From: hildegard8@excite.com   
      
   September 30th - Saint Gregory the Illuminator   
      
   Born 257?; died 337?, surnamed the Illuminator (Lusavorich).   
      
   Gregory the Illuminator is the apostle, national saint, and patron of   
   Armenia. He was not the first who introduced Christianity into that country.   
   The Armenians maintain that the faith was preached there by the Apostles   
   Bartholomew and Thaddaeus. Thaddaeus especially (the hero of the story of   
   King Abgar of Edessa and the portrait of Christ) has been taken over by the   
   Armenians, with the whole story. Abgar in their version becomes a King of   
   Armenia; thus their land is the first of all to turn Christian. It is   
   certain that there were Christians, even bishops, in Armenia before St.   
   Gregory. The south Edessa and Nisibis especially, which accounts for the   
   Armenian adoption of the Edessene story. A certain Dionysius of Alexandria   
   (248-265) wrote them a letter "about penitence" (Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl.",   
   VI, xlvi). This earliest Church was then destroyed by the Persians. Ardashir   
   I, the founder of the Sassanid dynasty (226), restored, even extended, the   
   old power of Persia. Armenia, always the exposed frontier state between Rome   
   and Persia, was overrun by Ardashir's army (Khosrov I of Armenia had taken   
   the side of the old Arsacid dynasty); and the principle of uniformity in the   
   Mazdean religion, that the Sassanids made a chief feature of their policy,   
   was also applied to the subject kingdom. A Parthian named Anak murdered   
   Khosrov by Ardashir's orders, who then tried to exterminate the whole   
   Armenian royal family. But a son of Khosrov, Trdat (Tiridates), escaped, was   
   trained in the Roman army, and eventually came back to drive out the   
   Persians and restore the Armenian kingdom.   
      
   In this restoration St. Gregory played an important part. He had been   
   brought up as a Christian at Caesarea in Cappadocia. He seems to have   
   belonged to an illustrious Armenian family. He was married and had two sons   
   (called Aristakes and Bardanes in the Greek text of Moses of Khorni; see   
   below). Gregory, after being himself persecuted by King Trdat, who at first   
   defended the old Armenian religion, eventually converted him, and with him   
   spread the Christian faith throughout the country. Trdat became so much a   
   Christian that he made Christianity the national faith; the nobility seem to   
   have followed his example easily, then the people followed-or were induced   
   to follow-too. This happened while Diocletian was emperor (284-305), so that   
   Armenia has a right to her claim of being the first Christian State. The   
   temples were made into churches and the people baptized in thousands. So   
   completely were the remains of the old heathendom effaced that we know   
   practically nothing about the original Armenian religion (as distinct from   
   Mazdeism), except the names of some gods whose temples were destroyed or   
   converted (the chief temple at Ashtishat was dedicated to Vahagn, Anahit and   
   Astlik; Vanatur was worshipped in the North round Mount Ararat, etc.).   
   Meanwhile Gregory had gone back to Caesarea to be ordained. Leontius of   
   Caesarea made him bishop of the Armenians; from this time till the   
   Monophysite schism the Church of Armenia depended on Caesarea, and the   
   Armenian primates (called Catholicoi, only much later patriarchs) went there   
   to be ordained. Gregory set up other bishops throughout the land and fixed   
   his residence at Ashtishat (in the province of Taron), where the temple had   
   been made into the church of Christ, "mother of all Armenian churches". He   
   preached in the national language and used it for the liturgy. This, too,   
   helped to give the Armenian Church the markedly national character that it   
   still has, more, perhaps, than any other in Christendom. Towards the end of   
   his life he retired and was succeeded as Catholicos by his son Aristakes.   
   Aristakes was present at the First General Council, in 325. Gregory died and   
   was buried at Thortan. A monastery was built near his grave. His relics were   
   afterwards taken to Constantinople, but apparently brought back again to   
   Armenia. Part of these relics are said to have been taken to Naples during   
   the Iconoclast troubles.   
      
   This is what can be said with some certainty about the Apostle of Armenia;   
   but a famous life of him by Aganthangelos (see below) embellishes the   
   narrative with wonderful stories that need not be taken very seriously.   
   According to this life, he was the son of the Parthian Anak who had murdered   
   King Khosrov I. Anak in trying to escape was drowned in the Araxes with all   
   his family except two sons, of whom one went to Persia, the other (the   
   subject of this article) was taken by his Christian nurse to Caesarea and   
   there baptized Gregory, in accordance with what she had been told in a   
   vision. Soon after his marriage, Gregory parted from his wife (who became a   
   nun) and came back to Armenia. Here he refused to take part in a great   
   sacrifice to the national gods ordered by King Trdat, and declared himself a   
   Christian. He was then tortured in various horrible ways, all the more when   
   the king discovered that he was the son of his father's murderer. After   
   being subjected to a variety of tortures (they scourged him, and put his   
   head in a bag of ashes, poured molten lead over him, etc.) he was thrown   
   into a pit full of dead bodies, poisonous filth, and serpents. He spent   
   fifteen years in this pit, being fed by bread that a pious widow brought him   
   daily. Meanwhile Trdat goes from bad to worse. A holy virgin named Rhipsime,   
   who resists the king's advances and is martyred, here plays a great part in   
   the story. Eventually, as a punishment for his wickedness, the king is   
   turned into a boar and possessed by a devil. A vision now reveals to the   
   monarch's sisters that nothing can save him but the prayers of Gregory. At   
   first no one will attend to this revelation, since they all think Gregory   
   dead long ago. Eventually they seek and find him in the pit. He comes out,   
   exorcises the evil spirit and restores the king, and then begins preaching.   
   Here a long discourse is put into the saint's mouth-so long that it takes up   
   more than half his life. It is simply a compendium of what the Armenian   
   Church believed at the time that it was written (fifth century). It begins   
   with an account of Bible history and goes on to dogmatic theology. Arianism,   
   Nestorianism and all the other heresies up to Monophysite times are refuted.   
   The discourse bears the stamp of the latter half of the fifth century so   
   plainly that, even without the fact that earlier writers who quote   
   Agathangelos (Moses of Khorni, etc.) do not know it, no one could doubt that   
   it is the composition of an Armenian theologian of that time, inserted into   
      
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