Armenian Church

Armenian Church, one of the oldest branches of the Christian faith. The earliest authentic accounts of the introduction of Christianity into Armenia date from the apostolic work of St Gregory the Illuminator, who, in 303, converted King Tiridates III and members of his court. Christianity was strengthened in Armenia by the translation of the Bible into the Armenian language by the Armenian monk and scholar St Mesrob. Following the ecclesiastical controversy concerning the twofold nature of Christ, the Armenian Christians refused to accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon and formed a separate Church, sometimes referred to as the Gregorian Church. In 1439 a union with the Roman Catholic Church was accepted by some members of the Armenian Church. This was later repudiated, but a group of Armenian Catholics accept papal supremacy and the authority of the Catholic Armenian patriarchate of Sis or Cilicia (in Beirut, Lebanon), which was set up in 1742. They use an Armenian rite. The remaining larger portion of the Armenian Church is headed by its catholicos, who resides at Echmiadzin, a monastery near Yerevan in Armenia. He is nominally in authority over the Armenian patriarchs of Jerusalem and Constantinople (that is, residing in İstanbul, Turkey). The monastery has been the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Armenian nation since the 4th century; it is said to be the oldest monastic foundation in the Christian world, and in 2000 was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.