Consecration of Khoren I, Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia (May 12, 1963)

After the premature and unexpected passing of Zareh I, Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia, in February 1963, at the age of forty-eight, it fell to his schoolmate at the Seminary, Archbishop Khoren Paroyan, and the difficult task to steer the ship of the Catholicosate in hard times. The “greeting of Jerusalem” with Catholicos of All Armenians Vazken I, in October would mend the rift that had appeared in the Armenian Church after the election of Zareh I in 1956.

The future Catholicos was born Mesrob Paroyan on November 24, 1914, in Nicosia (Cyprus), from parents from Kharpert. He spent his childhood in the village of Adalia. Returning to Nicosia in 1927, he entered the local Melikian primary school. Upon graduation in 1931, he was admitted to the newly founded Seminary of the Catholicosate of the Holy See of Cilicia in Antelias. He graduated and was ordained deacon in 1935. Two years later, he took the vows of celibacy and was consecrated monk (apegha) with the name Khoren, receiving the rank of archimandrite (vartabed) in 1938.

He occupied different positions in the Catholicosate from 1938-1942: chancellor, staff-bearer, vice dean of the Seminary, and member of the Brotherhood’s Administrative Council. In 1942 the Representative Assembly of the Prelacy of Beria (Aleppo) elected the young vartabed as Vicar in the region of Jazeera (on the borders with Turkey and Iraq), where 35,000 Armenians lived at the time. He organized the ecclesiastic, socio-cultural, and educational life for the next five years, during a turbulent period when Syria was engaged in the struggle for independence from the French mandate. Meanwhile, in 1946 he was elevated to the rank of dzayrakooyn vartabed.

In 1947 he returned to Antelias and Catholicos Karekin I consecrated him bishop. From 1947-1951 he held the two most important positions of the Catholicosate, sacristan and “door’s bishop” (turan yebisgobos), the latter providing all internal administrative matters. The Representative Assembly of the Prelacy of Lebanon elected him Prelate in late 1951. Bishop Khoren Paroyan once again showed his remarkable skills as administrator and builder, renovating and building new churches and schools.

The election of a successor to Karekin I, who died in 1952, had been postponed several times. After the Brotherhood Assembly elected Bishop Paroyan as new Vicar of the Catholicosate in October 1955, his expediency ensured the holding of elections in February 1956. He would become the right arm of newly elected Catholicos Zareh I.

He was elevated to the rank of archbishop in 1956 and visited the United States as Catholicosal Legate between October 1957 and June 1958. During his eight-month sojourn, he visited all Armenian centers in this country, celebrating the Divine Liturgy, preaching, lecturing, and explaining the role and mission of the Catholicosate in the Diaspora. As a result of his tireless organizational work, the Armenian Prelacy of the United States and Canada was born in 1958. After departing from the United States, he also visited the newly admitted prelacies of Greece, Tehran, Ispahan, and Iranian Azerbaijan.

His Holiness Khoren visits the Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, on April 16, 1969, during his extended visit to the United States

After Catholicos Zareh I’s passing, Archbishop Khoren was elected once again Vicar and organized the elections held three months later, with the participation, for the first times, of representatives of the new prelacies of the United States, Greece, and Iran. He was elected Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia and consecrated on May 12, 1963. Catholicos Khoren’s twenty-year tenure was marked by a wide effort to improve and renovate the monastery of Antelias, as well as the seminary in Bikfaya. He also executed the construction of affordable housing for Armenian families in the neighborhood of Fanar and initiated the construction of the Armenian Home for the Aged. He visited the faithful in the different countries, including a four-month visit to the United States and Canada in 1969. He had also met Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1967, while elevating the visibility of the Catholicosate both in the relations with the other Armenian denominations and the ecumenical field.

 

Health problems affected Khoren I starting with a heart crisis in 1969 during his American trip. In 1977, after the celebration of the fortieth anniversary of his consecration as celibate priest, Archbishop Karekin Sarkissian, then Prelate of the Eastern Prelacy, was elected Catholicos Coadjutor. He would become Khoren I’s successor after his death on February 9, 1983, opening a new chapter in the history of the Catholicosate.

The Council of Adana (July 18, 1316)

The Armenian state of Cilicia (1080-1375), which had become a kingdom in 1198, started a process of decline in the fourteenth century. The end of the Crusades in 1270 and the fall of the last Crusader bulwark in 1291 were combined with the rise of the Mamluks of Egypt and the Turkmens in Konia, as well as the end of the alliance with the Mongol Empire. As a result, the kingdom looked to the West for help, which was fueled by the pro-Catholic trends of part of the nobility and the ecclesiastics.
The fifth council of Sis (1307) examined the request of Pope Clement V (1305-1314), the beginner of the period of the Avignon Papacy (1307-1377). The Pope demanded that the Armenians adopted Catholicism in exchange for military help from Europe. The pressure exerted by King Levon IV (1301-1307), his father Hetum (the former King Hetum II), and the recently elected Catholicos Gosdantin III (1307-1322) forced the members of the council to adopt the doctrine and the ritual of the Catholic Church, as well as the sovereignty of the Pope. The new rules established, in practice, the union of the Armenian Church and the Catholic Church.
The strongly negative reaction of the public and the ecclesiastics from Greater Armenia led to the councils of Adana (1308) and the sixth council of Sis (1309), which declared null and void the resolutions of 1307.
However, the new King Oshin I (1308-1320) started persecutions against the participants in those councils, and many of them were jailed or exiled. Some 500 ecclesiastics were exiled to Cyprus, where most of them died.
In 1316 Pope John XXII asked Oshin I to restore the resolution of 1307. To that end, the king and the Catholicos called upon the second council of Adana on July 18, 1316, with the participation of 18 bishops, 7 archimandrites, and 10 princes, mostly from the dioceses of Cilicia. The participants confirmed the resolution of 1307, which was again refused by the people and the ecclesiastics of Greater Armenia. The court tried to impose the measures by force and met with an obstinate rejection, particularly in Armenia, and its attempts to do the same in Armenia only deepened the internal division and weakened the resistance against the external enemies.
The help from the West never came, and the eighth council of Sis (1361) declared definitively null and void the resolutions of 1307 and 1316. It was too late. The kingdom of Cilicia, reduced practically to Sis and its surroundings, would fall to the Mamluks in 1375. The last period of Armenian independence before the twentieth came to an end.

The Council of Shahapivan (June 24, 444 A.D.)

Following its participation in the first three Ecumenical Councils (Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus) between 325 and 431, the Armenian Church would convene many national councils, where the clergy would gather to take decisions over the internal order and structure of the Church, and internal issues, and to give a response to various other questions. Throughout history, these councils have functioned as the mouthpiece of the Church, giving her official viewpoints on various matters.

After three councils in the city of Ashtishat (352, 354, 435), a council was convened by Catholicos Hovsep I in the township of Shahapivan (province of Ayrarat) in 444, soon after the deaths of Catholicos Sahak and Mesrop Mashtots (439-440). It was attended by forty bishops, monks, priests, deacons, high-ranking and low-ranking noblemen, and peasants, “who were zealous of laws and sainthood.” Among the latter were Governor Vasak Siuni and General Commander Vartan Mamikonian. The purpose of the council was to put an end to activities endangering the newly-established Church.

The preface to the canons of the council notes that it was called to complete and to confirm the apostolic and Nicaean canons, which many ecclesiastics had violated, to re-establish the internal order and moral norms of the Armenian Church, and to respond to sects and various offenders.

Despite its canonical nature, the resolutions of the council of Shahapivan were the only ones in the history of the Armenian Church that established punishment for offenses and went beyond the canons to become a legal codification. Only one of the twenty canons was of advisory nature. Six of them in their entirety, and four of them partially referred to ecclesiastics, establishing canonical and criminal punishments for canonical violations and offenses. The remaining thirteen (nine entirely and four partially) were also of similar nature, but addressed the breaches caused by princes and peasants. The latter were made distinctions in the type of punishment: princes were sentenced to advice, fine, and penitence, while peasants received corporal punishment (beating). However, there were differences in the amounts of fines for princes and peasants, with the latter paying half or less than half. The fines were destined to churches, asylums, and other places, and in certain cases they were partially distributed among the poor. The canons recognized the equality of men and women before the law.

Strict canons were established against the heretical sect of the Messalians, whose teachings established that prayer was the only way to attain perfection, excluding the Church and the sacraments. In the case of families that followed the sect, the adults were confined to leper colonies, and the children were delivered to the Church, which took care of their religious education.

The council of Shahapivan was an important milestone in the consolidation of the Armenian Church and the formation of juridical thought in Armenia. Its canons became part of the codification of religious law.

Beginning of the Council of Nicea (May 20, 325)

The Council of Nicea (the first convened in that city) was an assembly of 318 Christian bishops gathered in that city of Bithynia (today Iznik, in Turkey) by Roman emperor Constantine I (306-337) in 325. This was the first ecumenical council, with the goal of attaining consensus through an assembly that represented all of Christendom. The attending bishops were only a fraction of the total number of bishops of the Church, approximately 1,800 (a thousand in the East and eight hundred in the West). Catholicos Aristakes, son of St. Gregory the Illuminator, was among the attending bishops as representative of the Armenian Church.

One of the purposes of the council was to resolve disagreements over the nature of the Son of God in his relationship to God the Father. In particular, whether the Son had been “begotten” by the Father from his own being, which meant having no beginning, or else created out of nothing, and therefore having a beginning. The first position was held by St. Alexander and Athanasius of Alexandria, while Arius, a member of the clergy of Alexandria, held the second position, which considered the Son of God a creature, instead of confessing him to be of one substance, power, and eternity with the Father.

The council was formally opened on May 20, 325, in the imperial palace at Nicea, with preliminary discussions of the Arian question. In these discussions, Arius was one of the dominant figures, with 22 bishops coming as supporters, led by Eusebius of Nicomedia. However, the reading of some of the more shocking passages from his writings made them almost unanimously seen as blasphemous.

The Nicene Creed was created in order to clarify the key tenets of the Christian faith, as a result of the extensive adoption of the doctrine of Arius, known as Arianism, far outside Alexandria. In the Creed, the divinity of Jesus Christ is proclaimed as “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.” He is said to be “begotten, not made,” asserting that he was the true Son of God, brought into being “of the substance of the Father,” and not a mere creature, brought into being out of nothing. Jesus Christ is also said to be “of one substance with the Father” (consubstantial). The Creed (Havadamk) of the Armenian Church, which is professed every Sunday during Holy Mass, is based on the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, of things visible and invisible. 

And we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of God the Father, only-begotten, that is of the substance of the Father. God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten and not made; himself of the same nature of the Father by whom all things came into being in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. 

Who for us, mankind, and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, became man, was born perfectly of the holy Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. By whom he took body, soul and mind and everything that is in mind, truly and not in semblance. 

He suffered and was crucified and was buried, and on the third day he rose again; and ascended into heaven with the same body and sat at the right hand of the Father. He is to come with the same body and with the glory of the Father to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom has no end. 

We also believe in the Holy Spirit, the uncreated and the perfect, who spoke through the Law and the Prophets and the Gospels; who descended on the river Jordan, preached through the apostles and dwelled in the saints. 

We also believe in only one, universal, and apostolic holy Church; in one baptism; in repentance and in the remission and forgiveness of sins; we believe in the resurrection of the dead, in the everlasting judgment of souls and bodies, in the kingdom of heaven and in life eternal.

The text of the Creed is entirely taken from the Bible. An anathema was added at the end, specifically addressed to the Arian heresy, which says:

The universal and apostolic holy Church anathematizes those who say that there was a time when the Son was not, or that there was a time when the Holy Spirit was not, or that they came into being out of nothing, or who say that the Son of God or the Holy Spirit is of different substance, or that they are changeable or alterable.

Besides the settlement of the Christological issue, the Council of Nicea also established the uniform observance of the date of Easter and the promulgation of early canon law. The Council was the first of the three ecumenical councils recognized by the Armenian Apostolic Church, the others being the councils of Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431).

Death of St. Krikor Datevatsi (December 25, 1409)

Until April 23, 2015, when the martyrs of the Armenian Genocide were canonized, Gregory of Datev (Krikor Datevatsi) was the last saint of the Armenian Church.

Krikor Datevatsi was born in 1346 in the district of Vayots Dzor, in the province of Siunik (southern Armenia). At the age of seven, his parents sent him out for education. He later continued his education in the famed University of Datev, where he was a disciple of Hovhan Vorotnetsi (1315-1386), another saint of the Armenian Church commemorated on the twentieth day of the Great Lent.

Monastery of Datev

In 1371 Krikor and his teacher went in pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where the 25-year-old student was consecrated celibate priest. On the way back, Krikor was ordained vartabed and received the doctorial staff from Vorotnetsi. The Matenadaran preserves a Bible copied in 1297, which Datevatsi illustrated in 1378.

Two years later, teacher and disciple moved to the convent of Aprakunis. After the death of Hovhan Vorotnetsi in 1388, Krikor became the head of the convent and gave courses of philosophy, theology, grammar, musical theory, and other subjects.

In 1390 he returned to Datev and congregated many students coming from various areas of Siunik and Armenia in general to continue his educational activities. His hundreds of students, among them famous writers like Tovma Medzopetsi and Arakel Siunetsi, played a remarkable role in Armenian cultural and religious life.

St. Gregory's mausoleum in the monastery of Datev

During his tenure, the University of Datev reached the pinnacle of its flourishing as a center of science, culture, art, and spiritual life. It had three schools (philosophy and theology, calligraphy and manuscript illumination, and music), where they taught philosophy, religion, Armenian language and grammar, literature, history, rhetoric, manuscript copying, miniature painting, natural sciences and astronomy, mathematics, architecture, music and singing, pedagogy and social sciences, and other subjects. Studies lasted seven to eight years. The university had a rich library, with more than ten thousand manuscript books. The monastery would be totally destroyed and set to fire by Shahrokh, youngest son of Tamerlan, in 1435.

Krikor Datevatsi left an abundant corpus of works, including sermons, commentaries of the works of Aristotle and David the Invincible, and theological works. The most important of his works was the Book of Questions, a sort of encyclopedia that has been compared to the works of Western theologians like Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus. This book also contained a critique of the doctrines of the Catholic Church, since Catholic missionaries had entered Armenia since the fourteen century and created the Armenian branch of the Dominican order, called Fratres Unitores, with proselytizing aims. He also wrote a book of sermons divided into two parts, For the Summer (Ամառան) and For the Winter (Ձմեռան).

In 1408, apparently due to the political unrest after the death of Tamerlan in 1403, Datevatsi and his students moved to the monastery of Medzop, near Lake Van, but returned to Datev after a year. The great teacher and writer passed away on December 25, 1409, after a short illness. He is commemorated by the Armenian Church on the Saturday before the fourth Sunday of the Great Lent. 

The cultural and religious stature of Datevatsi earned him a place among the twelve statues (the second to the left) surrounding Mesrob Mashdots and his disciple Koriun on the front of the Matenadaran, the library of manuscripts in Yerevan. The St. Gregory of Datev Institute, founded in 1987 by the Armenian Religious Education Council (AREC) under the aegis of the Armenian Prelacy, has also preserved the memory of his name.

Death of Catholicos Mateos II (December 11, 1910)

Mateos II was Patriarch of Constantinople and Catholicos of All Armenians in an extraordinarily difficult period of Armenian history, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

The future ecclesiastic was born on February 12, 1845, in Constantinople as Simeon Izmirlian. He studied at local schools (Bezjian and Kum Kapu) and became a teacher at the St. Mary Church of Ortakeuy in 1862. After being ordained deacon, he was ordained a celibate priest (vartabed) with the name Mateos in 1869. Patriarch Mgrdich Khrimian noted his intellectual capability and turned him into his personal secretary. His impeccable credentials and active service earned him the rank of dzayrakuyn vartabed in 1873. He was elected primate of Balikesir in 1874 and two years later was consecrated bishop. In 1881 he published a voluminous book in Armenian (1300 pages), The Patriarchate of the Holy Armenian Apostolic Church and Aghtamar and Sis.

Izmirlian’s religious and political activities were at times inseparable from each other. In 1886-1890 he was primate of the diocese of Egypt, but had to resign for health reasons. He returned to his hometown, where he was ordained archbishop, and in December 1894 he was elected Patriarch of Constantinople. His activism in order to improve the situation of the Armenians in the provinces led him to constant clashes with the authorities. His tenure coincided with the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896. His insistence on democratic reforms and Armenians rights, as well as his protest against the massacres earned him the title of “Iron Patriarch.” The Ottoman authorities tried to force him to present a letter that expressed his satisfaction with the situation, but Patriarch Izmirlian refused. Abdul Hamid II pressured him to abdicate, and in July 1896 he was exiled to Jerusalem for the next twelve years.

After the proclamation of the Ottoman Constitution (July 1908), Archbishop Mateos Izmirlian returned from his exile to Constantinople and was elected once again Patriarch after the resignation of Patriarch Maghakia Ormanian in October 1908. However, he did not remain in that position for long. Catholicos of All Armenians Mgrdich I Khrimian had passed away in October 1907. The National Ecclesiastical Assembly gathered in Holy Etchmiadzin elected Archbishop Mateos to replace Khrimian Hayrig in October 1908. The election was confirmed by a Russian imperial decree of April 15, 1909. The newly elected Catholicos departed from Constantinople in May. After introducing himself to Czar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg, he arrived in Etchmiadzin in June and was consecrated on September 13, 1909 as Mateos II.

Catholicos Mateos II would have a brief tenure of 15 months. He became the first Catholicos to make a pilgrimage to Ani, the ruined capital of medieval Armenia, by then within the Russian borders. His plan of action included the renewal of monastic life, the improvement of the Kevorkian Seminary, and the solution of various administrative issues.

The Catholicos passed away on December 11, 1910 and was buried in the courtyard of Holy Etchmiadzin. His correspondence was posthumously published in Cairo (1911).

Death of Maghakia Ormanian (November 19, 1918)

Archbishop Maghakia Ormanian was a remarkable figure of the Armenian Church in turbulent times at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

Boghos Ormanian was born on February 23, 1841 in Constantinople. After learning the first letters, in 1851 he was sent to Rome, where he pursued studies at the convent of St. Gregory, belonging to the Antonine Congregation, and then at the Vatican. He returned to Constantinople in 1866 and became secretary of the Antonine Congregation, while a year later he was designated principal of the Antonine School in Rome. In 1868 he obtained a master degree in philosophy, theology, and Church law, and became a member of the Theological Academy of Rome, as well as teacher of Armenian at the College of the Propaganda Fide.

Meanwhile, an acute conflict had started within the Armenian Catholic community as a result of the bulla Reversurus, promulgated by Pope Pius IX in 1867, which made dramatic changes in the traditions with which Armenians were familiar. The conflict was around the figure of Andon Hassoun, Armenian Catholic archbishop-primate of Constantinople, who was consecrated Armenian Catholic Patriarch of Cilicia by the Pope in 1867, with residence in Constantinople.

Ormanian took position with the anti-Hassoun camp, and returned to Constantinople in 1870, where he published numerous commentaries in French and Armenians newspapers against the Vatican policy, as well as several books in Italian and French, which in 1874 were included in the Index (the catalog of forbidden books) of the Vatican.

In 1876 Ormanian decided to sever his links with the Catholic Church and renounce Catholicism, and the following year he applied to Archbishop Nerses Varjabedian, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, asking to return to the Armenian Apostolic Church. In 1879 he received the grade of archimandrite superior (dzayrakooyn vartabed)of the Armenian Apostolic Church from the Patriarch in a ceremony at the cathedral of Kum-Kapu, in Constantinople.

After a short stint as preacher at the church of St. Gregory the Illuminator in the neighborhood of Galatia, in 1880 he was designated prelate of the diocese of Garin (Erzerum) and had an important role in the opening of the Sanasarian School of Erzerum in 1881. He also established links with the leaders of the secret organization “Defenders of the Fatherland,” founded in the same year. After his consecration as bishop by Catholicos of All Armenians Magar I in 1886, a year later he left the diocese of Garin and was invited to Holy Echmiadzin as lecturer of Theology at the Kevorkian Seminary. Among his students were future luminaries of the Armenian Church and culture, such as Gomidas Vartabed, Karekin I Hovsepiants, Karapet Ter-Mkrtichian, Yervant Ter-Minasian, and others. His teaching made an impact in the seminary.

His liberal views attracted the attention of the Russian authorities and, under the pretext of not being a Russian citizen, he was expelled from the Russian Empire in 1889. He returned to Constantinople and was named abbot of the monastery of Armash and director of the newly founded seminary.

On November 19, 1896 Ormanian, already an archbishop, was elected Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople. He succeeded Abp. Mateos Izmirlian (1894-1896), labeled the “Iron Patriarch” for his energetic protests against the Armenian massacres of 1894-1896. For this reason, he has been forced to resign by the Turkish authorities, which had exiled him to Egypt.

Ormanian adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the “Red Sultan” Abdul Hamid II, in order to avoid further massacres and create a more or less tolerable situation in the years of tyranny. His conservative policies alienated part of the Armenian constituency, and shortly after the Ottoman Revolution of 1908, a huge Armenian demonstration invaded the offices of the Armenian Patriarchate on July 16, 1908 and declared Ormanian’s dismissal from his position. The former Patriarch, in a book published in 1910, rebutted charges that he had been unreceptive to national problems and a knee-jerk to the Sultan, as well as a dictator in the management of community issues. The National Representative Assembly vindicated the former Patriarch in its session of January 3, 1913. 

Ormanian was elected delegate of the Church convention and member of the Religious Council in 1913, as well as prelate of the diocese of Egypt, but he rejected this position. He took various positions in the monastery of St. James, in Jerusalem, from 1914-1917, and also taught at the seminary. He returned to Constantinople in 1918 and passed away on November 19, on the twenty-second anniversary of his election as Patriarch.

Archbishop Maghakia Ormanian was, along with his long administrative and teaching career in the Church, an accomplished scholar. He was the author of the monumental Azkabadoom(National History, 1910-1911 and 1927), a three-volume history of the Armenian nation based on the history of the Armenian Church, and The Armenian Church (1910, in French; 1911, in English, also translated into Armenian), a fundamental text on the doctrine, history, and administrative situation of the Armenian Apostolic Church on the eve of the Armenian Genocide, among many other works.

Death of Catholicos of All Armenians Kevork VI (September 26, 1954)

Anti-religious policies during the first two decades of the Soviet Union would progressively bring the Armenian Church to the brink of destruction. Archbishop Kevork Chorekjian, first as locum tenens of the Catholicosate of All Armenians, and then as Catholicos, would lead the effort to revitalize the Church.

The future Catholicos was born in Nor Nakhichevan (today part of Rostov-on-the-Don) on December 2, 1868. After elementary studies at the parish school, in 1879 he entered the Kevorkian Seminary in Holy Etchmiadzin. He graduated in 1889 and was ordained a deacon in the same year. He pursued higher education at the University of Leipzig (Germany) in the fields of theology and philosophy, and also at the music conservatory (1889-1894).

Upon graduation, he returned to the homeland. He first taught music at the Kevorkian Seminary for one year (1894-1895) and then went back to his birthplace, Nor Nakhichevan, where for almost two decades he would work actively as a teacher and musician.

The breakthrough in his life occurred in 1913. At the age of 45, he was ordained archimandrite (vartabed) by Catholicos Kevork V and designated vicar of the diocese of Nor Nakhichevan. Two years later, as a member of the Committee of Fraternal Aid, he organized help for the refugees who had escaped from the Armenian Genocide, and became its chairman, as well as member of the Synod in 1916. He was ordained bishop in 1917 and designated sacristan of the Holy See.

Bishop Chorekjian was named primate of the diocese of Georgia in 1922 and held the post until 1927, when he returned to Holy Etchmiadzin and became a member of the Supreme Spiritual Council. Meanwhile, in 1925 he was elevated to the rank of archbishop.

The Soviet regime had practiced a comprehensive policy designated to reduce to a minimum the influence of the Church in general over society, and the policies carried in Soviet Armenia followed this general trend. As a result, by the 1930s most of the married and celibate priests in Armenia had renounced to the habits or had been subjected to various penalties, among other repressive measures. These policies came to a peak in 1938, when Catholicos of All Armenians Khoren I (1932-1938) died in unclear circumstances, which have been generally regarded as an assassination carried by orders of the Soviet secret police within the framework of the Stalinist purges. The first secretary of the Communist Party in Armenia, Grigor Arutinov, even wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin in 1940 asking permission to close the monastery of Holy Etchmiadzin and to turn it into a museum. Fortunately, the letter had no consequences.

Archbishop Kevork Chorekjian was one of the few high-ranking ecclesiastics who remained in Armenia. An encyclical issued by Khoren I before his death designated him as vicar of the Catholicosate. He managed the position until April 1941, when a National Representative Assembly was called to elect a Catholicos. However, the conditions were not favorable for the election (many dioceses could not send representatives due to World War II), and the gathering formally elected Archbishop Chorekjian as locum tenens of the Catholicosate.

For the next four years, the Soviet Union was involved in a life or death struggle against Nazi Germany, which also bore its impact over Armenia. The levels of repression and political pressure somehow diminished, and Archbishop Chorekjian took advantage to start working towards the reconstruction of the Armenian Church.

He organized a fundraiser in the Diaspora to finance the creation of the tank convoys “David of Sassoun” and “General Bagramian,” which would be added to the Soviet army. This public relations campaign would have its effect later, when he raised the issue of the Armenian territories usurped by Turkey in a meeting with Stalin held in April 1945.

The National Representative Assembly gathered in Etchmiadzin in June 1945 and elected 76-year-old Archbishop Kevork Chorekjian as Catholicos of All Armenians. Four months later, he addressed the government of the U.S.S.R, the U.S.A. and Great Britain, asking for the devolution of Armenian territories. From 1945-1947, claims for the return of Kars and Ardahan to Soviet Armenian would be one of the focuses of Soviet foreign policy.

Stalin also allowed some leniency to the Church, and Kevork VI used this to reopen the printing house, which in 1944 started the publication of the official monthly Etchmiadzin, which replaced the old monthly Ararat (closed in 1919). Some of the buildings of the monastery, which had been confiscated, were returned to the Holy See, as were the monasteries of Surp Hripsime, Surp Keghart, and Khor Virap. The seminary, closed since 1918, was reopened in November 1945 and its library was restored.

Despite the establishment of the Iron Curtain and the beginning of the Cold War, Kevork VI tried to enhance the links between Soviet Armenia and the Diaspora, which had been severed in the late 1930s. He had a significant role in the organization of the repatriation of 1946-1948.

The Catholicos also worked to replenish the ecclesiastical ranks, which had been decimated in the 1920s and 1930s. Fifteen new bishops were ordained during the nine years of his reign, and assigned to various dioceses which had remained without a religious head for years.

Catholicos Kevork VI passed away on September 26, 1954. He would be succeeded in 1955 by Catholicos Vazken I (1955-1994).

Death of St. Nerses Shnorhali (August 13, 1173)

One of the saints of the Armenian and the universal Church, Nerses Shnorhali, is also one of the most revered names in the Armenian Christian tradition. He was known with the appellative of Shnorhali (“Graceful”) due to his multiple talents: he was theologian, poet, musicologist, composer, and historian, and excelled in all those endeavors.

Nerses Klayetsi was born in the castle of Tzovk, in the district of Tluk, in the Armenian Mesopotamia (the area around the city of Edesa or Urfa) in 1102. He belonged to the princely Pahlavuni family. His great-grandfather was Grigor Pahlavuni or Magistros (990-1058), a famous writer, scholar, and public official.

After the early death of his father, Prince Apirat Pahlavuni, Nerses and his older brother Grigor were placed under the guardianship of their maternal great uncle, Catholicos Grigor II Martyrophile (1066-1105), who placed them in the monastery at Fhoughri. Later, Grigor’s successor, Barsegh (1105-1113) sent them to the school of the monastery of Karmir Vank, headed by Bishop Stepanos Manouk, a highly regarded scholar and theologian.

Nerses’ brother Grigor became Catholicos at the age of 21, in 1113. Nerses was ordained a celibate priest in 1119 and consecrated a bishop at the age of 35, in 1137. He was one of the best educated men of his time.

He assisted Catholicos Grigor III in moving the Catholicosate to Dzovk, on the property of their father, in 1125. This move was brief, as in 1151 the Catholicosate moved its headquarters to the fortress of Hromkla, near the Euphrates River (Nerses’ surname “Klayetsi” was derived from the name of the fortress). In 1165 hostilities broke out between Toros II, Prince of Cilicia, and one of the strongest princes of the country, Oshin of Lambron. Grigor III sent his brother to mediate.

On his way to the mediation, Nerses met Byzantine governor Alexios and discussed the strained relations between the Armenian and Greek churches since the Greek Orthodox Church had declared that the Armenian Church and the Jacobite Church were heretics in 1140. This discussion impressed the Byzantine governor to the point that he urged the Armenian bishop to write an exposition of the Armenian faith. Nerses stressed in his letter that, as both the Armenian and Greek churches accepted the statements of the first Council of Ephesus (431), there was no clear reason for them not to be in agreement, and did not make any polemical statements about the later Council of Chalcedon and its Confession.

On Nerses’ return from his successful mediation effort and the death of his brother shortly thereafter, he was made Catholicos of the Armenian Church. He convened a council with emissaries selected by Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenos to discuss how they might be able to reunite the two churches (1171). The terms the emperor offered were, however, unacceptable to both Nerses and the Armenian Church, and the negotiations collapsed.

Nerses Shnorhali passed away on August 13, 1173 and was buried in the fortress of Hromkla. The Armenian Church celebrates him as a saint on October 13, during the feast of the Holy Translators, while the Catholic Church also celebrates him, but on August 13.

His prolific literary output included long poems like Lament of Edesa (1145-1146), Jesus the Son (1152), and others, such as the cosmological poem About the Sky and Its Ornaments. He refined and completed the Sharaknots (collection of liturgical hymns) and the Divine Liturgy, enriching it with his own songs, whose number amounts to more than a hundred. One of his best sharakans is the well-known Morning of Light (Առաւօտ լուսոյ, Aravod luso). He also composed some 300 riddles, extracted from Armenian folklore. His Universal Epistle, written in 1166 and addressed to the entire Armenian people, was particularly influential in Armenian medieval thought.

Death of Tovma Medzopetsi (May 15, 1446)

Tovma Medzopetsi was the last noteworthy name in the long chain of Armenian medieval historians. As many others before him, his historical works have become a unique source for the study of a certain period of Armenian history, in this case, his own times.

Medzopetsi was born in 1378 in the village of Aghi, near the city of Arjesh, in the region of the Lake Van (Vaspurakan). He studied in the nearby monastery of Medzopavank, built in the eleventh century, between 1386 and 1393. The monastery was headed at the time by Hovhannes Medzopetsi, a vartabed who was a graduate of the University of Datev, in the region of Siunik. He later continued his studies in the monastery of Kharabastavank, as a student of the master vartabeds Sargis Aprakunetsi and Vartan Hokotsvanetsi. Afterwards, he went to the University of Datev in 1406 and studied with St. Grigor Davtevatsi himself, who had been the teacher of Hovhannes Medzopetsi decades before.

After studying for almost a quarter of a century, in 1410 Tovma Medzopetsi returned to his alma mater and became the abbot and the school master of Medzopavank for more than thirty years. During his tenure, the monastery became an active center of manuscript copy and illumination. Textbooks and commentaries were written by specialists who had been invited to teach there.

Besides works in the field of exegesis, music, and ritual, Medzopetsi is particularly noted for his historical work History of Tamerlane and His Successors, devoted to the period 1386-1440. The historian was a contemporary of the devastating invasions of the Turkic-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane, who laid waste of much of Armenia in successive campaigns between 1387 and 1402. He described the ruinous campaigns, the massacres and slavery of the population, the harsh tributary regime, and the few attempts to oppose the enemy.

In 1441, together with other high-ranking ecclesiastics of Armenia, Medzopetsi was among the organizers of the ecclesiastical assembly held in Holy Echmiadzin to elect a new Catholicos. The assembly elected Kirakos I Virapetsi (1441-1443), who installed its seat in Holy Echmiadzin, while Grigor IX Musabekiants (1439-1446) was Catholicos of Cilicia. Thus, from 1441 onwards, the Armenian Church had two Catholicosates.

Medzopetsi passed away in 1446 in the village of Akori, near Mount Ararat, and was buried in the monastery of Medzopavank, which would be destroyed in 1915.

December 21, 1917 - Closure of the Kevorkian Lyceum

In the nineteenth century, the Armenian Church did not have an institution that provided superior religious education and prepared its future members. At the beginning of his tenure, Catholicos Kevork IV (1866-1882) met Russian czar Alexander II (1855-1881) and asked for permission to found such an institution. The construction of the lyceum (jemaran) started on May 25, 1869 and the grand opening was held five years later, on September 28, 1875. The bylaws approved by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Empire in the same year established that the lyceum would have two sections: a six-year school and a three-year auditory, and would provide higher religious education. After the death of the Catholicos, the lyceum was named in his honor.

Despite many efforts, Kevork IV did not see any graduate becoming a celibate priest during his tenure. A secularist spirit predominated in the lyceum. His successor Magar I (1885-1891) played an important role to redirect the institution into its actual purpose. He invited a qualified faculty, which included Bishop Maghakia Ormanian, future Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople. The latter became the teacher of theological subjects, and thanks to his efforts, four graduates were consecrated celibate priests in 1888.

The level education at the lyceum was quite high. At the school level, the following subjects were taught: Armenian history and geography, general history and geography, ancient Armenian literature, Armenian and foreign (Russian, French, German) languages, natural sciences, astronomy, mathematics, the Bible, religious music, logics, etc. The auditory section included Armenian language (Classical and Modern), Armenian history, religious literature, Armenian literature, European literature, philosophy, psychology, pedagogy, political economy, history of the Armenian Church, Armenian religious law, ritual studies, ancient Greek, etcetera.

The graduates presented final essays, which were defended before an examining committee and then they became clerics or continued their higher studies in Russian and European universities.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the lyceum had 20 paying students and 230 others with scholarships. It was maintained through the incomes of the monastery of Holy Etchmiadzin, as well as fundraisers and donations. The Catholicos was the principal, who followed the activities of the lyceum through the Educational Council and the dean. The deans included Bishop Gabriel Ayvazovsky (brother of the famous painter), Rev. Garegin Hovsepiants (future Catholicos of Cilicia), Rev. Mesrop Ter-Movsisyan, and other names, generally but not exclusively ecclesiastics. Among the teachers of the Kevorkian lyceum were such luminaries of Armenian culture as Manuk Abeghian, Hrachia Ajarian, Leo, Stepan Lisitsian, Gomidas, Hakob Manandian, and many others. Those teachers were partly graduates of the same lyceum.

Within the frame of the lyceum there was an intensive intellectual activity: preparation of Armenian schools programs, writing of textbooks and handbooks, as well as many historiographic, philological, pedagogical, and theological works. The faculties of the Armenian schools of the Caucasus were filled by graduates of the Kevorkian lyceum for more than half a century.

Due to the political and military unfavorable conditions at the end of 1917, Catholicos Kevork V (1911-1930) decided to cease temporarily the activities of the lyceum on December 21, 1917. Attempts to reopen the Kevorkian Lyceum during the first independent Republic did not succeed. The unique and rich collection of its library (45,000 volumes) became one of the starting points of the collections of the National Library of Armenia and the Matenadaran.

The Etchmiadzin lyceum was finally reopened in 1945 and continues its activities until today.

October 13, 1668: Completion of the first printing of the Armenian Bible

After more than two and half years of work, the printing of the first edition of the Armenian Bible was finished in Amsterdam (Netherlands) in 1668. The tenacious efforts of Voskan Yerevantsi, a bishop of the Armenian Church, had finally achieved an elusive target that had been pursued for several decades.

Voskan (1614-1674) was the son of parents from Yerevan, who had been part of the deportation of Armenians from Eastern Armenia to Persia ordered by Shah Abbas I in 1604 and settled in New Julfa (Nor Jugha), the Armenian suburb of Ispahan founded by the Persian ruler. He studied at the monastery of All Saviors and, against the wishes of his parents, he was consecrated a celibate priest. After a few years of further study in Holy Etchmiadzin and Yerevan, he returned to New Julfa. Invited to Etchmiadzin by Catholicos Pilipos I Aghbaketsi in 1634, he was appointed abbot of the monastery of St. Sargis in Ushi, where he took classes in Latin, philosophy, geometry, and astronomy from the learned Dominican monk Paulo Piromalli, a Catholic missionary in Armenia, and taught Armenian to him.

In 1655 Catholicos Hakob IV Jughayetsi (1655-1680) sent his secretary, Movses Tzaretsi, to Europe with the aim of establishing a print shop. He did not find support in Italy and went to Amsterdam, where conditions were more favorable for printing, as the Netherlands were outside the sphere of influence of the Catholic Church. He was able to establish a print shop, but his attempt at printing the Armenian Bible ended in failure. Before his death in 1661, he asked his friend, the merchant Avetis from Jugha, to take over the print shop and continue his work. Avetis, at his turn, asked his brother, Voskan Yerevantsi, to come to Amsterdam. The latter had already been consecrated as bishop and was commissioned by the Catholicos to continue the task.

The first page of the Gospel of Matthew from the first printed Armenian Bible of 1668.

Bishop Voskan arrived in the Dutch port in 1664 and took over the direction of the “Holy Etchmiadzin and St. Sargis” print shop. Between 1664 and 1669, he printed 14 Armenian books, including the first printed book by a living Armenian historian, the Book of Histories by Arakel of Tabriz (1669). He and his disciples Karapet Andrianatsi and Ohan Yerevantsi started the printing of the Armenian Bible on March 11, 1666, which would result in a beautifully illustrated edition of 21 x 26 cm. (8.27 x 10.23 inches) and 1464 pages. This achievement would become enough to give Voskan Yerevantsi a place of honor in the history of Armenian printing, following the first printer of Armenian books, Hakob Meghapart.

Voskan moved his print shop to Livorno, Italy, in 1669, and three years later to Marseilles, France. He would print eight more books, including the first mathematical textbook, which was also the first printing in Modern Armenian, entitled Art of Calculus (Արհեստ համարողութեան, 1675). He died on February 4, 1674, before the printing of the textbook was complete. His print shop remained active until 1686 and a total of 40 books were printed.

The original text of the Armenian Bible has had ten editions since 1666 (the last one was printed in Vienna by the Mekhitarist fathers in 1929). Very Rev. Hovhannes Zohrabian’s edition, printed in Venice in 1805, is regarded as the most valuable by Biblical scholars.

October 8, 451: Opening of the Council of Chalcedon

The fourth ecumenical council that convened in Chalcedon became a turning point in the history of the Armenian Church, even though the Armenian Church was not represented at Chalcedon.

The first ecumenical council at Nicea (325) determined that Jesus Christ was God, “consubstantial” with the Father. This meant that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are “of one being” in that the Son is “born” or “begotten” “before all ages” or “eternally of the Father’s own being, from which the Spirit also eternally “proceeds.” The confession of Nicea, recited in every Holy Mass of the Armenian Church, states: “We believe (...) in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of God the Father, only-begotten, that is of the substance of the Father (...) who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, took body, became man, was born perfectly of the holy Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. By whom he took body, soul and mind and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.”

This was reaffirmed at the first council of Constantinople (381) and the council of Ephesus (431). One of the fathers of the Church, Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) taught that “There is only one nature (physis), since it is the Incarnation, of God the Word,” which was held as orthodoxy.

In 446, an aged monk from Constantinople named Eutyches started teaching a subtle variation of this doctrine. His teachings were considered heretical, but he was rehabilitated in a council marred with scandal, held again at Ephesus (449) and supported by Byzantine emperor Theodosius II (408-450) where he publicly professed that while Christ had two natures before the incarnation, the two natures had merged to form a single nature after the incarnation. Pope Leo I denounced the council as a “synod of robbers” and refused to accept its decisions.

The threat of a schism led the new Byzantine emperor, Marcian (450-457), to hold a new council at Chalcedon (451) from October 8 – November 1, 451, which condemned the work of the council of 449 and professed the doctrine of the incarnation presented in Leo’s Tome, a document prepared by the Pope, which confessed that Christ had two natures, and was not of or from two natures. A special committee appointed by the Council decided unanimously in favor of the orthodoxy of Leo’s Tome, and determined that it was compatible with the teachings of Cyril of Alexandria. The confession of Chalcedon stated: “We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess (...) one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”

The formula on the nature of Christ adopted by the Council of Chalcedon was severely criticized by various Oriental sees. Many local councils rejected that doctrine. Resistance reached the point that Byzantine emperor Zeno I (474-491) issued a document called Henotikon in 482, which considered the doctrinal resolutions of the first three councils (Nicea, Constantinople, and Ephesus), while the Council of Chalcedon and Leo’s Tome were not mentioned at all.

At the time of the Council of Chalcedon, Armenia was in crisis. A few months before, in May 451, the battle of Avarair had been fought, and the Armenian Church was in no position to have its say on the issue. The situation changed after the Treaty of Nvarsak (484), when the situation stabilized with Persian Armenia under the government of Vahan Mamikonian. The Armenian Church adopted the doctrine of the Henotikon, and this position was officially confirmed by the Council of Dvin (506).

The followers of the Council of Chalcedon have frequently accused the Armenian Church of monophysitism, but this is not true: the Armenian Church follows the doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria established at the third ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) that reaffirmed the decisions of the Councils of Nicea and Ephesus.

Death of Gomidas Vartabed - October 22, 1935

Pen and ink drawing by Minas Minasian.

Gomidas Vartabed was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, but he was also a victim of it, for he was never able to recover from the traumatic effects of his short-termed deportation.

Soghomon Soghomonian was born in Kütahya (Gudina), in western Turkey, on October 8, 1869. His family was Turkish-speaking. He lost his mother when he was one year old and his father when he was ten. In 1881 he was taken to Holy Etchmiadzin, where he entered the Kevorkian Seminary.

His exceptional voice and musical abilities attracted special attention. He studied Armenian musical notes and religious music, collected popular songs, and made his first attempts at composing. In 1893 he graduated and was designated music teacher and choirmaster of the cathedral. One year later he was ordained a celibate priest, and named Gomidas in honor of Catholicos Gomidas, a musician and poet of the 7th century. In 1895, he was elevated to the rank of archimandrite (vartabed).

He pursued musical studies in Berlin from 1896-1899. He returned to Etchmiadzin from 1899-1910. He collected close to 3,000 popular songs and dances, which he mostly arranged for choir versions. He presented his arrangements of Armenian popular and religious music in Paris (1906) with great success.

His musical programs included folk and sacred music, but his actions and ideas upset a conservative faction in Etchmiadzin. After Catholicos Mgrdich I (Khrimian Hairig) passed away in 1907, Gomidas’ situation became more problematic. He wrote that he could not breathe and was suffocating in Etchmiadzin. His formal request to become a hermit and continue his work was denied, and finally he decided to move to Constantinople.

He created the 300-member “Kusan” Choir and gave concerts in various places in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. Five of its members (Parsegh Ganachian, Mihran Toumajan, Vartan Sarxian, Vagharshag Srvantzdian, and Haig Semerjian) took classes of musical theory with him and came to be known as the “five Gomidas students.”

In April 1915, Gomidas was arrested with more than 200 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders and exiled to Chankiri. His behavior changed along the exile route. A few weeks later, while officiating at a church service, word came that he would be sent back to Constantinople with a few other notables.

The return was very difficult for him. His friends could not understand his odd behavior and considered him mad, committing him to the Turkish Military Psychiatric Hospital. Many of his compositions and notes were dispersed and lost.

In 1919 he was sent to Paris, where he spent the rest of his life, first in a private psychiatric hospital and then in the Villejuif asylum, where he passed away. In 1936 his body was sent to Armenia and buried in the pantheon named after him, where famous personalities found their final rest. The Music Conservatory of Yerevan is named after him, as is the state chamber quartet.

Gomidas was justly termed the Father of Armenian Music, as he rescued from oblivion more than 4,000 village songs and melodies, and set the foundation for the scientific study of Armenian music. He also wrote pieces for piano and songs, fragments for comedies and operas. His version of the Holy Mass is a classic work, used to this day by the Armenian Church.

Birth of Vazken I, Catholicos of All Armenians - October 3, 1908

Portrait of Catholicos Vazken I, painted by Martiros Saryan

The 130th Catholicos of All Armenians, Vazken I, had one of the longest tenures in the history of the Armenian Church, almost forty years. During his reign, he presided over the rebirth of the Armenian Church in the former Soviet Union, after its near destruction in the Stalin period.

He was born in Bucharest (Romania) on October 3, 1908. His father was a shoemaker and his mother a schoolteacher. His family moved to Odessa during World War I, where young Levon Baljian received his elementary education. After returning to Romania, he studied in the Misakian-Kesimian Armenian school of Bucharest and, from 1924-1926, in the higher school of trade in Bucharest. He taught in the Armenian schools of Bucharest from 1929-1943. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Bucharest in 1936 and from the section of applied pedagogy in 1937. He also published a monthly in Armenian, Herg, in 1937-1938.

His shift from philosophy to theology led him to study theology and divinity of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Athens. The Diocesan Council of the Armenian diocese of Romania decided to send him to Athens, where he was ordained a celibate priest (vartabed) in September 1943. Elected locum tenens of the diocese in November, he later became primate (1947-1955). He was ordained bishop in 1951 and became simultaneously primate of the Armenian diocese of Bulgaria in 1954.

After the death of Catholicos Kevork VI in 1954, he was elected Catholicos of All Armenians in 1955. He managed to assert some degree of independence for the Armenian Church, especially after the 1960s, and developed a wide activity of construction. Many churches were rebuilt during his tenure, such as the Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin, the surrounding churches of St. Hripsime, St. Gayane, St. Shoghagat, the monasteries of Khor Virap and Geghard, etcetera. He also built several important buildings in the monastery of Holy Etchmiadzin: the monument to the victims of the Armenian Genocide, the fountain-memorial dedicated to Khrimian Hayrig, the Alex and Marie Manoogian Museum, and others.

He published several works, such as “The Armenian of Musa Dagh in the Work of Franz Werfel” and “Khrimian Hayrig as an Educator.” Thanks to his efforts, various important Armenian manuscripts were saved and offered to the Matenadaran, the library of Armenian manuscripts of Yerevan. Among them were the Vehamayr Gospel (on behalf of his mother), which was used after the independence of Armenia by the presidents of the country to give their oath.

During 1988, Vazken I voiced his concerns and his support for the cause of the Armenians of Karabagh. He restored the diocese of Artsakh (Karabagh) of the Armenian Church in 1989 and started the renovation and reopening of various churches and monasteries of the region.

He was elected an honorary member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia in 1991 and was the first to receive the title of National Hero in Armenia (1994). The Catholicos passed away on August 18, 1994.

The seminary of Sevan bears his name, the same as a school in Vanadzor. Two statues remember him in the Vazkenian seminary of Sevan (2008) and in Holy Etchmiadzin (2010).

Death of St. Sahak Partev - September 7, 439

Sahak Partev was the tenth Catholicos of the Armenian Church for a period of almost fifty years, with interruptions, but this was not the main reason he was sanctified by the Armenian Church.

He was born on September 29, 348, and was the son of another important Catholicos, Nerses the Great (353-373); his mother belonged to the Mamikonian family. The first Catholicoi were all descendants of St. Gregory the Illuminator. Some of the Catholicoi had been married and had children before consecrating to religious life; their wives would leave world life afterwards and become nuns.

The future head of the Church was educated in schools in Caesarea, Alexandria, and Constantinople. He knew Greek, Syriac, and Persian. He was elected Catholicos in 387 and worked actively with king Khosrov IV to restore the unity of Greater Armenia, which had divided between the Persian and Byzantine empires in the same year. After the dethronement and exile of Khosrov III (388) by the Persian king, Sahak I was also deprived of the patriarchal throne in 389. The efforts of the next king, Vramshapuh (388-414), who was Khosrov’s brother, made it possible to restore the Catholicos in his position.

Sahak Partev had a fundamental role, together with Vramshapuh, in supporting the work of St. Mesrop Mashtots that led to the invention of the Armenian alphabet at the beginning of the fifth century, as well as to the creation of a school network to teach the new alphabet and the cultural work that created the Golden Age of Armenian literature in that century.

Historian Ghazar Parpetsi wrote that Mesrop Mashtots and the other translators, whenever needed to make any phonetic comparisons between the Armenian and Greek languages, took their questions to Sahak I, because he had received a classical education and had a comprehensive knowledge of phonetics and rhetorical commentary, and was also well versed in philosophy.

Sahak I worked to arrange and organize the Armenian calendar of religious festivities. He wrote many rules related to the ecclesiastic and secular classes, the officials, marriage, and other issues. He composed various liturgical hymns and prayers, and he played a significant role in the translation of the Bible, which was completed in 435.

The Catholicos wrote polemical letters against various sects, as well as letters to the Byzantine emperor Thedosius II, the Patriarch Proclus of Constantinople, bishops, and a Byzantine governor. In these letters, the Catholicos, together with Mashtots, presented the orthodox position of the Armenian Church after the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431). The letter to Proclus, in particular, was read at the Council of Constantinople (553), after the letter of Cyril of Alexandria, as proof of orthodoxy.

Sahak Partev passed away on September 7, 439, in the village of Pelrots, in the province of Bagrevant, and was buried in the city of Ashtishat, in the region of Taron. With his death the line of St. Gregory the Illuminator came to an end.

The Armenian Church remembers Sahak Partev’s memory twice a year. The first on the Saturday eight days before the Great Carnival (Barekentan), between January 24 and February 28, and the second on the Thursday following the fourth Sunday of Pentecost (between June 1 and July 16), when he is remembered along with Mesrop Mashtots as the Holy Translators.

Death of Khoren I, Catholicos of All Armenians - April 6, 1938

The death of Khoren I, Catholicos of All Armenians, on April 6, 1938, was the climax of the struggle of Communism to wipe out the Armenian Church from Soviet Armenia.

Alexander Muradbekian was born on December 8, 1873 in Tiflis. He graduated from the Nersisian Lyceum in 1892 and continued his studies in Switzerland. In 1897 he became a teacher of vocal music at his alma mater.

A few months after being ordained deacon in 1901, he took the vow of celibacy and was ordained vartabed in 1902. In between, he had been designated reformer of the churches of the region of Nor Bayazet (now Gavar). In June 1903, he resisted the confiscation of the properties of the Armenian Church by the Russian government and was arrested and exiled to Orel, Russia.

He returned from exile in 1905 and was named diocesan vicar of Gori-Imereti-Batum and Ardvin. A patriarchal encyclical by Catholicos Megerdich I Khrimian designated him reformer of the churches of Nor Bayazed and Darachicak (now Tsaghkadzor).

He was elevated to bishop in December 1909. He served as the president of the Committee of Brotherly Aid during the years of World War I, and organized assistance for wounded Armenian soldiers and refugees.

Bishop Khoren Muradbekian took the initiative of founding the Armenian National Council in Yerevan in 1917. By arrangement of Catholicos Kevork V Sureniants and order of the government of the Republic of Armenia, he went to Paris in 1919 as the Patriarchal Legate to settle the differences between the two Armenian delegations that participated in the Peace Conference (Delegation of the Republic of Armenia, led by Avetis Aharonian, and Armenian National Delegation, headed by Boghos Nubar).

In 1920 he traveled from Paris to the United States to resolve the discord in the diocese of America. He organized a fundraiser for the defense and reconstruction of the Republic of Armenia, and arranged for diocesan elections. In 1921, Archbishop Tirayr Der Hovhannisian was elected primate and served until 1928.

Bishop Khoren was given the title of Archbishop in December 1920, and designated chairman of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Council of Holy Etchmiadzin and locum tenens of the Catholicosate of All Armenians. He challenged the group called “Brotherhood of the Free Church,” which under the pretext of church reformation served as a tool of the Soviet Armenian regime.

After the death of Kevork V in 1930, Archbishop Muradbekian administered the Armenian Church for two years. The National Ecclesiastical Assembly elected him Catholicos of All Armenians on November 12, 1932.

Catholicos Khoren I struggled valiantly to reopen the churches closed by the government, to stop the destruction of churches and their use for non-religious purposes, and to prevent the persecution of Armenian clergymen by the Soviet authorities.

He also dealt with various issues regarding the statutes and the organization of the Church, as well as its rites. He worked to ensure a closer relationship between the hierarchical sees of the Armenian Church. He also organized the commemoration of the 1500th anniversary of the translation of the Bible (1935).

The Soviet regime was implacably moving to end the existence of the Armenian Church in Armenia. Churches were confiscated, closed, and destroyed; priests were arrested, tried, shot, or exiled with various excuses; the Holy See was being subjected to mounting political, financial, and social pressure. Under these constraints, Catholicos Khoren I passed away suddenly on April 6, 1938, in his residence at Holy Etchmiadzin. The circumstances of his death were mysterious enough to suggest foul play. While the official conclusion was that he died of a heart attack, the brevity of information about his death and various unofficial testimonies strengthened the belief that he died at the hands of the Soviet secret police. He was buried hastily, and four months later, on August 4, 1938, the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia decided: “Taking into consideration that available materials reveal the active struggle of the Catholicate of Etchmiadzin against the Soviet authorities and the Armenian people, to shut down the monastery of Etchmiadzin, and turn it into a museum; to deny authorization for the election of a new Catholicos, and to liquidate the Catholicate of Etchmiadzin, the center of Armenian ecclesiastics.” A letter in this regard was sent to the Soviet strongman, Joseph Stalin, for confirmation.

For one reason or another, the decisions were never put into practice. Archbishop Kevork Chorekjian, one of the few surviving high-ranking ecclesiastics, was named locum tenens. In 1941 he arranged for the remains of the unfortunate Catholicos to be buried near the main door of the Monastery of Saint Gayane. Fifty-five years later, in 1996, when the Soviet regime no longer existed and Armenia was an independent country, by order of the newly elected Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin I, the remains of Khoren I were reinterred in the courtyard of the Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin.

Approval of the Polozhenye (Statute) of the Armenian Church - March 11, 1836

The Russian Empire conquered Eastern Armenia between 1805 and 1828. Bishop Nerses Ashtaraketsi (1771-1857) had supported the Russian conquest of Eastern Armenia in the belief that liberation from Persian rule would bring greater freedom to the Armenian people. However, he had been blindsided; his opposition to General Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich (1782-1856), who was the commander of the Caucasian front during the Russo-Persian and Russo-Turkish wars of 1826-1829, earned him to be exiled to Besarabia as primate of the Armenian diocese in 1828. 

The Russian government immediately took measures to regulate its relations with the Catholicosate of All Armenians, headquartered in Holy Etchmiadzin. Paskevich obtained special permission from the government to establish a set of rules. He formed a four-member committee in 1829, which produced a statute of the Armenian Church on January 8, 1830. 

The preliminary version was revised in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire, and after certain changes it was presented to Czar Nicholas I (1825-1855), who approved it on March 11, 1836. These bylaws, officially titled “On the Management of the Spiritual Activities of the Armenian Gregorian Church,” were included in the eleventh volume of the Russian code, and popularly known as Polozhenye (“statute,” in Russian). (The name “Gregorian” is a misnomer of the Armenian Church, as it was not founded by St. Gregory the Illuminator, but by the Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew.)

The Polozhenye, composed of 141 articles, greatly reduced the political powers of the Armenian religious leadership, including that of the Catholicos, while preserving the autonomy of the Armenian Church. It established a Synod that would oversee the activities of the Catholicos. After 1836, in agreement with the new regulation, the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin was to be elected in congresses in Etchmiadzin, in which religious and non-religious dignitaries would participate. 

Nerses Ashtaraketsi, elected Catholicos of All Armenians in 1843 (1843-1857) fought to restore the rights of the Catholicos curtailed by the Polozhenye. Realizing that one tyranny had been replaced with another, Catholicos Nerses frequently overlooked the Russian-approved statutes and worked on his own. He concentrated all ecclesiastical power in his hands and did not complete the members of the Synod. He made sure that the resolutions of the Synod were not approved and thus reduced its effectiveness to naught. He even wrote a new statute for the Armenian Church that was not submitted to the government for approval, but he used it as the Church’s own guideline.  

Nevertheless, the Polozhenye continued to be applied in Eastern Armenia until the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917.