as in Roman Catholic countries. Minor feasts are even more numerous than the days in the year. The Church services are performed in the ancient tongue, not now understood by the common people, and in a manner altogether perfunctory and painful to an en- lightened mind.
" There are nine different grades of clergy, each re- ceiving a distinct ordination by the laying on of hands. Four of these are below the order of deacon, and are called porters, readers, exorcists, and candle-lighters. After these come the sub-deacons, the deacons, the priests, then the bishops, and, last of all, the catholi- cos. The catholicos is ordained by a council of bish- ops. He is the spiritual head of the church, who alone ordains bishops, and can furnish the meiron, or sacred oil used by bishops in ordaining the inferior clergy, and in the various ceremonies of the church. The priests are obliged to be married men, and can never rise higher than the priesthood, except in case of the death of a wife, when, not being allowed to marry a second time, they may enter among the Var- | tabids — an order of celibate priests, who are attached | to the churches as preachers (the married priests do ■ not usually preach), cr live together in monasteries, and from among whom the bishops, etc., on whom the ; law of celibacy is imposed, are taken" (Newcomb, Cy- clopad'a of Missions). — Bekcnnin. tl. Christ!. Glaubens d. armen. Kirch. (Petersb. 1799); Armenionorum Confcs- sio (Witeb. 1570) ; Liturgia Armena (cura G. Andichi- an (Ven. 1826); Tavf. -Ritual d. arm. K. in Russ. (Pe- tersb. 1799).
There are among the Gregorian (Non- united) I Armenians a great number of monks. They follow either the rule of St. Anthony or that of St. Basil. The monks of St. Anthony live in solitude and in the | desert, and surpass in austerity almost all the orders . of the Roman Church. There are sometimes as many I as a hundred monks in one monastery. The order j of St. Basil (introduced into the Armenian Church in 1173) is less strict ; their convents are in the towns, and from them the bishops and vartabeds are taken. Their principal convent, called "Three Churches," is at Eschmiazin. Most of their convents are poor, but i they have three verjr rich ones in Jerusalem. The ', United Armenians have the following orders: (1.) A congregation of monks of St. Anthony, still existing, ' under a general abbot, who resides on Mount Leba- non, while a procurator general represents the order at Rome. (2.) A congregation of Basilians, also called | Bartholomites, founded in 1307 at Genoa by a fugitive monk, Peter Martin. They obtained many convents ', in Italy, assumed in 1356 the rule of Augustine and ', the garb of the Dominican lay brothers, and were sup- I pressed in 1650. (3.) In 1330 a number of Armenian : monks and priests were induced by some Dominican ' friars to join the Church of Rome, and formed a mo- , nastic congregation, called the United Brethren of St. j Gregory Illuminator. They likewise adopted the rule of St. Augustine, and the constitutions and habit of the Dominicans. In 1S56 they fused entirely with the Dominican order, and were formed into the province of Nakhchevan. (4.) The most celebrated of the Ar- menian monks are the Mechitarists (q. v.).
III. Present Condition and Statistics. — The estimates of the present number of Armenians greatly vary. In Turkey they are believed to amount to about 2,000,000 souls." Russia had, in 1851, 372,535 Grego- rian (Non-united) and 22,253 Catholic (United) Ar- menians. Persia has, according to the "Missionary Herald" of 1859, about 30,000; according to Uhicini (Letters on Turkey), 600,000 Armenians. Ubicini gives 40,000 for India, and 60,000 for Western Europe ; but other statements give lower figures. The Armenians of Western Europe are mostly United ; of those in India, Persia, and Turkey, only a minority (in Asiatic Turkey 75,000 in 1844, which number has since in- creased). The number of Armenians in Turkey who
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had declared themselves Protestants amounted in 1858 to nearly G000. The catholicos of Eschmiazin (now in Russia) is still regarded as the chief bishop of the church. He is appointed by the Czar, and has under him a synod, an imperial procurator, and 67 bishop- rics. Also the bishops of Constantinople and Jerusa- lem assume the title Patriarch, though they are said not to be strictly such, but rather superior bishops, possessing certain privileges conferred by the patri- arch. The United Armenians have in European Tor- key 1 archbishop at Constantinople; in Asiatic Tur- key, 1 patriarch in Cilicia, 1 archbishop at Seleucia, and 9 bishops ; in Persia, 1 bishop at Ispahan ; in Aus- tria, 1 archbishop at Lemberg, besides whom also the Mechitarist abbots of Venice and Vienna are archbish- ops in prirtibus.
IV. Armenian Protestant Missions. — The history of Protestantism among the Armenians forms one of the most interesting chapters in the history of modern Protestant missions. As a forerunner in the reforma- tion of the Armenian Church Ave may regard a priest by the name of Debajy Oghlu, about 17C0. He lived in Constantinople, and wrote a book in which he praised Luther, and castigated both clergy and people with an unsparing hand. His book, though never published, circulated from hand to hand, and was later used by the Protestant missionaries with some effect. The efforts of the Protestant Church in behalf of the Armenian Church began with the circulation of the Bible. In 1813 the British Bible Society began the publication of the Armenian Bible (the translation made by Mesrob in the fifth century), and in 1815 an edition of 5000 copies was issued at Calcutta. The same society published in 1823 at Constantinople an edition of 5000 copies of the New Testament, and of 3000 copies of the four Gospels alone. Simultaneous- ly with the British society, the Russian Bible Soci- ety undertook the publication of the Armenian Bible, and issued at St. Petersburg, in 1817, an edition of 2000 copies, and soon after an edition of the ancient Armenian New Testament. A great enthusiasm man- ifested itself in Russia for this work, the Emperor Al- exander, the archbishops and bishops of the Greek and the Armenian churches, and nearly all the Rus- sian nobility being among its patrons. The Armenian Bibles and New Testaments thus printed were widely circulated through various agencies. But it was soon discovered that the mass of the people did not under- stand the old Armenian language, and that one por- tion (perhaps one third, chiefly in the more southern portions of Asia Minor) had even lost the use of the modern Armenian, speaking only Turkish. This led to the translation of the Bible into modern Armenian and into Armeno-Turkish (Turkish written with Ar- menian characters). The former translation was is- sued by the Russian society in 1822, the latter by the British society in 1823. These translations, however, called forth the opposition of the Armenian patriarch of Constantinople and the Armenian clergy in gen- eral.