Note 57 — Chapter XVI · EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

These stories were perhaps invented at a comparatively late period. We are on surer ground when we surmise that Christianity was professed in Armenia long anterior to the miraculous cure of King Tiridates and his conversion by St. Gregory. Indeed it would be strange if such had failed to be the case. The interposition of one vast desert between the Holy Land and Armenia is a comparatively modern geographical fact. It is due entirely to bad government. In the first century the two countries were united by a long string of cities, the populous capitals of the low-lying districts. From such centres as Edessa and Nisibis the religion was carried into the border ranges, and over the passes to the plains of the tableland. There the first regions designated by Nature to receive the new culture were situated in the fertile country about the shores of Lake Van, and further east around the margin of Lake Urmi. As early as the middle of the third century we hear of an Armenian bishop, whose name, that of Merujan, would naturally connect him with the great Artsruni family, which possessed extensive territories in the neighbourhood of Van and subsequently furnished to that country a line of mediæval kings.57 It is also probable that the Archelaus, in whose mouth is placed a disputation with Mani towards the close of the same century (c. A.D. 275–277), was bishop of a see not far removed from Van.58 These early ecclesiastics would almost certainly have made use of the Syriac character, and it is more than likely that many among them were Syrians. Their activity and the circle of their disciples may not have extended to Northern Armenia; although there is presumptive evidence to show that the Christianity of Albania (Eastern Caucasus or Daghestan) and Siunik (country around Lake Gökcheh and part of Karabagh) dated back to pre-Gregorian times.59 It seems at first sight strange that the earliest historians, such as Agathangelus and Faustus, maintain silence upon this older Christianity of their native land; but the edict of Tiridates against the enemies of paganism, preserved in the earliest source of the first of these works, implies the existence of Christians within the limits of his dominions whom the king persecutes after the example of his colleagues at Rome; and the luminous argument of one of the latest scholars in this field carries conviction that the priestly compiler Agathangelus and the monk Faustus had good reasons to ignore this pre-Gregorian Christianity, as being opposed to the character of the later orthodoxy.60 The big gap left by Armenian writers between the preaching of the apostles and the advent of St. Gregory in narrating the religious history of their country is in itself a suspicious fact; Armenian vanity was satisfied by the connection of their ancestors with the first disciples, and would not be wounded by a temporary relapse; but the laborious methods of modern research are year by year illuminating the interval, and removing the shroud which is perhaps due to ecclesiastical prejudice or fraud.