¹ Gérard Garitte, Documents pour l'étude du livre d'Agathange (Studi e Testi 127; Vatican City 1946).Google Scholar

² Gérard Garitte, La Narratio de rebus Armeniae. Édition critique et commentaire (CSCO 132, Subsidia 4; Louvain 1952) p. v (citing Fr. Peeters).Google Scholar

³ For the Georgian Annals cf. my articles ‘Medieval Georgian Historical Literature (VIIth-XVth Centuries),’ Traditio 1 (1943) 139–182; ‘The Oldest Manuscript of the Georgian Annals: the Queen Anne Codex (QA), 1479-1495,’ Traditio 5 (1947) 340-344.Google Scholar

⁴ 150 short paragraphs, 390 lines, 21 pages in G(aritte, ed. cit. supra n. 2).Google Scholar

⁵ Vol. 14 of the Bibliotheca appeared after the death of Andrea Gallandi (in 1780). For the editions of the Narratio cf. G 1-7.Google Scholar

⁶ G 8-14, 19-25. One of the Vaticani was known to Markwart and Gelzer; G 8 n. 1.Google Scholar

⁷ G 359-370 etc.Google Scholar

⁸ G 370-379, 16-19, 191-192.Google Scholar

⁹ Pace Laurent, J. (L'Arménie entre Byzance et l’Islam [Paris 1919] 309-316), Grumel, V. (Les regestes des actes du patriarcat de Constantinople I 2 [Istanbul 1936] 85), and Dvornik, F. (The Photian Schism [Cambridge 1948] 127 n. 3, 470, where the authenticity of the ‘Letter to Ashod, King of Armenia’ is not questioned), Cardinal Hergenröther's scepticism with regard to the ‘Letter of Photius’ (Photius I [Regensburg 1867] 478-504) appears to be fully justified by the fact that the document depends on the Armenian source of the Narratio (G 370-372, 16). In the words of Garitte (374-375), ‘désormais, les critiques qui croiraient pouvoir défendre l'authenticité de la Lettre s'imposeraient par le fait même la charge d'expliquer un inexplicable paradoxe: le plus savant des patriarches byzantins serait allé chercher dans une source arménienne des renseignements non seulement sur l’Église d'Arménie, mais même sur l'histoire de sa propre Église, et y aurait puisé, sur cette histoire qu'il connaissait mieux que personne, plusieurs données d'une évidente fausseté!’ — The ‘Letter to Zacharias’ was published by Papadopoulos, A.-Kerameus in Pravoslavnyj Palestinskij Sbornik 31 (St. Petersburg 1892) 179–195, with Marr, N.'s Russian transl. pp. 227-245. Fragments of this Letter are given in the History of Vardan († 1271); cf. Muyldermans, J., La domination arabe en Arménie (Louvain/Paris 1927) 64-68, cf. 128-138. Other parts of the same document are: the ‘Letter to Ašot [V, Prince of Armenia]’ (210-213, trans. 261-264) and the Armenian replies (196-210, 214-226, trans. 246-261, 265-279).Google Scholar

¹⁰ For all the defects of the Parisinus, certain of its passages, while showing a divergence from the Vaticani, find parallels in both the ‘Letter of Photius’ and the work of the Katholikos Arsenius I; G 24-25.Google Scholar

¹¹ Supra n. 2.Google Scholar

¹² The French translations are the first renderings into a West European language of these Georgian texts, published by T. Žordania in K'ronikebi I (Tiflis 1892) Appendix 2. 336-341.Google Scholar

¹³ In this way the greater part of the work of the Katholikos Arsenius I (published in Žordania's K‘ronikebi I Appendix 1.313-332) is given throughout the Commentaire, supplied with its first-known French translation.Google Scholar

¹⁴ A collection of Armenian documents of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries, relative to the religious history of Armenia, ed. Girk’ t'ḷtoc’. Matenagrut'iun naxneac’ (Tiflis 1901).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cf. Peeters, P., ‘S. Grégoire l'Illuminateur dans le calendrier lapidaire de Naples,’ Anal. Boll. 60 (1942) 122.Google Scholar

¹⁶ G 369-370.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Cf. Christensen, A., L'Iran sous les Sassanides (2nd ed. Copenhagen 1944) 15–27, 97-113, 136-140, 510-514.Google Scholar

¹⁸ For the survival of the two traditions cf., e.g., Baynes, N. H., ‘Eusebius and the Christian Empire,’ Annuaire de l'Institut de philologie et d'histoire orientales 2 (Brussels 1933) 13–18; Bury, J. B., The Constitution of the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge 1910); Br, L.éhier, Les institutions de l'Empire byzantin (Paris 1949) Bk. 1 esp. 1-5; Stein, E., ‘Introduction à l'histoire et aux institutions byzantines,’ Traditio 7 (1949-1951) 96, 97, 138-139. Already Hegel noted that, while, in the Roman Empire's western half, the barbarian invasions helped to obliterate pagan traditions and to replace them with new, Christian, conceptions, the Eastern Empire retained those pagan traditions unimpaired.’ The Byzantine Empire (he adds) is a great example of how the Christian religion may remain abstract among a cultivated people, if the whole organization of the state and of the laws is not reconstructed in harmony with its principles’; Philosophy of History Part 3 Sec. 3 Chap. 3 (English trans. Sibree, J.; New York 1944) 337f. — For the monistic character of the Eastern Empire cf., e.g., the facts adduced in Suvorov, N., Ucebnik cerkovnago prava (5th ed. Moscow 1913) 39-44, 462-469; Bréhier, esp. 53-88, 89-90, 430-442; F. Dölger and Schneider, A. M., Byzanz (Bern 1952) 93-98. — For Christian societal dualism cf., e.g., Lecler, J., The Two Sovereignties (London 1952: transl. of L'Église et la souveraineté de l'État [Paris 1946]). It may be remarked here that, whatever the mutual infringement of the boundary line between the two powers in Western Christianity (ibid. 92-99, 108-113), the primacy and universality of the spiritual has been safeguarded by the institution of the Papacy. Even though a temporal ruler — be he Byzantine, Frankish, or any other — may indeed attempt to influence that institution, or refuse it obedience, its very existence makes it impossible for any temporal power to reduce the Catholic Church to a nation-determined or polity-determined thing. — Additional material regarding the problems touched upon in this note will be found in Baynes, N. H., The Hellenistic Civilization and East Rome (London 1946; Williams, G. H., ‘Christology and Church-State Relations in the Fourth Century,’ Church History 20.3,4 (1951); Berkhof, H., Kirche und Kaiser (trans. from the Dutch, Locher, G. W.; Zurich 1947); Kittel, G., Christus und Imperator (Stuttgart/Berlin 1939); and in Treitinger's book cited infra n. 28. See further Rommen, H., The State in Catholic Thought (St. Louis/London 1945) esp. Pt. 3; Rahner, H., Abendländische Kirchenfreiheit (Einsiedeln/Cologne 1943).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Cf. e.g., Vasiliev, A., History of the Byzantine Empire (Madison 1952) 148, 175, 258, 334, 469-470.Google Scholar

²⁰ Toumanoff, C.,’ Caesaropapism in Byzantium and Russia,’ Theological Studies 7 (1946) 213–215. — It should be repeated here that such phenomena as the divinization of the State and the fusion of the spiritual and the temporal are extreme forms of societal monism, rather than its essential characteristics.Google Scholar

²¹ Some such argument is found, e.g., in Gr, H.égoire's chapter’ The Byzantine Church’ in Baynes, N. and Moss, H., Byzantium (Oxford 1948); in Ensslin, W.'s chap. ‘The Emperor and the Imperial Administration’ (ibid. 275-276); and in Baynes’ own ‘Introduction’ to the same (pp. xxviii-xxix). Others would assert that ‘the term « caesaropapism » is of course an anachronism after the days of the iconoclasts’ (J. Hussey, M., ‘The Byzantine Empire in the Eleventh Century: Some Different Interpretations,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 4th series 32 [1950] 76). A variation on the same theme, on the basis of certain juridical details in connection with the Councils, will be found in Dvornik, F., ‘Emperors, Popes and General Councils,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 6 (1951) 1-23.Google Scholar

²² My review of Stein's Hist. du Bas-Empire, in Traditio 7.488-489.Google Scholar

²³ In the cases of Emperors like Theodosius II, Marcian, and Justinian, the appellations of ἱεϱεύς and ἀϱχιεϱεύς were used of them and may, as Ensslin argues (op. cit. 275) have been empty titulary survivals of the pontifex maximus. But that author's attempt (ibid. 276) to dismiss Leo III's βασιλεὺς ϰαὶ ἱεϱεὺς εἰμί is not convincing, since Leo's claim seems especially suggestive when juxtaposed with his assertion, in the Ekloge, of his God-given duty to feed God's flock as comparable to the commission of St. Peter (cf. ibid. 272-273). Actually, however, this trend never became part of a systematic claim (cf. Bréhier, Ἱεϱεὺς ϰαὶ βασιλεύς, Mémorial Petit, L. [Archives de l'Orient chrétien 1; 1948] 41-45); and, of course, as will be seen, it had no bearing, one way or another, on the more fundamental question of caesaropapism.Google Scholar

²⁴ The Imperial City's ‘neo-Roman’ pretensions are discussed in F. Dölger, ‘Rom in der Gedankenwelt der Byzantiner,’ Byzanz und die europäische Staatenwelt (Ettal 1953) 70–115 (= Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 56 [1937] 1-42).Google Scholar

²⁵ Cf. Traditio 7.488-489 and n. 40. Accordingly, great Byzantine canonists, such as Theodore Balsamon and Demetrius Chomatenus, taught that Caesar was above all canons as well as laws and was possessed of the supreme power of jurisdiction in the Establishment (Balsamon, In can. 16 Carthag. PG 138.93; in can. 38 Trull. PG 137.644); that he was greater than the Patriarch, because he was in charge of both men's souls and bodies, the latter being in charge of men's souls only (idem, Meditata sive Responsa de patr. privilegiis, PG 138.1017); that he was possessed of the magisterium, being the Supreme Doctor of the Church, and united in himself all the privileges of the Pontificate, save only the Holy Orders (Chomatenus, Resp. ad Const. Cabasilam in Leunclavius, Jus graeco-romanum 5.317); that, finally, he was as essential for the Christians as the Church herself (Patriarch Anthony IV to Basil I of Muscovy, in Miklosich and Müller, Acta et diplomata graeca medii aevi 2 [Vienna 1862] 191 a. 1394-1397). These are some official statements which may be taken to indicate Caesar's juridical position in the Byzantine Establishment. As for his factual and customary exercise, in Byzantine Christianity, ever since the conversion, of the Papal functions — even before the Byzantine separation from Rome made them his de jure — it suffices to recall, e.g., his issuing dogmatic pronouncements and his convoking the councils of the Church, as well as the fact (to be examined later) that the Church came to be conceived of by the Byzantines as an Imperial Church. To this may be added various Imperial declarations, from Constantius II's ‘My will is canon law’ (Athanasius, Hist. Arian. 33) to the words of Isaac II Angelus: ‘there is no difference on earth between the powers of God and of the Emperor. The Emperors may do all, and they may use without any distinction the things that are God's along with the things that are their own, for they have received the sovereign power from God, and between God and them there is no difference’ (Nicetas Choniates, Hist. [Bonn 1835] 583), and Theodore II Lascaris’ treatise denying the Pope's right to convoke the councils and asserting the Emperor's right to have the last word in theological disputes (cf. Dr, J.äseke in Byz. Zeitschr. 3 [1894] 510-513).Google Scholar

²⁶ Cf. the preceding note; Jugie, M., Le schisme byzantin (Paris 1941) 403–406, 413-416; Dölger, Byzanz u. die europ. Staatenwelt 142 n. 2.Google Scholar

²⁷ Cf. infra, Additional Note A.Google Scholar

²⁸ For the divinization of pagan Caesar cf., e.g., Taylor, L. R., The Divinity of the Roman Emperor (Middletown, Conn. 1931). The tradition of the divinized State reached the Byzantines in two currents — that of the Divine Monarch (through the Ptolemaic and other Hellenistic monarchies, from the Pharaohs and other god-kings of the ancient Near East), and that of the Deifying State (from the Greek city-States and Rome from the beginning of the Principate). Haunted by this double inheritance, the Byzantines were not content with a view consonant with Christian societal dualism (and found, e.g., in St. Augustine) of the predestined role the Empire might have played in paving the way for Christianity and of its position as the temporal defence of the Faith, but held instead the monistic view of a theophanic polity, for which cf. Bréhier, Institutions 4, 36, 431; Treitinger, O., Die oströmische Kaiser- und Reichsidee (Jena 1938) 44-46, 52-53, 58-59; Dölger,’ Europas Gestaltung im Spiegel der fränkisch-byzantinischen Auseinandersetzung des 9. Jahrhunderts,’ Byzanz u. die europ. Staatenwelt 291-293;’ Bulgarisches Zartum und byzantinisches Kaisertum,’ ibid. 140-144. — For the Emperor as the Providential Man of the pagan days and then a συμβασιλεύς with God, and for the liturgy of the Byzantine cult of Caesar cf. Bréhier 5-6, 53-58. In this connection, two statements will sufficiently illustrate the acquiescence of the caesaropapists among the Byzantine clergy in this survival of paganism. One is from the Deacon Agapetus’ Exposition of the duties of princes, addressed to Justinian, to the effect that no intermediary is necessary between Caesar and God (PG 83.1177); the other is from a letter of Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrida, where the Emperor is called ‘god of the world’ (τοῦ … βασιλέως ϰαὶ θεοῦ ἐγϰοσμίου; PG 126.516). — In general, cf. also Herzog, G.-Hauser, ‘Kaiserkult’, RE Suppl. 4 (1924) 806–853.Google Scholar

²⁹ Caesaropapism in Byzantium and Russia 225-226; Treitinger, op. cit., 164-165; cf. Reiske on the De cerim. PG 112. 828 n. 6, 1256 n. 42; Medlin, W. K., Moscow and East Rome (Geneva 1952) 33, 42, 45 n. 3, 46; for the subjective universality connected with the title of Oecumenical Patriarch cf. Jugie, Le schisme byzantin 22-24. It was no doubt in consequence of this subjectivism that the word ϰαθολιϰός implied among the Byzantines that which is part of any whole; Bréhier, La civilisation byzantine (Paris 1950) 421.Google Scholar

³⁰ Some such view is found in, e.g., the introductory Chap. 1 of Medlin, Moscow and East Rome 17-37. Accordingly, the role of the Papacy in Byzantine history is understated and misunderstood in this book; cf. my review, in The Journal of Modern History 25 (1953) 419–420.Google Scholar

³¹ Cf., e.g., Medlin, op. cit. 17-32; Ensslin, in Byzantium 277.Google Scholar

³² The Byzantine notion of orthodoxy as Caesar's thing is apparent, e.g., in the designation of Melkite, i.e.,’Imperial,’ applied to those Egyptians and Syrians who, in obedience to Catholic Caesar indeed, adopted the Chalcedonite (Papal I) doctrine (cf. Jugie, Le schisme byzantin 7). As Baynes, N. H. observes,’ Church and State were so intimately connected that membership of the Orthodox Church tended inevitably to bring with it subjection to imperial politics, and conversely alliance with the Empire would bring with it subjection to the Patriarch of Constantinople’ (Byzantium xxv). In the words of another writer ‘Church and state are the great pillars of the Christian imperium, forming two heads of one great organism, over which is crowned one supreme authority as the symbol of unity, the Orthodox Autokrator. In space and time, the empire is in Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy is in empire’ (Medlin, op. cit. 31).Google Scholar

³³ For the history of the Byzantine secession from Rome cf. Jugie, Le schisme byzantin. With this, the tension between monism and Christianity had been resolved into the monistic peace of the Imperial συμφωνία: what had been a tendency of some became a consistent doctrine of all (supra n. 25; Jugie 399-420). But while the tension still subsisted, it entailed inconsistencies not unnatural in a Christian-pagan polarity like the Byzantine. Justinian offers as good an example of this as any. While affirming in official documents the universally supreme doctrinal and disciplinary authority of the Holy See, he did not hesitate to act as though he were the one possessed of that authority (cf. Jugie 74-76; Bréhier,’ Le concile de Constantinople et la fin du règne de Justinien,’ in Fliche, A. and Martin, V., Histoire de l'Église IV [Paris 1948] 481-482; Stein, E., Histoire du Bas-Empire II [Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam 1949] 279). Whereas these official statements are, without militating against the fact of caesaropapism, indeed examples of inconsistency, the fact that the Emperor attempted to obtain’ the signature of the Patriarchs or even of a general council for the recognition of his legislation on points of dogma,’ which Ensslin (Byzantium 275-276) would use in support of his argument against caesaropapism, not only fails to support that argument, but is not even an instance of inconsistency: the caesaropapistic sovereign could not in fact tolerate having his ecclesiastical subordinates refuse to carry out his dogmatic legislation. — The establishment of the monistic peace coincided with the cessation of Imperial adherence to doctrines formally at variance with those of the Catholic Church. Most of those doctrines were Christological, and the support they received from the Emperors was largely due to a desire to reconcile religiously the heterogeneous subjects of the Empire. Then, the advance of Islam reduced the Empire to territories the populations of which were on the whole attached to Catholic Christology. The next Imperial venture in the domain of theology was, accordingly, of a different nature. It was Iconoclasm, which, at the time of the Empire's total effort to withstand the attack of Islam, was intended not only to placate the aniconic Anatolian soldiery, but also, on a deeper level, to anticipate the triumph of societal monism in the Byzantine world (cf. Ladner, G., ‘Origin and Significance of the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy,’ Mediaeval Studies 2 [1940] 127-149, by far the most penetrating treatment of the subject). That triumph, however, was finally achieved somewhat later in the definitive Byzantine separation from Rome, which meant the formation of an Imperial Church — a thing no less incompatible with Catholic faith than all the previous Imperial lapses from it. It made, in fact, all other lapses no longer necessary (cf. Traditio 7.489). — In their preoccupation with the mechanism of the Photian secession and the Cerularian obviation of reunion, many authors have been inclined to treat these events as though they shared in the nature of a deus ex machina and were provoked by one or another of the chief actors. Actually, the roles of these actors, whomever a particular writer would like to bear his blame, were more modest: the fruit of Byzantine separation had grown ripe throughout the first half of Byzantine history, they merely shook the tree.Google Scholar

³⁴ Medlin, op. cit., 30; cf. 24.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid. 29.Google Scholar

³⁶ Ibid. 35. — These are but a few of many statements in Medlin's study which could be cited in support of our view.Google Scholar

³⁷ Ensslin, op. cit. 274.Google Scholar

³⁸ Baynes, in Byzantium xxi-xxii.Google Scholar

³⁹ Nobility, as an official, privileged, and hereditary institution was unknown to the Byzantine polity; the ruling group in that polity consisted of the Sovereign and the Administration (for which cf. Bréhier, Institutions; Ensslin, ‘The Emperor and the Imperial Administration,’ Chap. 10, in Byzantium 268-307). What is often loosely referred to as the Byzantine nobility (or, more appropriately, ‘aristocracy’) was actually a (theoretically) non-hereditary officialdom, decorated with non-hereditary titles, and of varied provenance. But this is not to say that there did not exist groups which tended to monopolize positions of power or that there did not evolve certain inchoate sociological features which might have resulted (though they did not in Byzantium) in the formation of a real nobility. The feudalist tendency sporadically displayed by the higher military and civil officialdom in conjunction with latifundia and by governmental concessions, such as the charistic system, is such a feature (Vasiliev, op. cit. 563 579 Stein, Introduction 129-134). Yet is was ‘une espèce de féodalisme voilé’ in which ‘les grands propriétaires … n'exercent leurs pouvoirs quasi-féodaux qu'en tant que fonctionnaires. C'est seulement dans le sens d'empiétements progressifs faits par des pouvoirs locaux tirant leur origine de conditions de droit privé, sur des prérogatives existantes de l’État qu'il faut comprendre les deux processus de féodalisation que l’Empire byzantin a subis successivement, le premier arrêté et défait par les réformes d’Héraclius, le second détruisant lentement les effets de celles-ci’ (Stein 130-131). These tendencies never passed beyond this embryonic stage; not even in the Palaeologan phase, when they did evolve (as has recently been pointed out once again by Charanis, P. in ‘On the Social Structure and Economic Organization of the Byzantine Empire in the Thirteenth Century and Later,’ Byzantinoslavica 12 [1951] 94-154 and, more briefly, in ‘The Aristocracy of Byzantium in the Thirteenth Century,’ Studies in Roman Economic and Social History in Honor of Allan Chester Johnson [Princeton 1951] 336-356) into an ‘aristocracy’ some features of which were influenced by the West, but which revertheless never became a true nobility. The powers of the Byzantine would-be nobility constituted an encroachment upon or usurpation from the weakening Imperial polity and were never transmuted into the constitutional balance and sharing of sovereignty between the Crown and the officially instituted hereditary nobility, as in Caucasia, Sassanid Iran, or feudal Europe (cf. Bréhier 153-155).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Bréhier, Institutions 282-300. The Byzantine theory ‘that other Christian princes could be, as it were, only the representatives of the Christ-loving Emperor’ (Ensslin, op. cit. 273; cf. Bréhier 4-5, 282-283), coupled with the absence of a feudalist doctrine within the Empire, and with the fact that most of the titles bestowed upon the vassal princes denoted a position in the Imperial administrative system (curopalates, magister, etc.), can only indicate the precarious character of the suzerain-vassal relations of the Empire and its clients. When, in the meso-Byzantine period, Empire and Christendom had long ceased to be conterminous and the former had become merely one of the Christian States (cf. Traditio 7.481), more emphasis was placed on the Emperor's position as the head (father or eldest brother) of the spiritual (pneumatic) family of Christian princes; for this cf. Dölger, ‘Die « Familie der Könige » im Mittelalter’ and ‘Die mittelalterliche « Familie der Fürsten und Völker» und der Bulgarenherrscher,’ Byzanz u. die europ. Staatenwelt 34-69, 159-182. This spiritual kinship did not, however, prevent the Emperors of the Basilid period, for instance, from destroying, Cronus-like, the Armenian kingdoms.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Obviously, the Byzantine autocracy, like any other political absolutism prior to the perfection through modern scientific development of the technique of oppression, was total in theory only. Various factors, religious, legal, traditional, human, technical, combined to impose limitation upon the Byzantine, as upon any other, autocrat. Cf. e.g. Bréhier, Institutions 89-90, 166, 63-65, 173; Ensslin, in Byzantium 268-280; Dvornik, ‘The Circus Parties in Byzantium,’ Byzantina-Metabyzantina 1 (New York 1946) 119–123. — A tendency to overrate some of these factors has been observable of late in current literature. As an instance, the significance of the Imperial coronation has been, under the influence of post-Carolingian West European reminiscences, emphasized to the point of making possible statements such as the following: ‘Constantine XI was never officially crowned and for that reason he was not admitted to the official list of the emperors’ (P. Charanis, ‘Coronation and Its Constitutional Significance in the Later Roman Empire,’ Byzantion 15 [1940–1941] 54). What, one may ask, was the ‘official list of the emperors,’ the admittance to which (and by whom?) made one a real Emperor? All that the reference to this statement can show is that, on the basis of some sources (John Eugenicus, John Doceianus), it seems that Constantine XI was not ‘officially’ crowned, and that the historian Ducas — a private person — refers, for that reason, to Constantine's predecessor as the last Roman Emperor (ibid. 54 n. 34). Ducas, in fact, does this not once, but at least four times (Hist. PG 157.868, 976, 1024, 1061); nevertheless, whenever he mentions Constantine XI after his accession — over a dozen times — he never fails to entitle him Emperor (cf. 1041, 1044, 1045, 1049, 1057, 1061, 1073, 1088, 1092, 1096, 1097, 1100, 1109, 1113). This, it must be admitted, rather weakens the argument from Ducas. For this interesting subject cf. the discussion in Dölger-Schneider, Byzanz 98-100.Google Scholar

⁴² My art. ‘Iberia on the Eve of Bagratid Rule,’ Le Muséon 65 (1952) 23–24; Higgins, M., ‘International Relations at the Close of the Sixth Century,’ The Catholic Historical Review 27 (1941) 279-315.Google Scholar

⁴³ Iberia 25-30; Adonc, N., Armenija v ěpoxu Justiniana (St. Petersburg 1908); Kherumian, R., ‘Esquisse d'une féodalité oubliée,’ Vostan 1 (1948-1949) 7-56; Toumanoff, Traditio 7.217-218.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ The date of the conversion of Armenia has been variously calculated to lie anywhere between 279 and 316 (cf. Kherumian, R., in Vostan 1.279); the conversion of Iberia must have taken place in 337 (cf. my review of Stein's Hist. du Bas-Empire, Traditio 7.485-487). Recently, Fr. Akinean, N. (Akinian) expressed a revolutionary view on the beginnings of the Armenian Church, which included putting the conversion of Armenia by St. Gregory at as high as A.D. 219; ‘Die Reihenfolge der Bischöfe Armeniens des 3. und 4. Jahrhunderts (219-439),’ Anal. Boll. 67 (1949) 74–86. Cf. inra, n. 255.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ This meta-political loyalty was a corollary to the Imperial political theology, for which cf. supra nn. 28, 40.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Grousset, R., Histoire de l'Arménie (Paris 1947) 260–261, 288-289; Toumanoff, Iberia 25.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 163-170; Hübschmann, Die altarmenischen Ortsnamen (Strasbourg 1904) 221–223; Baynes, N., ‘Rome and Armenia in the Fourth Century,’ Engl. Hist. Rev. 25 (1910) 625-643; Stein, Geschichte des spätrömischen Reiches I (Vienna 1928) 317; Christensen, Iran 253-254; Doise, J., ‘Le partage de l'Arménie sous Théodose I^er,’ Revue des études anciennes 47 (1945) 274-277; for the latest discussion of the date cf. my Iberia 24 n. 5; infra n. 80.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Grousset, op. cit. 168-169. The annexed kingdom was placed under a comes Armeniae (Procopius, De aedif. 3.1; cf. Stein, Geschichte I 317; Hist. du Bas-Empire II 289), though the princely States (satrapiae) were at first allowed to remain (Procopius loc. cit.; cf. Adonc, Armenija 91-198). Moses of Xoren's assertion (Hist. Arm. 3.46) that the Emperor also appointed, besides the Comes, one of the princes to preside over the others, seems to be a projection to an anterior epoch of the institution of the Principate (infra n. 51). In 528, the province of Great Armenia, together with those of Pontus Polemoniacus, I and II Armenia, and the princely States, was placed under a magister militum per Armeniam (Stein II 289-290).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Grousset, op. cit. 178-184.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Toumanoff, Iberia 23-41.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Grousset, op. cit. 191, 215-232, 281-295; Toumanoff, Iberia 41-49: the abolition of the monarchy, in Armenia as in Iberia, implied the immediate vassal dependence of the local dynasts upon the Sassanid emperor, who was careful to respect their sovereign rights and whose suzerainty was expressed merely in the presence of a viceroy (marzbᾱn) and in the fealty and military aid required of the princes. From 485 to c. 514 and from 628 to after 631, the Court of Ctesiphon vested the viceregal powers in Armenia in one of the local princes; in 588, this system of the Principate was set up by the Byzantines in Iberia, and in 635 in Roman Armenia.Google Scholar

⁵² Grousset, op. cit. 189-226; Toumanoff, Iberia 41-42.Google Scholar

⁵³ Cf. the complaint of the Armenian princes in Procopius, Bell. pers. 2.3. In 488, Zeno interfered with the hereditary succession in four of the five princely States in Sophene; in 536, Justinian suppressed all these States altogether, creating the province of IV Armenia instead; he also quashed in Roman Armenia the old Armenian law of primogeniture; Adonc, Armenija 91-198; Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 233-234, 241-242; Stein, Hist. du Bas-Emp. II 31, 290, 470-471. For Byzantine abuses in Lazica (Western Georgia), cf. ibid. 271, 303, 492-493, 513-514, 516.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ For the Christian origins of Armenia and Georgia cf. infra nn. 60, 61, 63, 66, 254.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ The subjective notion of universality is pregnant with fragmentation. Every political unit must, if consistent, conceive of itself as a microcosmic universe. In conjunction with caesaropapism, each such unit must regard itself as a Church-embracing polity; in the phyletic phase of caesaropapism (cf. supra n. 27) each nation regards itself as entitled to its own Church. This is the Byzantine heritage.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Thus the title of the work and § 1: G 26-27.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Cf. Traditio 5 (1947) 374–383.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Garitte, Documents pour l’étude du livre d’Agathange 273-274, 349 (cf. 351); Peeters, S. Grégoire l'Illuminateur (n. 15 supra) 91-130, esp. 104-112.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ For instances of ill-applied erudition in connection with the Gregorian cycle see Garitte, Documents 338-353, cf. 211-212 etc.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Peeters, , ‘Les débuts du christianisme en Géorgie d'après les sources hagiographiques,’ Anal. Boll. 50 (1936) 27–53; Tarchnišvili, M., ‘Die Legende der hl. Nino und die Geschichte des georgischen Nationalbewusstseins,’ Byz. Zeitschr. 40 (1940) 48-75; ‘Sources arménogéorgiennes de l'histoire ancienne de l'Église de Géorgie, Le Muséon 60 (1947) 30-37; my review of Stein, Traditio 7.485-487; and Tarchnišvili, ‘Die heilige Nino, Bekehrerin von Georgien,’ Analecta Ordinis Basilii Magni, S. (Rome 1953) 572-581 (wherein are answered Fr. Akinean's rather fanciful theories regarding St. Nino in K'ristonēut'ean mutk'ě Hayastan ew Vrastan [Vienna 1949] = Handes Amsorya 61,62 [1947, 1948]).Google Scholar

⁶¹ Cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.46; 9.8. — Tournebize, F., ‘Arménie,’ DHGE 4 (1930) 294; Histoire politique et religieuse de l’Arménie (Paris [1910]) 48, 415-421; Tamarati, M., L’Église géorgienne des origines jusqu’à nos jours (Rome 1910) 149-152. Fr. Akinean's startling suggestions in Reihenfolge d. Bischöfe Armeniens include, besides the year 219 as the date of the conversion of Armenia (supra n. 44), a re-shuffling of the heads of the Armenian Church in which Meruzanes (Meružan), to whom St. Dionysius wrote, becomes St. Gregory's successor from 250 to 256 (83-84).Google Scholar

⁶² Peeters, Les débuts du christianisme 11-17; Tarchnišvili, Sources arm.-géorg. 29.Google Scholar

⁶³ Tournebize, Arménie 294; Hist. pol. rel. 413-418; Zeiller, J., ‘L'expansion chrétienne de la fin du II^e au début du IV^e siècle,’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l’Église II (Paris 1948) 140–141 (for Armenia); Peeters, Débuts 13-17; ‘La légende de Orentius, S. et de ses six frères martyrs,’ Anal. Boll. 56 (1938) 256 (for Georgia). Adonc, Armenija 345-352: Meruzanes (supra n. 61) is connected here with a pre-Gregorian outpost of Syrian Christianity in Armenia; cf. also infra n. 68.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Tournebize, Arménie 293-294; Hist. pol. rel. 401-413.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Peeters, Débuts 10-11; cf. Tamarati, L’Église géorgienne 120-133.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Tournebize, Arménie 293-294; Hist. pol. rel. 402-413; Carri, A.ère, La légende d'Abgar dans l'histoire d'Arménie de Moïse de Khorène (Paris 1895); Tixeront, J., Les origines de l'Église d'Édesse et la légende d'Abgar (Paris 1888); Weber, S., Die katholische Kirche in Armenien (Freiburg 1903); Zeiller, ‘La propagation du christianisme,’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist, de l'Église I (Paris 1046) 285-287 (for the Armenian claims); Peeters, Débuts 10-12; Džavaxov, I., ‘Propovědničeskaja dějatel'nost’ ap. Andreja i sv. Niny v Gruzii,’ Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosujačšenija 333 (1901) 77-113 (for the Georgian claims).Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Cf., e.g., Ter, A.-Mikelian, Die armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zur byzantinischen (Leipzig 1892); Ormanian, M., L'Église arménienne (Paris 1910); Engl. tr. The Church of Armenia (London 1912): ‘The apostolic origin of the Armenian Church is hence established as an incontrovertible fact in ecclesiastical history’ (5), and ‘The apostolic character of the Armenian Church … bears testimony … to an origin … which is direct and autocephalic, without the intervening agency of another Church’ (4-5). This non sequitur of ‘autocephaly’ (an anachronism, if taken to mean an independent national Church) based on Apostolic preaching is astounding: on this principle, for instance, every town where St. Paul preached should have claimed ‘autocephaly.’ Equally curious is the contention that Armenia, like Persia and Ethiopia, had an independent Church, because it was outside the Empire (15-16). It is well known that the Church of Iran depended on Antioch and that of Ethiopia on Alexandria. The medieval forgery purporting to be Pope St. Sylvester I's grant of patriarchal rights (= ‘autocephaly’) to St. Gregory of Armenia was ‘fabricated by the Armenians at the time of the Crusades’ (Ormanian 15; the learned author contradicts himself when, on the preceding page, this claim is introduced as ‘according to the Latins’). Cf. Tournebize, Arménie 295, for this and similar claims.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Armenian Agathangelus (ed. G. Tēr-Mkrtč‘ean and Kanayeanc, S.’, Agat'angeḷay patmut'iwn Hayoc’ [Tiflis 1909]) §791-808; Greek Agathangelus (ed. P. de Lagarde, ‘Agathangelus und die Akten Gregors von Armenien,’ Abhandlungen der kgl. Gesellsch. der Wiss. zu Gottingen 35 [1888]) § 134-139; Greek Life of St. Gregory (ed. Garitte, Documents) § 116-153; Arabic Life of St. Gregory (ed. Marr, N., ‘Kresčenie Armjan, Gruzin, Abxazov i Alanov svjatym Grigoriem,’ Zapiski Vost. Otd. Imp. Russk. Arxeologičesk. Obščestua 16 [1905]) 120-130 (= Garitte's Latin transl. Documents 80-95, § 104-141). — The peculiarly Armenian (and, indeed, Caucasian) tendency to feudalize and ‘dynasticize’ the Church organization is dealt with in chap. 12 of Adonc, Armenija (322-369). It manifested itself in the approximation of that organization to the feudal-dynastic structure of the country. Thus, from the point of view of geography, each of the larger princely States constituted a bishopric (‘Bishop of Siunia,’ ‘of the Mamikonids,’ ‘of Bagrewand,’ etc.), while the royal demesne of Ayrarat was under the jurisdiction of the chief Bishop (‘Bishop of Armenia’); and, from the point of view of precedence, the bishops ranked with the princes (the same equivalence obtained, say, in medieval Germany; e.g., Thompson, J. W., Feudal Germany [Chicago 1928] 4 n. 1 citing Hauck, Kirchengesch. III 28), while the chief Bishop was a counterpart of the King; Adonc esp. 366-368. The approximation in question was even further enhanced by the existence of episcopal ‘dynasties’ like the Gregorids, who practically made the office of chief Bishop hereditary (infra at n. 85), and their rivals, the Albianids, representing (according to Adonc 345-352) respectively the influences of Cappadocian and of Syrian Christianity in Armenia. The earliest residence of the chief Bishops of Armenia was Aštišat, in Tarōn (and not in Ayrarat), formerly that of the dynasty of the pagan high priests; but subsequently the heads of the Armenian Church resided in the political capitals of the realm; Adonc 309-310; Tournebize, Arménie 295, cf. 371 (List); ‘Achetichat (Aschdichade),’ DHGE 1 (1912) 310; Petit, L., ‘Arménie,’ DThC 1.2 (1931) 1893.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Faustus, Hist. Arm. 3.12; 3.16; 3.17; 4.4. — It is entirely beyond the scope of this paper to go into the question of Faustus’ original language, Greek or Syriac; cf., e.g., Akinean, Reihenfolge d. Bisch. Armen. 74-75; Stein, Hist. du Bas-Empire II, Excursus U 835-836.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Faustus 5.24.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid. 5.29 (ed. Venice 1933; 230-231); cf. G 419-420; also the following note.Google Scholar

⁷² Cf. infra, Additional Note B.Google Scholar

⁷³ Cf. G 99-102, 151.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ G 48-50. This title seems to belong definitely to the pen of the redactor of the Narratio, rather than to that of any of its copyists.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Cf. G 53-57. Notwithstanding the trustworthiness of the Narratio, its chronological indications are almost always inexact; G 107-108, 189 etc. — For Ṛstakēs, cf. Garitte, Documents 226-227 (and bibl.); for the title of Bishop of Armenia, cf. infra § 21, supra n. 68.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Cf. G 55-63. The episcopal list ends with St. Nersēs I († c. 373); it omits the non-Gregorids, Daniel and Šahak, but mentions the non-Gregorid P‘arēn or P'arnerseh. It moreover includes St. Gregory's grandson of the same name, missionary to the Iberians (cf. infra n. 309) and the Albanians; this inclusion is customary with the katholikal lists; G 58, 416. — The first chief bishops of Armenia were: St. Gregory, St. Rstakēs, St. Vrt'anēs, St. Yusik I, Daniel (locum tenens), P‘arnerseh, Šahak I, St. Nersēs I (Faustus 3.3, 5, 12, 14, 16, 17; 4.3-7 etc.). The Greek List of the Katholikoi omits Daniel and Šahak (G 402; cf. G 415-418 and bibl. G 61-62: St. Nersēs is made to succeed P'arnerseh). Yet Šahak must be regarded as identical with Ἰσαϰόϰις Ἀϱμενίας μεγάλης, who, together with other Eastern bishops, signed in 363 a letter to the Emperor Jovian (Socrates, Hist. eccl. 3.25). It will be recalled that Faustus (4.4) ascribes the consecration of St. Nersēs to Eusebius of Caesarea (362-370). It is curious that Tournebize, Hist. pol. rel. 464 n. 1, ho d disagree with Gelzer on this point. It may be suspected that this is due not so much to the (to him) difficult task of telescoping St. Nersēs’ activity into a briefer period of time, as to the fact that Isacocis is not called Katholikos, for which title cf. infra § 21. For Akinean's view cf. Reihenfolge d. Bisch. Arm. 85. — St. Basil's Ep. 92 mentions Iosaces (= Isacocis?) and Narses.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Cf. G 64-73. For the Partition cf. supra at n. 47.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Cf. G 65-70, esp. 67-68.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Cf. G 65-70, esp. 65-67.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Cf. G 65-70, esp. 67-69. — Paragraph 12 of the Narratio states that the Great King Šāhpuhr III deposed Xosrov III, the first King of Persarmenia (cf. supra at n. 47), μετὰ χϱόνους τέσσαϱας. Garitte, M. (G 72) considers that this justifies the acceptance of the year 384, instead of 387, as the date of the Partition of Armenia, because the dates of Šāhpuhr III are 383-388, and the fourth year after 387 would be 390/391. But, as I have had occasion to remark in agreement with Baynes, the sequence of events in Faustus (5.37-44; 6.1) shows that the Partition could not have taken place before the death of Manuel, Prince of the Mamikonids, which, in turn, could not have occurred earlier than 385/386 (cf. my Iberia 24 n. 5). It was after Manuel's death that, according to Faustus (6.1), the princes asked the Great King for another Arsacid to replace Aršak III on the Armenian throne. The Great King thereupon appointed Xosrov III, married him to Zeruanduxt, of the House of Zik, and dispatched him to Armenia at the head of an army. Before this, Aršak fled to the protection of the Emperor. While the Roman forces arrived at Ekeleac’ in western Armenia, the Iranian troops occupied the bulk of the Kingdom. It was then that the two empires began diplomatic negotiations which led to the ‘Peace of Ekeleacʻ’ establishing two kingdoms, and two spheres of influence, in Armenia. This took place in 387. But it seems probable that the Narratio computes the regnal years of Xosrov III, not from the moment of the conclusion of the diplomatic negotiations between the two great Powers in 387, but rather from the moment of his appointment by the Great King, following Manuel's death in 385/386. Lazarus of P‘arpi (c. 504), in his Hist. Arm. 9 (ed. Tiflis 1907; 25), says that Xosrov was dethroned ‘after a few years’; other Armenian historians assign to Xosrov three years of reign, except Moses of Xoren, who states (3.50) that he reigned for five years (G 72-73). Very possibly ‘after four years’ means ‘in the fourth year,’ which would agree with the data of other historians (except, of course, Moses). Now, 385/6 + 3 = 388/9, which would make it possible for Xosrov to be dethroned by Šāhpuhr III. The Narratio’s customary chronological inexactitude must also be borne in mind (cf. supra n. 75).Google Scholar

⁸¹ Cf. G 73-76.Google Scholar

⁸² Cf. supra at nn. 49, 51.Google Scholar

⁸³ Cf. G 76-86.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Cf G 86-103.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Cf. Grousset, Hist. de l’Arm. 132-187; the Greek List, G 403 (cf. G 421, 423-424); supra n. 72. St. Isaac was the last male Gregorid; his daughter and heiress married into the princely house of the Mamikonids and was the mother of St. Vardan II (infra at n. 90). — It was while St. Isaac was chief bishop of Armenia that St. Mesrōp-Maštoc’ invented the Armenian alphabet, sometime between 392 and 405, and opened the way for an efflorescence of Armenian literature; Grousset, 171-178; Peeters, , ‘Pour l'histoire des origines de l'alphabet arménien,’ Revue des études arméniennes 9 (1929) 1.203-237. — The Narratio does not mention the chief bishops of Armenia between St. Nersēs I and his son St. Isaac 1, the first of whom was Yusik II (= Faustus? cf. supra n. 72), installed by King Pap in spite of the censures of Caesarea. According to the historian Faustus, these, thus, were: Yusik II, Zawēn, Šahak II, Aspurak (5.29; 6.2, 3, 4, 15). The Greek List mentions them as ‘kathonkoi in name only’ and omits Šahak II (G 402-403; cf. G 418-419 and bibl.) For the other lists cf. G 87-88. — The historian Faustus shares the Narratio’s — tacit — disapproval of these bishops when he relates the distress and disorder that followed in the Armenian Church the murder of St. Nersēs (5.30-31; 6.2-4).Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Grousset, op. cit. 184.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ The chief bishops of Armenia after St. Isaac I were: Surmak, Brkišoy, Šmuēl (Lazarus, Hist. 15), and again Surmak; cf. G 94-96; Grousset, op. cit. 184-189. They are mentioned as intruders in the Greek List of the Katholikoi (G 403; cf. G 422-424 and bibl.)·Google Scholar

⁸⁸ G 99-103, 153-154, cf. 151-152; Arsenius 319; List G 403-404.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Although the Armenian Church was headed by bishops appointed by Ctesiphon (cf. supra n. 87), St. Isaac appears to have continued to exercise in it a certain unofficial, one may say legitimist, guidance, until his death (437/439; cf. G 92-94); Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 184-187; Tournebize, Arménie 300-301: it was under that guidance that the Armenian bishops addressed themselves to Constantinople in connection with Nestorian propaganda (doubtless welcome to the Iranian appointees); cf. supra n. 72; infra nn. 101-102. — It seems that Joseph, though only a priest, succeeded Isaac (or Mesrōp-Maštoc‘) in that unofficial-legitimist capacity, while Surmak held (for the second time) the official Iranian appointment. Joseph's position became official upon Surmak's death, and he was martyred during the persecution of Yazdgard II; G 94-96 (and bibl.); Grousset 188-212. It was after St. Isaac's death, in 444, that the Armenian council of Šahapivan was held; § 28. G 30, cf. G 88-91 (and bibl.). — The Greek List mentions Mesrōp-Maštoc’, but omits Joseph, after Isaac I (G 404; cf. G 424 and bibl.).Google Scholar

⁹⁰ For Yazdgard II's religious policy and Vardan's II's revolt cf. Grousset, op. cit. 189-213; Christensen, Iran 283-288; Weber, Die katholische Kirche in Armenien (n. 66 supra) 430-447. Our sources for this are Lazarus of P‘arpi and Eliseus, Hist. (VI-VIIth c.). According to Akinean, N., Elišē vardapet I (Vienna 1932) 48–52, the narrative of Eliseus is the projection of a later insurrection, that of 572, to anterior epochs.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Cf., e.g., Ormanian, The Church of Armenia 101; Inglisian, V., ‘Chalkedon und die armenische Kirche,’ in Grillmeier, A. and Bacht, H., Das Konzil von Chalkedon II (Würzburg 1953) 361–417. The latter is a most important work, though it rather suffers from its lack of acquaintance with Garitte's edition of the Narratio and commentaries (cf. 370 n. 38; infra n. 107).Google Scholar

⁹² Cf. G 103-108.Google Scholar

⁹³ G 102.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ Cf. G 108-130,Google Scholar

⁹⁵ G 108,Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Cf. Grillmeier and Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon I (Würzburg 1951), especially: Grillmeier, A., ‘Die theologische und sprachliche Vorbereitung der christologischen Formel von Chalkedon,’ 5-202; Th. Camelot, ‘De Nestorius à Eutychès: l'opposition de deux christologies,’ 213-242; Goemans, M., ‘Chalkedon als « Allgemeines Konzil »,’ 251-289; Rahner, H.,’ Leo der Grosse, der Papst des Konzils,’ 323-339; Galtier, P., ‘Saint Cyrille d'Alexandrie et saint Léon le Grand à Chalcédoine,’ 345-387; Ortiz, I. de Urbina, ‘Das Glaubenssymbol von Chalkedon — sein Text, sein Werden, seine dogmatische Bedeutung,’ 389-418; Lebon, J.,’ La christologie du monophysisme syrien,’ 425-580; Mouterde, P., ‘Le concile de Chalcédoine d'après les historiens monophysites de langue syriaque,’ 581-602; W. de Vries,’ Die syrisch-nestorianische Haltung zu Chalkedon,’ 603-635; Ch. Moeller, ‘Le chalcédonisme et le néo-chalcédonisme en Orient de 451 à la fin du VI^e siècle,’ 637-720; II, especially: Bacht, H.,’Die Rolle des orientalischen Mönchtums in den kirchenpolitischen Auseinandersetzungen um Chalkedon (431-519),’ 193-314. Also, Bardy, G., ‘Les débuts du nestorianisme (428-433),’ ‘De l'acte d'Union à la mort de Proclus (433-446),’ ‘Le «Brigandage d'Éphèse» et le concile de Chalcédoine,’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église IV 163-196, 197-210, 211-240; Devreesse, R., Le patriarcat d’Antioche (Paris, 1945) 39-44, 48-76; Amann, E., ‘Nestorius,’ DThC 11 (1931) 76-157; Jugie, ‘Monophysisme,’ DThC 10.2 (1929) 2216-2251.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Cf. Labourt, J., Le christianisme dans l'empire perse sous la dynastie sassanide (224-632) (Paris 1904); Vine, A. R., The Nestorian Churches (London 1937): Bardy,’ Les Églises de Perse et d'Arménie au v^e siècle,’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église IV 321-336 (the section on the Church of Armenia, pp. 330-336, stands in need of revision, especially from the point of view of chronology); Tisserant, E., ‘L'Église nestorienne,’ DThC 11.157-323; Christensen, Iran 258-315. — There was no Nestorian current of any importance in the Roman Empire after Chalcedon; and the term ‘Nestorian’ was liberally and indiscriminately applied by the Monophysites not only to the real Nestorians, but also to the Catholics, Chalcedonite and neo-Chalcedonite alike; Ch. Moeller, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon I 651-658; cf. infra nn. 139, 328.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire II 34, 164-165, 174-176, 632; D'jakonov, Vizantijskie dimy 200-203 (supra n. 27).Google Scholar

⁹⁹ Bardy, ‘Les luttes christologiques après le concile de Chalcédoine,’ ‘Sous le régime de l'Hénotique: La politique religieuse d'Anastase,’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église IV 271-297, 299-320; Br, L.éhier, ‘Justin et le rétablissement de l'orthodoxie en Orient,’ ibid. 423-434; Stein, op. cit. 20-27, 31-39, 80, 157-176, 182-184, 189, 192, 223-228; Vasiliev, A., Justin the First (Cambridge, Mass. 1950) 132–253, cf. 418-426 (review in The Cath. Hist. Rev. 36 [1951] 453-455). For the Typos of Anastasius (not mentioned in Charanis, Church and State in the Later Roman Empire. The Religious Policy of Anastasius I [Madison 1939]) cf. Ch. Moeller, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon I 645 n. 25, 671; Lebon, in Revue d’Histoire ecclésiastique 25 (1929) 7. —Between Zeno and Justin, there were schisms within the Acacian schism (so called after Acacius, the Patriarch of the Henotikon), with Constantinople out of communion with Alexandria and the other eastern patriarchates, recognizing Chalcedon, yet not admitted to the Catholic communion for refusing to condemn Acacius. In 519, however, the Patriarch John was obliged to condemn Acacius and four other predecessors, as well as the Emperors Zeno and Anastasius Much, I. of the resistance in the Empire to the reunion of 519 was due to various bishops’ unwillingness to condemn their predecessors.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Bardy, in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Eglise IV 203-204, 333-334; Tournebize, Arménie 300-301. — The flowering of Armenian letters following the invention of the alphabet by St. Mesrōp (cf. supra n. 85) was first expressed in translations of the Bible and of various Greek and Syriac works. Among these were the works of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, representatives of the Antiochene school and inspirers of Nestorius.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Bardy, ibid. 204-205, 334; Tournebize, Arménie 301; cf. supra nn. 72, 89.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 234-235.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Grousset, op. cit. 198-199; Tournebize, Hist. pol. rel. 86-90; Arménie 302-303; Inglisian, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon II 380: Leo's Tome was at first known to the Armenians only in quotations contained in a work of Timothy Aelurus.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Grousset, op. cit. 224, 226.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ For this insurrection cf. Grousset, op. cit. 215-232; for its date, infra n. 237. For the Iberian side of the events cf. infra § 32-36; for Albania, Moses of Kalankatuk ‘(Xth c.) Hist. Alb. 1.10, 17; Eliseus 8.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Tournebize, Arménie 302-303; for the war, Stein, Hist. du Bas-Empire II 92-101.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ The date of the Council is determined by the Synodal Letter of the Bishop of Armenia, Babgēn (Book of Letters [= BL] 41-47), dated in the 18th year of the Great King Kavaδ I. (It is regrettable that in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l’Église IV 336, the formerly accepted erroneous date 491 should have been retained; cf. Ter, E.-Minassiantz, Die armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zu den syrischen Kirchen bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts [Leipzig 1904J 30-39; Tournebize, Hist. pol. rel. 320 n. 1). It is difficult to agree with Fr. Inglisian's thesis (Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon II 161-170) that the first Council of Dvin neither adhered to the Henotikon nor condemned Chalcedon. This thesis seems to be somewhat out of the historical context. Though, indeed, the Synodal Letter of Babgen makes no mention of either that Council or that formulary of faith, it does proclaim Armenia's doctrinal unity with the Empire, Iberia, and Albania. Now, the Empire was at that time (before the proclamation of Anastasius's even more anti-Chalcedonite Typos in 510; cf. supra n. 99) still under the regime of the Henotikon. How this document was generally understood in the East, is well known: in this context, Babgēn's second letter, which indeed condemns Chalcedon expressis verbis and commends Zeno's formulary (BL 48-51; cf. G 152-153), does not necessarily require the theory of the intervening influence of the Syrian Simon of Beth-Aršam to explain it. One may of course contend — and Fr. Inglisian seems to do this with an argument from silence — that the Armenians were not aware of the religious situation in the Empire. But they, at all events, cannot possibly have been ignorant of that situation in neighboring Iberia. And it was precisely that country that had, from as early as c. 485, adhered to the Henotikon, in its Monophysite interpretation (infra § 34-36). Nor, it should be added, would the Katholikos Abraham of Persarmenia, at the beginning of the following century, have dared to appeal, in his dispute with the Katholikos Kyrion of Iberia, to the Iberian participation in the condemnation of Chalcedon at Dvin, had this not been true (cf. infra § 39 and n. 308).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Cf. supra § 6-7.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Supra n. 27. This aspect was stressed in Armenia much earlier than in the Empire.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ For the bureaucratic importunities of Justinian and Maurice cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 237-242, 255-261; for the rapprochement between the Armenian princes and Ctesiphon, ibid. 261-265; also supra § 5, 8-9.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ ‘There is something that has appeared quite incredible to us: why the subjects of the King of Kings should be in amicable unanimity with a foreign Power and should separate from the local correligionists…’: Abraham, Katholikos of Armenia, to Kyrion I, Katholikos of Iberia, BL 165; ‘All of us under the authority of the King of Kings have become men of one faith’: Smbat IV, Prince of the Bagratids and Viceroy of Hyrcania, to Kyrion, Katholikos of Iberia, ibid. 169. (For the subject of this correspondence, Kyrion's return to Catholicism, cf. infra § 37-40.) This was a corollary of the Iranian insistence on partial religious conformity; cf. supra § 5.Google Scholar

¹¹² Because of this omission, the author of the Narratio implies (§ 65-67), and other documents representing the same tradition — the ‘Letter of Photius’ and the Greek List of the Katholikoi — state expressly, but quite erroneously all of them, that the doctrine of Chalcedon had been accepted in Armenia until the second Council of Dvin (555), which condemned it (infra § 20). On the other hand, the Katholikos Arsenius seems to imply that the Armenians ‘s'étaient détournés dans l'hérésie’ (Arsenius 324 = G 131; transl. G 132 [of course, cvaleba may mean also ‘schism,’ but it is used in the sense of ‘heresy’ a few lines earlier: nestorisa cvalebay]) in connection with the deposition of St. Isaac. Cf. G 151-153.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Cf. G 108-115. Our text implies (§ 42. G 31), in conformity with Cyril of Scythopolis and Evagrius, that Anastasius I was induced by others to embark upon his anti-Catholic policy; and the story of his persecution (§ 40-46. G 31-32) contains data not found elsewhere. For that policy cf. Lebon, J., Le monophysisme sévérien (Louvain 1909) 39–66; Bréhier, ‘Anastase,’ DHGE 2 (1914) 1447-1457; Charanis, Church and State in the Later Roman Empire; Bardy, in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église IV 303-320; Stein, Hist. du Bas-Empire II 156-176; Moeller, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon I 671.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Cf. G 115-116; 117-126. For Aelurus cf. Lebon, Monophysisme 93-111; Baumstark, A., Geschichte der syrischen Literatur (Bonn 1922) 162; Opitz, H., ‘Timotheos (24: Ailuros)’ RE 6 (1937) 1355-1357; Lebon, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon I.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Cf. Maspero, J., Histoire des patriarches d’Alexandrie (Paris 1923) 88–96; Draguet, R., Julien d’Halicarnasse et sa controverse avec Sévère d’Antioche sur l'incorruptibilité du corps du Christ (Louvain 1924); Jugie, M., ‘Julien d’Halicarnasse et Sévère d’Antioche,’ Échos d’Orient 24 (1925) 129-162, 257-285; Stein, Hist. du Bas-Empire II 233-235; Bréhier, in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église IV 433-434; also Lebon, Monophysisme and in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon 1; Stein 157-161; Bréhier 424-425. — The rupture between Julian and Severus is alluded to in a very confused way by the Narratio (§ 48. G 32-33); G 117-118.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ G 120-123. The refutation of the ‘Julianist’ thesis is found in § 50-56 (G 31-34), cf. G 123-126. It contains (together with § 83. G 37) the earliest known use among the Armenian authors of the term ‘Julianists’ (Ἰovλɩαvῖταɩ; G 125) and the earliest Greek use of the term ‘Jacobites’ (Ἰαϰωβῖταɩ; G 126).Google Scholar

¹¹⁷ Cf. G 126-130. This story may possibly have originated from the veneration of Julian's hand, surviving, according to our author, to his day (§ 59. G 34); G 129-130.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Arsenius 323-324 = G126-127. In the translation of this text (G 127), in the phrase ‘les (disciples) de Sabellius (sabelios),’ the last word should be ‘(sabelianos),’ the Georgian text having sabelianosni. Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ Cf. G 130-175.Google Scholar

¹²⁰ The condemnation of Chalcedon in Babgēn's letter (supra n. 107) and the use of the Monophysite Trisagion in Armenia as early as the beginning of the sixth century (infra at n. 140), are indications of the trend, for which cf. supra § 18.Google Scholar

¹²¹ Cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 239-242; Stein, Hist. du Bas-Empire II 364, 513; supra at n. 53.Google Scholar

¹²² Stein, op. cit. 499-500.Google Scholar

¹²³ Ibid. 513. — The Fifty Years’ Peace which ended the Second Persian War in 561 restored the status quo in Caucasia with Persarmenia in Iranian, and Lazica in Roman hands; cf. ibid. 516-521.Google Scholar

¹²⁴ The Narratio quotes (§ 67) the Armenians as saying (despite their secession) that they held their succession from St. Gregory and were his disciples.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ The dates of Nersēs II of Aštarakk’ are c. 548 - c. 557; G 154-155. His predecessors in the headship of the Armenian Church after Joseph I († 451; cf. supra n. 89), were: Melitē, Moses I, Giwt, John I Mandakuni, Babgēn (of the first Council of Dvin), Samuel, Mušel, Isaac II, Christopher I, and Leontius; Lazarus 62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 71, 78, 97, 99, 100; the Greek List (omitting Melitē and Moses I) G 404-405 (cf. G 425-429 and bibl.); also Grousset, Hist. de l’Arm. 212, 214, 217-230, 235-236. The Greek List places the order of the Great King to the Armenians to consecrate their own bishops (despite Caesarea's interdiction) under Giwt; G 404, cf. G 154, 426.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Cf. G 165.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Cf. G 163-167. An Armenian translation apparently made at this time of a work of Timothy Aelurus ‘Against Those Who Assert the Two Natures’ has been published by Ter, K.-Mekertschian and Ter, E.-Minassiantz, Timotheus Älurus’ des Patriarchen von Alexandrien Widerlegung der auf der Synode zu Chalcedon festgesetzten Lehre (Leipzig 1908; also under an Armenian title, at Ejmiacin 1908). As for Philoxenus, though no Armenian translation of any of his works has been found, he is referred to in an anti-Chalcedonite treatise preserved in the Book of Letters (413-482) and cited in the Seal of the Faith (Knik'hawatoy) composed c. 612/628 (Garitte, Documents 350; ed. Tēr-Mkrtc‘ean, Ejmiacin 1914, 253, 260). — For Timothy Aelurus cf. supra n. 114; for Philoxenus cf. Baumstark, Gesch. syr. Lit. 141-144; Tisserant, E., ‘Philoxène de Mabboug,’ DThC 12.2 (1935) 1509-1532; Honigmann, E., Évêques et évêchés monophysites d’Asie antérieure au VI ^e siècle (CSCO 127, Subsidia 2; Louvain 1951) 4-5, 66-67; Lebon, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon I.Google Scholar

¹²⁸ The reference to Constantinople and Jerusalem seems to imply that, in the Imperial Church, these two patriarchates were free of Monophysitism; cf. G 170-172: Jerusalem was, also, undesirable as a Catholic center of pilgrimages.Google Scholar

¹²⁹ G 136. Pages 136-142 contain passages relative to the second Council of Dvin from various Armenian historical works.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ G 142; the few who have made use of the Book of Letters include Ter-Minassiantz, Kirche 40-54; Adonc, Armenija 339-340; Tournebize, Hist. pol. rel. 327 n. 1 (= 327-330); idem, Arménie 303; Inglisian, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon II; also J̌avaxisvili and Akinean, cf. infra n. 284.Google Scholar

¹³¹ Arsenius 324-325 = G 130-132.Google Scholar

¹³² P. 181 = G 133-134. Vardan's résumé in Muyldermans, Domination arabe 67 = G 135.Google Scholar

¹³³ G 404-405 = 135-136.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ Cf. the summary in G 137; cf. Ter-Minassiantz, Kirche 40-56.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Letter of the ‘orthodox Syrians’ to Nersēs II, Meršapuh of Tarōn and the other bishops and princes, BL 52-54. The message quoted in the Narratio (§ 63-64) is substantially identical with that contained in this letter; 143-144, G 150-151.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Analyzing the doctrine expounded in the above letter (BL 52-54), in the Reply of Nersēs II and Meršapuh of Taron to the Syrians (BL 55-58), in the Letter of ‘Abdišō'to Nersēs II (BL 59-61), and in another Latter of the same to Nersēs II and the other bishops (BL 62-65), Ter-Minassiantz (without referring to the Narratio) proved it to be purely Julianist, Kirche 43-46; cf. G 142-144. The anathematisms of ‘Abdišō‘, contained in his two professions of faith (BL 66-67, 68-69) are inspired by, or identical with, those of Julian of Halicarnassus; G 162-163 and n. 1. The letter of John of Jerusalem (575-593) to Abbas of Albania (ed. K. Tēr-Mkrtč‘ean in Ararat 29-30 [1896] 252-256) 254a, states that the Armenians left the Church through their condemnation of Chalcedon and that they fell into the heresy of Julian of Halicarnassus. Finally, some documents in the Plerophoria of John of Antioch show that the Julianists again (c. 580) addressed the Armenians for episcopal consecrations; G 144.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ Reply of Nersēs II and Meršapuh of Tarōn to the Syrians, BL 55-58.Google Scholar

¹³⁸ The Synodal Letter of Nersēs II (BL 72) has Palm Sunday, 24th year of Chosroes (= 13 Sept. 554 to 12 Sept. 555) in which year Palm Sunday fell on 21 March 555; G 156-157. The Narratio offers five synchronisms, of which only one is exact: the 24th year of Chosroes (§ 69); another one: ‘at the beginning of the Armenian Era,’ is relatively so; G 156-161. Bardy, ‘Les Églises de Perse et d'Arménie au VI^e siècle,’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l’Église IV 511, dates the first Council of Dvin in 491, instead of 505/506, and splits the second into two, one in 524/527 and the other on 14 Dec. 552.Google Scholar

¹³⁹ The Synodal Letter of Nersēs II does not expressly condemn Chalcedon, but only the Nestorians (BL 72-77), but for him the terms ‘Nestorian’ and ‘Chalcedonite’ are equivalent, as is clear from the Letter of the ‘orthodox Syrians’ (BL 52-54) and the Reply of Nersēs II (BL 55-58); G 137, 161-162; cf. supra n. 97. The Narratio, moreover, states that Chalcedon was condemned ‘as Nestorian’ (§ 70). But in the following pieces of correspondence between the Syrians and the Armenians preserved in the BL, Chalcedon is condemned expressly: (1) Letter of the ‘orthodox Syrians’ (BL 53 = G 150-151); (2) Reply of Nersēs II (BL 56); (3) II Letter of ‘Abdišō’ (BL 62 = G 162-163); (4) Letter of John II, Nersēs II's successor, to the Bishop and the Prince of Siunia, affirming that Chalcedon had been condemned (BL 79 = G 162); (5) I Profession of faith of ‘Abdišō’ (BL 67 = G 163); (6) II Profession of faith of the same (BL 68 = G 163). To this may be added: (7) same document: condemnation of the doctrine of Two Natures (BL 68 = G 167).Google Scholar

¹⁴⁰ The Monophysite addition to the Trisagion (before the ‘miserere nobis’) of ‘qui crucifixus es pro nobis’ (ὁ σταυϱωθεὶς δɩ’ ἡμᾶς, Arm. or xač'ec'ar vasn mer) was proposed in the Letter of the ‘orthodox Syrians’ to the Armenians (BL 53 = G 167); this Syrian profession of faith, together with the Monophysite Trisagion, was repeated and further elaborated by Nersēs II in his Reply (BL 55-56; cf. G 168). The Monophysite Trisagion is also repeated in the II Profession of faith of ‘Abdišō’ (BL 69). The acceptance of this formula at the second Council of Dvin is attested to by some Armenian historical works (G 138, 140, 141, 168-169). Cyril of Scythopolis testifies to its acceptance among the Armenians already at the beginning of the sixth century; Life of St. Sabas 32 (ed. Schwartz, E. [Leipzig 1939] 117-118 = G 169). Dvin made its use official; G 167-170. For the Armenian Trisagion cf. Hanssens, J., Institutiones liturgicae de ritibus orientalibus III (Rome 1932) 2.128-140.Google Scholar

¹⁴¹ ‘Abdišō’ is called Abdisoy in the BL and Ἀπτισώ in the Narratio. He came from the monastery of Sareba (BL 54 = G 147-148); Σαϱεπά in Sasun (Narratio § 62). Although the Narratio implies that he was made bishop at the same time with three other Syrian Monophysites, at the time of the council (§ 76), the documents of the BL show that he received his consecration before it; G 172-173. For his role cf. G 147-150, 162-163. The Bishop of Tarōn is called Meršapuh (Mihršapuh?) in the BL and Neršapuh (Νεϱσαπώ) in the Narratio; according to the latter work (§ 61) he became bishop in 506/507. For his role cf. G 144-147. His importance was partly due to his See: Tarōn, the chief princedom of the Mamikonids, hereditary High Constables of Armenia (cf., e.g., Garitte, Documents 236). In the BL (Letter of the ‘orthodox Syrians,’ Reply of Nersēs II) he is called ‘Bishop of Tarōn and of the Mamikonids’ and ‘Bishop of the Mamikonids.’ Supra n. 68.Google Scholar

¹⁴² The Narratio states that the council was held at the beginning of the Armenian Era (§ 69). This Era begins on 11 July 552 or 553 (E. Dulaurier, Recherches sur la chronologie arménienne [Paris 1859] 51-55, 101-108, 173-178); G 159-161: ἐv ἀϱχῇ τοῦ ἀϱιθμoῦ τῶν Ἀϱμενίων must be taken in a very general sense.Google Scholar

¹⁴³ G 56-57, 155. The only other heads of the Armenian Church since 427/428 to be mentioned in the Narratio are Surmak (§ 33) and Joseph (§ 29-30). — For Šahak I cf. supra n. 76.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁴ For instance, Faustus refers to the chief bishops of Armenia as ‘Bishops’ in 4.3, title (cf. G 56-57), as ‘Patriarchs’ in 3.12, as ‘Katholikoi’ in 3.10; to the Metropolitans of Caesarea as ‘Bishops’ in 4.7, as ‘Patriarchs’ in 5.29, as ‘Katholikoi’ in 4.4. The Armenian Agathangelus calls St. Gregory ‘Katholikos’, e.g., in § 884 and the Greek Agathangelus, the same in § 168. The same title is applied to St. Leontius of Caesarea, e.g., in the Arm. Agathangelus, § 804, and in the Greek Agathangelus, § 139. The Greek Life of St. Gregory calls both Gregory and Leontius ‘Patriarchs’ in, e.g., § 193, 195. All these Gregorian documents refer throughout to St. Gregory also as ‘Bishop’ and ‘Archbishop.’Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Cf., e.g., Leclercq, H., ‘Patriarcat,’ DACL 13.2 (1938) 2455–2487; Devreesse, Antioche 119-123.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ Cf. Bardy, in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l’Église IV 321-330; Higgins, M. J., ‘Chronology of the Fourth-Century Metropolitans of Seleucia-Ctesiphon,’ Traditio 9 (1953) 45–99; and supra at nn. 86, 97.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ Adonc, Armenija 367-368. Cf. Leclercq, H., ‘Katholikos,’ DACL 8 (1928) 686–689; Vailh, S.é, ‘Antioche (1. Patriarcat grec),’ DThC 1.2 (1931) 1405, 1411; Akinean (ed.), Koriun: Biographie des hl. Maštoc (Texte und Untersuchungen der altarmenischen Literatur I 1; Vienna 1952) note 13 pp. 75-79. — An abortive ecclesiastical independency of an earlier period was, of course, that of the Donatists; cf., e.g., Frend, W. H. C., The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford 1952).Google Scholar

¹⁴⁸ The Katholikate of Abasgia was a late medieval institution patterned on that of Iberia; cf. Tamarati, L’Église géorgienne 396-398. As for Albania, its Primates began to entitle themselves Katholikoi in the sixth century; Manandian, A., Beiträge zur albanischen Geschichte (Leipzig 1897) 29; Tournebize, Hist. pol. rel. 356 n. 2 (= 356-360); G 207. Abas of Albania is so entitled in the letter of John II of Armenia (c. 557-574; BL 81-84) and in that (c. 574/577) of John of Jerusalem (supra n. 136; cf. G 207). Faustus indeed calls St. Gregory's grandson of the same name both Bishop and Katholikos of Albania and Iberia (3.5, 6), but, in this context, the latter title is manifestly used in its original sense of vicar, in this case of the Primate of Armenia. — For the Katholikate of Iberia cf. infra § 33-35.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁹ This may be an indication that the Armenian text of Faustus dates from after 427/428 and not, as Akinean holds (Reihenfolge d. Bisch. Armen. 74), from the first quarter of the fifth century. — This projection of the katholikal title into the epoch antecendent to its official use is a foible of which both medieval and modern Armenian historiography is guilty; witness, e.g., the Greek List of the Katholikoi.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁰ Cf. supra n. 15; infra at nn. 164, 205, 336. For the religious separatism of Albania and Siunia as regards Armenia (and their tendency towards Chalcedon) cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 312, 390-391, 470-472, 479-480.Google Scholar

¹⁵¹ For this cf. Grousset, op. cit. 232-234.Google Scholar

¹⁵² Cf. supra at nn. 110-111, 121-123. Arsenius (324-325 = G 130-132) and the ‘Letter of Photius’ (181 = G 134) imply, and the Galanus Chronicle (ap. Galano, C., Conciliationis Eccl. Armenae cum Romana etc. I [Rome 1650] 85 = G 140) indicates expressly what is perfectly plain from the circumstances of the case: namely, the determinant role which the Iranian polity played (along with other factors) in giving to Armenian Christianity the shape of a separate national Church — which was precisely the role it had played in the formation of the separate national Syro-Iranian (Nestorian) Church.Google Scholar

¹⁵³ Cf. Stein, Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Reiches (Stuttgart 1919) 21–25, 38-55, 58-102; Baynes, ‘The Successors of Justinian,’ CMH 2 (1936) 270-271; Ch. Diehl and Mar, G.çais, Le monde oriental de 395 à 1081, in Histoire générale (Histoire u Moyen Age) 3 (2nd. ed. Paris 1944) 128-131; Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 244-251; G 175-187 (and bibl.); Christensen, Iran 373-374, 443-445; Toumanoff, Iberia 37-44; Higgins, Intern. Relations (n. 42 supra) 290-315; Goubert, P., Byzance avant l'Islam (Paris 1951) 61-183 (Chap. 8 dealing with Caucasia needs being revised). For the date of the insurrection cf. G 187-190; on this point, the chronological indications of the Narratio (§ 78) are inexact.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁴ Cf. G 175-225.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁵ Cf. G 190-202. Both Arsenius (327 = G 176) and the ‘Letter of Photius’ (182 = G 178) speak of the adherence to Chalcedon. The Narratio (§ 83), on the other hand, mentions the condemnation of Origen, Evagrius, Didymus, the Nestorians, the Jacobites, the Julianists, the Gaianites, as well as Eutyches and Dioscorus. The Narratio and the Letter show the typically Armenian confusion between the names of Justinian and Justin with the result that the mention of the Fifth General Council is inserted next to that of the above synod (§ 81. G 37; cf. G 195-198) and that Justinian's building of the Church of the Holy Wisdom is connected with the revolt (§ 78. G 37; cf. G 189-190). Because of the former juxtaposition the condemnation of Origen, Evagrius, and Didymus, which took place at the Fifth Council, is ascribed to the synod of 572 (G 201-202). For the connection of one of the doors of the Church of the Holy Wisdom with the Mamikonids, mentioned in § 82 (G 37), cf. G 198-201.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁶ Arsenius 326-327 = G 176-177.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁷ Pp. 181-182 = G 178; Vardan's résumé, Muyldermans, Domination arabe 84 = G 178.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ Eccl. Hist. 2.18-24; 6.11 (transl. G 181).Google Scholar

¹⁵⁹ Universal Hist. 2.2 (= G 182).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁰ Cf. G 179-182.Google Scholar

¹⁶¹ John of Ephesus 2.22; Greek List of the Katholikoi (G 405; cf. G 430); cf. G 203-205 and bibl.; cf. also Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 243. The dates of John II of Gabeleank’ are c. 557-574. The Narratio (§ 84. G 37-38), erroneously or loosely, speaks of the return of the refugees and the mixed reception of the Union as in the days of the Katholikos John.Google Scholar

¹⁶² Cf. G 202-203.Google Scholar

¹⁶³ G 205.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁴ The first démarche of the anti-Chalcedonites was directed to Abas, Katholikos of Albania; but he refused to accept the Monophysite doctrine (§ 85. G 38; cf. G 205-209 and bibl.). Prior to the Union of 572, John II of Armenia had written to Abas urging him to accept Monophysitism (BL 81-84); since Abas adhered to Catholicism in 574, and also in 574/577, when John of Jerusalem was writing to him (though he seems to have been neglectful, or ignorant, of certain Monophy te practices in Albania; G 207-209), it is difficult to accept the assertion of Moses of Kalankatuk’ (Xth c.) that, convinced by John II of Armenia, Abas rejected Chalcedon (2.8; cf. Manandian, Beiträge z. alb. Gesch. 29, but cf. G 205-207). The Monophysites next turned to Vrt'anēs, Bishop of Siunia (§ 86-87. G 38; cf. G 209-216 and bibl.). To this prelate (and to the Prince of Siunia), John II of Armenia had also written, c. 568/571, urging the rejection of Nestorianism and Chalcedon (BL 79, 80). It is clear from that letter that Siunia then was Catholic (BL 79 = G 214); it was Catholic in 574; it is improbable therefore that Stephen Orbelian (Ōrpēlean; XIIIth c.) is correct in asserting, in his Hist. Siun. 24, that, like Abas, Vrt'anēs rejected Chalcedon upon the receipt of that letter. Siunia's separatist tendencies, political and religious, with regard to Armenia are well known. On the eve of the insurrection of 572, the Prince of Siunia, an exponent of the collaborationist trend, obtained from the Great King Siunia's political separation from the rest of Armenia (Sebēos [VIIth c.], Hist. of Heraclius 1 [ed. Tiflis 1913; 40] = G 211); and between 555 and 558, Bishop Peter of Siunia withdrew from the Armenian obedience, and the Church of Siunia came to depend on that of Albania; G 211-215. (The Bishop of Siunia is called in § 86 τοῦ στύλου ἐπίσϰοπον; this is one of the proofs of the Narratio's being translated from the Armenian original: the Armenian phrase siwneac‘ episkopisi was so translated because of the confusion between Siwnik’[Siunia] and siwn ‘column’; G 210-211.) Finally, the Monophysites approached the Church of Iberia only to find the same refusal there (§ 88. G 38; cf. G 216-217). For the situation in Iberia cf. infra § 36.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁵ These regions were the cantons of Tašir and Jorop'or, in the province of Gogarene on the Iberian frontier, that of Gardman, in the province of Uti on the Ibero-Albanian frontier, and the province of Arc'ax, between Albania and Siunia; cf. G 219-220; Hübschmann, Altarmen. Ortsnamen (n. 47 supra) 354, 253, 275-276, 252, 266-267. The correct reading of § 89 necessitates the revision of one of the late Fr. Peeters’ theses: G 217-219, cf. 216,Google Scholar

¹⁶⁶ In § 93 the Narratio ascribes the restoration of Chosroes to Mušel II, Prince of the Mamikonids, hereditary High Constable of Armenia and commander of the Armenian contingents, which together with the Byzantine and Iranian armies restored Chosroes on his throne. Mušel was greatly rewarded by Chosroes; § 95. Cf. G 231-236, 237-238.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁷ For the war cf. supra n. 153. For the new partition of Armenia cf. Gelzer, H., Georgii Cyprii descriptio Orbis Romani (Leipzig 1890) L-LV; Hübschmann, Altarm. Ortsnamen 228-232 (and map); Ghazarian, M., Armenien unter der arabischen Herrschaft bis zur Entstehung des Bagratidenreiches (Marburg 1903) 10; Honigmann, Die Ostgrenze des byzantinischen Reiches (Brussels 1935) 28-34; Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 251-253; G 236-237, 242: § 94 and § 102-104 bear important testimony on the partition.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁸ Cf. G 225-254.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁹ Cf. Toumanoff, Iberia 37-41. For the religious situation in Iberia cf. infra § 36.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁰ Cf. G 238-241. — It is interesting to note the connection between Mušel's Monophysitism and his loyalty to the Great King, which alone can explain his choice as envoy.Google Scholar

¹⁷¹ Already mentioned in § 92 (G 39). For Moses of Elivard (574-604) cf. G 223 (and bibl.); Greek List (G 405; cf. G 430). Cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 246, 265, 267, 269.Google Scholar

¹⁷² The refusal of Moses quoted in § 102 is important for several reasons. In conjunction with the distribution of the unionist and anti-unionist bishops (§ 103-104), the Katholikos’ refusal to cross the river Azat constitutes an indication as to the geography of the partition of 591; G 242, 244-245, cf. supra n. 167. § 103, by the way, contains the earliest known use of the geographical term ‘Vaspurakan’; G 244.) Moses’ saying that he would not eat the leavened Bread nor drink the hot water of the Byzantines is the earliest attested reference to both the Armenian use of unleavened bread in the liturgy and the Byzantine use of adding drops of hot water to the consecrated Wine; G 242-244.Google Scholar

¹⁷³ Cf. G 245-246.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁴ For John III of Bagaran (c. 592-610/611) cf. G 247-253, 263-265 (and bibl.). Also, Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 265-266, 269. John III is found in various Armenian katholikal lists; cf. Greek List (G 405; cf. 431); G 250-251. Sebēos (23.123 = G 263) calls him ‘the blessed old man, the Katholikos John’ (eraneli ceruni kat'uḷikosn Yovhan). His residence at Awan, in Kotayk’, is mentioned in Armenian historiography, beginning with the letter of John Mayragomec'i (infra n. 180); cf. G 247-251, 264.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁵ G 246-253. For Arsenius and Mayragomec‘i cf. infra, nn. 178, 180.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁶ Cf. G 253-254.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁷ G 231: ‘L'attitude radicalement chalcédonienne de Maurice à l’égard de l’Arménie recouvrée contredit absolument la thèse de Gr, M. H.égoire, qui prétend découvrir en cet empereur des tendences monophysites dues notamment à la nécessité où il se serait trouvé de ménager l’Arménie, important source de recrutement de son armée; Gr, M.égoire écrit par exemple: « Maurice a dû certainement, au moins après l'annexion de l’Arménie occidentale, tolérer les monophysites » (dans Le Muséon, 59, 1946 = Mélanges Lefort, p. 297); « I have proved (and my opinion is now shared and fortified with further proof by my master and friend, Vasiliev, A. A.), that Maurice favored the Armenian creed (!) and in general the monophysitic Church » (dans Armenian Quarterly, 1, 1946, p. 10). Les sources (non byzantines) passées en revue ci-dessus [G 226-231] disent exactement le contraire; Maurice fut si loin de « favoriser la confession arménienne » qu'il imposa à l’Arménie la foi de Chalcédoine et qu'il alla même jusqu’à provoquer l'installation en Arménie romaine d'un anticatholicos chalcédonien.’ — For Maurice's Catholicism cf. also Goubert, P., ‘Les successeurs de Justinien et le Monophysisme,’ in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon II 187-192.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁸ Arsenius 327-329 = G 226-227. The word samep'oy in this text should be translated as kingdom, royaume,’ rather than as ‘kingship, royauté’ (G 227), the latter's equivalent being mep'oba. Google Scholar

¹⁷⁹ P. 182 = G 228; Vardan's résumé, Muyldermans, Domination arabe 67 = G 228 (no reference to the consequent split of Armenia).Google Scholar

¹⁸⁰ Letter of Mayragomec'i (an opponent of the Union; cf. infra § 27-29), apud Moses of Kalankatuk’ 2.46 (ed. Tiflis 1912; 302-305) = G 247 (the Union itself is not mentioned, only its consequences).Google Scholar

¹⁸¹ G 229-231, 246-251.Google Scholar

¹⁸² In view of the fact that ‘the imperial power was an autocracy tempered by the legal right of revolution,’ it is difficult to see why Phocas should be termed a ‘usurper’ (G 254); there was a revolutionary aspect to the institution of the Emperorship; cf. Bréhier, Institutions 5-6, 17, 23-24; Ensslin, in Byzantium 271-272: ‘If the coup failed, he [the new Emperor] met with the shameful death of a usurper; if it succeeded, his victory was the sign that God's favour had abandoned the dethroned Emperor.’ If Phocas b a usurper, so must be Heraclius and a host of others also.Google Scholar

¹⁸³ For the last Persian War, and especially its Caucasian aspect, cf. Baynes, Successors of Justinian 285-301; Diehl-Marçais, Monde oriental 140-151; Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 269-276; Christensen, Iran 447-448, 497-498; Toumanoff, Iberia 199-202; G 257.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁴ Cf. G 254-277.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁵ Abraham was elected between 25 March and 23 April 607 (evidence of the act of the council which elected him, BL 149-150; cf. G 258-259 and bibl. — not, as formerly believed, in 594; ibid.) and died in 610/611 (G 268 and bibl.); cf. Greek List (G 405; cf. G 430). Also, Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm., 267, 282.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁶ Cf. supra § 19 and n. 111.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁷ Cf. G 259-260. The text of the Narratio would seem to indicate that all the ecclesiastics accepted the first alternative of Abraham's ultimatum. In the corresponding passage of his text, however, Arsenius (329 = G 255) speaks of only some of them accepting it. This is borne out by contemporary documents. The official act of submission drawn up by those bishops and abbots who did accept has been preserved in the BL (151-152); it contains the names of only two bishops of the province of Ayrarat and three of that of Turuberan: there were, however, more bishoprics in the part of Roman Armenia which the Iranians overran in 607, so that some bishops must have preferred exile to Monophysitism; G 260. On the other hand, twenty-one abbots signed that act; cf. G 255 n. 1, 260-261.Google Scholar

¹⁸⁸ Cf. G 261-263 (and bibl.).Google Scholar

¹⁸⁹ G 263-265 (and Armenian historians on John III).Google Scholar

¹⁹⁰ G 265-266: this ultimatum of Abraham met with much less success than that of 607; and no act of submission in response to it has been preserved in the BL.Google Scholar

¹⁹¹ Cf. G 266. The Iberian possession to which they fled was Tao = Arm. Tayk‘; cf. infra at n. 318.Google Scholar

¹⁹² G 267-277 (and bibl.). The dates of Komitas are 610/611-628. Cf. Greek List (G 405; cf. G 431). Also Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 282-283. According to Arsenius (321 = G 269), Komitas succeeded in winning over to Monophysitism the Katholikos of Albania, by ceding seven bishoprics to his jurisdiction, and the Bishop of Siunia, by conceding to him the right of having, like the Katholikos himself, a cross borne before him and by enlarging his diocese; this is indirectly borne out by the Defection of the Albanians of Ananias of Mokk‘ (Xth c.), which places the end of the Armeno-Albanian schism in the third year of Komitas (ed. Tēr-Mkrtč‘ean in Ararat 30-31 [1897] 137b), as well as by Ps. Uxtanēs (XIth c.?), Hist. Arm. 2.64, Moses of Kalankatuk’, 2.48, and Stephen Orbelian, 18, who mention the granting to the Bishop of Siunia of the privilege of the cross and of the rank of a metropolitan, but place it under the katholikate of Abraham; cf. G 272, 270 n. 1. For the Catholicism of Albania and Siunia at the end of the sixth century cf. supra n. 164; infra n. 336. A letter of Komitas to Syrian bishops, preserved in the BL (212-218), expounds a decidedly Monophysite doctrine of the Julianist tinge; Ter-Minassiantz, Kirche 62-66; G 272.Google Scholar

¹⁹³ For this council, which appears to have definitively recognized Monophysitism — a powerful ally in the war against the Empire — as the second established Christian Church of the Iranian State, cf. Tournebize, Arménie 304; Hist. pol. rel. 346 n. 1 (= 348); Bréhier, ‘La crise de l’Empire et le redressement d’Héraclius (611-632),’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église V (Paris 1947) 88–90. The principal source is Sebēos 33. 195-200; cf. infra n. 336.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁴ G 273-277. For the texts of Arsenius and Stephen cf. infra n. 195. The so-called Canons of St. Isaac appeared first in print in a Latin translation (from a codex dated in 1634; today MS Vat. Borg. Arm. 60, cf. Tisserant, E., Codices Armeni bybliothecae Vaticanae [Rome 1927] 87-91) made by the Monk Arsenius Angiarakian for Card. Angelo Mai: Scriptorum veterum nova collectio 10 (Rome 1838) II 276-290 (cf. Mai's praefatio, ibid. xxi, and admonitio, II 316; Amaduni, G., in Disciplina Armena: Testi vari di diritto canonico armeno [Codificazione Canonica Orientale: Fonti 7; Tipogr. Vaticana 1932] 4, 6). The Armenian edition by Fr. Leontius Ališan (Venice 1853) served as basis for Conybeare, F. C.'s English translation, in The American Journal of Theology 2 (1898) 828-848 (p. 828: ‘here for the first time [?] translated from the old Armenian’). — Fr. Akinean (‘S. Sahaki veragruac kanonnerě,’ Handes Amsorya 60 [1946] 48-70; 61 [1947] 1-25) is convinced that the document belongs to the beginning of the seventh century; G 275-276. For the connection of Mayragomec‘i with the seventh-century florilegium, the Seal of the Faith, cf. G 276-277, 331-334, 347-348; infra n. 211.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁵ This is also reported by Arsenius 321-322 = G 269; and Stephen of Tarōn 2.2 (= G 273); cf. G 273-276.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁶ Katholikos: 628-631: G 300-301; Greek List (G 405; cf. G 431); cf. infra n. 197. Also Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 283.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁷ (Ezr) Katholikos: 631-642; G 301-302; 338; Greek List (G 405; cf. G 432). Also Grousset, op. cit. 283-285. Christopher II was deposed in 630 or 631 (G 300-301), but Esdras, to whom all the sources ascribe ten years of katholikate (G 301), died in 642 (G 301-302, 338). The deposition of the one and accession of the other could not, therefore, have occurred before 631.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁸ Arsenius 329 = G 255, 320 = G 267, 321-322 = G 269. The text of Arsenius has reached us in a confused state, with related passages interspersed throughout it without much order; cf. infra n. 286.Google Scholar

¹⁹⁹ G 271.Google Scholar

²⁰⁰ For the war cf. supra n. 183. For the institution of the Principate in Armenia cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 281-295; Toumanoff, Iberia 41-49; supra n. 51.Google Scholar

²⁰¹ Cf. G 278-350.Google Scholar

²⁰² G 302-304: the Narratio alone of all the Armenian sources (though somewhat confusedly) gives this date, which is in perfect accord with the chronology of the Katholikoi. For the various dates heretofore assigned to the Council of Theodosiopolis cf. G 303-304.Google Scholar

²⁰³ For an analysis of the sources for the reunion of 632/633 cf. G 278-299, 304-311. For the bibliography on the subject, G 299-300, 303-304. The historical tradition represented by the Narratio and Arsenius (329-332 = G 278-280), as well as, in an abbreviated form, by the ‘Letter of Photius’ (182-183 = G 283-284; Vardan's résumé, Muyldermans, Domination arabe 67-68 = G 284) and also by the Galanus Chronicle (Galano, Conciliatio I 185-186 = G 287), shows marked divergences from the nationalist and traditional Armenian historians. While all the sources admit the fact of reunion under Heraclius, some of the latter (Sebēos, John Katholikos, Stephen of Tarōn, etc.) reduce the council to a private colloquy between the Emperor and the Katholikos, and perhaps some other persons. (Garitte shows, 305-306, how baseless it is to attempt to harmonize the two traditions by supposing two meetings: one a colloquy, the other a council.) Others (e.g., the History of the Councils attributed to the Katholikos John IV of Ōjun, VIITth c.) admit the council, but make its legitimacy appear suspect by the — erroneous — assertion that Esdras was made Katholikos only at that council. While some (John Katholikos, Stephen of Taron, Vardan) ascribe Esdras’ conversion to ignorance, most of the historians (these and also Sebēos and Kirakos, etc.) do not fail to record the earthly goods Esdras received from the Emperor. All these sources omit the fact of deliberations, and even Stephen Orbelian, who mentions them, obviously has no idea of their nature. On the other hand, both the Narratio (§ 122 in context with § 130) and Arsenius show the preponderant place occupied by the patristic argument in these deliberations: ‘c'est là un trait bien conforme aux préoccupations de l'époque qui a vu la compilation de florilèges dogmatiques tels que le « Sceau de la Foi »’ (G 323). Nevertheless, even the partial admissions of the national historians confirm the circumstantial narratives of the opposite tradition. — All the data regarding the reunion of 632/633 seem to indicate its Catholic character (the Narratio and Arsenius record submission and sworn engagement not to oppose Chalcedon and the Two Natures; the ‘Letter of Photius submission and acceptance of Chalcedon; the History of the Councils: rejection of the second Council of Dvin and of the Monophysite Trisagion etc.; the Galanus Chronicle: all of these indications; the rest reluctantly admit the adherence to the Emperor's creed; cf. G 310-311), and not a word seems to suggest the acceptance of a Monenergist formula, such as was used in Alexandria, in the Summer of 633, in order to secure the reunion of some Monophysite elements. The Armenian reunion, after all, antedated the Emperor's official adoption of Monothelitism (stemming from Monenergism), through the publication in 638 of the Ekthesis; for this cf. Jugie, M., ‘Monothélisme,’ DThC 10.2307-2323; Br, L.éhier, ‘La nouvelle crise religieuse. Juifs, Monoénergisme, Islam (632-639)’ and ‘L'Ekthesis, la fin du règne et la succession d'Héraclius (638-641),’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église V 103-130, 131-150: but the passages regarding Armenia (113-114, 116-117) stand now in need of revision.Google Scholar

²⁰⁴ Cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 255-265. This period coincided with the decline of the traditionally Romanophile Mamikonids and with the rise of the Bagratids, so very bien en cour at Ctesiphon, in the hegemony among the Armenian princely oligarchs.Google Scholar

²⁰⁵ Cf. G 311-319. Gardman, it will be recalled, was Monophysite in 574 and Siunia adhered to the national Armenian Church under Komitas; supra nn. 165, 192.Google Scholar

²⁰⁶ Cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 300-301; Laurent, Arménie 33-34; Toumanoff, Iberia 202-203.Google Scholar

²⁰⁷ Cf. G 319-337.Google Scholar

²⁰⁸ Cf. G 319-325, esp. 319-320, 322-323. ‘La seule lecture de ce résumé [G 319] permet d'apprécier la supériorité du récit de la Diegesis [= Narratio] sur celui de Jean le Catholicos [ed. Tiflis 1912; 78-79]. Comme dans la section précédente (les manœuvres du Mayragomec‘i), Jean le Catholicos ne présente ici qu'une amplification littéraire; n'importe quel littérateur a pu rédiger ce morceau sans posséder sur l'eutrevue aucune information précise autre que la donnée de fait de l'entrevue même. La relation de notre Diegesis a un tout autre caractère; tout y porte la marque du concret et du personnel…’ (G 320).Google Scholar

²⁰⁹ G 325-326.Google Scholar

²¹⁰ G 326-329.Google Scholar

²¹¹ G 329-334 (and quotations): the other source is a work Against Mayragomec‘i by Theodore, who is generally identified with a disciple of Mathusala of Siunia, the Persarmenian prelate who accepted the Union of 632/633; supra at n. 205.Google Scholar

²¹² Nersēs III of Išxan (642-662); G 339 (and bibl.); cf. Greek List (G 405; cf. G 432). Also Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 297, 300-302, 304.Google Scholar

²¹³ Grousset, op. cit. 296-299.Google Scholar

²¹⁴ Sebēos 33. 193-194 is the source. Cf. Tournebize, Arménie 304; Hist. pol. rel. 352 n. 1 (= 352-355), 366 n. 1 (= 366-370); Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 296-302; Bréhier, in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église V 157-158; G 340 (and bibl.).Google Scholar

²¹⁵ Grousset, op. cit. 300-301; cf. Tournebize, Arménie 304-305.Google Scholar

²¹⁶ Tournebize, Armėnie 304; Hist. pol. rel. 366 n. 1; Grousset, op. cit. 301-302; Bréhier, op. cit. 159-160; G 340. — For the Typos cf. Bréhier 166; Amann, E., ‘Type de Constant II,’ DThC 15 (1947) 1945–1948.Google Scholar

²¹⁷ Bréhier, op. cit. 124, 133, 160-162.Google Scholar

²¹⁸ Arsenius 331 = G 280; ‘Letter of Photius’ 182 = G 283-284 (Vardan's résumé, Muyldermans, Domination arabe 67 = G 284). — Cf. G 340-342. Erist'avman in the text of Arsenius (331-332 = G 280) should be translated as ‘duke, duc,’ or (in view of the fusion, in the social system of Armenia, of the ducal office and the princely dignity) as ‘prince,’ but not as ‘chef’ (G 283, 337, 341, 342); cf. Toumanoff, Iberia 25-30.Google Scholar

²¹⁹ Sebēos 35.226-228, 37.241-242. Cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 302-304. A confusion between the two contemporaneous Princes of Armenia, one for the Emperor and the other for the Caliph, was natural enough.Google Scholar

²²⁰ Grousset, op. cit. 303. — History was to show that the Caliphs were no easier overlords than the Emperors; and the fate of Theodore Ṛštuni himself, disgraced and deported to Damascus in 655, is an early indication of this; cf. ibid. 304.Google Scholar

²²¹ Cf. G 343-350. Through the usual confusion, Justinian is called ‘Justin’; G 349-350. — Anastasius of Akori was Katholikos in 662-667/668; G 345 (and bibl.); cf. Greek List (G 405; cf. G 432). Also Grousset, op. cit. 305.Google Scholar

²²² Cf. supra n. 203. — Arsenius (331 = G 279) is the only source to mention Mayragomec‘i's journey to Saberjnet'i (xolo igi carvida saberjnet's) after his interview with Esdras (cf. G 335). This term should, of course, be taken in the larger sense of ‘the Empire,’ rather than in the narrower sense of ‘Greece’ (cf. G 282, 335; also in connection with Arsenius 331 = G 280).Google Scholar

²²³ G 343-350. For Mayragomec'i's works cf. G 347-348 (and bibl.). For his opposition to nascent Iconoclasm in Armenia cf. Der Nersessian, S., ‘Une apologie des images du septième siècle,’ Byzantion 17 (1944-1945) 58–87.Google Scholar

²²⁴ G 352-353; Diehl-Marçais, Monde oriental 241-242, 243-244; Brooks, E. W., ‘The Successors of Heraclius to 717,’ CMH 2 (1936) 406–407; Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 307-308; Toumanoff, Iberia 215-216.Google Scholar

²²⁵ Cf. G 350-356. — The ‘Letter of Photius’ does not mention this reunion and Arsenius does not extend so far. There are, however, hints at it in Stephen of Tarōn's story (2.2 = G 351) of the capture of Isaac III and of five bishops by Justinian II; and the fact of reunion sheds light on what happened later: Isaac III was subsequently arrested by the Saracens and deported to Syria, which was, obviously, a punishment for adhering to the Emperor's creed; G 350-352. The Caliph had begun to tread in the footsteps of the Great King. — In view of the indications of the older sources (Sebēos and the Narratio) regarding the last reunions of the Armenian and the Byzantine Church — and these, in turn, can only be accounted for by previous secessions — it is not possible to accept Fr. Inglisian's thesis (based on a statement in Stephen Orbelian's Hist. Siun., Chap. 18) that, between the Katholikos Esdras, who accepted the Union of 632/633, and the Katholikos John IV of Ōjun (718-728), the Armenian Church remained Chalcedonite; Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon II 383-384.Google Scholar

²²⁶ Anastasius was succeeded by Israel (c. 668 - c. 678); G 353; cf. Greek List (G 405; cf. G 432-433). Israel was followed by Isaac III (c. 678 - c. 705); G 353 (and bibl.); cf. Greek List (G 405; cf. G 433-434). Also Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 305.Google Scholar

²²⁷ Stephen of Tarōn's disguised reference to the union would indicate that there were only five unionist bishops; cf. G 354; supra n. 225.Google Scholar

²²⁸ Cf. supra n. 224 and G 355.Google Scholar

²²⁹ Cf. supra at nn. 104-105.Google Scholar

²³⁰ Cf. Toumanoff, Iberia 19-20 (and bibl.).Google Scholar

²³¹ Ibid. 19-20, 31-37 etc.; Review of Stein's Hist. du Bas-Empire, Traditio 7.483-487.Google Scholar

²³² Cf. preceding note.Google Scholar

²³³ Toumanoff, Iberia 31-32.Google Scholar

²³⁴ Cf. supra at n. 104. The chief sources are Lazarus of P‘arpi (66-85) and the History of Vaxtang (HVG). For the latter source's information and for the Vitaxae of Gogarene cf. Iberia 230-237.Google Scholar

²³⁵ A = Queen Anne Codex of the Georgian Annals (ed. Qaux, S.č‘išvili, Tiflis 1942); M = Queen Mary Variant of the same (ed. E. T‘aqaišvili, Tiflis 1906). For these versions cf. supra n. 3.Google Scholar

²³⁶ Traditio 7.485 n. 18; it is mentioned in the HVG (A 105 = M 138).Google Scholar

²³⁷ Lazarus of P‘arpi 73-75, 79-81; cf. Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 221-224. During the campaign of Šahpuhr Mihrān the Armeno-Iberian forces were routed and the Armenians had to conclude a truce with the Iranians. The chronology of this revolt, as can be seen from the sequence of events in Lazarus, must differ from that adopted by Grousset (215-226). According to Lazarus, Vaxtang revolted in the 25th year of the Great King Pērōz (chap. 66, p. 259); this date can be either 484 or 482, depending on whether the regnal year was computed from the beginning of Pērōz's revolt against his predecessor or from his definitive accesion to the throne after the latter's death (cf. Peeters, P., in Anal. Boll. 53 [1935] 279 n. 1); it was obviously 482, in the context of the following events. A winter passed (Laz. 71.282); then summer came (Laz. 73.293); then another winter (Laz. 77.311); and, finally, spring (Laz. 78.316). Zarmihr arrived in Armenia (ibid.). Pērōz departed for the Hephthalite war and ordered Zarmihr to chastise Vaxtang (Laz. 79.321-322). Iberia was invaded; Vaxtang fled to the west; Šahpuhr became viceroy of Armenia (Laz. 80). Pērōz was killed in the war; the news reached Armenia (Laz. 85-87): this took place in 484 (Christensen, Iran 294). — Cf. also Traditio 7.484 n. 12, where the numbers of the chapters in Lazarus’ History are given in accordance with Ghésarian's translation in Langlois’ Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'Arménie II (Paris 1869).Google Scholar

²³⁸ Lazarus 85-87; cf. Christensen, op. cit. 289-296; Grousset, op. cit. 226-232. 239 Cf. Toumanoff, Mediev. Georg. Hist. Lit. 161; Peeters, in Anal. Boll. 33 (1935) 299–300.Google Scholar

²⁴⁰ Hamarot Patmut'iwn Vrac’ ěncayeal Juanšēri Patmč'i (Venice 1884) 85. It is difficult to understand how the phrase ew kruec'an ěnd mimeans zamiss č'ors could have been translated by Brosset as ‘ils se firent la guerre durant trois ans': ‘Chronique arménienne,’ Additions et éclaircissements à l'Histoire de la Géorgie (St. Petersburg 1851) 41. — This Armenian version has Vaxt'ang throughout.Google Scholar

²⁴¹ The only Great King so far mentioned by name was Hormizd III, Vaxtang's father-in-law (A 104 = M 136-137 [corrupt in M]); cf. Traditio 7.484-485. Other Great Kings are not mentioned by name, except occasionally by the dynastic denomination of Xuasro (i.e., the royal Iranian name par excellence), as in A 123, 125, 126, 127, 133, 136, 137, 139 = M 162, 165, 166, 167-168, 176, 180, 181, 184. Thus, in A 106 = M 139, the adversary of Julian the Apostate is called Chosroes and, in A 126 = M 166, the second Great King after Hormizd III (= Valāš) is confused with Chosroes I and credited with the capture of Antioch. For the use of ‘Xuasro’ (cf. the use of ‘Arsaces’ for the Parthian Great Kings) cf. Brosset, Histoire de la Géorgie I 1 (St. Petersburg 1849) 180 n. 3; Toumanoff, Iberia 235. Also, the HVG has the tendency to qualify successors on the throne as ‘sons': thus the second Great King after Hormizd III (Valāš) is called the son of the first (Pērōz) instead of brother, as would have been correct.Google Scholar

²⁴² Cf. Brosset, Hist. de la Géorgie I 1.189 nn. 2, 3 etc.Google Scholar

²⁴³ Christensen, Iran 296 and n. 2.Google Scholar

²⁴⁴ There were only two Hephthalite wars of Pērōz: in the first he was captured, in the second, killed, ibid. 293-294.Google Scholar

²⁴⁵ Vaxtang is said by our source to have married the Princess Helena, the Emperor's daughter (A 135 = M 178-179). The word ‘daughter’ need imply, in this context, no more than ‘relative’ (cf., e.g., the reference of the History of the King of Kings [another part of the Georgian Annals] to the marriage of Kata of Georgia to Alexius Bryennius, son of the celebrated Anna Comnena, as her being sent to be a daughter-in-law [sjlad] of the Emperor; A 212 = M 298), precisely as the word ‘son’ is used in this work, when referring to foreign monarchs, in the sense of successor (supra n. 241; infra nn. 247, 248); these simplifications were due to the authors’ insufficient knowledge of the genealogy of the non-Georgian ruling houses. By this marriage (485/488; cf. infra § 35 for the date of the establishment of the Iberian Katholikate simultaneous with that marriage) Vaxtang had three sons and two daughters (A 136 = M 180); Leo and Mithridates, his two surviving sons, who could not have been born before the early 500's (cf. my Iberia 32 n. 22; 38 n. 47), must have been the last children of Vaxtang and Helena. — The fact that the only Emperor to be given his praenomen in the HVG is Leo I (A 103 = M 136) has led to the presumption that the unnamed Emperor, whose ‘daughter’ Vaxtang married, must be identical with him (Brosset, ‘Tables généalogiques,’ Hist. de la Géorgie II 1 [St. Petersburg 1856] 261). The name of Leo borne by Vaxtang's eldest surviving son by Helena cannot be taken as a confirmation of that presumption, because Zeno (the Emperor with whom Vaxtang concluded his alliance and, consequently, whose relative he married) was himself associated with that praenomen, being the son-in-law of the first, and father of the second (and short-lived), Leo. — The final part of the HVG is rather telescoped (infra at nn. 247-252). It fuses together two facts about the Great King Kavāδ I: his war with Anastasius of 502-506 and his struggle with Vaxtang, begun c. 517/518. In the same way, it also fuses into one person (the Emperor, Vaxtang's ‘father-in-law’) two Emperors, Zeno, whose relative Vaxtang married, and Anastasius, who married Zeno's widow Ariadne. The first confusion is due to the identity of the agent; the second, to the similarity of genealogical situation and, also, the same anti-Chalcedonite policy of the two Emperors. Not aware of this second confusion, the redactors of the Chronique arménienne and those of the last recension of the Georgian Annals (King Vaxtang VI's Redaction, in the XVIIIth century) reasoned that if the King's ‘father-in-law’ was Leo, the next Emperor must be Zeno, and thus interpolated Zeno's praenomen into the telescoped part of our source, where reference is made to the death of the ‘father-in-law’ and the accession of a new Emperor (in reality Justin I); Brosset, Additions 45; M 183 n. 13. — Zeno's relative Helena is unknown to Byzantine genealogy.Google Scholar

²⁴⁶ Cf. supra at n. 104.Google Scholar

²⁴⁷ HVG calls him ‘son’ of his predecessor; A 136 = M 180; cf. supra nn. 241, 245.Google Scholar

²⁴⁸ Likewise called ‘son’ of his predecessor; HVG A 138 = M 183; cf. supra nn. 241, 245.Google Scholar

²⁴⁹ For the date of Vaxtang's birth, c. 440, established on the basis of the indications of the HVG, cf. Traditio 7.484-485. He succeeded his father, King Arč‘il I, at the age of seven (A 92 = M 122).Google Scholar

²⁵⁰ For which cf. Stein, Hist. du Bas-Empire II 92-101.Google Scholar

²⁵¹ Christensen, Iran 296-297. He was a son of Pērōz.Google Scholar

²⁵² Traditio 7.483-485. The chief source is Procopius, Bell. pers. 1.12. — Procopius’ statement: διό δὴ Γονϱγένης πϱοσχωϱεῖν Ἰουστίνῳ βασιλεῖ ἤθελε τά τε πιστὰ ἠξίου λαβεῖν ὡς οὔποτε Ἴβηϱας ϰαταπϱοήσονται Πέϱσαις ‘Ρωμαῖοι (1.12.5), etc. has been interpreted as implying that Imperial suzerainty over Iberia was established only then, under Justin I (cf. Traditio 7.483; Iberia 31). But the rapprochement of Christian Iberia with the Christian Empire, soon to be sealed (as we shall see) by the former's adherence to the latter's religious policies, under Zeno can only imply the establishment of a suzerain-vassal relationship between them (cf. supra at n. 40); and it was Iran's weakness after 484 that made it possible. The references of Procopius to Caucasian affairs must be treated with caution. We know that he misdates the Partition of Armenia (supra at n. 80) and misinterprets the reduction of the royal powers of Vaxtang's successors as an abolition of the monarchy (Traditio 7.487-488; Iberia 31-32). In the same way, Vaxtang's appeal for aid to his suzerain the Emperor, and possibly a renewal of the latter's protectorate, was mistaken by Procopius for a transfer of allegiance from Iran to the Empire,Google Scholar

²⁵³ Supra at nn. 57-66.Google Scholar

²⁵⁴ Cf. Peeters, Débuts (supra n. 60); Tarchnišvili, Legende der hl. Nino; Sources; ‘Kurzer Überblick über den Stand der georgischen Literaturforschung,’ Oriens Christianus 37 (1953) 2–3; Janin, R., ‘Géorgie,’ DThC 6 (1924) 1244-1251. — As for Western Georgia (Colchis-Lazica), regardless of whether or no its Christianity be traceable to the sees on the Euxine coast at the time of the first Council of Nicaea, it is quite incorrect, as the late Professor Vasiliev pointed out recently (Justin the First 261-262), to interpret the conversion of King Tzathus I (after his father's lapse into Mazdaism) in 522 as the beginning of Lazic Christianity. The West Georgian Church was a dependency of the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, but was united with the Church of Iberia as a result of the political union of Eastern and Western Georgia in 1008. Cf. Janin 1261; Tarchnišvili, in Enciclopedia Cattolica 6 (1951) 66.Google Scholar

²⁵⁵ This is a reference to the war begun by Constantine shortly before his death and continued by Constantius II (Stein, Gesch. d. spätröm. Reiches I 200, 212-215, 239, 244; Christensen, Iran 325-326) and an added confirmation of 337 as the date of the conversion of Iberia (cf. supra n. 44).Google Scholar

²⁵⁶ Cf. supra at n. 99.Google Scholar

²⁵⁷ The Bishop accuses the King also of having ‘placed his hope in [Mazdaist] fire’ (A 134 = M 177): this is a flourish.Google Scholar

²⁵⁸ The connection of Monophysitism with the establishment of the Iberian Katholikate is recognized by I. Javaxišvili, K'art'veli eris istoria I (3rd ed. Tiflis 1928) 306–320, cf. 277-278. He considers the reference to the twelve new bishops, established in Iberia by King Vaxtang, as implying, not the creation of new dioceses (though some new ones indeed were then created), but the replacement of the old bishops faithful to Chalcedon by Monophysites. Kekelije, K., on the other hand, is of the opinion (cf. Bulletin de l'Université de Tiflis 10 [1930] 317-327) that Vaxtang was indeed the first to establish bishoprics in Iberia, beside the See of Mc‘xet‘a, to which they were made subordinate. — Iberian contacts with Monophysitism dated from a century and a half earlier, as witnesses the career of Peter the Iberian, Monophysite Bishop of Mayūma; for whom cf. Bardy, in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église IV 277-278, cf. 309; Lang, D. M., ‘Peter the Iberian and his Biographers,’ The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 2 (1951) 158–168; Honigmann, ‘Pierre l'Ibérien et les écrits du Pseudo-Denys l'Aréopagite,’ Mem. Cl. des Lettres et des Sc. Mor. et Pol. de l'Acad. roy. de Bel. 47.3 (1952) 52-57; Mouterde, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon I 601-602; Bacht, in Chalkedon II 246 etc.Google Scholar

²⁵⁹ Supra § 21.Google Scholar

²⁶⁰ Cf. Janin, Géorgie 1252-1253; Vailhé, Antioche 1411.Google Scholar

²⁶¹ Cf., e.g., Henry, W., ‘Autocephali ou Acephali,’ DACL 1.2 (1924) 3189.Google Scholar

²⁶² For the eleventh-century testimony to this cf. Janin, Géor ie 1253.Google Scholar

²⁶³ This limited independence (= ‘autocephaly’ as then understood) of the Iberian Church is, I presume, what Kekelije has in mind when he denies (loc. cit.) that Vaxtang established an independent Church and when he regards ‘Katholikos’ as an administrative title of the chief among the Iberian bishops. It would indeed be an anachronism to speak of an ecclesiastical body within the then Byzantine communion (whether still Catholic or not) as independent in the Nestorian and Monophysite, or the later, ‘phyletic,’ Greek-Orthodox sense. — Fr. Tarchnišvili's valuable article ‘Die Entstehung und Entwicklung der kirchlichen Autokephalie Georgiens,’ Kyrios 5 (1940–1941), has not, to my regret, been available to me.Google Scholar

²⁶⁴ Bardy, op. cit. 287-288, 289, 293-294, 300; Fritz, G., ‘Pierre le Foulon,’ DThC 12.2 (1935) 1933–1935; Vailhé, Antioche 1405-1406; Devreesse, Antioche 65-68, 118 (No. 49: 483-490 are the dates of the fourth episcopate); cf. Stein, Hist. du Bas-Empire 33,Google Scholar

²⁶⁵ Balsamon, In can. 3 conc. Constantinopol. II: PG 137.320,Google Scholar

²⁶⁶ The first Katholikos of Iberia is mentioned in the Martyrdom of St. Susan the Princess. (The Saint was a daughter of the Mamikonid Prince, Vardan II, and wife of the Vitaxa of Gogarene, Vask‘en, whom Vaxtang I put to death at the beginning of the insurrection of 482-484; cf. my Iberia 235-236.) The Martyrdom purports to have been written by the Saint's confessor, Jacob the Priest (which Fr. Peeters, in the teeth of Georgian historiography, denied, assigning to its composition a much later date; ‘Sainte Sousanik, martyre en Arméno-Géorgie,’ Anal. Boll. 53 [1935]. This, however, is refuted by Georgian scholars; cf. Tarchnišvili, Kurzer Überblick üb. d. Stand d. georg. Literaturforsch. 2). For the reference to the Katholikos, cf. (ed.) Sabinini, M., Sak‘art‘velos Samot'xe (St. Petersburg 1882) 191; the more recent ed. by Abulaje, I. (Tiflis 1938) has not been available to me. — The documents preserved in the BL contain numerous references to the Katholikoi of Iberia.Google Scholar

²⁶⁷ Cf. Janin, Géorgie 1253; Korolevskij, C., ‘Antioche,’ DHGE 3 (1924) 597.Google Scholar

²⁶⁸ The two are always mentioned together, at first during Vaxtang's ‘campaign in Pontus’ (A 108-116 = M 142-153), then, after the recapitulation of the same events, in connection with the establishment of the Katholikate and the Antiochene consecration (A 133-140 = M 176-186). Their installation in Iberia by the King is described as follows: ‘And there [in the Cathedral of Mc'xet'a] he installed Peter as Katholikos and Bishop Samuel in the same See of Mc'xet‘a’; A 135 = M 179.Google Scholar

²⁶⁹ Supra n. 266.Google Scholar

²⁷⁰ Samuel is not mentioned as Bishop of the Royal House, in which case he could indeed be distinct from the Katholikos (cf. S. J̌anašia, P‘eodaluri revoluc'ia Sak‘arl‘veloši [Tiflis 1935] 18-19; Kababaje, S. in Saistorio Moambe 1 [1924] 102-104). — The historian Juanšer, whose work continues and incorporates, under the same name, the HVG, places (A 140 = M 186) the death of the Katholikos ‘Peter’ and the accession, after him, of Samuel, (really, Samuel II) in the reign of King Dač‘i (522/3-534/5; cf. my Iberia 35-36). He, evidently, had access to the same erroneous source of ecclesiastical history — a katholikal list, no doubt — as the anonymous author of the original HVG. If the date of the first Katholikos’ death be correct, he must have signed the acts of the first Council of Dvin, in 505/506, as is attested to in the II Letter of Abraham of Armenia to Kyrion of Iberia (BL 176-177). In this document his name is given as Gabriel. But as the list of the Georgian bishops assisting at that Council was quoted by Abraham from a Greek translation, made from the then lost original (i.e., re-translated into Armenian by him), as he himself admits (III Letter, BL 180-184), it i very likely that some names were ill-rendered; ‘Samuel’ could easily have become ‘Gabriel’ in the process, but it is far less likely that the latter name be an error for ‘Peter.’ — The ‘Royal List,’ appended to the Conversion of Iberia (VIIth c.), which was composed sometime between 826/829 and 973 and is dependent on J̌uanšer (cf. Iberia, Excursus B 237-244), also calls the first Katholikos Peter (T: E. T'aqaišvili's ed. of the Conversion in Sbornik Materialov dlja opisanija … Kavkaza 41 [1910] 62 = Z: Žordania's ed. of the same in K'ronikebi 1.49).Google Scholar

²⁷¹ Cf. Bardy, in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église IV 287-292; Stein, Geschichte des spätröm. Reiches I 538; Hist. du Bas-Empire II 20-27; Devreesse, Antioche 66-68.Google Scholar

²⁷² Bardy, op. cit. 328-329.Google Scholar

²⁷³ J̌avaxišvili, K'art’. eris istoria I 221-22, 319-320, proposes the date 472/484. In his brilliant analysis of the BL documents relating to the religious breach between Iberia and Armenia — ‘Istorija cerkovnago razryva mečdu Gruziej i Armeniej v načalě VII věka,’ Bulletin de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St-Pétersbourg 6 s. 5 (1908) 433–446, 511-536 — J̌avaxišvili (Džavaxov) reasons (511-512) that, since Samuel is presented in the Martyrdom of St. Susan (supra n. 266) as a contemporary of Aršuša whom Vaxtang killed in 484 (sic), the establishment of the Katholikate of Iberia must antedate that event. Actually, the execution of Vask'en of Gogarene (Aršuša's son; cf. my Iberia 235-236), which precipitated the insurrection of Vaxtang, occurred in 482, as is clear from the sequence of events in our chief source for this, Lazarus of P‘arpi (cf. supra n. 237); and the politico-religious historical context already examined precludes the establishment of the Iberian Katholikate prior to 485. Any reference to Samuel as Katholikos before that date must be regarded as anticipatory.Google Scholar

²⁷⁴ Supra at nn. 104-107; infra n. 308.Google Scholar

²⁷⁵ Supra § 20.Google Scholar

²⁷⁶ Supra § 23 and n. 164.Google Scholar

²⁷⁷ Iberia may well have officially remained Catholic from the days of Vaxtang I and Justin I; but this does not preclude the presence of Monophysites in Iberia, especially in its eastern provinces. It is important to note that both the ‘Endless’ Peace of 532 and that of 561 left Iberia under Iranian suzerainty, and we know from contemporaneous Armenian history what the religious implication of that suzerainty was. In the context of the present study, I can mention only in passing the moot question of the religious affiliation of the Thirteen Syrian Fathers, who arrived in Iberia at this time. The historian J̌uanšer in the HVG (A 141 = M 187-188) places the arrival of the chief Syrian Father, John of Mesopotamia, in the reign of Pharasmanes VI, which began in 561/562 (cf. my Iberia 36). (Over and above this mention, the Life of these Fathers in an abbreviated form has been later interpolated into the text of J̌uanšer by the King Vaxtang VI Redaction; cf. my Med. Georg. Hist. Lit. 177 and n. 5). Just before the arrival of John of Mesopotamia, our historian relates (A 141 = M 187) that, under Pharasmanes VI, the Katholikoi of Iberia were no longer men sent from the Empire, but Iberians of illustrious houses. The conjunction of several factors: (1) this act of defiance with regard to the Empire; (2) the proximity of the Syrian Fathers’ arrival in Iberia to the Julianist démarches to the Armenians which led to the Council of Dvin of 555; (3) the ‘Mesopotamian’ origin of so many of the Syrian Fathers, which seems to be consonant with the Μεσοποταμία τῆς Συϱίας of the Narratio (§ 76; cf. G 173-174), whence the Julianists came; and finally (4) the settlement of many of the Fathers in Kakhetia, the easternmost province of Iberia and domain of the Royal House, which fell decidedly under Iranian influence after 561, while the younger branch of the house remained Romanophile (A 141 = M 187; cf. Iberia 37) — all this tends, I submit, to lend color to the suspicion that the Syrian Fathers were Monophysites, and that, in general, Monophysite influences were again coming to the fore in Iberia.Google Scholar

²⁷⁸ Supra at nn. 168-169.Google Scholar

²⁷⁹ Toumanoff, Iberia 37-41.Google Scholar

²⁸⁰ For the partition of Armenia cf. supra n. 167; for that of Iberia, Toumanoff, op. cit. 44.Google Scholar

²⁸¹ Supra § 24.Google Scholar

²⁸² Toumanoff, op. cit. 41-49.Google Scholar

²⁸³ The religious conformity of Iberia and the Empire seems implied in the words which J̌uanšer in the HVG (A 144 = M 192) puts on the lips of Maurice: ‘I am the helper and protector of the Iberians and of all the Christians’ (cf. Iberia 44 n. 7).Google Scholar

²⁸⁴ This collection has been thoroughly studied by J̌avaxišvili (D avaxov) in his Istorija cerkovnago razryva; cf. also Peeters, Sainte Sousanik 245-307; Tarchnišvili, Sources 43-49; and Akinean, N., Kiwrion kat'oḷikos Vrac ‘ (Vienna 1910), esp. 37-47 (list and dates of the documents: 45-47).Google Scholar

²⁸⁵ The work of Ps. Uxtanēs is Part 2 (treating of the Ibero-Armenian religious separation) of his History of Armenia (Vaḷaršapat 1871). For it, cf. Peeters, op. cit. 247-260; also Akinean, op. cit. 47-81. — For the confusion in Arsenius’ work as we now know it cf. Kekelije, K‘art‘. lit. ist. I 122-128. Accordingly, for instance, Kyrion rejected Monophysitism in response to the second Council of Dvin! (Arsenius 319-320.)Google Scholar

²⁸⁶ This is the opinion of Fr. Michael Tarchnišvili, of Rome, communicated to me in his letter of 20 April 1953; cf. also Goussen, H., in Theologische Revue 1906.85. The Katholikos Kyrion mentioned in the Royal List (T 67 = Z 75) is Kyrion II of the eighth century (Z 75 n. 149; cf. Kakabadze, in Georgica 1 [1936] 82).Google Scholar

²⁸⁷ Supra n. 171; cf. Akinean, Kiwrion, e.g., 122.Google Scholar

²⁸⁸ Toumanoff, Iberia 199, 203.Google Scholar

²⁸⁹ Ibid. 199-200.Google Scholar

²⁹⁰ A 145 = M 193.Google Scholar

²⁹¹ Cf. Bréhier, Vie et mort de Byzance (Paris 1948) 43–45.Google Scholar

²⁹² A 145 = M 193, A 146 = M 196; cf. Toumanoff, op. cit. 205.Google Scholar

²⁹³ For urcmuno = Arm. anawrēn cf. ibid. 23 n. 4 (= 24); Peeters, in Anal. Boll. 53.288.Google Scholar

²⁹⁴ The Royal List, which is completely unreliable for this period and makes, e.g., Stephen I survive the capture of Tiflis in 627 (my Iberia 247 n. 45), places the accession of Bartholomew before that of Stephen (T 64 = Z 57) and makes him Katholikos ‘a second time’ (meored) after 627 (T 66 = Z 66).Google Scholar

²⁹⁵ It may be useful to append here a list of the Katholikoi of Iberia as found in the Georgian sources and supplied with the correct chronology of Iberian history: 1. (Samuel I-) ‘Peter’ (supra at nn. 259-273). 2. Samuel II Kath. under Dač'i, 522/3-534/5, dies under Pharasmanes V, 534/5-561/2 (A 140 = M 186; Royal List T 62-63 = Z 51). 3. T'avp'eč'ag I follows Samuel II, death not mentioned (A 140 = M 186; RL T 63 = Z 51). 4. Č'ermag dies under Pharasmanes VI, 561/2-? (A 141 = M 187; RL T 63 = Z 51: Č'imaga, in the lifetime of his predecessor. This must be the reason why the latter's death is left unrecorded). 5. Sabbas foll. Č‘ermag, dies under Pharasmanes VI (A 141 = M 187; RL T 63 = Z 52). 6. Elet‘i (Eulalius), foll. Sabbas, dies under Bacurius III, † 580 (A 141 = M 187-188; RL T 63 = Z 52-55: Evlale). 7. Macarius, foll. Eulalius, dies under Bacurius III, who dies soon afterwards (A 141-142 = M 188-189; RL T 63 = Z 55). 8. Simon foll. Macarius, dies under Guaram I, 588-c. 590 (A 142-143 = M 189-190; RL T 63 = Z 55-56: first Samuel, then Simon-Peter). 9. Samuel III foll. Simon, dies under Guaram I (A 143-144 = M 190-192; RL T 64 = Z 57). 10. Samuel IV foll. Samuel III, dies under Stephen I, c. 590-627 (A 144-145 = M 192-193; RL T 64 = Z 57). 11. (Kyrion I-) ‘Bartholomew’ foll. Samuel IV in 598/599 (A 145 = M 193; RL T 64 = Z 57; erroneous second mention T 66 = Z 66; cf. supra n. 294). For the chronology of the Kings and Princes of Iberia cf. my Iberia esp. 36, 40-41, 43, 199 and the precisions supra at nn. 288-294. Prior to the establishment of this chronology, Kyrion was identified with Simon-Peter; cf. the list in, e.g., Janin, Géorgie 1270.Google Scholar

²⁹⁶ Vrt'anēs to the Iberian Bishop Peter: the Katholikos Moses wrote to the Iberian Church warning against the ‘Nestorians’ (BL 136); — Vrt'anēs to Kyrion: the same, and that he has just learnt of Kyrion's inclination to Chalcedon (BL 138); — the Armenian Bishops to the Iberian: urging not to introduce any ‘novelties’ (BL 138); — II of Kyrion to Abraham: the Katholikos Moses indeed wrote to him against the ‘Nestorians’ (BL 178); however, that Kyrion should have added ‘and I knew that he was right’ seems (unless real Nestorians are meant; infra n. 328) impossible in view of the context and must be an interpolation. — Finally, the very fact that the rupture took place implies a previous communion; and this rupture, and consequently the preceding communion, concerned, not the Catholic Armenian Church of the Roman zone, which existed from 591 to 610/611 (supra at nn. 170-190), but the Monophysite Persarmenian Church of Moses, Vrt‘anēs, and Abraham (ibid. and at nn. 185-187). — Cf. J̌avaxišvili, Istorija 512-514.Google Scholar

²⁹⁷ Cf. supra nn. 171, 185. Vrt‘anēs the Grammarian seems to have been the author of an early work in defence of sacred images; Der Nersessian, S., Une apologie des images (n. 223 supra).Google Scholar

²⁹⁸ Moses of Curtavi was the author of several letters, recipient of several others, and is also mentioned in still other documents, preserved in the BL. For his diocese cf. infra § 40.Google Scholar

²⁹⁹ Moses of Curtavi to Vrt'anēs: mention of his verbal attacks and of the Iberian adherence to Chalcedon (BL 110); — II of Kyrion to Abraham: of the thirty-five Iberian bishops, Moses is alone in his views (BL 179); — I of Kyrion to Abraham: Kyrion's attempts to reason with Moses proved unsuccessful and the latter departed without appearing before the Katholikos when summoned (BL 167); — Moses of Curtavi to Vrt'anēs: he was expelled because of his attacks (BL 110); — but, the same to Smbat IV Bagratuni: he came to Tiflis, where Kyrion was staying, but was not received and left after nine days’ waiting, Kyrion having departed for Mc‘xet‘a (BL 172). — Cf. J̌avaxišvili, op. cit. 517-518.Google Scholar

³⁰⁰ Moses of Curtavi to Vrt'anēs (BL 133).Google Scholar

³⁰¹ Toumanoff, Iberia 201 n. 9.Google Scholar

³⁰² Ibid. 32-37.Google Scholar

³⁰³ Ibid. 37-46; cf. supra at n. 153.Google Scholar

³⁰⁴ Toumanoff, op. cit. 44-46.Google Scholar

³⁰⁵ Ibid. 199-202.Google Scholar

³⁰⁶ Supra n. 299.Google Scholar

³⁰⁷ Cf. supra § 25.Google Scholar

³⁰⁸ Three letters of Abraham to Kyrion (BL 164-165, 176-177, 180-184), all referring to the rejection of Chalcedon by the first Council of Dvin and the Iberian participation in it. Cf. supra at nn. 104-107.Google Scholar

³⁰⁹ Vrt'anēs to Kyrion (BL 134-135); II of Abraham to Kyrion (BL 176-177). — Kyrion's concurrence with the assertion of the Gregorian origin of Iberian Christianity seems to be an interpolation into Kyrion's letter II to Abraham (BL 178-179); cf. Tarchnišvili, Sources 47-49. The same concurrence in Kyrion's letter to Vrt‘anēs is not in the text preserved in the BL (171), but only in the work of Ps. Uxtanēs (95). For this assertion cf. Tarchnišvili 44. This tradition is possibly due to a confusion between real Iberia, with which the Gregorids had obviously nothing to do, and the Armeno-Iberian march of Gogarene, the princes of which were entitled ‘Vitaxae of Armenia’ (and variants) by the Iberians and ‘Vitaxae of Iberia’ (and variants) by the Armenians (cf. my Iberia 233-234). This province was under the suzerainty of the Armenian Crown at the moment of the conversion of Armenia (ibid. 232), so that it is most probable that it was evangelized either by St. Gregory himself or by his nephew of the same name, whom Armenian historiography represents as the first ‘Katholikos of Iberia and Albania’ (Tarchnišvili 44, 48-49). The documents of the Gregorian cycle already contain this tradition in its application to Iberia (Peeters, Débuts 233; Garitte, Documents 323 etc.). Although J̌avaxišvili has established, on the basis of the documents in the BL, the absolute equality of the two Katholikoi, of Eǰmiacin and of Mc‘xet‘a (Istorija 511, 530-534), the pretension that St. Gregory brought Christianity to Iberia implied eo ipso an Armenian claim to ecclesiastical overlordship over Iberia (J. Markwart, ‘Die Entstehung der armenischen Bistümer,’ Orientalia Christiana 26 [1932] 220-221), which we see come to fruition in the famous forgery purporting to be Pope St. Sylvester's grant to St. Gregory (cf. Tarchnišvili 45; supra n. 67).Google Scholar

³¹⁰ It reminds one of another child of the same parents — the idea of ‘Moscow the Third Rome.’Google Scholar

³¹¹ Vrt‘anēs to Kyrion (BL 138).Google Scholar

³¹² I of Abraham to Kyrion (BL 164-165); Smbat IV Bagratuni to Kyrion (BL 168-169); cf. supra at nn. 108-111.Google Scholar

³¹³ I and II of Kyrion to Abraham (BL 166-167, 178-179); cf. BL 140; Ps. Uxtanēs 95. There are considerable archaeological and liturgical data in favor of Kyrion's belief in the Hierosolymite origin, or early connections, of the Iberian Church; Tarchnišvili, Sources 49-50.Google Scholar

³¹⁴ II of Kyrion to Abraham (BL 178-179).Google Scholar

³¹⁵ Ibid. In the context ot the correspondence, Kyrion's conception of the faith of Jerusalem appears consonant with Isa. 2.3 (‘For the law shall come forth from Sion: and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem’); Tarchnišvili, op. cit. 48.Google Scholar

³¹⁶ II of Kyrion to Abraham (BL 178-179).Google Scholar

³¹⁷ I of Kyrion to Abraham (BL 166-167).Google Scholar

³¹⁸ Supra at nn. 181-191.Google Scholar

³¹⁹ Tarchnišvili, op. cit. 43-44, 46-49.Google Scholar

³²⁰ Cf. Jugie, Le schisme byzantin 37-38, 222-223.Google Scholar

³²¹ He is reported to have said ‘I will send this letter to Jerusalem, to the Patriarch of the city … he will give reply’; Moses of Curtavi to Vrt‘anēs (BL 140).Google Scholar

³²² Cf. infra at nn. 325-327.Google Scholar

³²³ Cf. supra n. 136. This letter (which is another instance of the Hierosolymite-Caucasian relations) contains the following passage: ‘And we, that is, the Holy Church, have the word of the Lord who said to Peter, chief of the Apostles: « Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. » And to the same Peter, He gave the keys of Heaven and earth. And, following his faith to this day, his disciples and the doctors of the Catholic Church bind and loose; they bind the wicked and loose from their bonds those who do penance; and this is pre-eminently true of his successors in the holy, principal, and venerable See, who are sane in the Faith and infallible according to the word of the Lord…’ Cf. also the Latin translation in Vardanian, A., ‘Der Johannes von Jerusalem Brief an den albanischen Katholikos Abas,’ Oriens Christianus N.S. 2 (1912) 70. This document is known to us in an Armenian translation.Google Scholar

³²⁴ St. Gregory I the Great, Reg. epist. MGH Ep. 1: 7.23; 2: 8.6, 11.28.Google Scholar

³²⁵ Ibid. 11.52. The variants of the names are: Quirio, Quiricho, Quiriaco, Quirigo and Hibernia, Iberia, Ibernia; ibid. p. 235 note.Google Scholar

³²⁶ Byzance avanl l'Islam (Paris 1951) 238–246. — The editor of the Reg. epist. (L. Hartmann, M.) is also of the opinion that Caucasian Iberia (Hiberia Pontica), and not Spain or Ireland, is meant here; MGH Ep. 2.324 note. Cf. also Akinean, Kiwrion 173-197.Google Scholar

³²⁷ Cf., e.g., Κνϱίνιος = Quirinius; Κνϱῖνος = Quirinus; ϰνϱῖται = Quirites; Κυϱίαϰος = Quiriacus, etc.Google Scholar

³²⁸ The question was whether it was necessary to re-baptize Nestorians reconciled with the Catholic Church. The presence of some Nestorians in Georgia seems to be indicated also in the documents of the BL. Letter II of Kyrion to Abraham tells of the latter's predecessor, Moses, as warning Kyrion against the Nestorians (BL 178). To be sure, the Monophysites referred to the Catholics as ‘Nestorians’ (supra nn. 97, 139), and it is in this sense that we must understand, e.g., Moses of Curtavi's letter (BL 173) where the bishop who replaced him is called ‘Nestorian’ and where Moses contemptuously says of him that he knows not only no Armenian, but even no Georgian. (J̌avaxišvili does not seem to realize this; he thinks that real Nestorians are always referred to, and, taking Moses’ taunt au pied de la lettre, supposes that bishop to have been a Syrian; Istorija 441-442, 244, 530. For the linguistic issue in connection with the Curtavi diocese cf. infra § 40.) On the other hand, Vrt‘anēs, writing to the Iberian Bishop Peter and to Kyrion (BL 136, 138), seems to distinguish between adherents of Chalcedon and Nestorians. At all events, the fact that Catholic Kyrion mentions Nestorians is proof enough that there was question of real Nestorians. Standing between the two extremes of Monophysitism and Nestorianism, Kyrion indeed represented the Catholic center,Google Scholar

³²⁹ Supra at n. 288,Google Scholar

³³⁰ Cf. Bréhier, Vie et mort de Byzance 47-48.Google Scholar

³³¹ Moses of Curtavi to Vrt'anēs (BL 110); the same to Smbat IV Bagratuni (BL 172); II of Kyrion to Abraham (BL 178); cf. J̌avaxišvili, Istorija 512-513. — For St. Susan (Šušanik), the martyred Princess of Gogarene, cf. supra n. 266. Since, after the fourth century, the Vitaxae of Gogarene were vassals of the Iberian Crown (my Iberia 232), their bishops depended on the chief Bishops and, subsequently, Katholikoi of Iberia.Google Scholar

³³² I of Kyrion to Abraham (BL 166-167): now he has placed a bishop who knows both languages, and the services are now in both. — II of Kyrion to Abraham (BL 178-179): the Iberian Bishops of Curtavi had to know Armenian. It is, however, nowhere mentioned in these documents that the Armenian Bishops knew Georgian; cf. J̌avaxišvili, op. cit. 527-530, 512.Google Scholar

³³³ I of Abraham to Kyrion (BL 164-165): Kyrion not only ‘expelled’ the Bishop of Curtavi (Moses), but even ‘abolished’ Armenian in the services; Smbat IV Bagratuni also wrote to remonstrate with Kyrion and Adarnase (BL 169), appealing to the blood ties that connected the aristocracies of the two countries: Moses, ex-Bishop of Curtavi, consoled himself with taunts directed against his successor (cf. supra n. 328). As can be seen from Kyrion's replies, there was hardly any cause for alarm (cf. the preceding note; J̌avaxišvili, loc. cit.). — The Armenians in Curtavi remained Monophysite (cf. their letter to Moses; BL 132; J̌avaxišvili, op. cit. 516-517) and also, undoubtedly, in the whole of Gogarene. Very probably they were more numerous than the Iberians in that province; and we find the Vitaxa Vahram-Aršuša III fighting on the Great King's side against Heraclius (cf. my Iberia 236).Google Scholar

³³⁴ In the course of the correspondence, both Katholikoi express their willingness to see each other (BL 168, 177). This vitiates Ps. Uxtanēs’ story of their meeting (115-117). For this and other inventions of that author cf. J̌avaxišvili, op. cit. 530-534.Google Scholar

³³⁵ The Encyclical Letter of Abraham (BL 189-195) states in conclusion: ‘The resolution of our first masters taken with regard to the Byzantines … we have now taken against the Iberians: not to have with them any communion, either in prayers, or in food, drink, friendship, bringing up children, not to go on pilgrimage to the Crosses of Mc‘xet‘a and of Manglisi and not to allow them in our churches, and to abstain altogether from entering into matrimony with them; it is possible only to buy from and sell to them, as with the Jews. This resolution shall apply also to the Albanians.’ For this rupture cf. Javaxišvili, op. cit.; Akinean, Kiwrion; Tournebize, Hist. pol. rel. 346 n. 1 (= 347-348); Arménie 304; ‘Abraham,’ DHGE 1 (1912) 163; Inglisian, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon II 373-375; Grousset, Hist. de l'Arm. 268. — Without the benefit of the correct chronology of the history and rulers of Iberia at this period (for which cf. my Iberia), all these works fail to appreciate the Iberian side of the event and its context with the political and religious history of the rest of Christendom. — The sources for the rupture, in addition to those in the dossier of the BU, are John Katholikos 10; Moses of Kaḷankatuk’ 3.49; Ps. Uxtanēs; and the passing note in Arsenius 319-320. — For the Albanians cf. the following note.Google Scholar

³³⁶ This excommunication of the Albanians by Abraham supports the evidence of Arsenius and Ananias of Mokk’(supra n. 192), who place the end of the Armeno-Albanian schism in the katholikate of Abraham's successor Komitas, as against other historians who place it already under Abraham. — Sebēos 33.198 makes mention of the presence of the Katholikoi of Iberia and Albania at the Council of the Royal Porte (614/616; supra at n. 193); they are represented as still adhering, together with many Armenian bishops of the Roman zone, to Chalcedon. The third year of Komitas, in which, according to Ananias of Mokk‘, Albania submitted to Armenia, was precisely the year 614. Sebēos, however, says nothing of the Albanian Katholikos’ conforming to Monophysitism, so that it is more likely that this happened after the Council. The Iberian Katholikos, who likewise did not conform, must have been Kyrion This, I. seems indicated in J̌uanšer's part of the HVG, where the next Katholikos after ‘Bartholomew’ is mentioned only under Adarnase I (627-630/4; cf. my Iberia 201-203); A 147 = M 197.Google Scholar

³³⁷ Inglisian, in Grillmeier-Bacht, Chalkedon II 383-387; Tournebize, Arménie 395: Hist. pol. rel. 388-395; Bréhier, ‘Le derniers Héraclides… (668-715)’ and ‘La vie de l’Église byzantine de Maurice à Constantin V,’ in Fliche-Martin, Hist. de l'Église V 203-204, 484-485. Despite Armenian aloofness, the comprehensiveness of the canons of the Council of 726, in which six Syrian Jacobite bishops took part, was such as to allow the affirmation of the Armeno-Jacobite doctrinal unity. The re-affirmed anti-Chalcedonism of the Katholikos John IV (718-729) was in part due to the anti-Byzantine implications of the Saracen policy of Smbat VI Bagratuni (Bréhier, loc. cit.), while the new attitude towards Monophysitism, represented by the same Katholikos and by Xosrovik the Translator, was a manifestation of what Fr. Inglisian has called ‘Armenian neo-Chalcedonism’ or Armenian parallel to neo-Chalcedonism (Inglisian, 399-412, 383-387). This new attitude was a far cry from that of the Council of 555. The five reunions, for all their lack of success, may have contributed to this change, but even more so the fact that, as the need to affirm Armenian distinctness from the Byzantines ceased, the similar need with regard to the Jacobites must have become more apparent.Google Scholar

³³⁸ In 1008, Eastern Georgia (Iberia) and Western Georgia (at first Colchis-Lazica; then independent of the Empire in the 790's as Abasgia; and subsequently Imeretia) were dynastically united to form the Kingdom of Georgia. Only after that event may one correctly speak of a ‘King of Georgia’ or ‘Church of Georgia however, the Katholikos continued officially to be styled ‘of Iberia’ (k'art'lisa kat'olikoz); cf. supra n. 254; for the Katholikoi of Abasgia, supra n. 148. — In the historical context, examined above, the unanimous Iberian rejection of Monophysitism under Kyrion I should not appear as unaccountable as it did to Fr. Akinean (Kiwrion 224).Google Scholar