THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
founded a bishopric there for which he had consecrated Xikolaios. At the instance of the Jesuits the latter joined the union.
With the seventeenth century a new period begins for the Armenians. From Echmiadzin
(Vagharshabad), the seat of the ca-
6. From tholicos, clerics were sent out to estab-
1600. lish Armenian printing offices. Such
were established at Lemberg 1616, at Julfa and Leghorn 1640, at Amsterdam 1660 (transferred to Marseilles in 1672), at Constantinople 1677, and elsewhere. Till then the Armenians were little better educated than the Syrians or Copts. The merit of making them acquainted with European culture belongs to Mekhitar and his order, the Mekhitarists (q.v.). In 1828 Persian Armenia came under Russian sway, and again a new period commenced for the national Church.
The national Armenian Church, whose adherents are erroneously called Gregorians, considers as its head the " supreme patriarch and catholicos of all Armenians," residing at Echmiadzin, who is elected by a national council consisting of members of all Armenian eparchies. Connected with the patriarchal see is a theological-philosophical academy An incomplete catalogue of the library at Echmiadzin was published by Brosset {Catalogue de la bibliotheque d'Edschmiadzin publie par M. Brosset, St. Petersburg, 1840). Besides the supreme patriarchate there are two lower ones, those of Jerusalem and Constantinople.
The Armenians who are united with the Roman See (the so called Uniates or United Armenians) have
maintained themselves since the times
7. The Ar- of the crusaders and the Unitores,
menian and gradually increased in numbers.
Uniates. Several catholicoi negotiated with
Rome, but the clergy and people remained anti-Roman. When, however, the order of Mekhitarists was established, a catholicate in connection with Rome was founded. Abraham Attar-Muradian in 1721 founded in the Lebanon the monastery of Kerem, which accepted the rule of St. Anthony (see Antonians, 1). His successors besides their own names take also that of the prince of the apostles. For the better regulation of the affairs of the Catholic and United Armenians, Pius IX. issued, July 12, 1867, the bull Reversurus. But a great portion of the United, protected by the Turkish government, did not recognize the injunctions of the bull, and in 1870 they renounced the Roman See, calling themselves Oriental Catholics. The most prominent men among the United and most of the Venetian Mekhitarists sided with them. On May 20, 1870, Pope Pius IX. suspended many priests, and when they did not yield, he excommunicated four bishops and forty-five other priests. The result was that the separatists now formed an independent organization under the civil patriarch John Kapelian, who, however, submitted to Pope Leo XIII. in 1879. In 1880 Anton Hassun was made the first Armenian cardinal. He died at Rome in 1884. His successor as patriarch of Cilicia with residence at Constantinople was Stephen Azarian, surnamed Stephanus Petrus X., to whom the pope sent an
encyclical in 1888, in which the preservation of the Armenian language and liturgy for religious purposes is guaranteed to the Armenians, and everything is confirmed which Benedict XIV enjoined concerning their own and other Oriental liturgies (cf. D. Vernier, Histoire du patriarchal Armenien catholique, Paris, 1890).
According to Missiones catholicce cura S. Congregationis de propaganda fide descriptor anno 1901, the present status of the Armenians united with Rome is as follows: The seat of the Armenian patriarch of Cilicia is Constantinople. The diocese comprises 16,000 Catholic Armenians; 13 congregations; 85 priests (including 16 Mekhitarists of Venice, 10 of Vienna, and 14 Antonians); 5 boys' and 7 girls' schools; 2 colleges besides the seminary of the patriarch and 1 lyceum; the convent of the Mekhitarists of Venice at Kadikeuy, of those of Vienna at Pancaldi, of the Antonians at Ortakeuy; one monastery of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. To the jurisdiction of the patriarch belong also 15 bishoprics. Excluded from this supervision are the dioceses of Alexandria in Egypt, Artuin in Russia, and Lemberg in Austria, whose archbishop has been named since 1819 by the emperor of Austria. The United Armenians, not including those in Hungary, in Russia outside of the eparchy of Artuin, and in Persia, number about 100,000 according to the lists of the propaganda. (H. Gelzer.)
The evangelical movement among Armenians had its origin early in the nineteenth century in several attempts to revive religion in the Eastern Churches. A large number of Armenians in Turkey, inhabiting Cilicia and central and southern Asia Minor, have lost their own language, speaking Turkish, but writing it with Armenian letters. They are quite unable to understand 8. The the Armenian church books. In 1815 Evangelical two Armenian ecclesiastics prepared Armenians, a version of the New Testament in Turkish for these people, which was afterward printed (1819) at St. Petersburg. About the same time the Church Missionary Society of London sent a mission to Malta to advance the cause of religion in the Greek and other Oriental Churches. This mission came in contact with Armenians before its abandonment in 1830. In 1823 the Basel Mission Institute sent two of its graduates, Mr. Zaremba (who was a Russian count by birth) and Mr. Pfander (afterward renowned as a missionary to Mohammedans in India and in Turkey). These men, driven from the Caucasus by the Czar Nicholas I., left a strong evangelical Armenian body, which still perseveres, at Shushi, Shemakhi, and Baku. About this time an Armenian scholar of Constantinople, acting for the British Bible Society, translated the New Testament into modern, or colloquial Armenian, the ancient and ecclesiastical language being unintelligible to the common people. This was published at Paris in 1823, and became another of the influences vaguely at work for reform.
The chief advance in this direction came through the American Board, of Boston, Mass., which sent missionaries to Turkey in 1819 and has steadily