King and minister travelled the country in all directions, preaching,[86] overthrowing temples and endowing the Church with their rich possessions. One after another the most famous sanctuaries succumbed to the royal zeal: the fane of Aramazd, father of the gods, at Ani, the modern Kemakh, the burial-place of the kings; that of Nanea, daughter of Aramazd, at Til, beyond the Western Euphrates; the temple of Mithra, son of Aramazd, at Pakharij in Terjan, and the temple of Barshamin at Tortan. A more personal delight may have thrilled the saint—if saints be capable of such emotions—as he shattered the golden statue of the goddess Anahid at Erzinjan, and watched the lofty walls of her numerous shrines sinking to the level of the ground. They were the most magnificent of all the sacred edifices in Armenia, and they were defended to the last by quite an army of dusky foes. Within the vacant enclosures was erected the sign of the Cross.
Months and perhaps years were occupied in the overthrow of these strongholds of paganism;[87] but it was not until after the return of Gregory from ordination at Cæsarea of Cappadocia, whither he was escorted by sixteen of the great nobles and conducted in a car drawn by white mules,[88] that king and people received at the hands of the minister, no longer a layman, the crowning benefit of baptism. The first act of Gregory upon his return to his native country was to destroy the temples of Astishat in the province of Taron (Mush), which lay upon his road and which were still frequented. These were three in number and dedicated to three gods. The first was the shrine of Vahagn, destroyer of serpents; the second belonged to Anahid, the golden mother; while the third preserved the cult of the goddess Astghik, the Aphrodite of the fair mythology of Greece. They were situated on the summit of Mount Karke, close to the Euphrates, and in full view of the chain of the Taurus mountains. The place was called Astishat because of the frequent sacrifices which were offered up; and it was there that the kings of Armenia had been wont to appease the gods. The saint was carrying with him certain relics obtained in Roman territory, namely a parcel of the bones of St. John the Baptist and of those of the holy martyr Athenogenes.[89] When his numerous party had arrived in front of the temples, and were not further from the Euphrates than a space which a horseman would cover in two careers of his steed, the white mules of the car with the relics came to a standstill in the hollow of a valley, where there was a little water and which still remained to be crossed. Efforts were being made in vain to induce them to proceed, when an angel appeared to Gregory and signified the Divine Will. The relics should be deposited upon the spot where they were stationed. Forthwith the entire company busied themselves with the erection of a chapel, where in due course the bones of the saints were laid to rest. The next care of pontiff and princes was to demolish the temples of the idols which stood above the valley. In their place Gregory laid the foundations of a church, and erected an altar to the glory of God.[90] It was here that he first commenced to build churches, and to erect altars in the name of Christ. For twenty days he sojourned on the spot; and having prepared fonts for baptism, baptized first the great princes who had journeyed with him, and next the people to the number of over a hundred and ninety thousand. In the chapel of St. John and Athenogenes he dispensed the holy sacrament; and it was ordained that an annual festival should be celebrated in that place in honour of the saints and in commemoration of the first foundation of Christian churches and ordination of Christian priests. From Astishat the Illuminator journeyed to Bagaran in the province of Ararat; but it was at the foot of Mount Nepat and on the banks of the river Euphrates that the son of Anak administered to king and assembled army the regenerating rite. A church was erected upon the site and endowed with a remnant of the relics; and a festival was appointed in honour of the saints in place of that of Amanor, at the season of first fruits.[91]
It would not be easy to find an account equally graphic and circumstantial of the methods employed to substitute Christianity for polytheism, which, although, no doubt, they were less violent and more gradually operative in more civilised countries, were yet essentially similar. We learn from the Armenian writer how the churches rose on the sites of the temples, how the ancient festival in honour of the god was converted into the festival of a martyr, and how, in fact, while the myth was new and unfamiliar, much of the ritual and all the surroundings remained the same. The sacred groves were taken by storm amid scenes of carnage which our historian skilfully veils by the use of metaphor. The lands and slaves of the heathen fanes were made over to the Church; the number of the chapels exceeded that of the shrines which had been demolished, and separate endowments were made to all by royal decree. The children of the priests were distributed among the newly founded seminaries, where they were instructed in the Greek and Syriac languages and introduced to the literature of the Church. Their loyalty to the new religion was stimulated by an annual salary; and the most deserving among them were consecrated bishops. Such was the nature of the revolution accomplished by St. Gregory with a thoroughness and decision which we cannot but admire. The old cult was not extinguished, but irremediably disabled; it lurked even in the highest places, and we hear of a queen of Armenia who encouraged the polytheists to assassinate Verthanes, the son and successor of St. Gregory.[92] Many Armenians practised Christianity as a mere matter of form, regarding it as an aberration of the human intelligence to which they had been compelled to subscribe.[93] Those who had embraced the faith with conviction were limited to the circles which spoke Greek or Syriac, or were at least fairly familiar with those idioms.[94] Yet Gregory preached to the Armenians in the Armenian language.[95] Under the shadow of night the devotees of the old religion would adore their divinities and chant the tempestuous epics of their native land.[96] Years elapsed before they would abandon their lamentations for the dead, a practice specially repugnant to the Christian spirit.[97] Still, in spite of the constant undercurrent and frequent ebullitions of paganism, the institutions of the Illuminator were never jeopardised by a decisive relapse. The religion which he invested with all the authority of the State became inextricably interwoven with the self-consciousness of the Armenian nation, and derived from their inveterate obstinacy or admirable heroism a stability which hardened the more it was threatened from without.
Then, as now, the keystone of the ecclesiastical edifice was the person of the katholikos. I do not know that we can instance among Christian organisations any counterpart of this high office. Beside it that of the king seems mere fable and tinsel. The title itself was unimportant and unpretentious, designating as it did among the Christians of the East an archbishop with plenary powers (ad universalitatem causarum), such as were necessary in countries removed by distance from the hierarchical centres. It is applied by our earliest extant authority to St. Gregory;[98] and, so moderate are the claims or pronounced the hierarchical spirit of his successor, Faustus, that he coins the cumbrous superlative, katholikos of katholikoi, to express the superior dignity of the metropolitan of Cæsarea.[99] But, whatever grade in the army of the Church may have been assigned to him by his clerical colleagues, the position occupied in his native country by the katholikos of Armenia was one of extraordinary glamour. The office was hereditary in the family of the Illuminator; and that family had been endowed with territories extending over fifteen provinces and comprising several princely residences.[100] The pontifical palace was at Astishat, in the neighbourhood of the mother-church of Armenia and the chapels of St. John the Baptist and of St. Athenogenes. From the spacious terrace expanded a landscape which aroused the envy of the richest laymen and which was only commensurate with a fraction of the pontifical possessions. When the scions of the family were unwilling to sustain the burden of the office it was entrusted to prominent clerics of the church at Astishat, while the unworthy heirs pursued the vocation of arms or the attractions of pleasure, surrounded by a court which polluted the sanctity of the pontifical residence.[101] It was customary for the descendants of Gregory to marry into the king’s family, and they were accorded many of the honours due to royalty alone. As often as the king aroused and probably deserved the censure of the katholikos, that spiritual castigation was unflinchingly enforced. In a vacancy of the Chair, owing to failure in the line or renunciation on the part of the heirs, it was not the priesthood who chose the successor but the king, the nobles and the army.[102] In these several respects the office was identified with the existing institutions of the country, and it was perhaps indeed modelled upon that of the high priest among the polytheists and the Jews.[103] But, however great was the prestige derived from such a splendid establishment and from the fame of the first occupant of the Chair, the hold of the pontificate upon the imagination of later generations was derived from a less antique and more constantly operative source. Two descendants of the Illuminator, one in the fourth, the other in the fifth century, added new and peculiar lustre to the institution. Nerses the First introduced the refinements of hierarchical government; Sahak the Great gave to the people an alphabet of their own. The throne of the successors of Tiridates crumbled away in the course of about a century from the death of the first Christian monarch; that of the successors of St. Gregory has weathered the storms of sixteen centuries and remains a solid and impressive monument at the present day.
Two events of high importance remain to be mentioned in this brief survey of the momentous revolution carried through by the great king and his great minister. The first is the journey to Europe. The reciprocal advantage of the ancient alliance between Tiridates and the Empire had been experienced in the campaigns which were waged by the Cæsar Galerius against the Persians (A.D. 296 and 297); and the memory of comradeship in arms may have preserved the first Christian State from incurring the active displeasure of the colleague of Diocletian during the subsequent onslaughts upon the Christian religion (303–311). But the Cæsar Maximin was less patient or more oblivious, and their new faith cost the Armenians a war (312).[104] The advent of Constantine averted their ruin and set the seal of political wisdom upon the spiritual policy of their monarch; and it was only natural that the two exalted instruments of the Christian profession should desire to profit in every sense by the Christian sympathies of so great a prince. The journey of Gregory and Tiridates to the court of Constantine has been regarded as unauthentic by a competent authority; yet it probably took place. The meeting perhaps occurred in Serdica, a residence of the emperor in Illyria, and it was attended by the friend and relation of Constantine, Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia. The highest honours were paid to the aged visitors, and the emperor prostrated himself at the feet of the saint. The pair were escorted with much pomp to their native country, having still further strengthened the link which attached them to their powerful neighbours, and perhaps concluded a formal treaty.[105]
The second event reposes upon less questionable evidence; it is the participation of the Armenian Church in the deliberations of the Council of Nice (325), and her formal subscription of its acts. The great age of Gregory may well have deterred him from personal attendance; his younger son Aristakes represented the Armenians in the famous assembly. Upon his return he communicated the canons to his father, who accepted them and contributed a few additions. The formula of Nice with its uncompromising identification of Christ with God was adopted as the dogmatic base of the State religion.[106]
III. A general impression which one receives from the perusal of the early histories is that the Armenians of the fourth century were not far removed from barbarism. The king might here and there set up a copy of a classical building; but I should doubt whether he could have left us any monument which might approach the originality of the creations of the Bagratid sovereigns in the Middle Ages. Very few among his subjects had a knowledge of Greek and Syriac, still less of Latin, the languages of the literature of their day. The Scriptures—that mine of knowledge—were read in the Syriac or Greek versions to congregations of which not even the most intelligent members could profit by the service.[107] Identity of interests with the Empire on the score of culture was a bond which, I suppose, scarcely existed in that age; and, alas, when at length it became a reality, how fragile it proved—how fragile such bonds have always proved! Still, although we must be careful in thinking of the Armenians of the fourth century as we might think of their descendants in the tenth, the ties which should have united them to their powerful neighbours on the west were of a nature which could appeal to all. There was the tie of a common religion, which either nation had recently adopted and subscribed at a joint conference. Both were threatened by a common enemy—the fire-worshippers of Persia, enlisting all the resources of the further East. From that Persian dynasty the Armenian monarchs were separated by difference of origin and by a blood feud, unmitigated by the lapse of time. They had been restored to their possessions by the Roman power. A great king and a great statesman, in whom they recognised a saint, had crowned their life work by the conclusion of an alliance with Rome which in no previous age could have reposed upon so stable a base. Shall we therefore be edified by the spectacle of their successors following in their footsteps, patiently waiving differences, insisting upon elements of union, ranging themselves upon the side of Christianity and civilisation and fighting their battles in such sacred causes as these?
King Tiridates was followed on the throne by his son Chosroes the Little, to whom is ascribed a reign of nine years.[108] If perhaps his stature was small and his body feeble, he at least possessed the merit of keeping well with the successor of Gregory, whom his queen in vain endeavoured to remove from the world. His name is therefore in favour with the priestly historian, who indeed narrates the events of this period in a somewhat fabulous manner, but presents us with a picture of contemporary society which is lifelike and full of movement and colour.[109] That the early years of the reign were not disturbed by a war with Persia was perhaps due to the youth of the Persian monarch; but the storm burst before its close. After sustaining with success the brunt of a Hunnish invasion—in which, however, the capital, Vagharshapat, was temporarily lost—Chosroes was called to the defence of his eastern frontiers by the approach of a Persian army. The first encounter took place near the shores of Lake Van, and resulted in a victory for the Armenians. The assistance of imperial troops[110] may have nerved the king’s resistance, which continued until the close of his life. With Chosroes is contemporary the pontificate of Verthanes, the eldest son of the Illuminator. That saintly personage did not long survive the successor of Tiridates; but he may have lived to confirm the reign of his son Tiran, and he was perhaps instrumental in placing him upon the throne.[111]
It is during the rule of Tiran that we observe for the first time manifestations of that bitter rivalry between the head of the Church and the head of the State which was destined, as much, perhaps, as any other cause, to bring about the downfall of the dynasty. Such an outcome of the ecclesiastical institutions of the first Christian monarch might indeed have been foreseen. Had Armenia not been exposed to a struggle for life and death with enemies from without, her statesmen might well have solved the problem of this dangerous dualism without endangering the safety of the nation. Enveloped as they were in such a struggle, the only policy was to postpone the issue; King Tiran chose the opposite course. He had given his daughter in marriage to the son of Verthanes, Yusik; but after the experience of a single night the youth deserted his bride, in apprehension, it is said, of the terrible progeny which she was destined to give to the world. Such conduct and such explanations could scarcely have satisfied her royal parents; but the princess died after giving birth to twin sons. Upon the death of Verthanes, Yusik was placed in the pontifical chair, the ceremony of his installation being performed at Artaxata. The king was a lukewarm Christian and, perhaps, an inveterate sinner; the katholikos was at once pious and severe. A long feud and partial estrangements resulted in an open rupture; and, when the sovereign on a certain feast day was about to attend divine service, he was publicly denounced by the enraged prelate and forbidden to enter the church. Yusik was beaten to death under royal orders; and a similar fate befell the saintly bishop of Astishat, who, although a Syrian and not a member of the family of St. Gregory, was summoned by king and nobles to fill the vacancy in the Chair. We are told that King Tiran lived on friendly terms with Persia; however this may be, he contrived to fall into the hands of these powerful neighbours, who put out his eyes and led him to the feet of their master.
A deputation of the great barons was forthwith despatched to Constantinople in order to obtain succour from the emperor. Before their return a Persian army was let loose upon Armenia, and those of the inhabitants of every rank who were able to make good their escape took refuge upon Greek territory. The arrival of imperial troops—it is said with the emperor at their head—was shortly followed by a decisive victory and the capture of the harem of the Persian king. That potentate was summoned to restore Tiran to his native country; but, upon the refusal of his blind prisoner to undertake the office, the son of Tiran, Arshak, was placed upon the throne. Two occurrences in the reign of this prince, as it is described by Faustus, may be identified with known events. The one is his connection with the great massacre of Christians in Persia which took place during the reign of Shapur.[112] Our historian attributes the wrath of the Persian monarch to the monstrous perfidy of the Christian sovereign of Armenia. The other is the conclusion of a treaty between the Roman and Persian empires, of which a provision was the engagement on the part of the former power not to offer any assistance to Arshak. These terms are familiar to us from other sources as having been wrung from the commander of the luckless Roman army after the death of Julian.[113]