[17] It is given at length by Agathangelus, and may be found in that portion of the treatise to which I shall hereafter allude as “the Acts” (see note on p. 291, infra). There can be little doubt that the legend of the Ripsimians took the place of an old heathen legend, associated with the site at Vagharshapat. There seems to have been a local tradition that the cathedral and the chapels of Ripsime and Gaiane stand upon three rocks, whence in pagan times voices would be heard coming from underlying cavities and returning answers to questions addressed to them. [↑]
[18] This is probably an anachronism. [↑]
[19] I interpret him in the sense of there and back. [↑]
[20] It appears to have been the custom among the Armenians down to comparatively recent times for pious people to place large blocks of stone in front of the entrance to a church by way of offering. Dubois de Montpéreux saw a number of such stones, 6 or 7 feet high, covered with crosses and arabesques, in front of the portal of the cathedral at Edgmiatsin. I do not know what has become of them. [↑]
[21] Chardin (ed. Langlès, Paris, 1811, 8vo, vol. ii. p. 175). See also Tavernier (book i. ch. iii.). The Jesuit missionaries, however, later on in the seventeenth century, speak of a structure resembling a mausoleum and having four stone columns and an altar in the centre. There can be little doubt that this is an allusion to the erection of Eleazar. [↑]
[23] History of Architecture, book i. ch. iv. Neo-Byzantine style. His remarks have reference to the shape of the dome and not to the pointed arches of the false arcade, which perhaps argue a much later date. [↑]
[24] Dubois de Montpéreux, Voyage autour du Caucase, Paris, 1839–43, vol. iii. pp. 372 seq. [↑]
[25] Ibid. Atlas, series iii. plate 7. [↑]
[26] See Telfer, The Crimea and Transcaucasia, London, 1876, vol. i. p. 222, and Dubois, op. cit. vol. iii. pp. 382 seq. [↑]