NARSES OF LAMPRO, ARCHBISHOP. — Armenian archbishop of Tarsus in Cilicia, b. in 1153, d. 14 July 1198. His father Oschin II, lord of Lampron, belonged to the noblest family of Armenia. He was first a monk in the monastery of Sghevra, then in that of Sagheru on Mount Taurus. At the age of 23 or 24 he was created by Gregory IV Dehga archbishop of Tarsus.
Narses took an active part in the political and religious life of his time, contributed to the foundation of the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia and to the attempts at union with the Chalcedonians, which culminated in the union of the Armenian Church of Cilicia with that of Rome in 1198, a few months after Narses’ death. Earlier, following in the footsteps of his uncle, the catholicos Narses Glaiesen, Narses I, he took part in the Synod of Rom-Gla (1179) and was the driving force behind the Synod of Tarsus (1196-77); indeed, it was Narses who led the Armenian embassy to Byzantium in 1197. Yet at the same time Narses was suspected by not a few Armenians for his pro-Catholic stance, which led him to adopt some liturgical usages and dogmatic formulas of the Latins, becoming the most staunch supporter of Prince Leo II and of the catholicos Gregory VI Abirad in negotiations with Celestine III with a view to union. Narses is regarded as a saint in the Armenian Church and is the greatest Armenian theologian of the 12th century. He is said to have written about fifty books. There survive the Synodal Oration delivered at the Council of Tarsus (Italian trans. by G. B. Aucher, Venice 1812; others attribute it to the Council of Rom-Gla); the treatise On the Institution of the Church and on the Mystery of the Mass, published in Armenian (Venice 1847), of which E. Dulaurier publishes long summaries in Armenian and French in Recueil des histoires des Croisades, Documents arméniens (I, Paris 1869, pp. 569-603); the Collation of Documents on the Controversies with the Syrians and the Greeks, published in Armenian (Paris 1788, Constantinople 1825); Commentaries on the Psalms, on the books of Solomon and on the Minor Prophets, of which only the last was printed (ibid. 1826); and some homilies and letters published in Venice (1787). His breadth of mind, the completeness of his studies carried out in Byzantium, Antioch, Cyprus and on the Black Mountain, and above all the very circumstances in which he lived, led Narses to adopt a broad approach to dogmatic concessions in the field of Christological doctrines.