Armenia Adopts Christianity

There were Christians in Armenia before the kingdom’s conversion. Eusebius lists among the letters of Dionysius of Alexandria, who wrote about the middle of the third century, one on repentance “to the brethren in Armenia”, whose bishop was named Merozanes (Eusebius, Church History 6.46.2). How the royal house came to the faith is told at length in the History that bears the name of Agathangelos, written in Armenian well over a century after the events. What follows is its account, as given in the abridged English version linked here.

Gregory the Illuminator was the son of a Parthian noble who had murdered the Armenian king. He was carried as an infant to Roman territory and brought up a Christian at Caesarea in Cappadocia. The murdered king’s son, Tiridates III, grew up in the Roman empire, served in its army, was honoured by the emperor and won back his throne with a great army. Gregory entered his service without saying who he was (Agathangelos, History 1.5–14). When he refused to honour the goddess Anahit the king had him tortured and then, learning whose son he was, thrown into a pit, where he survived for thirteen years (Agathangelos, History 1.15–26).

Meanwhile, the History continues, a company of Christian women, led by Gayane and including the beautiful Hripsime, fled from the emperor Diocletian to the royal city of Vagharshapat. Tiridates desired Hripsime, was refused, and had the women killed (Agathangelos, History 2.3–15). He was then struck with madness and behaved like an animal. His sister learned in a vision that only the prisoner in the pit could help. Gregory was drawn up alive, and the king knelt before him (Agathangelos, History 2.16–19).

In the same account Gregory preached for many days, buried the martyrs, and told of a vision in which a column of fire with a cross of light marked the place in the city where a church was to be built. The king was healed and gave orders for the pagan shrines to be destroyed (Agathangelos, History 3.1–19). Tiridates then sent Gregory to Caesarea, where Bishop Leontius and his colleagues consecrated him bishop (Agathangelos, History 3.22–25). On his return he baptised the court and a great number of people in the Euphrates, set up churches with priests and bishops, and had children taught to read the Scriptures in Syriac and Greek (Agathangelos, History 4.5–9).

Two notices from outside Armenia stand beside this. The Greek historian Sozomen, about 440, had heard that Tiridates became a Christian through a divine sign in his own house and ordered his subjects by herald to adopt the same religion (Sozomen, Church History 2.8). Eusebius, a contemporary, says that the emperor Maximinus went to war with the Armenians, old allies of Rome, because they were Christians and he tried to force them to sacrifice, and that he was defeated (Eusebius, Church History 9.8.2–4). Eusebius thus counts the Armenians as Christians by about 312. The Armenian Apostolic Church commemorates Gregory’s release from the pit as the beginning of the nation’s conversion, as the dating note shows. If the conversion is put about 314, it belongs to the years in which the Roman state gave up persecution; if in 301, it came before the last persecution began. Either way it took place in a kingdom that Eusebius calls an ally of Rome (Eusebius, Church History 9.8.2–4).