Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 24, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).
A team of German and Armenian researchers made a groundbreaking discovery last week of an ancient church in Armenia dating back to the fourth century, making it the oldest documented church in Armenia, which is considered the first Christian nation in the world.
In an email correspondence with CNA, co-directors of the project Achim Lichtenberger and Torben Schreiber of the University of Münster and Hayk Gyulamiryan of the Armenian Academy of Sciences explained the significance of the discovery made by the team at the site of the ancient city of Artaxata. The project’s fourth co-director, Mkrtich H. Zardaryan, could not be reached for comment by the time of publication.
Historic roots of Christianity in Armenia
“Being the first country which adopted Christianity at the state level, and where the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew preached Christianity in the early first century, this discovery is a very important fact for Armenians,” Gyulamiryan told CNA, further stating that “the findings are among the most important in Armenia in recent decades.”
Lichtenberger also emphasized the site’s particular importance, as the church was discovered near the monastery of Khor Virap, where Gregory the Illuminator had been kept in prison before he converted the Armenian king Tiradates III to Christianity in the fourth century.
As Gyulamiryan stated, although the roots of Christianity may be traced back to the time of the apostles in Armenia, it was not until 301 that Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of Armenia.
According to tradition, Armenia’s conversion is attributed to St. Gregory the Illuminator, a Christian evangelist and convert from Zoroastrianism who miraculously cured the nation’s pagan king of a peculiar “illness” after no other pagan priest was able to do so.
The widely-adopted story of how Armenia became Christian draws from a mythical history promulgated by the fifth-century author Agathangelos, the Armenian researcher explained.
As the legend goes, the pagan king of Armenia had become fascinated by the beauty of St. Hripsime, a nun who had fled with her abbess and community from persecution in Rome. The king offered to marry and make her queen, but Hripsime refused and was able to ward off the king’s advances through miraculous strength.
After the king ultimately had Hripsime and her community killed, historians claim he was “turned into a wild boar who tore at his own flesh” and could not be cured by any priests of pagan or Zoroastrian temples who attempted the feat.
Eventually, the king’s sister persuaded him to appeal to St. Gregory, whom the king had imprisoned for the past 15 years. Once St. Gregory was released, he cured the king of his “disease” and converted him and the entire royal family to the Christian faith.
Artaxata, where these events are believed to have taken place, is “a major place related to early Christianity in Armenia,” Lichtenberger told CNA.
St. Gregory is revered both in the Orthodox Armenian Apostolic Church and in the Catholic Church traditions. In 2005, Pope John Paul II erected a 19-foot statue of St. Gregory in the north courtyard of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
The discovery
The newly-discovered church measures about 100 feet across and is shaped like an octagon with “cruciform annexes oriented east-west and north-south,” according to Lichtenberger, who noted the discovery of a similar structure from a slightly later period found in Abchazia (Sebastopol).
Although the Araxata site was previously discovered, Lichtenberger told CNA that the church had been buried underground and gone undiscovered until the team carried out its magnetic prospections and excavations this past spring.
The researchers confirmed in September the age of the church to be from about 350 A.D. using radiocarbon dating techniques on a series of samples taken from a wooden platform belonging to the original construction of the building.
Ahead of the autumn excavations this year, Gyulamiryan told CNA he remembered thinking that the team “should confidently dig up the next chapter of the history of Armenia.”
According to Lichtenberger, the radiocarbon date from the wooden samples corresponded with pottery shards that were also discovered inside the church and with “the overall construction technique of the building using substantial amounts of mortar.”
“In the center of the church we encountered significant amounts of marble decoration that suggest that this part was prominently adorned,” he said. Interestingly, the German researcher noted that the state of the building upon discovery indicated that it had perhaps met a hostile end.
“The building was heavily destroyed (maybe intentionally),” he wrote, “the marble construction smashed, parts of the floor tiles removed, the roof set on fire, and all was buried in a huge collapse of roof tiles and burnt roof beams.”
However, according to Lichtenberger, there are no primary literary sources that correspond to the church, as “literary sources only relate to a seventh-century A.D. church in Artaxata.”
By contrast, while the Armenian literary tradition attests that the oldest church in the country is the Etchmiadzin Cathedral, Lichtenberger noted, “archeological evidence from this place does not date back to the mid-fourth century A.D.”
“This does not mean that Etchmiadzin is younger than the Artaxata church, it only means that the Artaxata church provides earlier archaeological evidence,” he added. “Therefore we assume that the Artaxata church is the oldest archaeologically attested church in Armenia.”
Future of the project
Schreiber shared with CNA in another email chain that analysis of data collected from the site will play a significant role in future archeological measures.
“The interaction of the excavation results, the geophysical survey, and the scientific investigations (natural sciences) will keep us busy in the coming year,” Schreiber said. “However, we are certain that these measures will provide us with a very comprehensive picture of this extraordinary and important find.”
The research team from the University of Münster and the Armenian Academy of Sciences have been at the Artaxata site since 2018 and have also made other noteworthy discoveries, including an unfinished Roman aqueduct, a Hellenistic sanctuary, and the remains of an Urartian settlement, according to Lichhtenberger.
The team of researchers also includes 10 students from the German university along with various internal and external specialists who consulted with the team on different groups of materials at the site, including animal and human bones, plants, or “archaeobotanical” matter, marble, plaster, pottery, and roof tiles — “of which we found a lot,” Lichtenberger said.
“We will continue the work of the Armenian-German Artaxata Project in the future,” he told CNA.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Armenians have a long and rich history in India. Archival accounts show Armenian merchant-cum-diplomat, named Thomas Cana, had reached the Malabar Coast of Kerala in 780 CE using the overland route.
Armenians worked as merchants, gunsmiths, gunners, priests and mercenaries in India. Much before the arrival of the Sultans, the Moghuls, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the English, and the Danes, the Armenians were very much at home thriving and crisscrossing the business-fertile Indian sub-continent.
In coastal India on the Arabian Seafront, Armenians conducted their international business in jewelry, diamonds, precious stones, perfumes, silk and cotton textiles through the ports of Cambay, Diu, Daman, and Surat on the Gujarat coast, through Mumbai, Vengurla, Ela (Old Goa), and Bhatkal on the Konkan coast, and through the ports at Calicut, Mahé, Quilon, Ponnani, Cannanore, and Cochin on the Malabar coast.
Further East on the Coromandel Coast kissing the Bay of Bengal, Armenian merchants participated in the lucrative business in pearls, conch shells, diamonds, and textiles. Ports of Colachel, Chennai, Pondicherry, Aryan Kuppam, Korkai, Karaikal, Nagapattinam, Nagore, Kayal, Kayalpattinam, Punnakayal, Periathalai, Alanthalai, Killkarai, Vaipar, Vembar, Manappad, Uvari, Tuticorin, Trichendur, Rameshwaram, Tranquebar, Machilipatnam, Balasore, Serampore, Hooghli, Chinsura, Chandernagore, Bandel, and Kolkata figure in historical documents as vibrant theatres of trading action and reaction among Indians, Arabs, Persians, Jews, Armenians, Portuguese, Dutch, French, English, Flemish, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and Scandinavians.
Several centuries of presence of Armenians resulted in the emergence of a number of large and small Armenian enclaves in Agra, Cawnpore, Gwalior, Lucknow, Surat, Mumbai, Chennai, Chinsura, Chandernagore, Calcutta, Saidabad in Murshidabad, and other locations in India.
For the spiritual wellbeing of the living and to celebrate the hallowed memory of their beloved ancestors, infrastructures in the form of Armenian churches and cemeteries are still to be found in several places across India depicting the spiritual and material culture of the Armenian people.
The Indian city of Kolkata in West Bengal is home to several Armenian Churches such as the Armenian Church of Holy Nazareth, Armenian Church of Saint John the Baptist, Armenian Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, The Holy Trinity Chapel, and Saint Mary Armenian Church (Saidapet-Murshidabad). The Armenian College of Philanthropic Academy in Kolkata is yet another institution of significance.
The Armenian gravestones from the 16th and 17th centuries serve as a testament to the Armenian community’s presence in Surat. These monuments are an important part of the city’s history and provide insight into the lives of the Armenians who lived there. The gravestones are decorated with intricate designs and inscriptions. Such grave goods offer a glimpse into the material culture of the Armenian people, and their significance in Surat’s rich inter-religious past.
The city of Mumbai in Maharashtra is home to the St. Peter’s Armenian Apostolic Church. In the South Indian city of Chennai or Madras of old, there is the Armenian Church and an Armenian cemetery on the Armenian Street.