vardapets. Only the monastic clergy now have deacons.[1] The married secular clergy are poor folk, having little training and no hope of advancement. The priesthood often descends from father to son through many generations.[2] Except in Russia (where the Government will not allow it) the laity has great influence in Church matters, and forms councils to administer Church property. Of three to four million Armenians, perhaps three-quarters belong to the Gregorian Church. She is not strictly in communion with even the other Monophysite Churches, and never has been.[3] But the relations between them are friendly, and Armenians are careless about giving and receiving Communion from other people.[4]
3. Churches and Vestments
An Armenian Church has a marked character, both inside and outside, by which it may easily be distinguished from any other. It generally has a dome in the centre,[5] which is not a dome outside, but a low round tower with a conical roof. In front of the larger churches is an atrium, an open court, around which are the priests' lodgings, the school, rooms for parochial business, and so on. Inside there is no ikonostasion. Perhaps it is more exact to say that the altar stands in front of the ikonostasion. Across the far east end there is a high screen, sometimes covered
- ↑ Ormanian, 127. Armenian catechisms still give seven orders (exactly ours, clearly through Latin influence). See e.g. the Instruction in the Christian Faith (Occas. Paper of the Eastern Church Assoc. viii.; Rivingtons, 1869), p. 26. If I understand Ormanian rightly, these (except priesthood) are now only given to monks. The deacon who serves in the liturgy is in most cases a priest. There are a few Gregorian Armenian nunneries.
- ↑ Ormanian gives the total number of Armenian clergy as: married, four thousand; celibate, four hundred (op. cit. 130-131).
- ↑ Occasional friendly relations are noted with surprise and delight. Michael the Syrian is very pleased that the Armenian Katholikos, Gregory IV (1173-1193), sent a profession of his Monophysite faith to the Jacobite Patriarch (ed. Chabot, ii. 492-500). On the other hand, Gregory III (1113-1166) cursed Jacobites roundly, and they cursed back.
- ↑ The late Bishop of Salisbury (John Wordsworth) boasts that once an Armenian priest received Communion from the Archbishop of Canterbury (in Wigram: Doctr. Position of the Assyrian Church, p. 19). The fact is equally disgraceful to both parties; for the Archbishop had no business to give communion to a Monophysite, and the Armenian had no business to receive it from a Protestant.
- ↑ At the crossing of the transept, if it has one.
