Mor Gabriel monastery: experiencing the Syriac Christian Orthodox liturgy

We are woken up by the loud bell in the bell tower near our room. It’s only 5.30 in the morning and it’s very cold! We grab some warm clothes, tie our scarves over our heads and make our way across the quadrangle to the church for the first liturgy of the day. As women tradition says we should sit on the left hand side and the men sit on the right. The nuns come to join us, sitting behind us at the back of the church. The church is gloomy, the atmosphere subdued. I think we’re not quite awake yet! Boys start to appear and gather around the two lecterns at the front of the church to each side, north and south, left and right. Soon they begin to chant or intone – antiphonally – first from one side, then the other. They stand with arms folded, all around the lecterns, so that some are reading the book on the lectern from the side or upside down! The shorter boys stand closer to the lectern. The liturgy is in classical Syriac - so we have no idea what is being said. More boys drift in, and the monks, over the next ten minutes or so – and they take their places at the lecterns - the time keeping seems quite relaxed, no one seems bothered if you are “late”. Every so often the boys and monks step over to carpets on the floor, where they kneel facing the sanctuary and prostrate themselves, all together, as they chant prayers, reminding us that the prostration for prayers which we think of as a Muslim way of prayer in fact originated before Islam in the Orthodox Christian worship.

Then the thurifer appears, the boy carrying the thurible or incense burner. He is dressed in a white alb, with crossed sashes perhaps denoting his seniority? He stands in front of us and swings the thurible in four directions, north, south, east and west, rotating on the spot as he does so. Then he goes around the church, censing the font and the several colorful hangings around the walls, called Sutore (sutoro singular). These hang on the bare walls and there is also a large one hanging from a curtain pole separating the sanctuary from the congregation. This is pulled open at various stages in the liturgy to reveal the sanctuary. On the altar a paten and chalice are in a state of readiness to celebrate the eucharist at any time. The liturgy proceeds like this for the best part of an hour. We get into the rhythm, standing whenever the incense is being used, and whenever the prostrations tell us that prayers are being said. Otherwise we sit.

the sanctuary sutoro

The atmosphere becomes increasingly charged with the incense, giving a sense of mystery and wonder to the proceedings. Finally the monk in charge, or on this occasion at Mor Gabriel the Archbishop, resplendent in his bright crimson habit, takes his position in front of the sanctuary. We queue to walk to the front of the sanctuary to where the Bible is placed – kiss it, and make our way back, touching the hand of the monk to receive a blessing from him. There is an order of hierarchy to this – men first, in order of seniority, followed by the boys, then the women, ordained first… where does a female priest place herself here? Does she join her male priest colleagues? The monks think not! Do we respect their attitude towards women? Or assert our priestly position, female or not? This is tricky and views inevitably vary!
There is just about enough time for a shower before breakfast. The total service has taken a little over an hour.




The process is repeated when we return to the monastery after our day out, when we join the boys and monks for Ramsho, the evening liturgy. After that liturgy we walk out into the evening sunshine, in time to see one of the boys drawing water up from the well just outside the church.
Time soon for supper and bed. After such an early start to each day no one seems to object to going to bed early, at 8 or 9 pm at the latest. That suits me just fine!




For further detail there is an excellent paper Monasticism in Tur Abdin: A Present Day Account by Mark DelCogliano in Cistercian Studies Quarterly 41.3 2006 p. 311

Mor Gabriel Monastery, Tur Abdin

In the late 1990s the road up to the Mor Gabriel monastery had to be closed at dusk because of the civil war in the region. The local kurds would shoot anyone driving up after dark.
As we make our way there in the coach now we are reminded that we are in a feudal area, ruled by overlords, Agha or Kurdish chieftains. In the worst of the troubles, the safety of the monastery and Christians in the area was threatened and 90% of the Christians emigrated, many to Sweden or Germany. The 20,000 Christian population dropped to nearer 2000. We also learn that there has been a bad relationship between the villagers and the monastery over land ownership.
Recently though the Agha system has been collapsing and there has been a massive improvement over the last 2-3 years in the local situation. Just from our coach we can see a building boom all around, the checkpoints have gone, where they used to be every 4-5 km, and villagers are coming back to their villages. There may now be five to ten Christian families again in each village. The plain is so fertile for arable crops that the farmers can work very hard for a few months of the year and then afford to go away for long holidays somewhere warm during Turkey’s harsh winter.

the entrance to Mor Gabriel

We are to stay here for two nights. Mor Gabriel, (otherwise known as Dayro d-Mor Gabriel or Deyrulumur and the seat of the bishopric of Tur Abdin) is the greatest of the Tur Abdin monasteries. This monastery has strong links with the Church of England through the Tur Abdin Focus Group. We are formally greeted by Mor Timotheus Samuel, who has been the Archbishop of Tur Abdin since 1985. For our leader Stephen Griffiths this is like a homecoming; he clearly feels very comfortable and at ease here. He has spent many years studying this part of Turkey and its Syriac Orthodox religion, getting to know the people well. Immediately on arrival we are invited to sit in a huge circle on the balcony in the shade. We are served the usual small glasses of cay by boys, students and lay workers at the convent, and we sit around talking for quite some time. We are not used to this style of welcoming and hospitality in our hurried western world, but here we are to become very used to it over the next few days. On this first day we seem reticent to speak and somewhat daunted by what seems a strained atmosphere.

The Archbishop is chatting with the Revd Stephen Griffiths, Abba Seraphim, (Primate of The British Orthodox Church within the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate), Archimandrite Deiniol (of the Wales Orthodox Mission of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church) and Bishop Christopher of the Anglican Diocese of Southwark, updating on the local situation particularly about the land dispute with the Turkish government that threatened the monastery's very existence and which is very much on everyone’s mind at present.
Then our accommodation is sorted out. There is a new wing and an old wing. I’m in one of the old rooms, which seems good enough, although with 4 single beds very close together albeit with our own modern bathroom this would have been quite uncomfortable with 4 females. Fortunately there are only two of us!

guidance for visitors

There is very little parking space for cases, clothes, and the general clobber of 2 women, let alone 4!! But it was fine. The new accommodation is apparently very much nicer with tables to write at, much more space and lovely views to the south over the Tur Abdin region.
But when one reflects on the plight of so many refugees not so very far from here in refugee camps how can we complain? 
Once the greeting and accommodation is all sorted out we have a tour of the monastery. Established in 397, this is the oldest Syriac Orthodox monastery in the world, and the most vital, with some 15 nuns, two monks, several lay workers and always providing hospitality to visitors from overseas. It is very much a working community, with productive gardens and orchards, and
its primary purpose “is to keep Syriac Orthodox Christianity alive in the land of its birth by providing schooling, and ordination of native-born monks." 
On occasions it has provided physical protection to the Christian population during the civil strifes.

This is such a fascinating area of Turkey, and the tenacity and perseverance shown by monasteries such as Mor Gabriel through the difficult times they have suffered is surely an inspiration to us all...

For those interested in looking at the situation of the Christians in Tur Abdin in more detail, I can recommend the following links:
For a very succinct explanation of the political situation as it has affected Syrian Christianity in the Tur Abdin region of South East Turkey there are the reports from 1997 onwards from the Revd. Stephen Griffiths on the Tur Abdin Focus Group website – for example see  http://www.focusmorgabriel.com/articles/article0002.php for his first visit in 1997, with much detail of the history of the Syriac Christian Church up to that time: http://www.focusmorgabriel.com/articles/article0012.php for more on the political background. Also http://www.focusmorgabriel.com/articles/article0011.php Will the Christians be driven out? for even greater detail and analysis…
Also http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/2013/10/turkey-religious-freedom-and-the-current-state-of-christian-muslim-dialogue/ for more background to the current status of the church in Turkey
and for the land dispute see http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/gem-of-christian-history-at-risk-in-turkey for the detail on the land dispute and the latest somewhat more positive update at http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/2013/10/return-of-mor-gabriel-monastery-land-approved/

the deer that lives at the monastery cared for by one of the nuns

Hasankeyf on the road to the Tur Abdin

The River Tigris

We are journeying, we are told, to the Syrian Orthodox area of Turkey, across the Tigris into Tur Abdin, and the traditional homeland of the Syrian Orthodox Church. The monasteries we will be visiting are supporting refugees of the current civil war, with their traditional monastic hospitality. We are warned by the bishop to display the very best of our natures to our hosts for this next stage of our pilgrimage, in view of our hotel experiences last night. Monasteries are not hotels! This is a timely reminder to us all.

As our journey takes us further south and we lose altitude, we can feel the climate getting ever warmer. We drive through a dramatic gorge following the course of the Bitlis river that will eventually find its way into the Tigris. I see small oil pumps in the distant fields. On the road through Kurtalan towards Batman we see a small convoy of tank transporters to remind us that all is not totally peaceful and well here. Earlier we passed an army checkpoint, but are waved through with no problem. Kurtalan and the surrounding area is colored orange on the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office map for travel advice through Turkey; warning us that all but essential travel is not advised through this area. Looking at a map it seems it would have been hard to avoid this area and we came through unscathed.
We are crossing a high plateau amongst the mountains. The vegetation is noticeably increasing and we are driving into much larger scale arable farming than we have seen thus far. There are large scorched fields where the farmers have burnt off the stubble. At Ikikopru we drive over another small tributary of the Tigris, the Yanarsu Cayi. Here we are crossing the line between Eastern and Western Syriac Christianity. Army camps seem more frequent here. The large scale farms are using very old John Deere farm implements.
So we drive down off the plain towards Batman, which we see sprawling below us as the road hairpins down. Once a small village, this exploded in size following the discovery of oil in the 1940’s and it is now a vibrant town with the largest oilfield in Turkey located just outside the city.

Hasankeyf

It seems quite unbelievable that the Turkish government would want to flood and destroy a significant and beautiful part of their ancient heritage, which is such a tourist attraction as well. But this is what they intend for the Kurdish city of Hasankeyf, or Hasankale, on the River Tigris, when in 2015 they begin construction of the planned Ilisu hydro-electric dam. Local people face eviction; in fact over 37 communities will be displaced and in 2013 there are signs of the new city already being built to re-house the population. This is in spite of huge opposition to the plan, locally and internationally. We stop for a photo opportunity but sadly have no time to linger. Here we have one of the most important cities of the Middle Ages, with castle, mosque (once a byzantine church), palaces, thousands of cave houses, and the enormous ruined arches of the old bridge across the Tigris; and all in the beautiful honey colored rock of the region.

Hasankeyf

This is a simply heartbreaking place.
There are plenty of websites that can be visited and supported to try to stop this sacrilege. See for example the opposition from the Nature Foundation who have a petition online, and an excellent blog dedicated to Hasankeyf  which is a very good source of information on the site and a discussion of all relevant issues. Here also can be found a petition to make the site a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We are now into the Tur Abdin region,

The River Tigris

the South East region of Turkey flanked by the Tigris to the East, the Euphrates to the West, and stretching down to the Syrian border in the South. In Syriac the words translate as Mountains of the Slaves, although current romantic interpretations like to think of slaves as servants, and guide books often refer to the Mountains of the Servants of God. The area is significant for the number of monasteries and churches, and the majority of the inhabitants of the region live in small villages. Syriac Christians may be variously known as Syriac Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Assyrians, Arameans, Syriani; whatever we call them they are custodians of some of the earliest surviving churches in the world, and we are in their homeland, in what was once East Syria. On the coach we hear about the “sons and daughters of the covenant” committed to celibacy and ascetic lives but dedicated to church life within the community. They were an important part of early Syriac Christianity, forming the basis of the monastic system in the area, before the advent of the monasticism which developed in the deserts of Egypt. There is an invaluable spiritual tradition embodied in the Tur Abdin community and its spiritual and cultural value to the wider community is important and increasing, as we will see and hear for ourselves over the next few days.

Impressions and reflections on Turkish Hotels: our pilgrimage continues...

We check into our hotel for the night, tired and hungry, and everything seems to be wrong with it.
First impressions are unfortunate. The water is cold, the beds lack clean sheets, the duvets are distinctly grubby, some room bins have rubbish in them from previous occupants… Our guide lists our complaints and the hotel staff look bemused but promise to try to put things right, while we have our evening prayers. Meanwhile our supper is getting cold.
And everything is put right, more or less.
The lads who comprise the hotel staff were well intentioned if untrained to Western standards of hotel management. 
The food was good, although the choice was limited to two dishes - fish or meat - plus my vegetarian tomato/onion/pepper casserole with couscous, which was very good. All the food was plentiful and well cooked, albeit cold on serving, some said, but again this was to some extent our fault. Our impromptu half hour evening prayers when the staff were clearly ready to serve us our supper was perhaps unfortunate timing. Anyway the meal concluded with unlimited quantities of typically Turkish syrupy cake and cay – so I was very happy!
Tomorrow was to be the start of the next stage of our journey, and something completely different; a few days experiencing the hospitality and liturgy of a couple of Syriac Orthodox monasteries whilst we explored other churches and monasteries of the Tur Abdin area of Southern Turkey down towards the Syrian border.

the view from our window

When I woke up the next morning, drew back the curtains and saw our position right on the shore of the beautiful Lake Van, with splendid views over to the glistening snow capped mountains beyond the other side of the lake, I felt more than a little contrite. We all seemed to have so much to complain about last night when we checked into this hotel. And what a panorama we woke up to! A simply fabulous view of the lake was there straight in front of us – we were right on the waterfront. We had been so tired and grumpy the previous night on arrival that we had all noticed only the bad, not seeing any good in our situation.

the view from our window

The wifi in our room worked very well, we had a lake view (those on the other side of the hotel fared less well) the room was large, with both a double and a single bed, carpeting and well decorated. The beds were comfortable once we had made them up with the clean sheets supplied, the room was very quiet and we enjoyed a really good night’s sleep. Yes the modern bathroom was scruffy and moldy but this could so easily be put right. Yes there was no hot water on arrival but these hotels cannot afford to put heat on until guests arrive – quite reasonably! Our itinerary said we were staying in Bitlis, and from the map I see that this is some way inland from Lake Van. The hotel was in fact in Tatvan, a town on the far South West corner of the lake in the province of Bitlis. (actually Bitlis itself, I now read from a guide book, has one of the highest concentration of restored historic buildings in Eastern Anatolia, so that seems like a good place to visit on another trip). I don’t think any one of us expected this hotel to be on the lake. Hence my own confusion, and my total surprise and delight at such a lovely view.

Lake Van from the hotel grounds

The hotel has been operating for 30 years, we are told, and is in fact in a wonderful scenic location. Sadly, wondering down to the lake before breakfast, I see that the hotel frontage is in a sorry state, and in desperate need of much repair and cleaning up. It could be so lovely again, given its position on the lake. I also do believe we have to be careful that we do not judge others’ hotels in different cultures by the standards of our own. That said, it would not take much effort to tidy up the lake frontage outside, clearing up the piles of litter, mending and re-laying the odd broken and uneven paving slabs, tidying up the grass areas and the edging plants. Perhaps it has a good tidy up at the start of the season. We are after all now heading into winter. And proper toilets not squats in the public “lavabos” in the downstairs foyer would be good!
Breakfast was OK with not the greatest choice of foods available, especially for a veggie like me. But the cay was brewed early, and I was able to take a cup to my room mate before she rose; tea in bed is not a luxury the monasteries will provide, I’m sure!

In one of those curious moments of synchronicity I was reading Freya Stark's Riding to the Tigris at this time, where she recounts her experiences on a journey from Lake Van to the Tigris, mostly undertaken on horseback. In Chapter 3, on Van, she writes: "The Turks, with the most splendid, varied and interesting country in the world, are naturally anxious to obtain tourists, and their difficulties in this respect are caused chiefly by the quite phenomenal badness of their hotels." This she attributes mainly to their lack of training in hotel management. OK this was written about her travels in the 1950s, but it is clear that some hotels could even now do well to heed her words! Although I must add that the efforts of hotel staff everywhere we went were invariably well-intentioned and the traditional Turkish hospitality could rarely be faulted.

an early glimpse of the Tigris river

We have an early start and another long drive ahead of us. Our journey on the coach begins with a short version of morning prayer, and a wisdom reading from the Holy Bible, Ecclesiastes Chapter 6, on balancing gratefulness with generosity - carefully chosen by the bishop and very pertinent to our experiences last night. I listened with contrition. I wonder if everyone on the coach felt as I did? Anyway it was a good way for pilgrims to start the day, as we made our way South towards the Tur Abdin region of Turkey.

Aktamar, Lake Van contd: the pilgrim's perspective

As we stepped ashore on the Island of Aktamar after our short boat trip across Lake Van from Edremit it soon became clear that for the first time on our pilgrimage we were to share the site with tourists.
Sadly the groups already ashore made it difficult for us to find any chance for peace, prayer and contemplation within the church. In any event the guard on duty told us that we could not say the Lord’s Prayer there as a group, so we had to find our own moments for private prayer.
Whilst I knelt silently and I hoped unobtrusively in a dark corner within the church the building was besieged by noisy groups who seemed to care little for the sacred space, whilst they listened to poor and inaccurate information from guides who seemed to have little accurate knowledge of the place. Indeed one group were more interested in getting back earlier to their hotel to allow shopping and swimming time before supper! 

This tenth century Church of the Holy Cross is truly beautiful and as so often on this pilgrimage we were blessed with fine weather to be able to view it in detail from outside as well as within. For it is justifiably famous for the very fine carved bas-reliefs on all four sides illustrating biblical stories from both Old and New Testaments. As I walked around the church, starting with the south side and dodging tourists and tombstones, I looked with awe at depictions of David and Goliath, the Madonna with Jesus, the Isaac sacrifice, the Jonah story, a rather playful vineyard scene: then on the East side St John the Evangelist, John the Baptist and Gregory the Illuminator, (whom we met at Ani): to the North, Shadrak, Meshak and Abednego and the fiery furnace, and Adam and Eve: and so round to the Western side with a rather wonderful relief of a church and Jesus Christ. Sadly the frescoes inside the church, Christian images of the gospel stories, have been badly damaged and it needed some patience and a very cricked neck to work out the meaning of much of the imagery. I was sorry I didn’t get a good image of Gregory the Illuminator, in bas relief alongside St John the Evangelist and John the Baptist on the East façade, but there is a very good website which provides extensive detail and drawings of all the various images at  and very much more besides. This is all very comprehensive, for those who wish to delve much deeper into the detail of these various sites. Reading that website and from our own observations it is apparent that much of historical and architectural importance is being allowed to collapse and decay, through vandalism, some officially sanctioned it would seem, even politically motivated. This is sad and disturbing…

a view of the graveyard at Aktamar

And be warned – there are also some YouTube videos where ill informed guides seem to have little idea of the difference between Old and New Testament stories, mixing them up in sad ways. I listened to one such guide who is heard to say about Shadrak, Meshak and Abednego that they were told to walk through hot ashes to show they believe in Jesus!! A strange interpretation indeed of the Old Testament story of the fiery furnace from the book of Daniel! A big Turkish flag flies on the island, which had been clearly visible from our boat as we approached. It seems that the Turks only want to preserve the island on their terms, as an interesting archaeological site, not as a sacred Christian building. There is apparently no guide book available for the inside of the church, but I found it hard to believe that someone somewhere isn’t even as I write this putting one together somewhere. There is certainly a demand for one, in both Turkish and English. Or is there? Given that there is plenty of information online, and that tourists nowadays take their tablets out with them to call up all the detail they seek, and to take all the photos they want, then perhaps the paper guidebook has nearly had its day?

Restoration? Rebuilding? of monks' accommodation

Outside the church some workmen are busily building replicas of the monks’ cells that would have been there… but they are only making them one story high and there is good evidence that these would have had two stories. Again the restoration work may be ill conceived and inappropriately destructive?
Are the Turks deliberately trying to hide the Armenian Christian heritage in Anatolia? The new name for the island given to it by the Turkish authorities of Akdamar, meaning White Vein, is claimed by some to be part of a deliberate cultural cleansing. What I experienced within the church made me uneasy for the future of such a beautiful sacred artefact.

looking back as we leave the island

Our time on this lovely island was all too short and after enjoying a hot cay in the weak and not too warm sunshine outside the island’s café it was with some sadness that we strolled down to catch our boat back to the mainland. On the way to the jetty I dipped my hands in the water of the lake. The concentration of minerals left the skin feeling silky smooth; as good as any hand cream! On the boat the wind dropped and the snowy mountain tops in the distance glistened in the setting sun of early evening. It wasn’t too far to go to our next hotel. I hoped our driver was feeling better. It had been a very long drive for him today. So we made our way further round the lake, through the new road tunnel towards Tatvan, past smart new villas with lake views, and were waved through an army checkpoint, before offloading at our last hotel stay of this trip.

The Church of the Holy Cross on Aghtamar on Lake Van: our Pilgrimage continues

“Van in this world, paradise in the next.” 

Church of the Holy Cross

I found this Armenian proverb as I was browsing through Armenia Travels and Studies Volume 2, by H F B Lynch. We were approaching Lake Van, which Lynch describes as “here the luxuriance of the Bay of Naples, there the austere features of a Norwegian Fjord.” Writing in more troubled times than now, he muses that this Armenian proverb might be justified in happier situations, but the perversity of man was converting this heaven into a little hell. This country, he writes further, is “one of the fairest and most favored of the old world”, and “like a book which may borrow much from the work of other writers and yet produce an effect on the reader which is wholly new, so one opens the landscape of Lake Van with that particular emotion which only very beautiful and original objects can produce.”

lunch of fish - presumed pearl mullet from the lake?

There is a pleasant looking lakeside resort called Edremit just the other side of Van towards where we are to pick up the boat to take us to the island of Aghtamar (Aktamar). It has a promenade, in need of a little smartening up, a small marina is being built, there are many small cafes along the road, which is lined on the lake side with what look like many miniature bandstands, but are actually little picnic huts with conical roofs and open sides containing the standard wooden picnic benches and tables that are so common everywhere. And they all have splendid views. This is clearly an up and coming lakeside resort. I was surprised not to see more boating activity but I guess the place was now shut for the winter with cold and snow on its way. The snow poles still present along the roadside out of town reminded us that winters here can be very harsh.

Edremit existed as a settlement before Christianity came here. Its name comes from the Armenian name Artamet, meaning "Near the Fields" in Armenian. This is appropriate situated as it is on the shores of the lake with fields of grapes and apples beyond. The population here suffered two genocides, the first Armenian genocide of 1894–1896, and then again in 1915-1923 when Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and other Christian numbers were decimated and Turkish families took over.  Before 1915 Artamet had 10 Armenian churches and 1 Greek church. Thousands of their historical monuments were annihilated as well. We have to appreciate this.

There is a lovely Armenian legend surrounding the original name for the island of Aktamar. It involves the love story of an Armenian princess called Tamar, living on the island, for her lover, a commoner boy on the mainland. Each night he would swim over the 3 km separating the island from the mainland, guided by a light she held for him. One night her father, disapproving of course of such a liaison, extinguished the light. The boy became lost and drowned, and when they found his body the words Akh Tamar or Oh Tamar were frozen on his lips. After another excellent traditional Turkish lunch we were taken by boat to the island. It was a half hour journey – there is a shorter boat route from further around the coast near Gevas but the longer trip allowed us to savour the lake views and then watch to see who would be first to spot the little church, dedicated to the Holy Cross, snuggled into the side of the island as we approached the landing stage.

It is something of a miracle that this beautiful church, built of pink volcanic tuff on this grey limestone island has been preserved as well as it is, given its turbulent and violent history. The island itself was once a palatial residence of a king, one King Gagik 1 Artsruni of the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan, who reigned from 908-943. He built a large palace for himself and founded a large settlement with gardens and orchards and places of recreation. During the period from 1116 to 1895 the church was the seat of an Armenian Catholicus, something akin to a church bishop. All that remains today from that period is the church, built during the years 915-921 by a monk Manuel. During the Armenian genocide of 1915 the monks were massacred and the monastic complex of which the church was central, fell into ruins.

The church and island was a military training ground for a period and many large bullet holes were made in the beautiful façade which were to challenge later attempts at restoration. In 1951 the church was going to be destroyed by the Turkish government but was mercifully saved by the writer and journalist Yaşar Kemal and became a tourist attraction. It underwent some controversial restoration in 2005/2006 and became a secular museum for a while before being restored to its status as an Armenian Christian church.

The cross that now sits atop the dome once again, as a symbol of the true religious purpose of the building, was itself the center of controversy. Apparently the Turkish government resisted such a cross and there was some concern over the weight which the church would be able to support, but in 2010 a cross was indeed erected, albeit half the weight of that originally proposed. In 2011 the earthquake in the region cracked the dome, possibly weakened by the newly erected cross.

Since 2010, once a year on the feast day of 19th September, the Turkish authorities allow a patronal festival service to be held but otherwise the church is very much just a tourist attraction.
Tomorrow there will be more about this wonderful but still threatened church...

Armenian Christianity in Eastern Turkey - a pilgrimage and a history

Church of the Holy Cross Aktamar 

By now my readers will be used to the idea that pretty much everything about the history of the areas we were visiting in this beautiful region of Eastern Turkey has been extremely complicated. It was little wonder that I sometimes found it hard to get my head around all the dates and names and battles and so on that our guide was telling us about in the coach as we traveled on between our many and varied stopping points.

Armenian church of St Gregory of Tigran Honents at Ani

But to gain the most out of this pilgrimage it really was important to understand some of the background history to the area and especially its churches and monasteries,
and as far as the history of the Armenian Church is concerned, I have identified the following which I see as the main facts relevant to this pilgrimage:

1. It was two of the disciples of Jesus Christ, Thaddeus and Bartholomew, who first brought Christianity to the ancient Kingdom of Armenia, in about the middle of the first century AD. They helped spread the religion in the Kingdom and it is said that they may have been martyred in Armenia.

Ani church of St Gregory of Tigran Honents

2. St Gregory the Illuminator (otherwise called St Gregory the Enlightener, and so called because he enlightened the nation with the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was responsible for the Armenians embracing Christianity. He was brought up in Caesarea in Cappadochia as a Christian and was imprisoned and tortured for many years in a deep dungeon by the pagan Tiridates. The story goes that at that time King Tiridates III succumbed to a dreadful affliction brought on after the King had a group of Christian nuns murdered in a fit of spite because his amorous advances were rejected by one of them. So Gregory was brought up from his dungeon, where in spite of the awful treatments inflicted upon him he had survived, and sure enough did indeed cure the king, converting him to Christianity from Paganism at the same time. This was good news for Armenian Christianity as in gratitude the King declared the official religion of Armenia to be Christianity.
This made Armenia the first country to have a national Christian Church. 
Within just a few centuries, with royal support, Christianity had spread rapidly throughout the country and even permeated the Armenian culture.
The frescoes in the eastern part of the Church of St Gregory of Tigran Honents at Ani are devoted to the life of St Gregory the Illuminator.

3. There were three other very significant events in early Armenian church history:

a. In the mid fifth century the Persians wanted the Armenians to denounce their faith and follow Zoroastrianism. The Armenians fought for their right to remain Christian at the Battle of Avarayr where St Vartan and over 1000 noblemen were defeated, but after 30 years of persecution the new Persian Shah acknowledged the right from then on for the Armenians to pursue their Christian faith without hindrance.

b. Until much the same time there was no written Armenian language and Greek or Syriac was used in worship. In 404 AD the monk Mesrob, later to become St Mesrob, invented an Armenian alphabet enabling him to translate the Bible so that the written word was available for all.

c. The third event of significance is somewhat more complicated and theological and concerns the way that followers of Jesus understood his nature as both perfect God and perfect man; basically whether Christians emphasized the diversity or the unity of the incarnate God – “the Word become flesh.” Those who believed in the unity of the incarnate God were accused of denying the humanity of Christ while the diversity group were said to be effectively splitting Christ into two persons. The argument is a difficult theological one, and the matter was put up for discussion and decision by the fourth Ecumenical council held at Chalcedon near Constantinople in 451 AD. Far from bringing the two sides in the debate together, in fact the council were accused of leaning too far towards the diversity idea and this split the churches into those that accepted Chalcedon (The Eastern Orthodox Churches as well as the Roman Catholic Church) and the non Chalcedonian churches including the Armenian, Syrian and Coptic Oriental Orthodox churches.

For some time from 992 Ani was the main See or center of the Catholicus or leader of the Armenian Church, and had many of the finest examples of Armenian Church architecture, sadly mostly in ruins as we had seen. Ani was the capital of the medieval Armenian Kingdom (Bagratuni) from 961 – 1045 and by the beginning of the 11th century it had a population of well over 100,000 (some say even up to 200,000). It was renowned not only for its churches but also for its elaborately fortified walls and was known as “the city of forty gates” as well as the “city of a thousand and one churches.”

Church of the Holy Cross Island of Aktamar

It was important for us to understand as pilgrims the persecutions and oppressions suffered by the Armenian Church through the ages, 
right up to the devastating genocide in 1915 already mentioned and subsequent limitations on worship in Soviet Armenia.
It says a great deal for the strength of their faith that the church has survived as it has, and at the same time it was sobering to see so many beautiful Armenian churches in different states of ruin or abandonment. 

So where does the Armenian church stand today? I quote below from an article by Michael B Papazian on The Armenian Church from which some of the above information was also obtained:

“The mission of the Armenian Church today is the re-evangelization of Armenia following its emancipation from coercive atheism as well as the renewal of religious life in a Diaspora that is increasingly threatened by materialistic and secular influences (I so agree!) The mission today to integrate all aspects of Armenian life with the Gospel remains fundamentally the same as that of St. Gregory the Illuminator at the Armenian Church’s beginning.”

I also used another excellent source, from the Armenian Culture website, on the “History of the Armenian Church”  by James R. Russell, Columbia University. 1981 and it seems appropriate to close with passages taken from the final paragraphs of that article:

"Religious intolerance, violence, and the fanatical propagation of one's own ideas without regard for the convictions and dignity of others, are the denial of civilization. …
The Armenians became more than a culture with Vartan, separating themselves decisively from Iran -- they became a civilization. No king led them into battle, nor did any hope of victory or gain spur them; they fought with simple bravery and fine reluctance, only for the right to be themselves. Such a nation is so enlightened, cupped in the very hand of God, that it can never really be defeated. Armenia celebrates in Vartan the victory, not of arms, but of an idea. That idea is the freedom of the spirit, the basis of liberty, of creativity, of thought and of life.”

Other sites that may be of interest:
http://www.armenianchurch-ed.net/our-church/history-of-the-church/history/ in USA http://armenianchurchsydney.org.au/our-church/church-history/ in Australia