Материал: Payaslian S., The History of Armenia From the Origins to the Present

in the second half of the third century and ruled Armenia from 180 to 428 (with a brief interruption between 252 and 278/9). The Sasanians controlled Persia thereafter until 651.

Trdat II (r. ca. 216/217–252), the first Arshakuni king raised in Armenia, expected to manage his domestic and foreign affairs free of external interventions. The Parthian empire had collapsed, and Rome appeared to favor his government. The Sasanians, however, pursued a far more hostile policy toward Rome than their predecessors. Faced with this threat and in the absence of Arshakuni support from Persia, Trdat II requested protection from Rome, but to no avail.29 The Sasanians, determined to create their own empire, constantly engaged in wars with their neighbors. Intensely opposed to the West and Greco-Roman cultural and political influences in the region, King Shapur I (r. 240–271) sought to impose Persian Zoroastrianism at home and abroad, launched massive military campaigns to expand his imperial domain, and eventually defeated the Roman army in the Middle East, scoring a major military victory particularly at the Battle of Massice (or Anbar) in 244. He subsequently captured the great cities of Antioch and Caesarea before his death in 271. One of his sons, Hurmazd I (Hormizd), succeeded him as the Sasanian king at Ctesiphon, while another son, Narseh, having deposed Trdat II, much to Rome’s chagrin, ruled as the king of Armenia until 293.30

The Roman emperor Aurelian (r. 270–275) challenged Sasanian power. Their struggle was resolved in 278, when the emperor Probus (r. 276–282) and Narseh agreed to partition Armenia. Rome successfully installed the pro-Roman Khosrov II to rule the western or Roman provinces of Armenia, but the Sasanians orchestrated his assassination in 287 and removed the pro-Roman nakharars from power. Their meddling in Armenian affairs notwithstanding, the Sasanian government failed to exercise direct rule in Armenia at this time, particularly after 293, when Narseh left Armenia to assume the Persian throne.31 Internal crises in Ctesiphon briefly permitted the Roman military to strengthen its hold on geostrategic regions in Armenia and the Middle East. No sooner had Rome installed Trdat III on the Armenian throne than Narseh, having consolidated power against his opposition at home, launched a sustained offensive in 296–297 against Armenia and Rome and removed Trdat III from power. Trdat IV, one of Khosrov II’s sons, who had sought refuge with the Roman army, in cooperation with a Roman army contingent led by Galerius, routed Narseh’s troops from Armenia. The Emperor Diocletian’s army imposed the Peace of Nisibis (Mtsbin) on Narseh in 297 and placed Trdat IV on the Armenian throne in 298/9. Under the terms of this treaty, the Sasanians recognized the autonomy of Armenia under Roman suzerainty. The treaty also placed the former Persian satrapies under Roman directorate as civitates feoderatae liberae et immunes (free

territories) and required their loyalty in matters of imperial foreign policy. The treaty also pushed the border of the Roman East across northern Mesopotamia and to the southern shores of Lake Van to secure for Roman merchants the trade routes in the region.32 The Sasanians hated the humiliating treaty, but neither Narseh nor his successor, Hormizd II (r. 302–309), could rectify the situation. Shapur II, who ascended to the throne in 309 at a very young age, did not inspire much confidence. During the course of the next twenty years, Shapur concentrated his energies at home and normalized relations with Rome rather than risk defeat in military adventures. The rise of Roman emperor Constantine to power radically altered the relations between the two empires.

THE ADOPTION OF CHRISTIANITY AND

THE ARMENIAN ALPHABET

The accession of Trdat IV the Great to the Armenian throne in 298 or 299 followed tortuous events as Rome and Sasanian Persia competed for power.33 Upon recognition of the Armenian king, Narseh returned the Armenian cities under his jurisdiction, including Tigranakert, and Trdat established his capital at Vagharshapat. The ensuing brief period of political stability enabled Trdat to consolidate Greater Armenia as a single political entity. In matters of domestic policies, he sought greater administrative centralization to strengthen the monarchy and reorganized the territorial jurisdictions of local governors, with the aim of promoting commerce and military security in relations with the Roman and PersianSasanian empires. Land surveys were conducted for purposes of taxation, and the information was compiled in Ashkharagir madiank (geographic records). In the meantime, as discussed below, Trdat and his supporters experimented with a new approach in the governance of Armenia34 and opted for a complete political and cultural disengagement from the Sasanian empire. The next hundred years of Arshakuni rule witnessed a cultural metamorphosis.

One of the most significant changes introduced by Trdat the Great was the acceptance of Christianity as a state religion. The conventional narrative depicting the Armenian conversion to Christianity is mixed with facts and myths. As historian Leo (Arakel Babakhanian) has pointed out, the historiography of the Armenian people is replete with literature on the conversion to Christianity, but there is little credible material on the subject. A detailed discussion of the legendary aspects of the conversion is beyond the purview of this chapter. Suffice it to note that according to the conventional view, two apostles, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, journeyed to Edessa and Armenia to disseminate the new religion. Two centuries

later, this view holds, Grigor Lusavorich (Gregory the Illuminator), the first supreme patriarch of the Armenian Church, carried out extensive work to further spread Christianity among the people and the nobility. After initial opposition, Trdat the Great, who is said to have owed his recovery from a near-fatal illness to a miracle, declared Christianity as the state religion and established the Armenian Apostolic Church.35

The historical reality, of course, was far more complex than the quasimythological narrative. Christianity had first spread to Syria and then into Cappadocia in Asia Minor. The new religion thus entered Greater Armenia from two directions. In the south, it was first established as a formal religion in Mtsbin in Mesopotamia and farther west with its center at Edessa (Urfa), the capital of the Osreone kingdom. As a large Armenian population resided in both cities, it is likely that they had converted to Christianity long before it reached the Armenian centers of Van and Artashat. The first king to accept Christianity was Abgar IX Ukama at Edessa in the second century. Assyrian priests, among them Bardatsan of Edessa, were instrumental in the spread of Christianity in Armenia; they and their Armenian supporters founded new schools to teach and preach the religion. Christianity continued to make inroads on the bordering areas from the region of Bitlis (Baghesh) and Mush (Taron) located west of Lake Van through the southern shores of the lake and to Van. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, an Armenian bishopric was established in the region of Van under Bishop Mehruzhan, who was most likely associated with the Artsruni house. This southern Armenian form of Christianity was oriented more toward the masses, espoused more democratic ecclesiastical principles and communal philosophy, and was therefore less amenable to rigid institutional hierarchy.36

Whether in time this southern variant of Armenian Christianity would have evolved into the rigidly hierarchical church that the Armenian Church eventually became is subject for debate, but it was the western, GrecoRoman form of Christianity, which entered Armenia by way of Cappadocia, that superseded the southern church and established its ecclesiastical hegemony in Armenia. This movement was led by Grigor Lusavorich, a member of the Armenian nobility of Parthian origin and educated at a Greek Christian school in Cappadocia. He is believed to have possessed considerable organizational skills, which along with his enormous wealth and political power enabled him and his supporters to suppress and surpass the Edessa-based Christian movement in southern Armenia. At his urging, Trdat IV converted to Christianity and officially declared it a state religion in 301 (or 314), a process that was highly politicized and polarized Armenian society as it inflamed profound hostilities at home and in foreign affairs.37

Two principal factors possibly contributed to the conversion. The first involved Armenian foreign policy objectives and the determination on the

part of the Armenian government, now relying on Roman protectorate support, to establish a renewed Arshakuni dynastic rule independently of the Sasanian regime. The Armenian leaders had to consider the political repercussions of adopting Christianity as state religion. The Sasanians under Hormizd II and his successor, Shapur II, perceived the conversion to be a direct threat to their domestic and geopolitical interests. Significantly, despite his initial hostility to the Christian movements within his domain, the Roman emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) consented to Christianity in Armenia at the time as a demonstration of opposition to the Sasanians, given Trdat’s loyalty to him. So long as the Armenian leadership continued its anti-Sasanian policy as expressed in military arrangements and in religious matters, Rome—regardless of doctrinal complications the conversion created—continued to tolerate Armenian “independent” posturing vis-à-vis Persia.38

The conversion to Christianity also involved domestic considerations. As a monotheistic religion, Christianity provided the philosophical or ideological foundations for the centralization and strengthening of the monarchy, placing the king, as the only deputy of a single God, at the apex of the sociopolitical hierarchy. Trdat the Great and his supporters utilized the transition from polytheistic to monotheistic religious order to achieve greater political and economic power and centralization.39 Trdat sought to advance the new religion but also to destroy the temple complexes, the old pantheistic pagan traditions, and the wealth associated with the temple economies, so as to check the chronic centrifugal tendencies among some of the nakharar houses scrambling for power and wealth. By eliminating the pagan temples, Trdat sought to create new loyalties to his regime based on the new ideology and its institutions. Those loyal would accept the new religion and recognize the new religious order and hierarchy sanctioned by the state; those rejecting Christianity would lose their privileges. The destruction of the pagan temples therefore represented more than the mere physical removal of old institutions from the Armenian culture; it also meant the destruction of the economies and of the elites associated with those economies, now replaced by supporters of Trdat the Great.

The government lent its unequivocal support for the newly emerging ecclesiastical organization, the church. Trdat granted Grigor Lusavorich vast territories encompassing as many as fifteen provinces, the equivalent of a kingdom. The adoption of Christianity as official policy enabled the church firmly to establish its powerful institutions in Armenia. Grigor Lusavorich led the effort to Christianize Armenian pagan traditions and relied on education and the military. He established schools to train the children of the krmapet (high priest) families for Christian priesthood but also as a military force in cooperation with the government to destroy the ancient pagan temples and the social, cultural,

and economic organizational life sustaining them. He and his supporters pillaged and plundered the pagan temples and communities and carried off the loot—gold and silver—to finance the construction of churches and schools. He also confiscated the estates owned by the pagan temple economies. While Armenian pagan traditions were never completely eradicated, the Armenian state and the church cooperated to impose Christianity throughout the country. Churches replaced old pagan shrines in Ani and Vagharshapat; in the latter, the temple of Anahit was replaced by the Cathedral of Holy Echmiadzin, the Mother See of the Armenian Apostolic Church, with its catholicos as the supreme patriarch. Echmiadzin may be translated as the site where the only Begotten Son descended.40

The emerging church and its institutional hierarchy paralleled the existing socioeconomic hierarchy with its own feudatory estates and slaves. The office of the catholicos remained hereditary for some time, as initiated under the family of Grigor Lusavorich. Similar to the nakharar families and their pagan traditions, he established the catholicosate as a hereditary institution, which further strengthened his control over the church hierarchy as a dynasty. The bishopric functioned as a representative of the ecclesiastical landowning nakharardom. Bishops were appointed from among the nakharar clans, and the lower clergy from the azats. The church eventually prohibited the clergy from marrying but permitted eunuchs to enter service as celibate clergy.41

The conversion to Christianity also introduced reforms in matters of familial relations and marriage, although it did not fundamentally change the androcentric, patriarchal customs and norms. The Armenian Church, with the full support of the monarchy, formalized the institution of marriage and required that husband and wife legalize their union by vows adhering to the Christian doctrine. It also expressly prohibited the clergy from officiating at secret weddings. The church dictated that a person marry outside the immediate family, although it permitted a widow to marry with her brother-in- law. It found unacceptable the pre-Christian practices of polygamy and marriage within the family, a custom that had enabled the nakharar houses to hold on to their inheritances. When opposition to the church increased, the Council of Ashtashat in 365, under the auspices of Catholicos Nerses I Partev, condemned those nakharar houses that insisted on continuing pagan practices. For their part, the anti-Christian nakharar families refused to acknowledge the authority of the church in matters of family and finances and ignored the Ashtashat decision. Determined to strengthen its position in society, years later, in 447, at the Council of Shahapivan, the church approved several resolutions regarding the responsibilities of the higher clergy and the family. With respect to relations between husband and wife, the Shahapivan edict reaffirmed the legitimacy of patriarchal dominance at home by providing that the bride money paid by the husband to her parents granted him the right to exercise control over her.42 Such edicts passed by the