CHAPTER I.
SABBATARIAN CHURCHES IN ASIA AND AFRICA.
SECTION I.
HISTORY OF THE ARMENIAN CHURCH.
The religious and political history of Armenia has, from the earliest ages, been pregnant with great events; but, obedient to necessity; I condense within a few pages what might fill as many volumes, and content myself with giving an outline of the subject that some future historian may amplify and adorn. In countries where there exists a union between the church and the state, and the prelatic dignity is supported by royal authority, the revolutions of the former are intimately connected with the convulsions of the latter,—the temporal with the spiritual affairs. But the archiepiscopal see of Armenia appears to have preserved its ancient form of discipline and doctrine in the most remarkable manner, notwithstanding the changes of the royal and ducal dynasties in the state, and its alternate subjection to Saracenic and Persian dominion.
The propagation of the gospel throughout Armenia is ascribed by ancient historians to St. Bartholomew, who is said to be identical with Nathaniel,—that Israelite indeed. In Albanopolis, a city of this country, we are informed that the apostle suffered martyrdom; but his blood only watered the seed of divine truth, and caused a more glorious harvest of proselytes from the Zendavesta to the gospel,—from the adoration of the host of heaven to the spiritual worship of their Maker, "the King immortal, eternal, and invisible."
Notwithstanding the penal edicts of the sovereign, and the opposition of the Magian priesthood, Christianity flourished like a tree planted by the rivers of water, and the rising generations of Armenia reposed under its salutary shade. Few religious sects have been extirpated by persecution. Religion shines brightest in the night of adversity; it is quenched and extinguished in the sunshine of courts. Zeal and intrepidity are always stimulated by the presence of an enemy. The Christians of Armenia received the crown of martyrdom, rejoicing that they were accounted worthy to suffer for their attachment to the cross. At last, however, the eloquence of a priest, named Gregory, succeeded in converting the monarch and his principal nobility, who received the rite of baptism, and entered into the communion of the church. In consequence of this, Leontius, bishop of Cappadocia, consecrated Gregory bishop of the Armenians, and their church became annexed to the episcopal jurisdiction of the Antiochan prelate.
This circumstance, so fortunate in a temporal sense, proved highly destructive to its spiritual repose. No longer assaulted, it became the parent of schism; and one Eustathius, an obscure priest, has given his name to history, by the success that attended his efforts to create an excitement and faction in the church. The convention of a Council at Gangra might condemn and excommunicate, but could not suppress this faction, which poured forth legions of missionaries, and for a long time disturbed the repose of the Eastern prelates. The doctrines of Eustathius were neither heretical, nor his conduct in introducing them truly reprehensible, although from their nature highly offensive to the spiritual dignitaries, who, to judge from their habits of life, found more solace in wine and female intercourse than in religious exercises, and who were more solicitous to acquire wealth and preferments to enrich their physical heirs, than solicitous about the welfare of their spiritual progeny. Producing the example and judgment of Paul, Eustathius boldly condemned the marriages of the priests, under any circumstances, as productive of evil; but denounced second and third marriages as abominable, and worthy of excommunication. The use of wine,—in short, all sensual delights,—he prohibited, as equally reprehensible in those who were set as exemplars and rulers of the flock of Christ. Eustathius was succeeded by Erius, a priest, and semi-Arian, who not only protested against the multiplied marriages of the priests, but declared that the bishops were not distinguished from the presbyters by any divine right, and that, according to the Holy Scriptures, their authority and offices were identical. This tenet, of which the immediate consequences would have been to reduce within certain limits the power of the prelates, raised a storm of opposition from that quarter, although it was highly agreeable to many good Christians, to whom their tyranny and arrogance had become insupportable. Erius also condemned fasts, stated feasts, prayers for the dead, and the celebration of Easter; but he urged a purer morality and a stricter observance of the Sabbath. He had many followers, whose numbers were greatly augmented by one Paul of Samosota, from whom they were called Paulicians. Notwithstanding the opposition of the prelates, who invoked the secular arm to prevent the defection of their spiritual subjects, the tenets of this sect struck deep root in Armenia and many of the eastern provinces, and finally the great body of Christians in the former country, withdrew from the Episcopal communion, and publicly espoused the sentiments of the Paulicians. These were accused of breaking loose from the brotherhood of the Christian world, and they were denounced by the bishops as the most odious of mankind. Whatever might have been the denunciations of their adversaries, posterity, after a candid examination of their tenets, must concede that they were principally distinguished for an adherence to the strict letter of the sacred text, and for the primitive simplicity of their forms of worship. Their ecclesiastical institutions exhibited the most liberal principle of reason. The austerity of the cloister was relaxed, and gradually forgotten. The standard of piety was changed from absurd penances to purity of life and morals. Houses of charity were endowed for the support and education of orphans and foundlings, and the religious teachers were obliged to depend for temporal support upon the voluntary subscriptions of their brethren and the labour of their own hands. To these churches, famous throughout the East no less for the purity of their worship than their exemption from ecclesiastical tyranny, myriads of fugitives resorted from all the provinces of the Eastern empire, and the narrow bigotry of the emperors was punished by the emigration of their most useful subjects, who transported into a foreign realm the arts of both peace and war. Among the mountains of Armenia, and beyond the precincts of the Roman power, they seemed to have found a new world, where they might breathe the air of religious freedom. The emperors, ignorant of the rights of conscience, and incapable of pity or esteem for the heretics who durst dispute the infallibility of holy councils, and refused to acquiesce in their imperial decisions, vainly sought, by various methods, to excite against them the indignation of their sovereign and the vengeance of persecution.
During this time the Paulicians had increased in a wonderful manner. The desire of gaining souls for God, and subjects for the church, has, in all ages, fired the zeal and animated the activity of the Christian priesthood. It must not be supposed that the Paulicians were less arduous in the prosecution of their spiritual enterprises. Assuming the character of travelling merchants, or in the habits of pilgrims, a character to this day sacred throughout the East, they joined the Indian caravans, or pursued without fear the footsteps of the roving Tartar. The hordes encamped on the verdant banks of the Selinga, or in the valleys of the Imaus, heard, with feelings of mysterious reverence, the story of the incarnation; and illiterate shepherds and sanguinary warriors forsook their flocks and deserted their camps to listen to the simple eloquence of an Armenian pilgrim. Perhaps the exposition of a metaphysical creed was no more comprehensible to the one than were lessons of humanity and repose to the other; but both were susceptible of the baser passions of hope and fear, and both could understand the effect that their rejection or adoption of the gospel would exercise, according to the popular belief, upon their destiny in a future world. The mysterious rites of Christianity were administered to multitudes, among whom a great Khan and his warriors were said to be included.[1] In other regions the Paulicians were no less successful. Unwonted crowds resorted to the banks of Abana and Pharpar, whose limpid waters seemed particularly appropriate for the administration of the baptismal rite. The bishops of Syria, Pontus, and Cappadocia, complained of the defection of their spiritual flocks. Their murmurs, a principle of policy, above all an implacable hatred against everything bearing the semblance of freedom, induced the Grecian emperors to commence, and continue for nearly two centuries, the most terrible persecutions against the Paulicians. During these frightful convulsions, Armenia was ravaged from border to border with fire and sword; its monarchy—then held by a younger branch of the family of the Parthian kings—extinguished; its cities demolished, and its inhabitants either massacred by the hands of their enemies, driven into exile, or sold into servitude. Great numbers fled for safety and protection to the Saracens, by whom they were hospitably entertained, and who permitted them to build a city for their residence, which was called Tibrica. This afforded them an opportunity for returning, with interest, the miseries that they had suffered at the hands of the Greeks; for, entering into a league with the Saracens, and choosing for their leader a chief named Carbeas, they prosecuted against the Greeks a war which continued during the century, and in which the slaughter on both sides was prodigious.[2] During these convulsions several companies of the Paulicians passed into Bulgaria, Thrace, and the neighbouring provinces, where their opinions became the source of new dissensions. After the Council of Basil had commenced its deliberations, these sectaries removed into Italy, where they became amalgamated with the Albigenses and Waldenses.
Armenia, reduced from an independent kingdom to a ducal sovereignty, maintained a real independence, though in nominal servitude. The Roman emperors, in the decline of their greatness, were content with the name of homage and the shadow of allegiance. A robe of rare texture and curious workmanship, formed of the hair or wool by which the mother-of-pearl, a shell-fish of the Mediterranean, attaches itself to the rock, was their annual imperial gift that purchased the nominal fealty of the Armenian satraps. But the Church, notwithstanding this political vassalage, preserved its independence. The Armenian priests, in consequence of their ignorance of the Greek tongue, were unable to assist at the Council of Chalcedon, but the doctrines of Eutyches, to which they still adhere, were propagated among them, perhaps, with a slight modification, by Julian of Halicarnassus. From the earliest ages they have devoutly hated the error and idolatry of the Greeks. Like the primitive Christians, they have ever exhibited an unconquerable repugnance to the use or abuse of images, which, in the eighth and ninth centuries, spread like a leprosy through nearly all Christendom, and supplanted all traces of genuine piety in the visible church by the grossest superstition. They are decidedly adverse to the adoration of relics, the worship of the Virgin, or the observation of the feasts and festivals of the Church. They regarded the Greeks as idolaters;—the Greeks accused them of Judaism, heresy, and atheism, and to these accusations, with the feelings they engendered, may be ascribed the unrelenting animosity and persecution that they waged against each other, and which terminated only when the Grecian empire ceased to exist.
Armenia has, in all ages, been the theatre of hostile operations. Times without number her cities have been plundered, her harvests consumed, and her flocks slaughtered, to gratify the cupidity or to satiate the hunger of armies, who, in the character of allies, were marching through her territories. The empire of the East has, in many instances, been contested upon her fields; and, though generally in servitude, seldom has she been permitted to enjoy the tranquillity of that state. Yet subsequent to the firm establishment of the Saracen dominion in Asia, they enjoyed a long period of prosperity and repose. When the Saracenic empire became supplanted by that of the Tartars, the consequences to the Eastern Christians were most deplorable.
These ruthless conquerors destroyed, wherever they went, the fair fruits that had arisen from the labours of the missionaries, extirpated the religion of Jesus from several cities and provinces where it had flourished, and substituted the Mohammedan superstition in its place. The Armenian churches, in particular, experienced the most deplorable evils from the ruthless and vindictive spirit of Timur Bec, or Tamerlane, the Tartar chief. This implacable warrior, having overrun a great part of northern and western Asia, exerted all his influence and authority to compel the Christians to apostatize from their faith. To the stern dictates of unlimited power he united the compulsory violence of persecution, and treated the disciples of Christ with the most unrelenting severity; subjecting such as magnanimously adhered to their religion, to the most cruel forms of death, or to the horrors of unmitigated slavery. Under the successors of Timur they were subjected to many vicissitudes, being alternately protected and oppressed, according as the caprice of the reigning sovereign seemed to dictate. Nevertheless, under the rod of oppression their zeal was intrepid and fervent, nor could the sunshine of prosperity warm in their hearts an undue love of the world, and render them careless or indifferent to the interests of Christianity. In numberless instances they preferred the crown of martyrdom to the turban of Mohammed, and have sacrificed the dearest of temporal interests,—fame, wealth, and preferments, to a scrupulous adherence to the Christian profession, and a strict regard for its duties. Once only within the last thirteen centuries has Armenia aspired to the rank of an independent kingdom, and even then her Christian kings, who arose and fell, in the thirteenth century, on the confines of Cilicia, were the creatures and vassals of the Turkish sultans of Iconium. About the commencement of the seventeenth century their state experienced a considerable change in consequence of the incursions of Shah Abbas, the great king of Persia.