Gregory the Illuminator
Gregory the Illuminator is the patron saint and first official head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He was a religious leader who is credited with converting Armenia from paganism to Christianity in 301. Armenia thus became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion.
Beginnings
Gregory was the son of the Armenian Parthian nobles Anak the Parthian and Okohe. His father, Anak, was a Prince said to be related to the Arsacid Kings of Armenia or was from the House of Suren, one of the seven branches of the ruling Arsacid dynasty of Sakastan. Anak was charged with assassinating Khosrov II, one of the kings of the Arsacid dynasty and was put to death. Gregory narrowly escaped execution with the help of Sopia and Yevtagh, his caretakers. He was taken to Caesarea in Cappadocia where Sopia and Yevtagh hoped to raise him. Gregory was given to the Christian Holy Father Phirmilianos to be educated and was brought up as a devout Christian.Upon coming of age, Gregory married a woman called Miriam, a devout Christian who was the daughter of a Christian Armenian prince in Cappadocia. From their union, Miriam bore Gregory two children, their sons Vrtanes and Aristaces. Through Vrtanes, Gregory and Miriam would have further descendants and when Gregory died, Aristaces succeeded him. At some point, Miriam and Gregory separated in order that Gregory might take up a monastic life. Gregory left Cappadocia and went to Armenia in the hope of atoning for his father's crime by evangelizing his homeland.
At that time Tiridates III, son of the late King Khosrov II, reigned. Influenced partly by the fact that Gregory was the son of his father's enemy, he ordered Gregory imprisoned for twelve years in a pit on the Ararat Plain under the present day church of Khor Virap located near the historical city Artashat in Armenia. Gregory was eventually called forth from his pit in c. 297 to restore to sanity Tiridates III, who had lost all reason after he was betrayed by Roman emperor Diocletian. Diocletian invaded and vast amounts of territory from western provinces of Greater Armenia became protectorates of Rome.
Declaration of Christianity in Armenia
In 301 Gregory baptized Tiridates III along with members of the royal court and upper class as Christians. Tiridates III issued a decree by which he granted Gregory full rights to begin carrying out the conversion of the entire nation to the Christian faith. The same year Armenia became the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion. The newly built cathedral, the Mother Church in Etchmiadzin became and remains the spiritual and cultural center of Armenian Christianity and center of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Most Armenians were baptized in the Aratsani and Yeraskh rivers. Two princes from Ujjain, India had founded a large kingdom in Armenia in 165 BCE and they established 22 cities covering most of modern Armenia including two Hindu temples dedicated to Gisane and Demetr. According to the account of Zenob Glak, one of the first disciples of Gregory the Illuminator, the temples were destroyed and the priests killed along with 1038 defenders of the raid that was ordered by Gregory.Many of the pre-Christian festivals and celebrations such as Tyarndarach and Vardavar or Vadarvar associated with water worship, that dated back thousands of years, were preserved and continued in the form of Christian celebrations and chants. In 302, Gregory received consecration as Patriarch of Armenia from Leontius of Caesarea, his childhood friend.
Retirement and death
In 318, Gregory appointed his second son Aristaces as the next Catholicos in line of Armenia's Holy Apostolic Church to stabilize and continue strengthening Christianity not only in Armenia, but also in the Caucasus. Gregory also placed and instructed his grandson Gregory in charge of the holy missions to the peoples and tribes of all of the Caucasus and Caucasian Albania; the younger man was martyred by a fanatical mob while preaching in Albania.In his later years, Gregory withdrew to a small sanctuary near Mount Sebuh in the Daranali province with a small convent of monks, where he remained until his death.
Veneration
After his death his corpse was removed to the village of Thodanum. His remains were scattered near and far in the reign of the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno. His head is believed to be now in Armenia, his left hand at Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, and his right at the Holy See of Cilicia in Antelias, Lebanon. In the 8th century, the iconoclast decrees in Greece caused a number of religious orders to flee the Byzantine Empire and seek refuge elsewhere. San Gregorio Armeno in Naples was built in that century over the remains of a Roman temple dedicated to Ceres, by a group of nuns escaping from the Byzantine Empire with the relics of Gregory.A number of prayers, and about thirty of the canonical hymns of the Armenian Church, are ascribed to Gregory the Illuminator. Homilies of his 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. 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 Symeon the Metaphrast.
A Life of Gregory by the Vartabed Matthew was published in the Armenian language at Venice in 1749 and was translated into English by the Rev. Father Malan. Gregory is commemorated on September 30 by the Orthodox Church, which styles him "Holy Hieromartyr Gregory, Bishop of Greater Armenia, Equal of the Apostles and Enlightener of Armenia." He is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on March 23.