The reign of Arshak is, indeed, contemporary with the great wars which were waged by Shapur with the power which disputed his supremacy over the East. However little credit we may attach to the narrative of the Armenian historian, it is at least plain that a king who owed his throne to the Cæsars was often their enemy and never their loyal ally. We are told, indeed, that on one occasion his armies violated the Roman territory and advanced as far as Angora; on another that the king himself led his troops against those of the Empire, and fell upon them as they were preparing to receive a Persian attack. When the duel was being waged most fiercely he maintained an attitude of expectant neutrality, waiting to see which of the antagonists would offer him the best terms. The only palliation which we may discover for such a course of outrageous conduct is derived from the obscure notice of a religious persecution, directed against the Armenian pontiff, Nerses, by one of the successors of Constantine. Yet that prelate with true wisdom enjoined resistance to the Persians at a moment when it might well have seemed a desperate course. The king, left to his fate by the provision in the Roman treaty, maintained for awhile a courageous front to the Persian onslaught. But he was at length compelled to sue for peace and to place his person in the power of his enemy under a guarantee of security. His former treachery was requited, as it deserved, by the same treatment; and, while he himself was taken to Persia and consigned to the castle of oblivion, his queen, after a brief resistance, was brought to the presence of Shapur and outraged before the eyes of his army until she expired.
A series of massacres on a large scale and organised by Shapur in person was the sequel of these events. The unfortunate Armenians were collected into large bodies and trampled down under the feet of elephants. The number of the victims is said to have amounted to thousands and tens of thousands of either sex and every age. The great cities, including Artaxata and Vagharshapat, were ruthlessly destroyed. Whole populations, among which were conspicuous the numerous Jewish colonies, were driven off into captivity. From this calamity, which must have occurred after the year 363 and before 379, the Arsakid dynasty does not appear to have recovered. The son of Arshak, by name Pap, was indeed placed upon the throne by the emperor, and reigned for several years. But, like his father, he turned his arms against his protectors the moment they had cleared his frontiers of the inveterate foe. Like his father he coquetted with the Persian power, forgetting the unspeakable insults to which his family had been subjected. He even possessed the effrontery to despatch to the emperor an insulting message, summoning him to restore Edessa and Cæsarea and ten other cities which he averred had belonged to his ancestors. Pap was put to death by imperial order, and another member of the Arsakid family sent to reign in his place. But that prince was expelled by the most valiant of the Armenian chieftains, who proceeded to administer the country in the interests of the sons of Pap. When these had come of age the royal authority was divided between them, while the numerous Persian party among the Armenians selected a rival Arsakid and enlisted in his favour Persian support. Armenian politics were becoming a farce when the rulers of the two great powers arrived at a solution to which both had been provoked. The buffer state was divided between them, the Persians taking the greater portion, and the smaller, including the valley of the Western Euphrates, falling to the Roman Empire (A.D. 387). Phantom kings of Arsakid descent were set up by either power, until in the course of time Persian governors and Greek prefects administered the government in either sphere.
I have anticipated in this brief summary upon the sequel of the ecclesiastical policy pursued by King Tiran. After the murder of the bishop of Taron, whose diocese included Astishat, a priest of the church in this religious centre was elevated to the pontifical dignity and duly consecrated at Cæsarea. He was succeeded by a scion of the House of Albianus—a House of which the founder is mentioned first in the list of bishops chosen by St. Gregory from the ranks of the children of the heathen priests.[114] Meanwhile the sons of Yusik—the terrible progeny given to the world by his bride of a single night—had reached an age which permitted the full indulgence of their wicked appetites in every kind of vice. They are said to have met their death in the pontifical palace, where their wassail was cut short by the angel of God. One of the twins, by name Athenogenes, had already produced an heir; and it was this child who, when he had reached the estate of manhood, was acclaimed katholikos by army and nation during the reign of King Arshak. Nerses—such was his name—had been brought up at Cæsarea, the native city of his contemporary, St. Basil the Great. After an early marriage he adopted the military profession and became chamberlain and counsellor to his king. He is delineated as the ideal of a perfect cavalier—tall and supple of figure, with a face of great beauty, which enlisted the sympathy of both sexes and all classes. Yet the youth wore the flower of a blameless private life; and his high capacities were from the first bestowed upon the intimate care of the poor or afflicted, and the protection of the oppressed. His function at court was to stand behind the person of the king, attired in a rich and elegant robe, and bearing in his hand the royal sword of tried steel with its golden scabbard and belt inlaid with precious stones. Such was the station which he was fulfilling when the nobles and assembled troops approached the steps of the throne. They had come to demand his acceptance of the high office, hereditary in his family; but the embarrassed chamberlain waved them aside. His profession of personal unworthiness was received with laughter; his indignant protests by the clash of shields. Upon his persistence King Arshak gave orders that he should be bound in his presence, and shorn of his long and abundant hair. Many of the bystanders shed tears when the ruthless scissors severed those silky and floating locks. Stripped of his gay apparel, he was made to assume the garb of a priest; and it was difficult to recognise in the face of the deacon, who was being ordained by a venerable bishop, the brave soldier and princely courtier of a few minutes ago.[115]
The national character of the Armenian Church is mainly derived from the institutions of St. Gregory; but it was this Nerses, his direct descendant, who brought it into line with the Church of the Empire in the important sphere of internal development and discipline. The family likeness which it still presents to the neighbouring Greek Church is largely due to this prelate. The monastery is still the pivot of the ecclesiastical organisation; and it was this contemporary, perhaps this disciple of St. Basil of Cæsarea, who spread broadcast cloisters and convents over the land. A single rule was established for the several orders of monks; and the laity were bidden to observe certain wholesome regulations, among which was included abstention from animal food. The poor and the sick were lodged in hospices, and were not allowed to beg; a humane enactment provided that their neighbours should bring them food to their public or private dwellings. In each district was founded a school for the instruction of the people in the Greek and Syriac languages. Every action of the great katholikos bears the imprint of a high purpose, and overwelling zeal. That purpose was to conquer the lusts of a full-blooded and intemperate people by subduing their unruly bodies and fanning into life the spark of the soul. But just in the execution of this lofty project he was brought into conflict with the king, and the fate of his grandfather stared him in the face. The son of Tiran was indeed the son of that obstinate sinner, nor was Nerses less inflexible than Yusik. Perhaps the monarch acted with design, and wished to divide his people into separate communities of the black and the white sheep. The saints might be handed over to the sway of their prince-prelate; over the sinners his own prerogative would remain supreme. He proclaimed an edict which enacted that every debtor or accused person, those who had shed the blood or taken the property of their neighbours, should assemble in an appointed place, where no law would be allowed to touch them and each man might lead his life after his own guise.[116] To that haven beyond their dreams flocked the company of the unrighteous—women with the husbands of other women, and men with the wives of other men. The brigands and the assassins and the unjust judges and the perjured witnesses, all collected at the given tryst. The place was at first a village; but it soon prospered, and became a town, which again extended until it filled an entire valley. Then the king built a palace in the midst of his congenial subjects and called the city by his own name (Arshakavan). Upon the return of the katholikos—he is said to have been exiled by a Roman emperor; but his vicar during his absence had not betrayed his trust—this truly original and royal solution of the problem of joint government was vigorously arraigned. The pontiff taxed the monarch with having founded a second Sodom; but, relenting to a mood of greater amiability, he suggested that the sovereign might continue to reside in his city if he would entrust its management into the hands of the katholikos. The rejection of this kind proposal was shortly followed by the outbreak of a malady, which decimated the inhabitants. The king was constrained to sue for pardon from the saint and to disband his colony. The quarrel broke out anew when the inveterate profligate shed the blood of a subject and espoused his beautiful wife. Nerses left the court and did not return. Arshak, in open defiance, appointed a katholikos in his stead—a certain Chunak, who was nothing better than one of his minions. He could not hope that his action might be endorsed at Cæsarea; so he summoned all the bishops of his own country and bade them consecrate the object of his choice. Only two could be persuaded to perform the ceremony; and these were perhaps pensioners of the king.[117]
The full activity of the lawful pontiff was not resumed until after the calamity which resulted in the bondage of his old enemy and the seclusion of Arshak in the castle of oblivion. The accession of Pap was attended by the presentation of a solemn petition, in which sovereign and nation craved the assistance of their true pastor. Nerses devoted his energies to the restoration of the churches which had been destroyed by Shapur. But the son of Arshak was quite as licentious, although less capable than his father; and he is said to have added to the sum of the delinquencies of his predecessor the habitual practice of unspeakable vice. The monster was forbidden entry even into the porch of the church; and he retaliated by poisoning the katholikos with a cup of peace which, in token of repentance, he tendered with his own hand. The death of Nerses, which occurred not later than the year 374,[118] marks an epoch in the history of the Church.
On the one hand its emoluments were considerably curtailed; on the other—and this is a fact with the most far-reaching consequences—it was dissevered for good and all from the Church of the Empire. It is quite evident that Nerses failed to gauge correctly the temper of his countrymen; and it was the defect of his undoubted virtues that he at once endeavoured to go too far and to accomplish too much. The reaction from his severe ordinances enabled the king to proceed unhindered in the work of overthrowing the structure which his victim had reared. The hospices were abolished, the convents were destroyed and their inmates given over to prostitution. Moreover the greater portion of the lands bestowed upon the Church by Tiridates were appropriated by the State. Of each seven domains belonging to the former institution the revenues of five were allotted to the Treasury. Nor can we doubt that popular support was forthcoming for the revolution which the monarch initiated in the relations with the Greek Church. The Armenians have at all periods approved a national policy, and preferred to perish than unite with their neighbours. A bishop of the House of Albianus, always obsequious to the throne, was invested with the vacant primacy. The consent of Cæsarea was not even applied for, nor was the bishop despatched to the capital of the province of Cappadocia for consecration in accordance with the usual custom. With the possible exception of the two sons of St. Gregory and, of course, of the pseudo-katholikos, Chunak, each successive holder of the pontifical office, including the Illuminator, had been in the habit of proceeding with great pomp through the territory of the Empire to the steps of the episcopal throne in the Greek city. It was there that the chosen of the Armenians bowed his head before a prelate who loomed in the eyes of his countrymen as the living embodiment of the authority of the Church of Christ. The defiance offered him by the king was accepted by Basil in a similar spirit. He called together all the members of the provincial synod of Cæsarea, without inviting the nominee of King Pap. A violent despatch was addressed to the Armenian bishops and a similar one to the king. The right of consecrating bishops was taken away from the katholikos, and he was left the single prerogative of blessing bread at the court of the king. The result of this hot temper upon either side was a bitter conflict in the Armenian Church itself. The clergy were divided into followers of the king and the House of Albianus, and those who held to the necessity of consecration in Cæsarea and to allegiance to the House of Gregory.[119] The subsequent lapse of the greater part of Armenia under Persian influence promoted the policy initiated by Pap; and when, towards the close of the century, the chair was again occupied by a descendant of St. Gregory, the link with Cæsarea was not restored.
There can, I think, be no doubt that the story of the foundation of the Armenian Church by a direct mandate of Christ Himself was invented not earlier than the period at which we have now arrived. The mandate is said to have taken the form of an injunction to St. Gregory to build the church of Vagharshapat. Neither the author of the Life of the Illuminator, as we can trace that source through the Agathangelus treatise, nor the historian who continues his narrative, displays any cognisance with such a momentous event. The former tells us that it was at Astishat in the south of Armenia, the country of the Murad, that Gregory built the first Christian church. The cult of martyrs which he first introduced was not the cult of the Ripsimians but that of St. John the Baptist and Athenogenes. We learn from the latter that after the death of the saint, and at least down to the murder of Nerses, the mother-church of Armenia was situated at Astishat and not at Edgmiatsin. Faustus, indeed, expresses himself not once alone or in a doubtful manner upon this important point. Astishat contains the “first and great mother of Armenian churches,” “the first and greatest of all the churches of Armenia, the principal and most honoured seat of the Christian religion.” It was at Astishat that was situated the palace of the katholikos. The great synod which was convoked by Nerses of all Armenian bishops was held at Astishat. When that prelate wished to chide the chief of the king’s eunuchs for casting covetous glances upon the wide domains which surrounded the church, he quoted the scriptural injunction against such ignoble conduct, and added that such was the will of Jesus Christ, “Whose choice had first fallen upon the church at Astishat for the glorification of His Name.”[120] On the other hand, I cannot help detecting in these passages indications that their author was aware of the growing rivalry of the church at Edgmiatsin. Faustus wrote after the severance from Cæsarea and after the partition of Armenia (A.D. 387). He displays acquaintance with the Ripsimian legend. But there is no trace in his pages of a knowledge of the vision of St. Gregory upon which Edgmiatsin has founded her claim.
As time went on, several causes, which perhaps we may distinguish, contributed to widen further the breach with the Church of the Empire. The Persian occupation and the ultimate removal of the Arsakid dynasty, whose hereditary blood feud with the House of Sasan had long embittered the antagonism of the peoples, were no small factors in an estrangement from Greek influences which the policy of Persia lost no occasion of promoting. The invention by Mesrop of an Armenian alphabet,[121] and the institution of a school of translators during the pontificate of the son of Nerses, Isaac the Great (c. 390–439), constitute elements which, while they worked for the attachment of the Armenians to Greek culture and for the wider propagation of Christianity, were yet calculated to foster the strong proclivities of this people towards complete religious independence. Lastly—if indeed there be an end to such a catalogue, in which each item is as much an effect as a cause—the peculiar genius of the Armenian nation imprinted a stamp upon the dogma of their Church which was not the stamp sanctioned by that of the Empire.
The Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) addressed itself to the solution of the problems which were the natural outcome of the dogma adopted at the Council of Nice. What was the true view of the mystery expressed by the words of the formula: Son of God, of one nature with the Father, Who came down from heaven and took flesh and became man? How explain the character of the union of God with man in the person of Christ? Over the answer which should be returned to this question conflicts arose which destroyed thousands of innocent people, and which prepared the way for the disappearance of the Roman Empire from the map of Asia, and for the triumph of Islam. The compromise adopted at Chalcedon is difficult to place in a short sentence; but perhaps no essential feature is omitted in the following phrase: Christ according to His Godhead is of one nature with the Father, according to His humanity is, apart from sin, of one nature with us. This one and the same Christ is recognised in two natures indissolubly united but yet distinct. The Armenians were not represented at this Council;[122] and, indeed, it is contemporary with the fierce religious persecutions directed against them by Yezdegerd II. But, when once the unfortunate nation, or what remained after the orgy of the fire-worshippers, had settled down to a more peaceful routine, they proceeded to hold a synod of their own, which assembled at Vagharshapat (A.D. 491), and which with all solemnity cursed the Council of Chalcedon. This procedure was repeated at several subsequent synods; nor has the bitterness which was consequent upon this open breach with the Church of the West subsided at the present day. At Edgmiatsin, the seat of this synod, held fourteen centuries ago, I was informed that the Armenian Church expressly rejects Chalcedon; and the emphasis of language was underlined by the tone of the voice. The Armenians therefore differ both with the Greek and with the Roman Church in their expression of the mystery of Christology. They will not hear of two natures. They hold that in Christ there is one person and one nature, one will and one energy; and their liturgy presents this dogma in an impressive manner in the Trisagion, which runs: “O God, holy God, mighty God, everlasting God, who wast crucified for us.”[123] At the same time they deny and denounce the teaching of Eutyches, protagonist against the Nestorians. Eutyches held that the body of Christ is not to be regarded as of one nature with ours; the Armenians maintain that God became man in the fullest sense.[124]
One might argue this question to all eternity; but one feels that the Greeks were the subtler disputants. The Armenians, like the Persian Mohammedans, would appear to be averse to abstractions; they go, perhaps, to extremes in the concreteness of their conception of God—a God-man in the crudest sense. This Christology has probably embodied the sentiments of the people; but it had the effect of estranging them not only with the Church of the Empire, but also with the great body of their fellow-Christians of different nationality within the Persian dominions. At the synod of Beth Lapat (A.D. 483 or 484) the old Christian Church of Persia welcomed into its bosom the flying forces of Nestorianism, and adopted the Nestorian confession. The Georgians, it is true, followed the lead of the Armenians, with whom their Church was directly connected. But these allies broke away before the close of the sixth century, and went over to the teaching of Chalcedon. As the centuries rolled by, these various breaches became wider, and they are still marked features in the Christianity of the East. Martyrdom and political slavery were alternatives which were gladly accepted rather than compromise dogmatic and doctrinal differences. When Heraclius visited Armenia after replacing the Cross in the churches of Jerusalem, the Armenians refused to camp with his troops. In the Middle Ages, when the Sasanians were already forgotten, when the caliphs, their successors, were approaching their doom, the stubborn hierarchy insisted upon baptizing babes a second time if the ceremony had been performed by a Greek priest. All attempts to effect a union—and they have been many and serious—have invariably failed. The more attractive the offers of the Greeks, the greater grew the hatred of them; nor have the popes met with better success. They have added costly objects to the treasury at Edgmiatsin; the result remains a blank. When we reflect that this obstinate people are as intelligent as any in the world in the various pursuits of civilised life, our anger at such conduct, which gave away the cause of civilisation, may be tempered by a different feeling. The Armenians have fought at all hazards to preserve their individuality, and the bulk of the nation have perished in the attempt. The remnant may be destined, like the son of Anak, to redress the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the common Christian weal. On the other hand, the lesson which is taught by history is that no nation and no Christianity will succeed with the Armenians which endeavours to deflect them from their own opinions and to preclude them from working out their own salvation in their own way.[125]