ETCHMIADZIN. - Armenian patriarchal see. Etymologically it means "Descent of the Only-Begotten," a name owed to the legend of a vision attributed to St. Gregory the Illuminator, who is said to have seen Christ descending near the village of Valaršapat, in the province of Ajrarat, 20 km west of the present-day city of Erivan, and to have marked with a golden hammer the site corresponding to the martyrdom of the holy Hriphsimian virgins, where the first Armenian cathedral church was to be erected.
Historically, however, the first Armenian cathedral, the Katholik, with the seat of the first katholikoi, is to be sought for a century and a half at Aštišat, in the province of Taran, much further west than Valaršapat. Here, instead, there was only the bishop of the Armenian court, who during the struggles between the authentic Katholikós and the Armenian king sometimes unlawfully replaced the katholikós.
The narrative of this vision, handed down from the History of Agathangelos (ed. Venice 1862, chaps. 102, 120), is posthumous and betrays the compiler's concern to justify the Armenian autocephaly, which occurred in the second half of the 5th century as a result of the new political circumstances of Armenia, and perhaps to lend value to the transfer of the see made from Aštišat to the province of Ajrarat and precisely to Dwin (465 or 484), residence of the Persian and later Arab satraps southeast of Valaršapat.
The Armenian katholikosate, after a residence of three and a half centuries at Dwin, followed the emigratory movement of the Armenian people pressed by the barbarian hordes of greater Asia, changing far more than seven places before establishing itself, with Gregory VII of Anarzapa, definitively in the capital of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, Sis (1294).
After the fall of the Kingdom of Cilicia (1375), part of the Armenian people headed toward Europe, part dispersed throughout Asia Minor; Cilicia remained impoverished, and these consequences were suffered also by the Armenian patriarchal see. The undue interference of the infidel rulers increased its decline, which made the eastern bishops envision the long-coveted idea of transferring the see of St. Gregory to E., near the village of Valaršapat.
The promoter of this was Thomas Vardapet Medsophesi. His personal motives, ardently propagated in the East, also gave this initiative, good in itself, a secessionist orientation with regard to Rome.
The historic name of Valaršapat, with its charm as the cradle of Armenian Christianity, gave strength to Thomas's campaign. When Gregory IX katholikós, already resident at Sis, declined the invitation to move to E., an elective synod was convoked there; a certain anchorite of the monastery of Khor-Virap, by name Kirakos, was elected katholikós in the see of E., on 19 December 1441. The synod was composed, besides the katholikós of the Aluani, of 13 eastern bishops, including those four of the principal sees, whose presence, according to the persuasion that had prevailed for centuries, was deemed indispensable for the canonicity of the elections of the katholikoi. Many vardapets, ogumeni and magnates were present; another 11 eastern bishops, detained by the infidels, and the katholikós of Althamar adhered to it.
Kirakos's first act was to invite the nation to concord, and for this reason he lifted the excommunication that had weighed on Althamar for centuries. Nevertheless Gregory IX continued to exercise his own jurisdiction at Sis, regarding E. as an anti-see. Antagonisms between the two sees were not lacking. The transfer to E., although devoid of canonical support, increased the influence of this see through the centuries, because it succeeded in polarizing around itself the majority of the Armenian episcopal sees, and in finally imposing itself as the see of the supreme katholikós of all the Armenians scattered throughout the world, even over the katholikoi of Sis. The very frequent relations with the Holy See in the 16th-17th centuries obtained for E. a tacit universal recognition, while Sis remained of secondary rank.
E. from 1441 to today has seen 42 katholikoi. Of the 100 eparchies, between episcopal sees and monastic ordinariates, that were counted up to the pre-war period of 1914-18, only 15 were under the immediate obedience of Sis, 4 of Jerusalem, 3 of Althamar, while fully 70 eparchies obeyed E. directly. After the great Armenian massacres of 1915, and after the sovietization of the small Armenian republic of Transcaucasia, the 100 dissident Armenian eparchies are reduced to little more than a dozen, scattered throughout the world, which continue to look to the see of E. as their religious center, more symbolic than real.
Bibliography7 works
Garabed Amaduni