Roman Armenia - Roman Christianity

Roman Christianity

The influence of Christianity was felt in the 1st century after Christ: Christianity was first introduced by the apostles Bartholomew and Jude Thaddeus. Thus both Saints are considered the patron saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Apostle Bartholomew is said to have been martyred in Albanopolis in Armenia. According to one account, he was beheaded, but a more popular tradition holds that he was flayed alive and crucified, head downward. He is said to have converted Polymius, the king of Armenia, to Christianity. Astyages, Polybius' brother, consequently ordered Bartholemew's execution.

Armenia became the first country to establish Christianity as its state religion when, in an event traditionally dated to 301, St. Gregory the Illuminator convinced Tiridates III, the king of Armenia, to convert to Christianity.

As a consequence of Diocletian's victory over the Sassanids, all of Armenia was once again a vassal state of Rome by 299: Rome secured in this way a wide zone of cultural influence east of Anatolia, which led to a wide diffusion of Syriac Christianity from a center at Nisibis in the first decades of the 4th century, and to the eventual full Christianization of Armenia.

Before this, the dominant religion in Armenia was Zoroastrianism (promoted by the Parthian/Sassanid Empire) and to a smaller degree local Paganism. St Gregory and his son Aristaces were successful in the full Christianization of all Armenians in the first half of the 4th century, mainly after Roman emperor Constantine legalised Christianity in the Roman Empire in 313.

It is a well recognized historical fact that the Armenians were the first nation in the world to formally adhere to Christianity. This conversion was followed in the 4th and 5th centuries by a process of institutionalization and Armenization of Christianity in Armenia. Indeed St. Gregory the Illuminator became the organizer of the Armenian Church hierarchy. From that time, the heads of the Armenian Church have been called Catholicos and still hold the same title.

St. Gregory chose as the site of the "Catholicosate" the capital city of Vagharshapat (actual Ejmiatsinin) in Armenia and built there the Etchmiadzin Cathedral as a vaulted basilica in 301-303 (Vahan Mamikonian, Roman governor of Armenia, in 480 ordered the dilapidated basilica to be replaced with a new cruciform church, still standing in the modern Republic of Armenia).

The continuous upheavals, which characterized the political scenes of Armenia in the next centuries, made the political power move to safer places often related to the Eastern Roman Empire. The Church center moved as well to different locations together with the political authority, ending in Byzantine Cilicia in the 13th century