadth of 16 feet 6 inches. But it is a very humble place when compared to the magnificent dining halls at Cambridge, and it is not more than 14 feet in height. The ceiling is vaulted, and like the walls is whitewashed over; the apartment is well lit and is cool in summer. Two rows of narrow tables extend down it, and on the west side is the throne and the canopy of the Katholikos, both in carved wood. Should he join the monks at dinner, his table is spread beneath the canopy. Parallel with this refectory and facing the outhouses on the south is placed a similar chamber for the servants, a part of the space upon the east being occupied by the kitchen. The storey above the refectories is tenanted by the library, while the eastern portion of the buildings is taken up by granaries and store rooms both on the ground and upper floors.
Plan of the Monastery of Edgmiatsin