it and at last the Mohammedan conquests brought the greater part of it under the sway of Islam. The Armenians, who are now largely scattered over Asia Minor and considerably represented at Constantinople, are an ancient, distinct race of the Indo-Germanic family with marked characteristics, among which is a keen business ability, that has enabled them to attain to wealth where it has been possible for them to do so, in face of oppression and persecution. They were neither Hellenised under the Byzantine Empire nor Latinised under the Roman. They have retained their own language and national characteristics in spite of the terrible series of destructive tyrannies to which they have been subject. In this respect, and in the hatred their commercial superiority has aroused, we may compare them to the Jews, whom they thus resemble more than any other race.
It is usual to divide the history of the Armenian Church into three periods—(1) a.d. 34–302, beginning with the legendary mission of Thaddæus to King Abgar, together with supposed visits of Bartholomew, Simon, and Jude;[1] (2) a.d. 302–491, from the mission of Gregory the Illuminator to the breach with the orthodox Church owing to rejection of the decrees of Chalcedon; (3) a.d. 491 to the present time, when the Church of Armenia has been entirely independent of Constantinople and doctrinally severed from the Greek Church. But the first of these periods is mythical; we have no clear evidence of any Christianity existing in Armenia previous to the fourth century, when Gregory Illuminator, the apostle of the Armenians, introduced the gospel to these people.
Gregory, who is surnamed "The Illuminator," because "Illumination" is the technical Armenian word for conversion, was born about the year 257, at Valarshabad (now represented by Etchmiadzin), the capital of the province of Ararat in Armenia. At the instigation of the Sassauid Sapor i. his father assassinated Chosroes i., the King of Armenia, for which act the dying king ordered the whole
- ↑ See Lynch, Armenia, vol. i. p. 277, note 2.
