Armenian Christianity — the Zartonk Century

Zartonk — awakening — is what Armenians call their nineteenth century. A revival of language, schools, printing and civic life carried largely inside the church, because under Ottoman rule the church was the nation's legal body. Its central document is the Armenian National Constitution of 1863, which seated lay delegates in a national assembly and limited what the Patriarch of Constantinople could do alone, an unusual experiment in giving a laity formal power over its own hierarchy. The century also divided the community: converts of American missionaries were expelled from the Apostolic Church and organized as the Armenian Evangelical Church in 1846, recognized by the Ottoman state as a separate Protestant community in 1850, while an Armenian Catholic patriarchate continued alongside. And it ended in blood — the Hamidian massacres of 1894-96 killed tens of thousands and emptied whole districts.