Note 62 — Chapter XVI · EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

Traces of adoptionism are to be found in the teaching of St. Gregory himself and in the early institutions of the Armenian State Church. We must regret that what is probably the earliest source for our knowledge of that teaching has not yet been translated into one of our Western tongues.62 In one passage the saint instructs us that the Spirit, coming down at the Baptism, gave to Jesus the glory which became His. John the Baptist is represented as the depositary of the Divine favours conferred of old upon Israel; and it was he who conferred these favours—priesthood, prophecy and kingship—upon our Lord Jesus Christ.63 It is, I think, scarcely fair to argue from such passages that the Christianity of Gregory was, as a whole, of an adoptionist type. But it is interesting to remember in this connection that the Armenians celebrate the birth and the baptism of Christ upon one and the same day, the 6th of January. And we may perhaps be surprised to read that in the canons of St. Sahak, one of the pillars of the early State Church (390–439), the feast of the birth of Christ is not included in the list of festivals which are formulated in some detail.64 We know that St. Gregory himself brought to Armenia with great pomp certain relics of St. John the Baptist; and the number of monasteries in Armenia which are dedicated to the hermit on the Jordan testify to the peculiar veneration in which he has been held. But the influence of orthodoxy in the West must early have restrained these adoptionist tendencies; and it is not improbable that they became identified with that stubborn heresy of their native land which is often mentioned and deplored by Armenian writers.65 There are reasons for supposing that the Messalianism (meteslenuthium) against which is directed a cruel canon of the Armenian Council of Shahapivan, convened in about the middle of the fifth century, was in effect a manifestation of this native heresy, and was identical with the Paulicianism which was specifically stigmatised by a canon of the Council held in Dvin (valley of the Araxes) in the year 719. The first of these synods enacted that priests convicted of Messalianism should be branded on the forehead with the figure of a fox. This particular punishment was the same which was meted out to the Paulicians of Armenia during the persecutions of the eleventh century. The Council of Dvin forbade all intercourse with members of this sect under pain of heavy punishments. The pontiff of the day, John the Philosopher, composed a tract against them, in which he speaks of them as dregs of the incestuous flock of the Paulicians, and informs us that they had been placed under a ban by Nerses Katholikos, under which name he is probably alluding to Nerses III. (640–661).66 He represents them as joining hands with certain refugees from the Albanian Church (Eastern Caucasus) who were opposed to the use of images. There is at least a family resemblance between these sectaries of the eighth century and those who, under the name of Thonraki (Thonraketzi), suffered persecution in the tenth and eleventh centuries at the hands of the Armenian State Church. Their fiercest adversary, Gregory Magistros, who in the middle of the eleventh century carried fire and sword into their mountain retreats, alludes to them as having imbibed the poison of Paul of Samosata, and adds the important statement that their proximate founder was one Sembat, and that for 170 years they had been continuously admonished and anathematised by successive patriarchs and bishops of Armenia as well as of Albania.67 Their seats in Armenia were in the radial mountain mass of the Ala Dagh (Thonrak), in Sasun, south of Mush, and in the neighbourhood of Khinis, whence were derived the band who were the object of perhaps the latest persecution, that of 1837–45. It was on this occasion that the documentary proof of their professions was wrested from them and taken to Edgmiatsin. It is the book entitled the Key of Truth. The plain of Khinis contained members of this sect into quite recent times; but they suffered severely owing to the customary powers possessed by the heads of the Gregorian community in Turkey to inflict corporal punishment upon members of their own flock. The sectaries were not recognised by the Government as an independent religion. Not many years ago the remnant came over to the American missionaries and embraced the Protestant faith.