^ 145. THE MONOPHYSITE SECTS. 779
m. Tlie Armenians. These are the most numerous, inter esting, and hopeful of the Monophysite sects, and now the most accessible to evangelical Protestantism Their nationality reaches back into hoary antiquity, like Mount Ararat, at whose base lies their original home. They were converted tc Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century, under King Tiridates, by Gregory the Enlightener, the lirst patriarch and ecclesiastical writer and the greatest saint of the Armenians." They were provided by him with monasteries and seminaries, and afterwards by Mesrob " with a version of the Scriptures, made from the Greek with the help of the Syriac Peschito ; which at the same time marks the beginning of the Armenian literature, since Mesrob had first to invent his alphabet. The Armenian canon has four books found in no other Bible ; in the Old Testament, the History of Joseph and Asenath, and the Testament of the twelve Patriarchs, and in the ISTew, the Epistle of the Coi'inthians to Paul and a Third, but spurious, Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. The next oldest work in the Armenian language is the history of their land and people, by Moses Chorenensis, a half century later.
The Armenians fell away from the church of the Greek
aud 1. ISENBERG: Abyssinien und die evangelische Mission, Bonn, 1844, 2 Bde. and IsENBERG and Kkapf: Journals, 1843. Also Harris: Highlands of Etliiopia, 1844. The imported fragments of an Abyssinian translation of the Bible, dating from the fourth or fifth century, have drawn the attention of Western scholars. Prof. A. Dillmann (now in Giessen) has since 1854 pubUshed the Jjlthiopic Old Testament, a grammar, and a lexicon of the Jithiopic language. Of the older works on Abyaainia the principal are LuDOLPHas: Historia ^thiopica, Frankf. 1681; Geddes: Church History of Ethiopia, Lond. 1696, and La Croze: Histoire du Christianisme d'Ethiopie et d'Armenie, La Haye, 1739. They have all drawn their principal materials from the Jesuits, especially from the general history of Tellez, published 1660.
' *a)Ti(TT^y, Illuminator. He was married and had several sons. He waa urgently invited to the Nicene council, but sent his son Aristax in his stead, to whom be resigned Ids office, and then withdrew himself for the rest of his life into a mountain-cave. There are homilies of his still extant, which were first printed in 1131 in Constantinople.
^ Called Mesrop, Mjesrob, Mjesrop, and Marchtoz. Comp. respecting this man and the origin of the Armenian version of the Bible, the clironicle of his pupil, Moses Chorenensis, and the article by Petermann in Herzog's EncycL Bd. ix. p 870 ff.
780 THIRD PERIOD. A.T). 311-590.
Empire in 552, tVom wliicli year tliej date tlicir era. The Persians favored the separation on political grounds, but were themselves tlioi-ouiihiy hostile to Christianity, and endeavored to introduce the Zoroastrian religion into Armenia. The Armenian church, being left unrepresented at the council of Chalcedon through the accidental absence of its bishops, accepted in 491 the lienoticon of the emperor Zeno, and at the synod of Twin (Tevin or Tovin, the capital at that time), held a. d. 595, declared decidedly for the Monophj'site doctrine. The Confessio Armenica, which in other respects closely resembles the Nicene Creed, is recited by the priest at every morning service. The Armenian church had for a long time only one patriarch or Catholicus, who at first resided in Sebaste, and afterwards in the monastery of Etschmiezin (Edschmiadsin), their holy city, at the foot of Mount Ararat, near Erivan (now belonging to Kussia), and had forty-two archbishops under him. At his consecration the dead hand of Gregory the Enlightener is even yet always used, as the medium of tactual succession. Afterwards other patriarchal sees were established, at Jerusalem (in 1311), at Sis, in Cilicia (in 1440), and after the fall of the Greek empire in Constantinople (1461).' In 637 Armenia fell under Mohammedan dominion, and belongs now partly to Turkey and partly to Enssia. But the varying fortunes and frequent oppressions of tlieir country have driven many thousands of the Armenians abroad, and they are now scattered in other parts of Eussia and Tui'key, as well as in Persia, India, and Austria.
Tlie Armenians of the diaspora are mostly successful traders and brokers, and have become a nation and a church of merchant princes, holding great influence in Turkey. Their dispersion, and love of trade, their lack of political independence, their tenacious adherence to ancient national customs and rites, the oppressions to which they are exposed in foreign countries, and the influence which they nevertheless exercise upon these countries, msLke their position in the Orient, espe-
' Respecting thj patriarchal and metropolitan sees and the bishoprics of the Armenians, comp. Le Quien, torn, i., and Wiltsch, Kirchliche Geogiaphie und St* tistik, ii. p. 375 ff.