There can be little doubt that the overseeing by the katholikos and synod of the administration of the funds of the Church in Russia has already effected a salutary change. Should Russia become possessed of the Turkish provinces, and should her counsels incline to the sounder policy of encouraging the Armenians to work out their salvation in their own way, this concentration is likely to promote a general reform of the Armenian clergy. The authority of the katholikos at the present day extends to practically all Armenians professing the national religion. That authority suffered division during the troubled period of long duration which followed the overthrow of the Bagratid dynasty (A.D. 1045) and the gradual dispersal of the Armenian people. But the Katholikos of Sis has quite recently professed his spiritual allegiance to Edgmiatsin;[50] and the recluse of Akhtamar, that beauteous island in the lake of Van, alone continues pretence to the title and station of a supreme pontiff. His jurisdiction is confined to his rock and a few villages on the mainland. The patriarchate of Constantinople is an institution which is the result of political exigencies, and which in no way derogates from the spiritual supremacy of the successor of St. Gregory, enthroned in the cloister near the banks of the Araxes.
My reader has perhaps divined from a perusal of the foregoing paragraphs that an interesting feature of the Armenian Church is the power enjoyed by the laity, which indeed may be described as predominant. With them rests the choice of the ordinary clergy, and in practice their voice prevails in the selection of a katholikos. That Church is indeed a compromise, so far as her ministers are concerned, between opposite principles in the organisation of Christianity. The monastic priests represent the principle of elevating a hierarchy into a position of lofty independence. From among their ranks are taken the bishops. But the great body of the clergy are strictly the ministers of the people, supported by their voluntary contributions. From these conclusions, derived from a study of contemporary conditions, I pass to a brief examination of the Edgmiatsin legend, and of the history and character of that interesting ecclesiastical edifice which rises in the background of all that I have written in the present chapter.
The Armenians boast that the Gospel was preached to their ancestors by the first apostles, and that they were the first people to adopt Christianity as the religion of the State. They separate these two events by a respectable interval, for they attribute the conversion of king and people to a miracle performed by St. Gregory towards the close of the third century. We have seen that the current version of that miracle comprises a vision by which Jesus Christ becomes in effect the Founder of their cathedral church. The inference is perhaps legitimate that they hold their own Church, as an organisation, to have been established by Christ Himself; and its independence of all hierarchies, whether of the East or of the West, to be based upon the same supreme sanction.[51] We are carried back by a discussion of these claims to the very dawn of the Christian religion; and it will be wise to keep them before us as prominent landmarks to control the discursiveness of an enquiry which must also be brief.
I. The apostles mentioned by Armenian writers as having carried the Gospel into Armenia are St. Bartholomew, St. Thaddeus—the son or brother of St. James—St. Simon and St. Jude.[52] Of these the two first named are alone in general repute. But the fame of St. Thaddeus reposes upon no less a title than that of having executed a commission from Jesus Christ Himself to the court of an Arsakid king of Lower Armenia or Mesopotamia, whom the Armenians claim as one of their own royal line. King Abgar of Edessa is said to have corresponded with the Saviour and to have begged Him to come to his capital and heal him of a malady. The letter is preserved which purports to contain the reply of Jesus, to the effect that after His ascension He would despatch one of the disciples. With this epistle came a portrait of the features of the Redeemer, which in subsequent times was the peculiar pride of Edessa. In due course the disciple arrived in the person of St. Thaddeus, and the king was restored to health. Monarch and people embraced the Christian faith. After the death of Abgar, which appears to have taken place at no long interval, his dominions were divided between his son and nephew. The former returned at once to the religion of his ancestors and reopened the temples of the gods. The latter, who seems to have reigned over a portion of Armenia proper, and who bore the name of Sanatruk, was visited by the apostle and embraced the faith. But fear of the Armenian nobles compelled the ruler to apostatise; the disciple was overwhelmed by the storm which he had himself aroused, and perished in the border province of Armenia on the side of Persia, in the country which receives the eastern slopes of Ararat.[53] The legend of Abgar and his correspondence has provoked the attack of modern criticism and has perished in the unequal affray.[54] But the preaching and martyrdom of St. Thaddeus at the hands of King Sanatruk are well known to one of the earliest and most reliable of Armenian historians; and the same authority of the fourth century speaks of the throne of the Armenian pontiffs as the chair of St. Thaddeus.[55] In the absence of conclusive evidence that this saint did not preach in Armenia I shall prefer to suppose that he did. The name of St. Bartholomew is often mentioned in connection with that of St. Thaddeus; he is said to have been active in the mountainous region to the south of Lake Van, and to have been flayed alive by the same monarch who put his colleague to death.[56]
These stories were perhaps invented at a comparatively late period. We are on surer ground when we surmise that Christianity was professed in Armenia long anterior to the miraculous cure of King Tiridates and his conversion by St. Gregory. Indeed it would be strange if such had failed to be the case. The interposition of one vast desert between the Holy Land and Armenia is a comparatively modern geographical fact. It is due entirely to bad government. In the first century the two countries were united by a long string of cities, the populous capitals of the low-lying districts. From such centres as Edessa and Nisibis the religion was carried into the border ranges, and over the passes to the plains of the tableland. There the first regions designated by Nature to receive the new culture were situated in the fertile country about the shores of Lake Van, and further east around the margin of Lake Urmi. As early as the middle of the third century we hear of an Armenian bishop, whose name, that of Merujan, would naturally connect him with the great Artsruni family, which possessed extensive territories in the neighbourhood of Van and subsequently furnished to that country a line of mediæval kings.[57] It is also probable that the Archelaus, in whose mouth is placed a disputation with Mani towards the close of the same century (c. A.D. 275–277), was bishop of a see not far removed from Van.[58] These early ecclesiastics would almost certainly have made use of the Syriac character, and it is more than likely that many among them were Syrians. Their activity and the circle of their disciples may not have extended to Northern Armenia; although there is presumptive evidence to show that the Christianity of Albania (Eastern Caucasus or Daghestan) and Siunik (country around Lake Gökcheh and part of Karabagh) dated back to pre-Gregorian times.[59] It seems at first sight strange that the earliest historians, such as Agathangelus and Faustus, maintain silence upon this older Christianity of their native land; but the edict of Tiridates against the enemies of paganism, preserved in the earliest source of the first of these works, implies the existence of Christians within the limits of his dominions whom the king persecutes after the example of his colleagues at Rome; and the luminous argument of one of the latest scholars in this field carries conviction that the priestly compiler Agathangelus and the monk Faustus had good reasons to ignore this pre-Gregorian Christianity, as being opposed to the character of the later orthodoxy.[60] The big gap left by Armenian writers between the preaching of the apostles and the advent of St. Gregory in narrating the religious history of their country is in itself a suspicious fact; Armenian vanity was satisfied by the connection of their ancestors with the first disciples, and would not be wounded by a temporary relapse; but the laborious methods of modern research are year by year illuminating the interval, and removing the shroud which is perhaps due to ecclesiastical prejudice or fraud.
What was the nature of this early Christianity which made its way in despite of persecution among a barbarous people, professing a crude and perhaps unamiable form of paganism? It is difficult to believe that the religion of the first Christians resembled even remotely the later State religion of the Roman Empire, which under the name of Christianity was spread over the world by the imperial armies and has been bequeathed as a troublesome legacy to the modern world. The origins of this great spiritual movement are veiled in twilight; but from the shadows and uncertain glimmer shines forth a Personality which no doubts and no disappointments can assail. Round this Personality centred many and diverse spiritual conceptions, old as time itself and young as time. They were quickened into new life by the emotional quality of a great example; and they were kept alive and made to focus upon the domain of morality by the daily and intimate intercourse of the members of a brotherhood which should embrace all the creatures of God. It is essential to the fruitfulness of such a community that they should maintain, not internal discipline nor even the agreement of the members upon matters of doctrine among themselves, but the enthusiasm which prompted their first efforts, a high sense of individual responsibility among the members, and the habit of mutual tolerance, mutual help, mutual consolation, and, above all, of mutual love. The simple ceremonies of the early Church were calculated to promote this spirit. The candidate was admonished by the rite of baptism of the serious nature of the resolve which he had taken to break with the world of sense and appearance, and to become initiated into the higher meaning and purpose by which it is supported and inspired. The fast redressed the balance between the soul and the unruly flesh; and the agapes or love-feasts induced a close communion among the brothers, the necessary corollary to communion with God.
It is scarcely open to doubt that the theoretical side of the religion was not defined by any rigid formula. “Tell me,” says Archelaus, “over whom it was that the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. Who is this one whom John baptizes? If He was already perfect, if He was already the Son, if He was already Virtue, the Holy Spirit could not have entered into Him; a kingdom cannot enter into a kingdom. Whose was the voice which came from heaven and bore testimony to Him: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’?” It is clear that the theory of Archelaus was of an adoptionist nature, or, in other words, that he believed Jesus to have been adopted as the Son of God by the descent of the Holy Spirit at the baptism. It is also plain that he was not arguing as an irresponsible disputant, but as giving voice to a strong current of orthodox opinion in his Church, as opposed to the docetic teaching of Mani, representing Jesus as a heavenly spirit assuming the mask of man. Other currents there certainly were in other dioceses than that of Archelaus, and perhaps even among his own flock. But there seems strong reason for believing that the adoptionist Christology was firmly established towards the close of the third century in outlying portions of the Roman Empire and among the Christian communities outside its pale.[61] In Antioch it had been suppressed in the person of Bishop Paul of Samosata after the overthrow of his patron, Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, by the Emperor Aurelian in the year 272. The weight of the Empire was placed in the scale of those tendencies which were to crystallise in the celebrated formula of Nice (A.D. 325): Christ a very God, begotten of God, but not a creature of God; Son of God, of one nature with the Father; Who came down from heaven, and took flesh, and became man, and suffered and ascended into heaven; Who was before He was begotten and Who has always been. The same Council of Nice enjoined that the followers of Bishop Paul, or Pauliani, should be re-baptized before admission to the Church. The recalcitrant were driven out into the mountain fastnesses, where after the lapse of several centuries and under the Armenian terminology of Paulicians (Paulikean), the inheritors of their spirit again emerge as a sharp thorn in the side of the orthodox Churches both of Constantinople and of Armenia. The history of the wholesale persecutions of this hardy people by the successors of the Cæsars during the ninth century, and of the successful reprisals which they made, is outside the scope of these remarks; they were driven into the arms of the Mohammedan Power, and their decimation by the imperial armies drove another nail into the coffin which was being prepared for the cancerous body of the Roman Empire.
The connection of the assailants of Armenian orthodoxy, who were known as Paulicians, with their namesakes in the more westerly provinces of the Empire, and of these with Paul of Samosata, has not yet, perhaps, in spite of the luminous researches of the scholar I have quoted, been sufficiently worked out. But we rise from a perusal of his work with the conviction that this connection was at least of the nature of a strong family resemblance dating back to apostolic times. The important document which he has disinterred from the library at Edgmiatsin, and of which the title suggests the hopes that were excited in the breast of Socrates by the pretensions of a certain work of Anaxagoras, affords us a full and detailed, if partially mutilated account of the religious profession of the descendants of these Armenian heretics, as copied from previous copies by a member of the sect in 1782. The same voice which found expression in the disputation of Archelaus rings out from the pages of the Key of Truth not less clearly than of old. Jesus is human, though free from sin, until He is baptized by John in the Jordan when He has reached His thirtieth year. Then the Spirit of the Father, descending upon Him, fills Him with the Godhead. After adoption the elect Christ is forthwith led up to the mountain, where He enjoys the mystery of intercourse with the Father for forty days. Baptism must therefore constitute a central event in the life of the Christian, or imitator of Christ. He must come to baptism after the full awakening of his individual conscience to a knowledge of sin and to the nature of repentance. He must come at mature age, when the heats of youth are passed and his natural instincts have been brought under control. No remission of sins can be effective until he shall have reached this age; nor is baptism under other circumstances more than an empty form. Through baptism he becomes a Christian; and the meal which follows baptism is the symbol of that feast of divine converse with God of which the Son of God, after His adoption, partook. The Holy Ghost enters the catechumen immediately after baptism, and he in effect becomes filled with the spirit of God. The note of aversion to hierarchical grades which is struck in this treatise was no doubt accentuated by the opposition of the sect to the methods of their natural enemies, the Orthodox Church. But their polity—if the word may stand—could in this respect be based on Scripture; and it encouraged that sense of individual responsibility and that habit of self-reliance which are not less effective qualities in the domain of evangelical enterprise than the opposite methods of the Jesuits. The elect of God composed a body of which each member was sublimely conscious of his resolve to pursue a life of ideal justice by communion with the spirit which resided in himself. The example which they set was not that of a selected and exotic hierarchy, but was the example of simple peasants and artisans. When we meet such people, whatever the proximate origin of their particular tenets, we take farewell with a tear and perhaps with a sigh. The Dukhobortsy, of whom I have spoken, would find much in the manual of these Armenian adoptionists with which those resolute children of the Reformation in Europe would cordially agree.
Traces of adoptionism are to be found in the teaching of St. Gregory himself and in the early institutions of the Armenian State Church. We must regret that what is probably the earliest source for our knowledge of that teaching has not yet been translated into one of our Western tongues.[62] In one passage the saint instructs us that the Spirit, coming down at the Baptism, gave to Jesus the glory which became His. John the Baptist is represented as the depositary of the Divine favours conferred of old upon Israel; and it was he who conferred these favours—priesthood, prophecy and kingship—upon our Lord Jesus Christ.[63] It is, I think, scarcely fair to argue from such passages that the Christianity of Gregory was, as a whole, of an adoptionist type. But it is interesting to remember in this connection that the Armenians celebrate the birth and the baptism of Christ upon one and the same day, the 6th of January. And we may perhaps be surprised to read that in the canons of St. Sahak, one of the pillars of the early State Church (390–439), the feast of the birth of Christ is not included in the list of festivals which are formulated in some detail.[64] We know that St. Gregory himself brought to Armenia with great pomp certain relics of St. John the Baptist; and the number of monasteries in Armenia which are dedicated to the hermit on the Jordan testify to the peculiar veneration in which he has been held. But the influence of orthodoxy in the West must early have restrained these adoptionist tendencies; and it is not improbable that they became identified with that stubborn heresy of their native land which is often mentioned and deplored by Armenian writers.[65] There are reasons for supposing that the Messalianism (meteslenuthium) against which is directed a cruel canon of the Armenian Council of Shahapivan, convened in about the middle of the fifth century, was in effect a manifestation of this native heresy, and was identical with the Paulicianism which was specifically stigmatised by a canon of the Council held in Dvin (valley of the Araxes) in the year 719. The first of these synods enacted that priests convicted of Messalianism should be branded on the forehead with the figure of a fox. This particular punishment was the same which was meted out to the Paulicians of Armenia during the persecutions of the eleventh century. The Council of Dvin forbade all intercourse with members of this sect under pain of heavy punishments. The pontiff of the day, John the Philosopher, composed a tract against them, in which he speaks of them as dregs of the incestuous flock of the Paulicians, and informs us that they had been placed under a ban by Nerses Katholikos, under which name he is probably alluding to Nerses III. (640–661).[66] He represents them as joining hands with certain refugees from the Albanian Church (Eastern Caucasus) who were opposed to the use of images. There is at least a family resemblance between these sectaries of the eighth century and those who, under the name of Thonraki (Thonraketzi), suffered persecution in the tenth and eleventh centuries at the hands of the Armenian State Church. Their fiercest adversary, Gregory Magistros, who in the middle of the eleventh century carried fire and sword into their mountain retreats, alludes to them as having imbibed the poison of Paul of Samosata, and adds the important statement that their proximate founder was one Sembat, and that for 170 years they had been continuously admonished and anathematised by successive patriarchs and bishops of Armenia as well as of Albania.[67] Their seats in Armenia were in the radial mountain mass of the Ala Dagh (Thonrak), in Sasun, south of Mush, and in the neighbourhood of Khinis, whence were derived the band who were the object of perhaps the latest persecution, that of 1837–45. It was on this occasion that the documentary proof of their professions was wrested from them and taken to Edgmiatsin. It is the book entitled the Key of Truth. The plain of Khinis contained members of this sect into quite recent times; but they suffered severely owing to the customary powers possessed by the heads of the Gregorian community in Turkey to inflict corporal punishment upon members of their own flock. The sectaries were not recognised by the Government as an independent religion. Not many years ago the remnant came over to the American missionaries and embraced the Protestant faith.