ishtartv.com-
ancient.eu
by Armen
Ayvazyan
published
on 15 April 2015
In
301 CE, the ruling circles of the Kingdom of Great Armenia decided to convert
their entire nation to Christianity.
This revolutionary break with the centuries-old pagan tradition was led by King
Tiridates III (Trdat the Great, 287-330 CE), his sister Khosrovidukht, his
wife Queen Ashkhen, and his closest associate Gregory the Illuminator, the
Father and first Patriarch of Armenian Church (302-326 CE). Gregory was later
canonized by the major Christian Churches, and all four of them were canonized
by the Armenian Church.
Reasons
for Armenia's Conversion to Christianity
Armenia’s
pioneering conversion to Christianity was a move towards a more centralized
state, at the expense of the increasingly powerful feudal houses. From King
Tiridates' own political frame of reference, uniting his nation under the
banner of one God was an ideological booster for an already strong Armenian
ethnic identity in the face of the escalating geopolitical pressure from the
two feuding superpowers of the time, the Roman Empire and Sassanid Persia.
Furthermore,
replacing polytheism with monotheism elevated the king above all nobility as a
foremost propagator and defender of the faith, a direct representative of
Christ in Armenia. Simultaneously, the new religious doctrine deprived both the
king and the noble chiefs from their previously assumed divine origin.
Support
and Resistance
As
many Christian communities were already scattered throughout the country
and because virtually all major feudal military lords of Armenia stood firmly
behind their king in favor of this historic spiritual renewal, the swift
triumph of the new creed was a foregone conclusion. In 302 CE, a physically
disjointed armed resistance was attempted by the elements of the establishment
who favoured the old religious system. However, only in the canton of Taron did
the efforts to protect the pagan temples grow into a full-scale, though
self-consciously hopeless, insurrection. Most of the rebel force was put up by
the Armenian-Indian theocratic principality or, more precisely, a warrior temple association founded by the
Indian tribes who migrated to Armenia some two centuries earlier, presumably,
during the reign of King Tiridates I (63-88 CE).
Tiridates
I had ordered them to settle in this strategically important area and supply
his army with trained cavalry and infantry, which they did loyally. By the
fourth century these Indians had grown to a population of up to 100,000, and
they had already been partially assimilated into the Armenian society: in
particular, they had become Armenian-speaking. Still, ethnoreligious
distinctiveness had hereditarily been maintained. Judging by the idols of their
worship as well as their markedly different countenance – a contemporary
primary source describes them as “black, ugly and long-haired” – they were most
likely the worshippers of Krishna (alias Gisane).
Armed
Conflict
In
any event, in 302 CE, Ardzan, the high priest of these Armenian Indians and an
influential feudal lord in his own right, was killed in one of the initial
encounters with the royal forces in Taron. The next day saw heavy fighting with
6,946 soldiers on the pagan side and 7,080 soldiers on the royal side (the vast
majority of the royal forces were not in the area at that time). During the
fighting, the balance of forces on the ground changed against the royal troops,
when one of the Armenian commanders, the Prince of Hashtenk, together with his
force of 700 men, switched camps and went to the idolaters only to be killed in
a mounted duel with the Prince of Syunik.
The
protracted battle came to an end
when Demetr, the pagans’ commander and the son of Ardzan, was killed alongside
a thousand of his troops. A surprisingly rapid reconciliation followed, as
evidenced by the fact that the numerous dead were cooperatively collected and
buried in a common grave. Likewise,
a few days later the thousands of former rebels, who had been allowed to return
to their villages, being neither disarmed nor persecuted, agreed to be baptized
of their own free will.
A
monument was quickly erected on the spot of the battle, commemorating the
fallen from both sides. Its mollifying inscription indicated the collective
shock of ancient Armenians at the previously unheard of intense fratricidal
conflict in the following terms:
This
has been the first civil war. It was
extremely ferocious.
Ardzan the High Priest, a chief commander at this battle, is buried here
together with 1,083 of his men.
And we fought this battle for the deities of Gisane and for Christ.
The
resistance against conversion to Christianity was defeated, and Armenia became one
of the first kingdoms to officially adopt Christianity as state religion.
