of Cæsarea, in the great united body of which the chiefs were the three Patriarchs, and the Roman Patriarch head of the chiefs. The Armenians were Catholic in faith too, in spite of their hereditary episcopates and other abnormal customs. They accepted, and still accept, the first three General Councils.[1] In spite of her remote, almost isolated position, she was conscious of the Primacy of St. Peter. Even after her schism, the Katholikos Hovhannes (John) I (478-490) refers "those who have made shipwreck of the faith" to "the door-keeper and key-bearer of heaven, Peter."[2] Like all Eastern Churches the Armenians still consider the Pope to be the chief bishop of Christendom (p. 427).
4. The Breach with Cæsarea
Before the rise of the heresy which was to engulf her, the Armenian Church endangered her position by breaking the bond which held her in a canonical position, joined in the orderly scheme of the great united Church.[3] The Armenian breach with Cæsarea is a disgraceful example of injustice and of the interference of a civil tyrant in Church matters. It begins by a schism in Armenia against the lawful Katholikos.
Although after Trdat II the Armenian kings were Christians, it was not long before quarrels began between the Church and the state. Yusik, the fourth Katholikos, reproached King Tiran II (325-341?) for various immoralities, and was martyred by his order.[4] Yusik's grandson Nerses was a great reformer. He had been educated at Cæsarea, and began the abolition of Armenian irregularities and the principle of conforming to the
- ↑ Ormanian, op. cit. 21. For acceptance of Ephesus see Tournebize, op. cit. 86-87, 506. The Armenians, later Monophysites, were always strongly anti-Nestorian. They held a synod against Theodore of Mopsuestia in 435.
- ↑ Tournebize: Hist. politique et religieuse de l'Arménie (Paris, 1900), 87-88. There are many texts about the Papacy by early Armenian writers. These will be considered in the next volume.
- ↑ The parallel between all this story and that of the Persian Church is obvious. Persia went into schism before she became heretical. In Persia, too, the originally dependent Katholikos made himself an independent Patriarch (p. 51).
- ↑ Faustus, iii. 12 (ed. cit. i. 222-223).
