Note 82 — Chapter XVI · EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

It is not unlikely that the mind of the monarch was influenced by some occurrence of the nature deducible from the mangled narrative of the original biographer. Tiridates was a full-blooded heathen, prone to all forms of superstition, and free from any taint of rationalising tendencies. Yet we may suspect that the number and power of the Armenian Christians prior to his conversion loomed much larger in the consciousness of himself and of his contemporaries than we are led to suppose by Armenian histories. Was he desirous of finding a counterpoise to the Mazdaism of his Persian enemy, which had been elevated by the Sasanians into a strongly organised State religion and identified with the throne? Was he impressed with the cohesion of the Christians among themselves, and by the contrast thus offered to the fissiparous tendencies of his feudal polity? Was the widow in the castle of Artaxata a Christian, and was the old authority of the prisoner in the king’s counsels exploited by her co-religionists at an opportune moment, when his wisdom should appear restored, as by a miracle, to a necessitous land? If such questions be mere matters of surmise, we at least know that at the date of the conversion the Roman Empire was hesitating in a policy towards the Christians, and that the repressive measures of a Valerian were no longer in repute.82 The Armenian king became a convert before their revival under Diocletian (284–305); and Christianity was adopted as the religion of the State in Armenia some thirty years prior to its triumph in the West by the decisive action of the Milvian Bridge (312), and over a hundred years before the edicts of Theodosius the First against the practice of paganism.83