Note 8 — Chapter V · FROM VAN TO BITLIS

How one regretted the society of the well-read monks of Edgmiatsin, from which community and spiritual government this monastery became dissociated during the religious quarrels of the twelfth century.8 We walked to the cloister on the south side of the church; the low mud wall joins the outer wall of the narthex on the west, and is produced so as to form a court. There is nothing interesting in the residence of the monks or in the apartments of the Katholikos. But the edifice which they face is indeed a remarkable monument and, so far as my experience extends, unique. Its dimensions are not large: a length of 48 feet 6 inches and a breadth of 38 feet (interior measurements). The characteristics which impress the eye, accustomed to the beauties of Armenian architecture, are the height of the composition with its lofty walls and central tower, and the elaborate mural decorations. As usual, the effect is marred by the additions of a later age. On the south side a belfry and portico, giving entrance to the interior, are due to the misplaced piety of a katholikos of the eighteenth century; and the same personage contributed the spacious narthex or pronaos which adjoins the church upon the west.9 The eye is obliged to remove these later excrescences before it is enabled to seize the merits of the design. My reader will recognise the first of these features in the illustration taken from the south-east (Fig. 141). The companion picture from the north-west corner exhibits the low narthex coming forward beyond the side of the church (Fig. 142).