Note (1) — 63.—Of the religion of the Armenians.

(1.) “when Saint Silvester was Pope at Rome.”—The Armenian Church teaches that St. Thaddeus, one of the seventy-two disciples of our Lord, and St. Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, were the first to preach the gospel in Armenia; but the actual conversion of the Armenians to Christianity was not effected until the reign of Tiridates in the 4th century, by St. Gregory, thenceforth named Lousarovitch—the Enlightener. He was the son of a prince of Parthia, the assassin of Chosroes, king of Armenia, who, though not a kinsman of Gregory, belonged to the race of the Arsacidæ of Parthian origin; St. Gregory’s own ancestors, the Surenians, being also a branch of the same royal race. St. Gregory was, therefore, indeed a kinsman of Tiridates, who was the son of Chosroes.