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Take the right fork and drive past the
extensive cemetery to the monastery of Khor Virap ("deep pit"), built on
the side of one of a chain of low hills looking out across the
Russian-guarded border to Turkey and Mt. Ararat.
The central church, S. Astvatsatsin, dates from the end of
the 17th c. The
smaller S. Gevorg church was originally constructed in 642 by
Katholikos Nerses the Builder, but has been repeatedly rebuilt.
In this second church are two deep stone cisterns, the
further of which, then garnished with serpents (or alternatively
poisonous insects), is said to have been the pit in which Gregory
the Illuminator was imprisoned for 13 years by the cruel king
Trdat (Tiridates) III (or maybe IV – the chronology set forth by
the ancient Armenian sources makes no sense without finding
another Trdat the ancients left out). The descent into the pit,
now via a perilous metal stairway, is spiritually rewarding and
generally not fatal. (The
same cannot be said about the public restrooms behind the
monastery.)
After the murder of his father Chosroes by Chosroes'
evil brother (or a Persian -- the sources differ), the young
Tiridates was taken to Rome to protect him from the usurper and
give him a good Roman upbringing. Installed by the Romans on his father's throne around AD 298,
after the Romans made Greater Armenia a protectorate as one of the
spoils of their victory over the Persians in AD 297, King
Tiridates "the Great" cheerfully followed the lead of
his friend the Emperor Diocletian in savagely persecuting
Christians. It is
open to question whether he put Gregory in the pit for being a
Christian or for being (some sources say) the son of his father's
murderer. God ultimately punished Tiridates' misdeeds by giving him the
head of a boar in place of his own.
Gregory cured the King and was rewarded with the official
conversion of Armenia to Christianity probably in the year 314
(after the Emperor Constantine the Great made it safe to do so)
rather than in the year 301, 1700th anniversary of which date will
be celebrated with great pomp in 2001. Gregory was sent to Caesaria to be consecrated a bishop, and
he and his children and descendants became the hereditary
religious chiefs of Armenia. |
