The ruins of Ani to this day attest the magnificence and antiquity of former dynasties which long since reigned and passed away in the highlands of Armenia. In the time of Cyrus, according to Moses of Chorene, the historian of that country in the sixteenth century, Greek statues of Jupiter, Artemis (Diana), Minerva, HephÆstion, and Venus, were brought to Ani and placed in the citadel of that town. Here the treasures and the sepulchres of the ancient kings were preserved in a fortress deemed by them impregnable. I will not pause to disentangle the records of Armenia before the time of our Savior, for even during the life of our Lord the annals of Armenia become remarkably interesting as connected with his holy faith, and the rise and progress of Christianity in the countries immediately adjoining the sacred soil of Palestine. Abgarus, king of Edessa, and sovereign of great part of Armenia, with the adjoining countries, is said by Eusebius, bishop of CÆsarea, the early historian of the Church, who flourished in the fourth century, to have written a letter to our Savior, requesting him to repair to his court and to cure him of a disease under which he labored. The following is a translation of the letter which Abgarus is said to have written to our Lord:

“Abgarus, King of Edessa, to Jesus the good Savior, who appeareth at Jerusalem, greeting:

“I have been informed concerning thee and thy cures, which are performed without the use of medicines or of herbs.

“For it is reported that thou dost cause the blind to see, the lame to walk, that thou dost cleanse the lepers, and dost cast out unclean spirits and devils, and dost restore to health those who have been long diseased, and also that thou dost raise the dead.

“All which when I heard I was persuaded of one of these two things:

“Either that thou art God himself descended from heaven;

“Or that thou art the Son of God.

“On this account, therefore, I have written unto thee, earnestly desiring that thou wouldst trouble thyself to take a journey hither, and that thou wilt also cure me of the disease under which I suffer.

“For I fear that the Jews hold thee in derision, and intend to do thee harm.

“My city is indeed small, but it is sufficient to contain us both.”

In the history of Moses of Chorene, this letter begins with the words “Abgar, the son of Archam,” but the substance of it is the same as the above, which is taken from the pages of Eusebius, who lived a century earlier than Moses of Chorene. This author ascribes the answer to St. Thomas the Apostle, who was deputed to write an answer to the above in these words:

“Happy art thou, O Abgarus, forasmuch as thou hast believed in me whom thou hast not seen.

“For it is written concerning me, that those who have seen me have not believed on me, that those who have not seen me might believe and live.

“As to that part of thine epistle which relates to my visiting thee, I must inform thee that I must fulfill the ends of my mission in this land, and after that be received up again unto Him that sent me; but after my ascension I will send one of my disciples, who will cure thy disease, and give life unto thee and all that are with thee.”

These two letters are generally considered to be forgeries, although they are mentioned by some of the earliest historians of the Church.

Some years ago I was informed, while at Alexandria, that a papyrus had been discovered in Upper Egypt, in an ancient tomb; it was inclosed in a coarse earthenware vase, and it contained the letter from Abgarus to our Savior, written either in Coptic or uncial Greek characters. The answer of St. Thomas was said not to be with it. I was told that the manuscript afterward came into the possession of the King of Holland, but I have no means at present of ascertaining the truth of the story, or the antiquity of the papyrus of which it forms the subject.

The seeds of the Christian faith were sown in Armenia by the apostles St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas. According to Tertullian (adv. JudÆos, c. 7), a Christian Church flourished there in the second century. St. Blaise and other bishops suffered martyrdom in different parts of Armenia during the persecution of Diocletian, about the year 310.

To St. Gregory, the Illuminator, is due the honor of having established Christianity in this region, and he is known by the title of the Apostle of Armenia. Toward the middle of the third century, having been himself a convert from Paganism, he first preached the doctrines of our Lord among the mountains of his native land. He had received his education at CÆsarea in Cappadocia, where he was baptized. The zeal with which he was animated gave irresistible force to his words, and the people flocked to him in great multitudes, and were baptized by his hands. The King Tiridates, a violent persecutor of the Christians, touched by the piety and virtues of St. Gregory, embraced the Christian faith, and, with his queen and his sister, received the sacrament of baptism in the 16th year of his reign, A.D. 274, and became the first Christian King of Armenia. St. Gregory was consecrated bishop by St. Leontius, Bishop of CÆsarea, in Cappadocia, and continued his labors in propagating the faith all over Armenia, Georgia, and the nations living on the borders of the Caspian Sea. From this circumstance it became the custom for the Primate of Armenia to receive his consecration from the Archbishop of CÆsarea, which continued to be the practice for several centuries. St. Gregory died in the year 336, in a cave to which he had retired, desiring to end his days as an anchorite, according to a custom much observed in the fourth century.

In those disturbed and unsettled times, the religion of our Savior alternately rose and prospered, or was oppressed by the persecutions of various governors under the Emperors of Rome. Numerous heresies distracted the minds of the priesthood, and confused the doctrines of the Armenian Church. About the year 390 rose the most celebrated man in the history of this country: his name was Mesrob Maschdots. This personage was born in the town of Hatsegatz-Avan, in the province of Daron: he had been secretary to the Patriarch Narses, and to the Prince Varastad, who was dethroned by the Romans in the year 382. In the year 390, in conjunction with the Armenian Patriarch Sahag, he occupied himself in the extinction of the idolatry which still prevailed, and was the first person who arranged the forms of the Armenian liturgy. Before this time the Armenian language had no written character; the inhabitants of the eastern districts used the Persian alphabet, while those of the west wrote in the Syriac character. Mesrob either restored the ancient Armenian letters according to the historian Moses of Chorene, who gives a long miraculous account of the event, or he invented an entirely new alphabet—a solitary instance, I believe, of such an undertaking having been accomplished by one man. The present Armenian letters were adopted by the commands of Bahram Schahpoor over the whole of that country in the year 406. The first complete version of the Bible was now arranged and promulgated by Mesrob, and written on parchment in his new characters; numerous copies of it were distributed to the churches and monasteries of Armenia, and the important circumstance of their being now able to read the Holy Scriptures in their own language tended to preserve their faith, and to unite them as a nation during the continual troubles and adversities which they have suffered ever since. This great benefactor to his country died in the year 441.

The Armenian hierarchy had till now been a branch of the Greek Church, but, unable to read their liturgy, troubled with diversities of opinion, and oppressed first by one neighboring tyrant and then by another, this helpless nation finally settled down into the heresy of Eutyches, and, under the guidance of their patriarch, separated themselves from the Church of Constantinople. They believe that the body of our Savior was created, or else existed without creation, a divine and incorruptible substance, not subject to the infirmities of the flesh. This schism took place about the year 535.

The Armenian era commences in the year 552, from which epoch their manuscripts and calendar are dated. The custom continues to the present day. By the council of Tibena in 554, they were confirmed in their persistence in the Eutychian heresy. The council of Trullo, 692, and the council of Jerusalem, 1143, condemned the errors of the Armenians. In the fourteenth century, Pope John XXII. sent a Dominican friar, called Bartholomew the Little, into that distant region, with several colleagues, to preach the doctrines of the Church of Rome. Bartholomew was consecrated bishop (of Nakchevan?), and since that time the archbishop of that province has, with all his dependencies, continued a member of the Roman Church. The thunders of the Lateran have often since been directed against the perseverance of these distant heretics, but they have been of no avail.

The Patriarch of Armenia resides at Etchmiazin. He is styled Catholicos, and holds under his sway forty-seven archbishops, of whom the greater part are titular, having no jurisdiction or dignity beyond their titles; many of these reside in the monastery, and form a sort of court around their spiritual lord the Patriarch. They seem to hold the same position as the Monsignores of the court of Rome. Above the titular and actual archbishops are three Patriarchs, whose seats are at Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Diarbekir. The number of bishops and episcopal sees is very considerable, but I have not been able to enumerate them. The monasteries are also very numerous, and are scattered all over the mountains of Armenia, the islands of Lake Van, and other places in Persia, Georgia, and Turkey.

The ancient monasteries of their own land are of a peculiar construction, remarkable for the diminutive proportions of the churches and the small size of the monastic buildings, as well as their massive strength and the great squared stones of which they are built. They are little fortresses, and seem always to have been very poor, though some are larger and more wealthy, comparatively, than the generality. They have been erected to resist the incursions of the Saracens, Knights Templars, Koords, Turks, and Persians, who, from time to time, overran this abject principality. Their massive strength alone has saved them from being pulled down and utterly destroyed; the time necessary for such an operation could not be spared during the inroad of a chappow, or plundering expedition. Nothing worth stealing remains in the various monasteries which I have visited. A few dirty and imperfect church-books, some faded vestments and poor furniture for the altar, and the cells of three or four peasant-monks, were all the wealth that they displayed. Very few appear to have contained a library—none that I have seen. Their manuscripts were written in former days at Edessa, Etchmiazin (which is a more extensive fabric), Teflis, Ooroomia, Tabriz, and other cities, and not usually in these outposts among the mountains. The little monastery of Kuzzul Vank possesses one ancient manuscript of the Holy Scriptures, written in the year, as far as I can remember, 422, which, if it refers to the Armenian era, would be 974; it is written in uncial letters, on vellum, in a small, thick quarto form.

Ignorance and superstition contend for the mastery among the lower classes of Armenia, whose religion shows that tendency to sink into a kind of idolatry which is common among other branches of the Church of Christ in warmer climates. The following anecdote will explain my meaning in advancing such a charge. One of my servants had a bad toothache; he was a Roman Catholic of Smyrna; he made a vow to present an offering to the shrine of St. George at Smyrna if his toothache was cured by the mediation of that saint, but the pain still continued. A friend of his at Erzeroom advised him to vow a silver mouth to St. George of Erzeroom; “for,” he said, “St. George of Smyrna is a Roman saint, and, of course, he can have no authority here; but our St. George is an Armenian, and he will hear your prayer.” The advice was taken: a silver mouth was vowed to St. George of Erzeroom, and the toothache ceased immediately, the servant firmly believing that he had been cured by this saint, who, he considered, was another person, and not the same as St. George of Smyrna, and that his picture here was more powerful in working miracles than the others. In the same manner, the pictures or images of Our Lady of Loretto, Guadaloupe, or del Pilar are believed to be endowed with peculiar powers, and are, in fact, worshiped for their own merits, and not for what they represent.

A curious episode in the history of Armenia took place in the time of Shah Abbas the Great, who established a colony of the natives of that province at Julfa, a village near Isfahaun. He gave them many privileges and immunities, which a remnant of their descendants enjoy still. The forms and ceremonies of their worship resemble those of the Greek Church, from which they are derived. Their vestments are the same, or nearly so: and here I will remark that the sacred vestures of the Christian Church are the same, with very insignificant modifications, among every denomination of Christians in the world; that they have always been the same, and never were otherwise in any country, from the remotest times when we have any written accounts of them, or any mosaics, sculptures, or pictures to explain their forms. They are no more a Popish invention, or have any thing more to do with the Roman Church, than any other usage which is common to all denominations of Christians. They are, and always have been, of general and universal—that is, of catholic—use; they have never been used for many centuries for ornament or dress by the laity, having been considered as set apart to be used only by priests in the church during the celebration of the worship of Almighty God. These ancient vestures have been worn by the bishops, priests, and deacons of that, in common with the hierarchy of every other Church. In England they have fallen into disuse by neglect; King Charles I. presented some vestments to the Cathedral of Durham long after the Reformation, and they continued in use there almost in the memory of man.

The parish priests of the Armenian religion are, I believe, permitted, if not obliged, to marry, as is the case in the Greek and Russian Churches; but they can not, so long as their wife survives, be promoted to any of the higher orders of the hierarchy. Bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs are elected out of the monastic bodies who take the vows of celibacy; their fasts are long and rigorous, their food simple, and their style of life severe; their time is almost entirely taken up with the services of religion, and, as a general rule, their ignorance is extreme.

In their doctrine of the Holy Trinity, they believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone; that Christ descended into hell, from whence he reprieved the souls of sinners till the day of judgment; that the souls of the righteous will not be admitted to the beatific vision till after the resurrection, notwithstanding which they invoke them in their prayers. They make use of pictures in their churches, but not of images; they use confession to the priests, and administer the Eucharist in both kinds.

In baptism they plunge the child three times in water, apply the chrism with consecrated oil prepared only by the Patriarch. They also touch the child’s lips with the Eucharist, which consists of unleavened bread sopped in wine.

The Holy Scriptures contain more books than those of the Western Churches. In the Old Testament, after the Book of Genesis, occurs The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Sons of Jacob; then The History of Joseph and of his wife Asenath; The Book of Jesus the Son of Sirach. After these the order of the scriptural books succeeds as with us. In the New Testament, after St. Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, we find the Epistle of the Corinthians to St. Paul, which is followed by St. Paul’s Third Epistle to the Corinthians. The remainder of the New Testament is the same as ours.

The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Book of Jesus the Son of Sirach, are well known; but I am not aware that the Book of Asenath has been printed in any European language. This curious book was translated into Italian, from an ancient Armenian manuscript of the Bible in my possession, by an Armenian friend, and translated from the Italian into English by myself: this I presume to be the only copy of the Book of Asenath in the English language. It is a work of considerable length, and is interesting, not only from the place it holds in the estimation of a numerous body of Christians, but also from the picture it presents of the manners and customs of Egypt, at some remote period when it was written. Several passages in it indicate that it must have been composed when what may be called the classic style of life was still in use. Whether it was included among the number of the sacred books collected by Mesrob I do not know: in that case it would date as far back as the fourth century after Christ, a period prolific in apocryphal books, several of which were forged about that time to support the authority of the various heresiarchs who promulgated their opinions in many countries of the East, and who, being unable to produce texts from the accepted books of the Sacred Scriptures which would prove the truth of their doctrines, invented others more suitable to their own purposes, and written more in accordance with their views.

The Epistle from the Corinthians to St. Paul, and the answer from the great apostle, is of a higher class, and bears much resemblance to his other Epistles. It has been published among Lord Byron’s works. He took a few lessons in Armenian from Father Pasquale Aucher, a monk of the monastery of St. Lazarus, at Venice, a man of extraordinary learning, who speaks most of the European languages, as well as Turkish, Armenian, and other Oriental tongues. He translated these Epistles into English, with the assistance of Lord Byron.

The Roman Catholic branch of the Armenian Church has done much more for literature and civilization than the original body. Few Catholics are found in Armenia itself, excepting at Erzeroom and other cities, where a remnant remain, while at Constantinople a great number of the higher and wealthier Armenians give their adherence to that creed. Their minds are more enlarged, they are less Oriental in their ideas, being usually considered as half Franks by their more Eastern brethren. Their churches bear a great resemblance to those of other Catholics, but they retain their own language in their ritual, with many of the forms and ceremonies of the Oriental Church. The Armenian Patriarch, with his long beard, and crown instead of a mitre, is one of the picturesque figures to whom attention is drawn in the ceremonies of the Holy Week at Rome, where there is a college for the education of priests of their nation. They have another college at Constantinople, and several handsome churches; but the most important establishment of this branch of their religion is that of the convent or monastery on the island of St. Lazarus, near Venice.

This society, as they themselves call it, was founded by Mechitar, an Armenian, who was born at Sebaste, in lesser Armenia, in 1676. He received holy orders from the Bishop Ananias, superior of the convent of the Holy Cross, near Sebaste. He afterward studied in the convent of Passen, near Erzeroom, and at another on the island on Lake Van. His wish was to remain in the great monastery of Etchmiazin, to which place he traveled, but, finding no opportunities of study at the seat of the Patriarch, he proceeded to Constantinople, where he afterward founded a small society, of a monastic kind, at Pera, in the year 1700.

In the year 1708 he established a church and monastic society at Modon in the Morea, then under the government of Venice; but the Turks having taken that place, his companions were made prisoners and sold for slaves. He, with some others, escaped to Venice, where he received a grant, in the year 1717, from the Signory, of a small deserted island in the Lagunes, originally the property of the Benedictine order, who established a hospital for lepers there in 1180. In this island he set up a printing-press about the year 1730, for the production of Armenian religious books; and he had the satisfaction of seeing his convent increase in comfort, wealth, and respectability before his death, which took place on the 27th of April, 1749.

So high was the character of this establishment for usefulness and good conduct, that in 1810, when other monastic establishments were suppressed at Venice, the abbot of St. Lazaro received a peculiar decree, granting him and his community all the privileges of their former independence. So high also has been the character of this society since that time, that it has been usual for the Pope to confer upon each new abbot the title and dignity of Archbishop, although he has no province or bishops under him. The service they have rendered to their countrymen is very great: they have at present five printing-presses, from whence every year proceed numerous volumes of religious and historical character, as well as school-books, and a newspaper in the Armenian language. These are mostly sold at Constantinople, and among the scattered societies of their nation. The funds produced from this source enable them to establish a considerable school or college at Venice, and to send literary missionaries, as they may be called, to collect manuscripts and historical notices among the barren mountains of Armenia. Of these they make good use, compiling, from imperfect and mutilated fragments, authentic histories of their country; printing the almost hitherto lost and unknown works of ancient Armenian authors, and distributing copies of the Holy Scriptures among their brethren in the wasted and benighted land of their fathers.

They printed the Armenian Bible in the year 1805; and, entirely by their energy, the small spark which alone glimmered in the darkness of Armenian ignorance in the East has gradually increased its light into a feeble ray, which now, seen faintly through the mist, draws every now and then the attention of some one endowed by nature with more intelligence than the rest, and incites him to inquire into those truths the rumors of whose existence had only reached him hitherto. Slowly enough, but we trust surely, the good work prospers: when curiosity and interest are awakened, the mind turns naturally to the sources from which information may be gained. The Holy Gospels, the New Testament, and, in some places, the whole Bible, may now be procured at a comparatively trifling expense; the leaven, once introduced, sooner or later will leaven the whole mass; truth and common sense will dissipate the clouds which ignorance and superstition have gathered over the face of the land, and the light of true religion will arise to set no more.