The Origin Of The Armenian Church

According to tradition, the seeds of the Christian faith were sown in Armenia by the two apostles of Jesus Christ, St. Thad­deus and St. Bartho­lomew, who are considered to be the First Illuminators and the founders of the church in Armenia. Infor­mation about the apostles’ evangelism in Armenia is scanty. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the father of church history, Ap­kar, the king of Edessa, who was suffering from a skin disease, sent a letter to Jesus Christ hoping to be cured, and received the answer that one of the apostles would visit him. After Christ’s ascension, St. Thaddeus went to Edessa and with the face cloth of Christ cured the King who, with his family, became Christian. St. Thaddeus then entered Ar­menia. He converted Princess San­dukht, the daughter of King Sanatruk of Armenia, and many others. King Sanatruk tried to force St. Thaddeus and his followers, in­cluding his own daughter, to re­nounce Chris­tianity. Having remained faith­ful to her faith, San­dukht, to­gether with St. Thaddeus, was martyred, thus be­coming the first Christian woman martyr in Armenia. In the meantime, St. Bartho­­lomew, after preaching in Persia and near the border of India, proceeded to Armenia, preached the Christian faith, and received the crown of martyrdom. The apostolic origin of the Ar­menian Church has become a sacred legacy and a source of spiritual renewal, permeating all spheres and aspects of its life. The throne of the catho­li­cos has been referred to as the Apostolic See or Apostolic Throne. Aposto­licity has served as a constant re­minder to the Armenian Church to fulfill the Great Com­mission and remain faithful to the tradition and faith of the early church transmitted by the apostles.

Christianity As The State Religion

By general consensus, the for­mal conversion of Ar­menia to Christianity came in the year 301. St. Gre­gory the Illu­minator played a pivotal role in the total conversion of Armenia to Christianity. St. Gregory the Illuminator (Surb Grigor Lusaworič‘) is considered the Second Illuminator, the patron saint and the first catholicos of the Armenian Church. His rich legacy is deeply rooted in the history and in all aspects of the Armenian Church. His memo­ry is commemorated several times during the liturgi­cal year; the most signi­ficant feasts are the date he entered the pit, the date he emer­ged from the pit, and the date his relics were discovered. The Catholic, Eastern, and Ori­ental Orthodox churches have special days in their liturgical calendars for St. Gregory the Illuminator, and the story of his life is part of the hagiographic readings in many churches.

The Rejection Of The Council Of Chalcedon

In 506 the Armenian Church rejected the Council of Chalcedon (451); this act had far-reaching consequences for the life of the Armenian people and the Church. The Byzantine Empire con­sidered this rejection a political act of dislo­yalty towards the empire, as well as a divi­sive step towards the Church of Constan­tinople. The Council of Chalce­don was called to consider the Nes­torian and Euty­chian heresies, the juris­dic­tional quarrel of the three Sees, namely Rome, Constan­tinople and Alexan­dria, and the growing clash between the Alexandrian theological school, which laid the emphasis on the unity of Christ’s divine and human natures, and the Antiochian theological school, which stres­­sed the dis­tinc­tiveness of Christ’s two na­tures.

According to some western church his­torians, the Armenian Church rejected the Council of Chalcedon because there was no Armenian representative at the council and the transcrip­tion of the council’s teachings from Greek into Armenian were incomplete. However, the historical facts and theological evi­dence of both the pre-Chalce­donian and post-Chalcedonian periods indicate that the Armenian Church’s rejection of the Council of Chalcedon was consistent with its Christological teachings, which were based on the first three ecume­nical councils and on the arguments advocated by the Alexan­drian theological school. From the very beginning of the formation of the Armenian Church, its special relations with Caesarea and close theological connection with Alexandrian church fathers, particularly through the translation of their works, had already placed the Armenian theology solidly in the Alexandrian camp. Therefore, St. Cyril’s Christological approach, which emphasized the inseparable but identi­fiable unity of divine and human natures in Christ and which would become a point of reference of crucial importance in the Christological cont­ro­­versy, served as the basis of the Armenian Church’s Christological position vis-a-vis the Council of Chalcedon.

In the ensuing centuries, political pres­sures, mili­tary threats, and even great pro­mises by the Byzantine Empire failed to con­vince the Ar­menian Church revise its attitude regard­ing Chalcedon. Along with theo­lo­gical factors, each side’s position was influenced by political con­si­de­ra­tions. The Greeks be­lieved that the acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon by the Armenian Church would greatly facilitate their ulti­mate objective, which was the subjugation of Armenia. The Armenians feared that accept­ing the Council of Chalce­don would compromise the inde­pendence of the Armenian Church and would also lead to the assimilation of the Ar­menian people into the Byzantine Empire.

The Formation Of Armenian Cilicia

The Armenian Catholicosate, the admi­­nist­rative head­quar­ters of the Armenian Church, together with its people had been moved from Armenia to Cilicia in the middle of the 11th Century. In Cilicia, the Armenian Church played a decisive role in ensuring the physical survival of its people and pre­ser­ving their internal unity. The Church also pro­moted Christian unity by engaging in inter-church relations and theo­logical dia­logue with the Syrian, Greek, and Latin churches and, through its cultural achieve­ments, it greatly contributed towards the flowering of Christian civilization in the east. In Cilicia, close interaction with the plu­ralistic environment and con­tinuous contact with the Christian west and the Muslim east enriched the Armenian political and religious culture with new trends and per­spec­tives, broad­ening the views and atti­tudes of the Ar­menians towards the po­litical, social, and theo­logical issues of the time. This interaction also helped to de­velop an inclusive vision and a politico-religious strategy, charac­terized by two features: 1) faithfulness to the basic teachings of the Armenian Church and the core values of the Armenian culture and national ideo­logy, and 2) openness and tolerance towards other churches, cultures, and ethnicities.

This period of time in Cilicia has become known as the Silver Age of Armenian his­tory. Hromkla, Skevra, Trazark, Agner, and other monas­teries, which became vib­rant centers of cul­ture and higher learning, pro­duced a new spi­ritual and cultural reawak­ening. In Cilicia, Armenians learned out of their existential experience how to survive by interacting with others. The present-day diaspora, which, to a large degree, is the con­tinuation of Armenian Ci­licia, has continued this way of being. Mean­while, in spite of prevailing political uncertainties in Greater Armenia, religio-cultural life was kept alive, particularly in the mo­nasteries of Datev, Klatsor, Sanahin, and Haghpad.

The Armenian Genocide

In the second half of the 19th Century, the Ottoman Empire’s repression of the Armenians increased. The Ottoman authorities ignored the for­mal assu­rances guaranteed to the Armenians by the treaties of San Stefano and Berlin. The Armenian Church frequently pleaded to the European powers to intercede with the Ottoman authorities, but the pleas fell on deaf ears. Late in the 19th Century, the authorities began enlisting local tribes throughout the empire to commit violence against the Ar­menians. The Otto­man-Turkish govern­ment organized mas­sacres in 1894-5 in Sassun and in 1908-9 in Adana. The Young Turks, who had come to power in 1908, made their top priority the res­toration of a Pan-Turanian empire stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caspian Sea, based on Turkish nationalistic and secular ideology. The Armenians, who were actively present in the economic, cul­tural, and intellectual life of Ottoman society, were regarded as a major hindrance to the reali­zation of this plan. The First World War provided the opportune moment for the Ottoman-Turkish Empire to realize its final solution: the total annihilation of the Ar­menian people.

The western powers did nothing to pre­vent or to stop the first genocide of the 20th Century. Historical evidence and eyewitness accounts clearly prove that the Ar­menian Genocide was carefully or­ganized and sys­tematically executed by the Ottoman-Turkish government of the time. The geno­cide put the very survival of the Armenian people and the Church at risk. One-and-a-half million Ar­menians were massacred and the survivors, including thousands of or­phans, took refuge in Syria, Lebanon, and other Arab countries, which received them with com­passion and respect. Thousands of churches, monasteries, religious sites, schools, and community cen­ters were either destroyed or con­fiscated, including church, commu­nity, and individual properties; many clergymen were killed; in­numerable manu­scripts and litur­gical objects of immeasurable value were stolen or de­stroyed. A number of Armenians were forcefully converted to Islam, particularly in the rural areas, and, thus, the Otto­man-Turkish Empire was de­popu­lated of all Ar­menians, except for a small community in Con­stan­­­tinople.

In his memoirs, Catholicos Sahak II de­scribed how orders came from the Turkish authorities to evacuate the Catholicosate, in Sis, and how it was then assaulted and destroyed by Turkish troops. He wrote: “Goodbye eight-hundred-year-old Catholicosal See….” The last catholi­cos in Sis, Cilicia became, in his own words, a “roaming catho­licos,” like his flock, in exile, moving from Sis to Ada­na, Jeru­salem, Da­mas­­cus, Aleppo, Beirut, Cyprus, and finally, in 1930, estab­lishing the centuries-old Catholicosate of Cilicia in An­telias, Lebanon. Even today the descendants of the genocide sing the hymn of the Catholicosate of Cilicia: “I wish to see my Cilicia, the country that gave me the sun…” with tears in their eyes….

Out of the genocide emerged the world­wide Ar­menian dias­pora.

Soviet Armenia And The Armenian Diaspora

The Armenian Church was strongly marked by three phenomena in the 20th Century: the genocide, the sovietization of Eastern Armenia, and the emergence of a worldwide diaspora. Sadly, Soviet Armenia and the diaspora grew distant from each other and were often in tension; this situation had a negative impact on the life of the Armenian Church and people.

In the diaspora, Armenians had to build their lives all over again. At the beginning, they had difficulty settling and ad­justing to local conditions. The transition from refugee to community building took time, hard work, and total dedication. The situation took its toll on the Armenian Church as well. The Patriarchate of Jeru­salem, because of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, because of the genocide, were considerably weakened, losing most of their clergy, faithful, and authority. The Catho­li­cosate of Cilicia played an instru­mental role in reactivating and renewing the mission of the Ar­menian Church in the diaspora under the most complex and cri­tical conditions. It purchased property in Antelias, Lebanon from the American Relief for the Near East, which, from 1922 to 1928, had been using it to operate an Ar­menian or­phanage. In a very short period of time, the Cathedral of St. Gregory the Illuminator and a chapel in memory of the Armenian Geno­cide martyrs were built on the property, and a new semi­nary was founded. This initial stage of settling the Catholicosate in Antelias was followed by a number of initiatives aimed at the re-invigoration of the internal life and the mis­sionary outreach of the Church.

The poli­tical parties and cultural, huma­nitarian, and social or­gani­zations re-organ­ized, pros­pered, and parti­ci­pated in com­munity building. In some com­mu­­ni­ties, anti-Soviet and pro-Soviet trends gene­rated inter­nal tensions. However, the Ar­menian dias­pora remained a fierce opponent of the Soviet regime. The recog­nition of the Ar­menian Genocide and reparation, known as the Ar­menian Cause, became a top priority for the diaspora. The Catholicosate of Cilicia, which is the living symbol of the Ar­menian Geno­cide, became a leading force in community building, an avant-garde of the anti-Soviet struggle, and a strong advo­cate for the legitimate rights of the Ar­menian people.