The Age of Monks and Empires · 451-554 · Armenia
Armenian Christianity after Avarayr
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About This Movement
In 451, while the Roman world's bishops met at Chalcedon, Armenia's nobles met the Persian army at Avarayr rather than accept an imposed return to Zoroastrian worship. They lost the battle and their commander, Vardan Mamikonian, but the resistance went on until Persia conceded the right to remain Christian in 484. And the Armenian church came to read that defeat as a covenant sealed in martyrdom rather than as a loss. Absorbed in that struggle, Armenia had sent no bishops to Chalcedon. When it did take up the council's formula it judged it too close to dividing Christ, and at the second council of Dvin in 554 the church formally set itself outside Chalcedon. By then it had a Bible and a liturgy in an alphabet barely fifty years old, and a body of historical writing — Elishe's and Lazar's accounts of the war. That fixed the story it has told about itself ever since.
Sources
- Elishe (Ełishē), History of Vardan and the Armenian War (trans. R. W. Thomson, 1982) (primary) — The classic inside account of Avarayr (451) and its martyr-theology of covenant; Harvard Armenian Texts and Studies 5; standard annotated English translation, online at archive.org.
- Łazar P'arpec'i, History of the Armenians (trans. R. W. Thomson, 1991) (primary) — The other fifth-century narrative of Avarayr and the 480s Vahan revolt, more sober than Elishe; Thomson's English translation is standard.
- Girk' T'łt'oc' (Book of Letters) (primary) — The Armenian church's own dossier of doctrinal correspondence, incl. its sixth-century rejection of Chalcedon (Dvin councils); Classical Armenian editions (Tiflis 1901, Jerusalem 1994) - no full English translation; access via excerpts in Garsoian/Sarkissian (transmission flag).
- Karekin Sarkissian, The Council of Chalcedon and the Armenian Church (1965) (secondary) — Accessible standard account (by an insider-scholar) of why and how the Armenian church came to reject Chalcedon; older but still the usual English entry point.
- Nina Garsoian, L'Eglise armenienne et le grand schisme d'Orient (CSCO 574, 1999) (secondary) — The definitive scholarly treatment of the Armenian schism with translations of key Book of Letters documents; French only - a real access barrier.
- Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2, ch. 4, 'Early Asian and East African Christianities' (David Bundy) (reference) — Reference chapter covering Armenia among the non-Roman Christianities; verified in vol. 2 TOC.