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).

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 Karekin I, Catholicos of All Armenians - June 29, 1999

Thirteen years ago, the untimely death of Karekin I, Catholicos of All Armenians (formerly Karekin II, Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia) was a hard blow to the Armenian Church worldwide. Much has been said and written about the life and deeds of the Catholicos, but it is never too late to recall his memory one more time. 

Born in Kessab, a piece of Armenian Cilicia which miraculously remained in Syria after the sanjak of Alexandretta (Hatay) was transferred to Turkey by the French mandate in 1939, Nishan Sarkissian entered the Theological Seminary of Antelias in 1946 and graduated six years later. In 1952, he was ordained a celibate priest and renamed Karekin, after the recently deceased Catholicos Karekin I Hovsepiants. He joined the brotherhood of the Armenian Catholicate of Cilicia.

After he defended his doctoral thesis in 1955, he received the degree of “vartabed” (doctor of the Church). He was a faculty member and then served as dean of the seminary. He studied theology for two years at Oxford University. In 1963 he became an aide to Catholicos Khoren I. The same year he was elevated to senior archimandrite and in 1964, consecrated bishop.

In the 1970s, he served in important administrative positions. From 1971-1973 he was Prelate of the Diocese of New Julfa (Iran) and in 1973 he received the rank of archbishop. He was appointed Pontifical Legate of the Eastern Prelacy from 1973-1975 and Prelate from 1975-1977. He left his position in 1977 when he was elected Catholicos Coadjutor of the Catholicate of Cilicia. He served in this position until the death of Catholicos Khoren in 1983, when he became Catholicos Karekin II of the Holy See of Cilicia.

His ecclesiastical, administrative, and intellectual activities, including his ecumenical contacts and his frequent and valuable publications in Armenian, English, and French on theological, Armenological, philosophical, ethical and other subjects, had already earned him a position of importance in the hierarchy of the Armenian Church. He bolstered his activities during his twelve-year tenure as Catholicos (1983-1995). He developed a close relationship with Catholicos of All Armenians, Vazken I (1955-1994).

Upon the death of Catholicos Vazken, Catholicos Karekin II was elected Catholicos of All Armenians in April 1995 and thereafter became known as Karekin I. These were the first years of the second independence of Armenia. The newly elected Catholicos was called to have a central role in the resurgence of the Armenian Church after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, his health failed him and his pontificate was extremely brief. After a painful battle with cancer, he passed away on June 29, 1999.

Death of Karekin I Hovsepiants, Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia, June 21, 1952

“Armenian people, believe in your past, in your history, in the God of your fathers, in their immortal and alive soul, and you will not die. Believe that you will live and act with that believe, work and hope... and you will not die.”

These words belong to Karekin Hovsepiants, one of the most remarkable figures of the Armenian Apostolic Church in the twentieth century. A Church leader, he was also a distinguished scholar of Armenian studies and a name of national proportions.

Karekin Hovsepiants (his birth name was also Karekin) was born in the village of Maghavuz (Karabagh) in 1867. He studied in the Kevorkian Seminary of Holy Ecthmiadzin from 1882-1890. He pursued higher studies in Germany (Leipzig, Halle and Berlin) from 1892-1897, and obtained his doctorate in Theology from Leipzig University with a dissertation on the origins of monothelitism, the Christological doctrine about how the divine and human relate in the person of Jesus that formally emerged in Armenia and Syria in the seventh century.

Karekin Hovsepiants returned to the Caucasus and had a flourishing activity. He was ordained a celibate priest in 1897. After three years of intense teaching at the Seminary of Holy Etchmiadzin (1897-1900), which he had to interrupt due to health problems, he was designated Vicar of the Armenian diocese of Tiflis and participated actively in the intellectual life of the Armenian community (1900-1902). He was later the principal of the diocesan school of Yerevan (1902-1905), dean of the Seminary (1905-1907), editor of Ararat, the journal of the Catholicosate (1906-1907), abbot of the monastery of Saint Hripsime (1907-1914), again dean of the Seminary (1914-1917). In the meantime, his research and publication had gained him the respect of the Armenian intelligentsia.

In 1917, Catholicos of All Armenians Kevork V consecrated him as bishop. In May 1918 Hovsepiants participated actively in the crucial battle of Sardarabad and was decorated for his bravery by the government of the newly-founded Republic of Armenia. In 1920, he established a chair of Armenian Art and Archaeology at the newly created Yerevan State University. After the establishment of the Soviet regime, the chair was closed, most probably because the religious content of art ran counter to Soviet ideology.

He continued his ecclesiastic and intellectual activities and in 1927 he was designated Primate of the diocese of Russia, Crimea, and Nor Nakhichevan. In 1932 he became a member of the Supreme Spiritual Council of Holy Etchmiadzin and in 1934 was designated nuncio for the Armenian Diaspora by Catholicos Khoren I. He traveled through different communities and from 1936-1938 he tried unsuccessfully to mend the split in the Armenian Church of America. From 1938-1943 he was Primate of the Armenian Diocese of America.

He was elected Catholicos of the Holy See of Cilicia in 1943 but due to the difficulties of World War II he was only able to take the position in 1945. The Catholicate had just come out from the very difficult years following its establishment in Antelias in 1929. During his seven-year tenure, Catholicos Karekin I gave a powerful momentum to administrative, ecclesiastic, educational, and publishing activities, and turned the Catholicate into a focus of Armenian life in the Diaspora. He also continued to publish very important works about Armenian history and art. After suffering two heart attacks in 1950, he was confined to bed until his passing on June 21, 1952.

Shortly after his death, a twenty-year-old seminarian, Neshan Sarkissian, was ordained a priest and took the name Karekin in remembrance of the late Catholicos. He would go on to become Catholicos Karekin II of Cilicia and later Karekin I of All Armenians.

Birth of St. Nerses Shnorhali (June 4, 1102)

Every time we sing “Aravod Looso” (Morning of Light) during the morning service at church or “Norahrash bsagavor” (Newly and Marvelously Crowned) at the festivity of Vartanantz, we are singing two of the most inspired sharagans written and musicalized by Nerses Shnorhali. We are also repeating his words when we recite “Havadov Khosdovanim” (In Faith I Confess) during Lent. One of the most beloved saints of the Armenian Church, he was born on June 4, 1102 (some sources say 1098 or 1101). He was a member of the Pahlavuni princely family and the grandson of the noted writer, Grigor Magistros Pahlavuni. Shnorhali (literally “filled with grace”) had been the title of several known members of the Church, but it became synonymous with Nerses after his time.

The fall of the Armenian kingdom of the Bagratunis in 1045 and the destruction of the capital Ani by the Seljukid Turks in 1064 had forced the Holy See of the Armenian Church to move from the capital in 1081. After several changes of place, Grigor III had settled the see in the fortress of Hromkla (Hrom-kla, “Roman Fortress”), on the banks of the Euphrates River, very close to the border of the Armenian state of Cilicia, in 1149 (it remained there until 1292). His brother Nerses, whom he had ordained at the age of 18 and who was consecrated a bishop at the age of thirty, was also known as Nerses Klayetsi. He was the right hand of Grigor III during his long reign (1113-1166) and succeeded him as Catholicos Nerses IV until his death in 1173.
 
A prolific writer and theologian, some of Shnorhali’s best known works are his Tught Unthanragan (General Epistle), a message of guidance in the Christian faith for the Armenian people, and his poem Hisus Vorti (Jesus the Son). Both have been translated into English. Many of his songs and hymns were incorporated into the regular service of the Armenian Church. His pioneering spirit of ecumenism and his leadership have been historically recognized.