βØàôðæ

KAMURJ

Owing to the splendour of the services he had rendered, St. Grigor was naturally chosen to be the head of the Armenian Church. Raised to this dignity by the will of the king and of the nation, he received episcopal consecration at the hands of Leontius, archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, in the year 302. The event is attested by all historians of the period and by national tradition. But this consecration gave rise to a controversy with regard to its significance, and consequently, as to the nature of the hierarchic relation between the sees of Armenia and of Caesarea. According to the Greeks, the see of Armenia was suffragan to that of Caesarea, and the antagonism, which divided them in the fifth century, should be ascribed to a schism. According to the Latins, the see of Armenia, originally connected with that of Caesarea, was subsequently instituted as an autocephalic see through the licence of pope Sylvester I. Such is not the opinion of the Armenians, who believe that the see of Armenia is of apostolic creation, and that it has been independent since its origin. It is certain that it was but revived by St. Grigor, and the consecration, which he received at Caesarea, by no means indicated subordination, nor an hierarchic dependence.

Those who endeavour to make the see of Armenia suffragan to that of Armenia suffragan to that of Caesarea, take their stand on the hypothesis that the apostolic preaching in Armenia was nothing but a passing episode, which ended with the death of the apostles that the preaching of St. Grigor would not have taken place but by direction of the see of Caesarea that Christianity, in fact, was not established in Armenia, for the first time, until the fourth century. After what has already been said, it is not necessary to recapitulate the evidences of the positive existence of Christianity in Armenia before the time of St. Grigor.

As to the supposed licence granted by Sylvester, it rests on no more than an apocryphal document, which was fabricated by the Armenians at the time of the Crusades. The object of that document was to protect the independence of the see of Armenia without offending the amour propre of the papacy, and at the same time to invoke the aid of the Crusaders in the interests of their kingdom in Cilicia. Moreover, all historical, chronological, critical, and philological information at our disposal unite in declaring the spuriousness of this document, which no longer finds a defender. The independence of the see of Armenia from the very beginning, which has never ceased to be maintained by the patriarchs and writers of the Armenian Church, is superabundantly confirmed by other facts and incidents.

It is well known that the system of jurisdiction and the mutual dependence of patriarchs and of metropolitans in the Roman Empire was modelled on the civil organisation of prefects and of pro-consuls. The two institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, were in exact juxtaposition. Conse quently, those regions, which happened not to form an integral part of the empire, remained outside the organisation of the patriarchates which were there established. It was thus that the independent sees of Armenia, of Persia, and of Ethiopia came into being outside the empire.

It is true that the existence of the provinces of First Armenia (Sebaste) and of Second Armenia (Melitene), within the limits of the jurisdiction of the exarchate of Pontus (Caesarea), could frequently have given rise to a confusion of names for these two provinces have been confounded with Armenia Major and Armenia Minor. If we were to compare the Statement of the patriarchates with the Lists of civil provinces, this mistake would be clearly seen.

At no period has the see of Caesarea, nor that of Antioch or Constantinople, exercised any authority or jurisdiction in Armenia properly so called and all that is to be found in this connection in the letters of St. Basil of Caesarea relates ex clusively to the bishoprics of Nicopolis, of Satala, etc., which were situated within the limits of the First and Second Armenias, and which were de pendent on the exarchate of Pontus.

Moreover, the history of the ecclesiastical re lations between the chief sees at the beginning of the fourth century and before the Council of Nicaea in 325, if carefully studied, will be found to contain nothing to induce us to presume the intervention of one see in the affairs of another; and that is not surprising for each ecclesiastical district had its limits strictly confined to that of the political district, on the model of which it was constituted.

Besides, we do not find in the history of the fourth and fifth centuries that any alteration had occurred in the relations between the sees of Armenia and of Caesarea. This absence of evidence justifies us in concluding that the same system of independence had not ceased to be the governing principle of this Church since her institution.

In fact, all that the advocates of a contrary view have been able to formulate up to the present amounts to pure hypothesis. Their views are based on a state of things which never existed in the century of which we are speaking, but were rather the outcome of later centuries. During the Byzantine domination in Armenia, and later, under the influence of the Crusades, incidents of an indistinct and questionable nature may have affected the relations of different sees but those incidents could have had no retrospective action, nor could they have altered the issues of earlier centuries.

Therefore, the consecration of St. Grigor by the archbishop of Caesarea must be ascribed to circumstances of a casual nature, perhaps even to a personal desire on the part of St. Grigor, who bad received his education in Caesarea. It should not be used as an argument from which we are to infer a system of hierarchic relationship.