Note 121 — Chapter XVI · EDGMIATSIN AND THE ARMENIAN CHURCH

As time went on, several causes, which perhaps we may distinguish, contributed to widen further the breach with the Church of the Empire. The Persian occupation and the ultimate removal of the Arsakid dynasty, whose hereditary blood feud with the House of Sasan had long embittered the antagonism of the peoples, were no small factors in an estrangement from Greek influences which the policy of Persia lost no occasion of promoting. The invention by Mesrop of an Armenian alphabet,121 and the institution of a school of translators during the pontificate of the son of Nerses, Isaac the Great (c. 390–439), constitute elements which, while they worked for the attachment of the Armenians to Greek culture and for the wider propagation of Christianity, were yet calculated to foster the strong proclivities of this people towards complete religious independence. Lastly—if indeed there be an end to such a catalogue, in which each item is as much an effect as a cause—the peculiar genius of the Armenian nation imprinted a stamp upon the dogma of their Church which was not the stamp sanctioned by that of the Empire.