We come to the question of the place of the Armenian Church in the body of Christendom. This is perfectly simple, and perfectly regular. It was a missionary Church dependent on Cæsarea, subject to the jurisdiction of Cæsarea, just as the Persian Church was on Edessa, and Ethiopia on Alexandria. Modern Armenian writers, supposing the legend of Etshmiadzin, claim that their Church was autocephalous, independent of any foreign authority from the beginning.[1] It was for just such a purpose that this legend was invented, after the Armenians had broken with their mother-Church. There is no possibility of such a position, and none for so monstrous a person (at that time) as a "Patriarch" of Armenia. Moreover, we have the clearest direct evidence of Armenian dependence on Cæsarea.
Till the Council of Ephesus (431) made Cyprus extra-patriarchal, on the strength of its alleged apostolic foundation,[2] there was no such thing as an autocephalous national Church. There were three, and only three, Patriarchs in Christendom — the Bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Antioch; all Christians were ultimately subject to one of these, and of them the Roman Patriarch was chief of his brothers.[3] Missionary Churches obeyed the bishop of the mother-Church. We have seen this in the case of Persia (pp. 42, 49) and Abyssinia (pp. 296, 299). It is no less clear in the case of Armenia. Here the mother-Church was Cæsarea in Cappadocia. St. Gregory the Illuminator came from Cæsarea; he went back there to be ordained. He ordained his son Aristakes himself (p. 401); we do not know who ordained Vrthanes. But then till Nerses all the Armenian Primates went up to Cæsarea, with a great retinue, to be ordained. Agathangelos makes Leontius claim this as a right for all time.[4] We have seen that in the East the right of ordination always implies ecclesiastical jurisdiction (pp. 37, 300, etc); the sign of an autocephalous Metropolitan is that he is ordained by his own suffragans, as was the Archbishop of Cyprus after Ephesus.[5] So, consistently, after their schism with Cæsarea the Armenian Primates began to be ordained by
