excommunicated him (609).[1] That broke all connection between Armenia and Georgia. The Georgian Church remained Orthodox.[2] Under Heraclius (610-641) occurred the first of the temporary reunions of the Armenians. He drove the Persians from their land, was their benefactor and protector, and invited them to come back to the great Church, Catholic and Orthodox. In a synod at Erzerum (c. 629)[3] their Katholikos with his clergy did so. But there was already a firm Monophysite party in Armenia. After the Saracen conquest (p. 386) the Church relapsed into what had become her national faith. A synod at Tovin in 645, after the Romans had left the land, again denounced Chalcedon.
The Church, now in schism, naturally had no longer any dependence on Cæsarea or on any other Chalcedonian see. She became autocephalous in the strictest sense, out of communion with every other religious body. The Armenians did not even establish formal intercommunion with their fellow-Monophysites[4] in Egypt and Syria.[5]
6. The Five Armenian Patriarchs
The later history of the Armenian Church is mainly one long story of simony, quarrels, schisms and rival Patriarchs. It is a dull and dispiriting history into which we need not go in detail.[6] There would be little of general interest to a Western reader in these quarrels. In general we may say that, besides the endless rivalries of usurping Patriarchs, there are continually tentative efforts at reunion, made by both Orthodox and Catholics,[7] never
- ↑ Ormanian, p. 32. Tournebize gives the date 596 (p. 92).
- ↑ Orth. Eastern Church, 304-305.
- ↑ Tournebize: op. cit. p. 95.
- ↑ There is some theological difference between the Monophysism of Armenia and that of the Copts and Jacobites (see p. 425).
- ↑ This is a difficult and rather subtle question; see p. 432.
- ↑ Accounts of the succession of quarrels will be found in Ormanian (who naturally always makes the best of them), and Tournebize, op. cit. Simony is a special offence during all this time. The Patriarchate for long intervals was regularly bought for money; Ormanian, p. 56.
- ↑ As a result of such temporary partial reconciliations some Armenian bishops were present at the fifth, sixth, and seventh General Councils (Constantinople II in 553, Constantinople III in 680, Nicæa II in 787). Some of their writers claim that these synods are acknowledged by the
