offered to idols, and exonerates from blame or any ecclesiastical anathema women who had, against their will, lost their chastity; but he lays great emphasis on the vices and greed of those who had violated Christian morality for gain and personal advantage. Different degrees of penalty and exclusion from church privilege were assigned, and those were argued on ground of Scripture alone. The epistle containing these canons was addressed to an anonymous bp. of Pontus, who had asked his advice, c. 258, towards the end of his episcopate. It reveals the imperfect character of the wholesale conversions that had followed his remarkable ministry.
Other works have been wrongly attributed to Gregory; e.g. ἔκθεσις τῆς κατὰ μέρος πίστεως, which Vossius published in Latin in 1662, among the works of Gregory, and which Cardinal Mai (Scrip. Vet. vii. p. 170) has presented in Greek from the Codex Vaticanus. It is given by Migne (l.c. pp. 1103–1123). The best interpretation of the title is, "A creed not of all the dogmas of the church, but only of some, in opposition to the heretics who deny them" (Ante-Nicene Library, vol. xx. p. 81). It differs from the former confession in its obvious and technical repudiation of Arianism, and its distinct references to the later Nestorian, and Eutychian heresies. Other treatises and fragments given in edd. of his works, and also trans. in A.-N. L., are: Capitula duodecim de Fide, with interpretation, attributed by Gretser to Gregory (ed. Ratisbon, 1741). Ad Tatianum Disputatio de Animâ, which must have been written by a medieval philosopher when the philosophy of Aristotle was beginning to exert a new influence (Ceillier). Four Homiliae, preserved by Vossius, on "the Annunciation to the Holy Virgin Mary," and on "Christ's Baptism," are totally unlike the genuine writing of Gregory; they are surcharged with the peculiar reverence paid to the Mother of our Lord after the controversy between Nestorius and Cyril, and they adopt the test-words of orthodoxy current in the Arian disputes. Two brief fragments remain to be added, one a comment on Matt. vi. 22–23, from a Catena, Cod. MS. and pub. by Galland, Vet. Patr. Bibl. xiv. 119, and a discourse, in Omnes Sanctos, preserved with a long Epistola praevia by Mingarelli.
Gregory was present at the first council at Antioch (264) to try Paul of Samosata. His brother Athenodorus accompanied him, and they are named among the most eminent members of the council (Eus. H. E. vii. 28).
Gregory was buried in the church he had built in Neocaesarea, and commemorated on Nov. 17 (Cal. Ethiop.) and Nov. 23 (Cal. Arm.).
Editions of his Works.—The most noted have been those of Gerard Vossius, 1640, in 4to, and in 1622, in folio. They had been published in Bibl. Patr. Cologne in 1618. The Panegyric on Origen by Sirmond, 1609, 4to. De la Rue included it in his ed. of Origensis Opera, vol. iv. The various fragments attributed to Gregory are all pub. by Migne (Patr. Gk. vol. x.). See esp. Ryssel, Gregorius Thaumaturgus (Leipz. 1880). His Address to Origen and Origen's Letter to Gregory have been trans. with intro. and notes by W. Metcalfe (S.P.C.K.). There are also translations of his works in the Ante-Nic. Lib. vol. vi.
[H.R.R.]
Gregorius (7), St., "the Illuminator" (Gregor Lusavoritch), "the sun of Armenia," the apostle, first patriarch and patron saint of Armenia, c. 302–331. Of his life and times the best if not the only authorities are Agathangelos, who was secretary to Tiridates king of Armenia, the persecutor and afterwards the convert of Gregory, and Simeon Metaphrastes. A French trans. of the former was printed in vol. i. of the Historiens del᾿ Arménie (1867), by Victor Langlois. The Life of St. Gregory by Metaphrastes (Migne, Patr. Gk. cxv. 941–996) is evidently drawn from Agathangelos. The silence of all Greek writers about Gregory is remarkable. The Rev. S. C. Malan trans. the Life and Times of St. Gregory the Illuminator from the Armenian work of the Vartabed Matthew, which is the main source of the following sketch.
Gregory was born c. 257 in Valarshabad, the capital of the province of Ararat in Armenia. His father Anak, or Anag, a Parthian Arsacid, of the province of Balkh, murdered, c. 258, Chosroes I. of Armenia. The dying king commanded the whole family of Anak to be slain, but an infant was saved, carried to the Cappadocian Caesarea, there brought up in the Christian faith, and baptized Gregorius.
Tiridates II., son of Chosroes, recovered the kingdom c. 284 by the help of Diocletian, whose favour he had gained and whose hatred of Christianity he had imbibed. Gregory became his servant, and was raised to the rank of a noble. In the first year of his reign Tiridates went to the town of Erez (Erzenga) in Higher Armenia, to make offerings to Anahid, the patron-goddess of Armenia; but Gregory, refusing to take any part in this idolatry, endeavoured to turn the king from his idols, and spoke to him of Christ s the judge of quick and dead. Then followed what are known as "the twelve tortures of St. Gregory," borne with unsurpassed fortitude (but see Dowling's Armenian Church, S.P.C.K. 1910). After two years Tiridates ordered the saint to be thrown into a muddy pit infested with creeping creatures, into which malefactors were wont to be hurled, in the city of Ardashat, and there he lived for 14 years, being fed by a Christian woman named Anna. This is one of several traces in the story of an already-existing Christianity in Armenia.
The king's barbarous treatment of a community of religious women, who c. 300 took refuge within his domains and built a convent outside the city of Valarshabad, brought a plague upon him and his people, which was only relieved when Gregory was fetched from the pit. Gregory instructed the people, and at his order they built three churches where the King's crimes had been perpetrated, and he called the place Etchmiadzin (the descent of the Only-begotten), its Turkish name being Ütch-Kilise (Three Churches). Gregory was consecrated bp. for Armenia c. 302, by Leontius, bp. of Caesarea in Cappadocia. His cathedral was in Valarshabad. He destroyed the idol temples, "conquering the devils who inhabited them"—i.e. the priests and supporters of the old religion—and baptized the king and his court in the Euphrates. This national conversion occurred before Constantine had established the church in the Roman empire, and Armenia was thus the first kingdom to adopt Christian-
