The cause of Christianity was now secured; king and princes and people vied with each other in obedience to Gregory's instruction. Convents, churches and schools were established. In 302 AD, Gregory received consecration as patriarch of Armenia from Leontius of Caesarea. In 318 Gregory appointed his son Aristax[?] to be his successor. About 331 he withdrew to a cave in the mountain Sebuh[?] in the province of Daranalia[?] in Upper Armenia, and there he died a few years later, unattended and unobserved. When it was discovered he was dead his corpse was removed to the village of Thodanum or Tharotan. The remains of the saint were scattered far and near in the reign of Zeno. His head is believed to be now in Italy, his right hand at Etchmiadzin[?], and his left at Sis. It is almost impossible to get at Gregory's real personality through the tangled growth of ecclesiastical legend; but he would appear to have possessed some of that consideration for expediency which is so frequently of service to the reformer. While he did his best to undermine their system, he left the old pagan priests in enjoyment of their accustomed revenues.
A number of homilies, possibly spurious, several prayers, and about thirty of the canons of the Armenian Church are ascribed to Gregory. The homilies appeared for the first time in a work called Haschacnapadum at Constantinople in 1737; a century afterwards a Greek translation was published at Venice by the Mekhiterists; and they have since been edited in German by J.M. Schmid (ratisbon, 1872). The original authorities for Gregory's life are Agathangelos[?], whose History of Tiridates was published by the Mekhitarists in 1835; Moses of Chorene[?], Historiae Armenicae; and Simeon Metaphrastes[?]. A Life of Gregory by the vartabed Matthew, published in Armenian at Venice in 1749, was translated into English by Rev. S.C. Malan, 1868.
from the 9th edition (1880) of an unnnamed encyclopedia
Search Encyclopedia
|
Featured Article
|