At first the Gregorian Church took part in the ecumenical conferences,
but for some reason they had no representatives in the council which
met at Chalcedon in 451 A. D. In a synod of Armenian bishops in 491 the
decisions of the council of Chalcedon were rejected, and at a later
synod they declared openly for the Monophysite doctrine. This led to
their complete separation from the Greek Church.
Their church government is Episcopal, with the same form of patriarchal
control which dominates the Greek Church in Turkey. The bishop of the
main body of the Armenians resides at Etchmiadzin, their holy city, now
in Russia, not far from the Turkish borders. There is also a bishop
on the island of Octamar in the lake of Van, and another at Cis in
Cilicia, each with a small following. The bishops have authority over
the spiritual affairs of the Church, like the ordaining of priests
and vartabeds, while the two patriarchs, one at Jerusalem and one at
Constantinople, control its temporal affairs. As these patriarchs, and
especially the one at Constantinople, are in a measure the appointees
of the sultan, and as he represents his people in all their government
matters, the office is largely political and secular. The importance as
well as the delicacy of the position is greatly increased during the
times of political unrest.
At its beginning, the Church was as pure in doctrine and practise as
was the Greek Church at Constantinople. It was an important branch
of the Church of Christ on earth. The location of the unprotected
Armenians, in a country swept by invasion and persecutors of every
kind, made the position of the Church a most trying one. As illiteracy
increased, the spoken language of the people underwent marked changes.
The Church possessed most sacredly guarded manuscript copies of the
Scriptures and beautiful liturgies, all in the then spoken language
of the people. These were read at all church services and sermons
were preached by the officiating clergy. As the spoken language
changed during the last ten centuries, under the blasting influence
of Mohammedan rule, the sacred books of the Church ceased to speak to
the people. The priests read the words of the ritual, but neither they
nor the people understood it. The church was too holy a place in which
to make use of the vulgar vernacular, so the sermon was discontinued
because there was no one to preach in the classic tongue of the race.
Under these conditions the Christianity of the Gregorian Church became,
for the most part, a religion of form, from which the spirit had
departed. Thus bereft of the true power of Christianity and subject to
the temptations and persecutions of the Moslems among whom they dwelt,
it is not strange that the Christianity of the Gregorian Church lost
its vital power.