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 Hovhannes Hovhannisyan
Soviet historiography studied the history of the Armenian nation through isolating and erasing the Armenian Apostolic Church from that history. However, after Armenia regained independence, it became a requirement to evaluate the internal and external condition of the Armenian Apostolic Church and, especially, its history during the 20th century by a new approach. A vivid example of the above is the fact that until now the only complete study of Armenian Church history was written by Patriarch Maghakia Ormanian, whereas thereafter scholars only produced monographs and investigations on isolated issues.
At the beginning of the 20th century the Holy See of Echmiadzin, as a pan Armenian spiritual center, was implementing the external and the internal organization of Western Armenians, Eastern Armenians, Persian Armenians and all Armenians change formulation . . .unclear. From the viewpoint of contemporary scholarship on church history and political science it is very interesting to study the great struggle between the Armenian political parties and the church as “actors” in the internal life of Eastern Armenians, to achieve hegemony over the Armenian nation. This was the period when some clergymen educated at European Universities became ideologists of the reform movement whose ideas might be useful even today to strengthen and to consolidate the structure of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
At the beginning of the 20th century the Church executed most of the functions now implemented by the independent Armenian state. However, the Church continued to maintain its national functions of great significance.
The beginning of the 20th century is a dramatic period for the Armenian Apostolic Church. It seems that the Church entered a stable and secure era but events indicated that the premeditated policies of the Russian authorities endangered not only the functioning of the Armenian Church but also its continued existence.
It is clear that after uniting with Russia official contact with the Russian authorities in Eastern Armenia was maintained only through the Armenian Apostolic Church. That was the reason why the Russian authorities tried to limit the Church’s activities and deprive it of its financial resourses. After his election the Armenian catholicos had to be ratified by the Tsar,moreover, the Polozhenie of 1836 (the regulation governing the Armenian Church) granted some mechanisms to the Holy Synod to punish the Armenian Catholicos in cases of disobedience .
A vivid example of Russianantagonism toward the Armenian Church must be deemed the report of viceroy V. Golitsin dated March 13, 1899 submitted to the Minister of Internal Affairs on the process of secularization in Transcaucasia. In this report Church property was characterized as a resource to be exploited for revolutionary purposes against the Empire. To thwart that goal he offered to confiscate not only the Church’s annual income of half a million rubles, but also to resettle Russian imigrants in Armenia. As a result of this policy not only would the Armenian Church be deprived of its property, but the Armenian nation would face the problem of maintaining its national identity and integrity. One cannot ignore the fact that confiscation of Church property would present a major problem not only for Eastern Armenians but also for Western, because the Church made proviison for poor relief among western Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as well. Moreover, depriving the Church of its property meant that Armenians would not be able to attend Church schools, to learn history in their national language, and receive spiritual instruction because most Church finances were spent on school maintenance. Moreover, the result of all these actions was russification, forcing Armenians to attend Russian schools and receive their education in Russia .
Historical documents confirm that the one of the next steps against the Church was the bill approved by the Senate on February 17, 1899, which forced the clergy to take the oath not in Armenian but Russian . Opposing this decision, the catholicos stated that oaths were also a religious act and it lay outside the competence of the secular power. He also stated that Armenian was the canonical language of the Armenian Church and that Church ritual had never been conducted in other languages .
All this promoted the Armenian Church’s struggle for national identity and integrity under the leadership of the Armenian clergy in the person of Catholicos Mkrtich Khrimyan. It is also interesting that this fact was not rejected by Soviet histiography:indeed all historians proved that any infringement against the Armenian Church was regarded as a challenge to Armenian national identity and self-determination .
Pressure was applied against the Church and the Armenian laity in a series of steps – closing parochial schools and opening Russian schools in their place, censuring Ararat, official organ of the Holy See , closing Armenian benevolent organizations, which in Golitsin’s opinion, had been deviating from their main mission to occupy themselves with “politics rather than charity” . By so doing, the Russian authorities advanced two plans, to segregate their subjects from European values and influence, as one of the aims of these philanthropic organizations was to provide the younger generation with a European education and at the same time to introduce Russian educational programes into the schools.
Based on Golitsin’s information, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Muravyov presented his opinion on the secularization process in Transcaucasia on March 07, 1900. The main accusation against the Church was based on abstract charges because the minister considered that some revolutional entities were operating under the auspices of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Notwithstanding this charge, the experienced diplomat opposed confiscating Church property. On the one hand, he thought that undermining of the auhtority of Armenians living in the south would strengthen the Ottoman position in this important geopolitical region. On the other hand, he argued that the Armenian Christian population would be in an unfavourable situation vis-a-vis the local Muslim Sunni and Shia population . Most members of the Government were in favor of confiscation, but some, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs, considered it as an untimely event. The head of the Government Vitte agreed with Muravyov’s approach that “the Armenians’ faith is close to the faith of the Russian Orthodox Church” .
On July 26, 1901 Tsar Nikolay II approved the appointment of a special comittee to supervise the incomes and expenses of the Holy See of Echmiadzin. The use of Russian became mandatory for the Armenian population. The clergy could not be appointed without the secular power’s consent, while special reforms were drawn up to be enacted in the Gevorgian Theological Seminary.
The Russian authorities also tried also to distract Armenian attention by unleashing strife between the Armenians and Tatars. At that difficult moment Armenian unity and integrity became an extremely urgent issue because the processes commenced endangered the existence of the Armenian Church and national religion as “the Church was the only junction which could sustain the remains of the generation of Hayk together and maintain it as one nation” . After the Armeno-Tatar disputes, the Christian Armenians had to defend themselves not only against their “brother” Russian Orthodox Church and proselytizers from western Churches, but also had to fight against the Muslims. Besides inter-religious controversies the Russian Government raised obstacles to prevent Armenian imigration from Turkey so as not to exacerbate relations with the Ottoman Government.
The Russian authorities realized that they could only defeat the Holy See of Echmiadzin in the ecclesiastical sphere through an alternative spiritual ideology by pitting Russian Orthodoxy against the Armenian Apostolic Church. So, after the stormy events following June 12, 1903, the Russian Government eased its policy against the Armenians and wished to mollify the nationalistic movement by seeking “to prove” that “they do not affect the religion and Church sanctuaries” . But this was only a dream because confiscating church property would mean depriving the Church of its freedom. This is proved by the fact that the Russian authority planned to build a huge Orthodox church near Holy Echmiadzin and maintained that until construction was complete, a temporary church should be set up in Echmiadzin . At the beginning of the 20th century only 70 Armenian families were Russian Orthodox communicants around Echmiadzin and were strongly persecuted by their relatives as traitors .
Simultaneously, the Russian Government was eager to protect the Russian Orthodox Church as a national and state structure, a strategy reflected in the exile of Russian evangelicals to Armenia and their settlement in the Vagharshapat area . I interpret this as evidence of a Russian policy to create a system of alternative religious ideologies close to the center of the Armenian Church. The documents prove that at the beginning of the century the majority of teachers in the newly opened schools were non-Armenian and the study of Armenian Church history and theology was very rudimentary . But, considering the conditions under which the Orthodox Armenian community arose, we can convincingly state that the change of confession was not determined by issues of belief, but conditioned by the change in the political situation.
The logical conclusion of the Russian anti-Armenian policy was the Law on confiscating church property of June 12, 1903 (known as the Law of June 12). By this decision the Russian Government tried to destroy the Armenian Apostolic Church, transforming it into a common governmental entity financially dependent on the state. On the one hand the government wished to make Echmiadzin subject to quell any anti-imperial movement, while on the other the representatives of the Holy See would now assume a special diplomatic status in foreign countries, which could strengthen Russian influence among Armenians outside. This related primarily to Armenians living in Turkey, but the Ottoman Government, aware of the Russian intention, sought to maintain the high authority of the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople.
After some preparatory measures the Russian Government started to implement more serious steps under the initiative of the Minister of Internal Affairs V. K. Pleve. He wanted to confiscate the church property and to solve two problems at the same time: a/ to weaken the Church and its influence on Armenians and b/ to settle Russians on Armenian church lands as a step toward the main goal – assimilation . Actually, most ministers voted against the draft Law (12 votes), but Tsar Nikolay II approved the opinion of minority (5 votes) and signed it into law.
The Law aroused the whole Armenian nation. “The movement of the Armenians of the Caucasus was not only unexpected but also incredibly sudden”, - writes the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, M. Ormanyan . Armenians from all over the world sent letters of support to Echmiadzin encouraging Catholicos Khrimyan to stand firm in his position . On July 29, 1903, as he was leaving the city of Aleksandrapol, the people demanded that the catholicos disobey the requirements of the so-called law and to take all measures to block the confiscation process. Some clashes took place between the police and agitated elements of the population in Yerevan, Ashotsk, and other places .
In response to these extreme measures Catholicos Khrimyan Hayrik issued an order to the Synod on August 21 not to enforce the property confiscation, putting himself in danger by so doing ag in order to save the nation from a staggering blow.
August 24, 1903 can be deemed the date of the beginning of for national disobedience. Ignoring Golitsin’s demand to postpone consecrating the holy chrism, the catholicos performed this ceremony in the presence of 3,000 people on the following day . As a result of clashes between demonstrators and soldiers more than 10 people were killed, and more than 70 wounded in Gandzak (Genje) on August 29. Thereafter tempers became even more aggressive and the struggle to maintain national integrity continued. There were important ramifications in Tbilisi, administrative center of Transcaucasia. Trying to pacify the local Armenian population, the viceroy spread false information to the effect that the government was not closing Armenian Churches nor forcing Armenians to become Orthodox . If we take into account the absolute inconsistency of this announcement with reality, then it could be supposed that the government had intentions of going further beyond of truth . But the Russian Government failed. Instead, the whole Armenian nation stood up against any attempt at assimilation. The eastern Armenians started to evaluate their native language in a new way – they hired teachers for their children, organized secret classes, and made a serious study of their language and religion. As the great Armenian historiographer Leo says “Golitsin turned the Armenians into Armenians” .
The tsarist anti-Armenian policy led Armenians to complain against Orthodoxy and its exposure in every form. The people shunned any Armenian who tried to favour Russian culture, to marry a Russian, or to speak Russian. Fortunately, the Armenian Apostolic Church did not have to struggle very long against the government because world events impelled the tsar to change his policy regarding border regions. Besides the foreign defeats, the revolutionary wave started to threaten the tsarist dictatorship. The immediate result of this threat was the order of 1905 permitting the renewal of instruction in Armenian religion and language in schools .
It seemed that after the appointment of I. Vorontsov-Dashkov as a viceroy the situation in Transcaucasia should have changed. But, further events indicate that the government did not swerve from its intention and continued to pursue its previous policy by invisible and diplomatic channels. After the viceroy arrived in Tbilisi on May 1905, the catholicos Khrimyan Hayrik met him on June 26, and after 4 days the former submitted his proposal for reopening the Armenian schools and returning confiscated church property to suport the schools financially.
Finally, Tsar Nikolas II who had signed the Law of June 12, 1903 stepped back and issued a new order on August 1, 1905 stating that the church property should be returned and the schools be reopened. The viceroy was to execute the order, the 4th and 5th clauses of which authorized him to regulate all the problems alone . According to the rules the viceroy submitted, the use of the property and management of the schools and parishes should be governed by elected parish councils. Through these measures the government tried to unify the management of church property and schools in one entity, to share oversight with the laity and partly deprive the church of the monopolistic control it had enjoyed in the past.
Hence, I would contend that the authors of the Law on June 12, 1903 did not change their minds radically but altered the means by which to pursue the same goals. The Russian Government realized that rude methods of assimilation were not effective and therefore decided to pursue the same purposes through mild, but effective methods.
The beginning of the 20th century is also of significance for Armenian Church history in that apart from the external pressures we have discussed internal clashes also bore a negative impact on Echmiadzin. At that time a “reform” movement arose within the church framework aiming to reform the theological, parochial, canonical, legal and other spheres of the Armenian Apostolic Church to render it more dynamic and flexible, adapting it to the changing requirements of the time.
It is evident that the reformers blamed famous representatives of the clergy of radical rigorist persuasion for the negative situation prevailing in Echmiadzin. They insisted that some clergymen related to the Holy See not as a spiritual-ecclesiastical centre nor as a force for maintaining national identity, but as an institution providing financial security . Of course, some clergymen had exercised a negative role in bringing this situation about, but many of the reformers did not consider the facts and lacked an effective program for improving conditions.
There were also some reformers who tried to seek those responsible within the framework of lay society. They considered that the laity tried not to support the Church but to deprive it of its power. They also proved that secular reformers only pursued their party political goals.
It is not hard to observe that the main reason for these controversies between the secular and spiritual reformers was their different methodological premises. The staunch defenders of church reform were lay representatives who understood reform as erasing the Church from all secular spheres, and first of all the school. In order to gain authority in public life many of the political actors criticized the Church,not only demanding the cleansing of school programs of religious subjects but even the abolition of Church structures.
Of course, the clerical theologian-reformers opposed this approach. They were convinced that the existence of an ecclesial structure was not as an end in itself but that additionally the clergy should ponder how the church could serve the Armenian nation. Through the removal of deception and fraud from the Church the reformators considered that the main goal of the Armenian nation should be merely “to see Echmiadizn in its previous majestic position” .
Unfortunately, Armenian public life was not univocal either because of ideological diversity (Conservatives, Liberals, National-revolutionists, Social-democrats). These organizations were guided not by common national interests, but by the strategy of to attaining preeminent positions in public life from which to implement their own ideas .
The reformers aimed at making worship more understandable, replacing Classical Armenian (grabar) with the contemporary (Ashkharhabar) standard comprehensible to the common people and cleansing the Armenian Apostolic Church from foreign influences which had accrued over the centuries. From this point of view it is evident that the reform movement arose within the Church framework and was led by the theologians educated in famous European theological seminaries, who sought to improve and modernize the Church structure, while defending its interests and strengths.
Study of the documents and materials on the Church reform history has revealed that most clergymen both conservative and progressive had mentioned disciplinary issues, Church problems, and dogmatic questions traditionally considered taboo. Howefver, I should mention that some wanted to reform the Church through a review of dogma .
Opposing this approach the moderate representatives of reform believed that the reformed Church should become a very important factor for Armenian progress and the reform should develop from a personal level into a systematic process. “Through changing the patriarchs we can not purify the patriarchate, through electing a new catholicos we can not reform the Church, but the conduct of affairs should be changed through administrative reform”, - concludes G. Palagyan .
Thus, the reform movement was very diversified in methodological approach and involved a huge range of problems – from the need to change the ritual and liturgical aspects to proposals to review the Church’s dogmatic basis. However, the most difficult obstacle to church reform was not the reformers’clashes over different approaches but the conservative clergy’s stance in denying the notion of reform in general.
Authors of the time identified the opposite trends as conservatives and liberals, westerns and slavonics, as well as insiders and outsiders . Unfortunately, the clash between these two groups or “parties” related not only to the ideological grounds but also personal. On the other hand, the conservatives rejected the need to reform the Church and felt that “the light of freedom” would damage the eyes of an Armenian . In fact, the conservatives in the person of deputy catholicos Gevorg Surenyan did not wish to raise the people’s educational level because, in their opinion, it was untimely and required a gradated solution. The conservatives also took the radical step of accusating the reformers Karapet Ter-Mkrtchyan, Ervand Ter-Minasyan, and Garegin Yovsepyan, all of whom had been educated at illustrious European universities, of being under the influence of the Protestant Church. In my opinion, Adolf von Harnack’s lectures on liberal theology had some influence on them, but an examination of their articles and literary heritage concerning Trinitarian and Christological issues reveals that they were not under protestant dogmatic influence. The charge was false because the reformer-theologians published many scholarly articles in Echmiadzin’s official organ “Ararat”, as well as publishing books and producing scholarly research on dogmatic and ritual issues, which showed that they had not contemplated any dogmatic reform, but instead,by employing contemproary scholarly methods they strove to bolster the spiritual approaches the Armenian Church had approved throughout the centuries .
Almost all historiographers of the Church unanimously proclaim that the impulse for reform came from Maghakia Ormanian, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople who had been born into a catholic family, but had returned to the Armenian Church as adult and served to the support the Holy See of Echmiadzin with his theological and academic knowledge. Conservative and other clergy opposed to reform attacked his ideas in their articles . We can convincingly say that through his teaching Ormanian was spurring a reevaluation of the Gevorgian Theological Seminary because after its foundation by Catholicos Gevorg IV it had gradually ceased to fulfill its main purpose. It was also evident that after his activities at the seminary his disciples Karapet Ter-Mkrtchian and Garegin Yovsepyan became active followers of his plans for church reform. Thereafter reform ideas spread to the Armash Theological Seminary under Ormanian’s direction through Babken Kiwleserian and Torgom Gushakian.
It should also be noted that the pro- reform faction among the clergy were by no means unanimous. It is natural that reviewing such complex issues would inevitably lead to divergence among figures with different spiritual, dogmatic, and political orientations. From this point of view I have divided the representatives into groups accortding to their tactical differences regarding implementation of their programs. So, in my opinion, the following are the main trends :
a/ moderate reformers /M. Ormanian, K. Ter-Mkrtchian, G. Yovsepian/
b/ radical reformers /Ervand Ter-Minasian/
c/ Ultraradical reformers / Archimandrite Benik / .
In this connection I want to underline that the main differences among the reformers were based not only on dogmatic but also on disciplinary-canonical issues. Here the main emphasis fell on clergy reform, especially priestly formation (education, elections, etc.).
Analysis of various articles by the well-known theologian Karapet Ter-Mkrtchian reveals that his main aspiration in Church reform was to improve the standard of clerical education and thereby to provide a higher level of education for the general public. He thought that one of the main causes of disorder at the begining of the 20th century was the absence of a true spiritual education, a question which could not be solved merely by increasing the number of schools. In reality, Karapet Ter-Mkrtchian remarked the opposite trend in public life: reduction in spiritual education was accompanied by the increase in abnormalities and distortions in society. Referring to the latter, he would comment “Money is the basis of its existence and Baku is the complex reflection of moral degradation of our nation” . The key focus of all his articles was the clerical and ecclesial morality. Ter-Mkrtchyan considered morality as the essence of religion nd a necessary precondition for the progress of nations.
In contrast to Karapet Ter-Mkrtchyan, other reformers wanted to institute more radical church reform , of whom the most outstanding was Ervand Ter-Minasian. The main problem with clergy n his esttimation was the struggle between old and new.
According to him the old, traditional clergyman could not advance in parallel with achievements in science and thought because the current world with its materialistic thinkers emands not only “progressive approaches” but also the reconciliation of church ideology with scientific advances. In his opinion the struggle between old and new is the way to present eternal truths.
Ervand Ter-Minasyan thought that each historical period originated new problems and new methods and approaches to solve them. From this point of view Armenian clergy at the begining of 20th century, both conservative and liberal, should contemplate new approaches to settle spiritual matters and church problems, taking into account the contemporary historical and political situation.
Influenced by protestant thinking, Ervand Ter-Minasyan judged freedom to be the most important commodity for each human being and insisted that the human soul should not be constrained by ancient dogmas. The impact of this approach streeing free will within Protestantism had given rise to a great diversity of trends. It is not hard to guess that such a variety of approaches would not promote the unity and the integrity of Armenian Apostolic Church but would rather undermine it.
The reform Ter-Minasian suggested aimed at the radical renewal of the Armenian Church’s structure of worship. “Not to abolish, but to improve and reform” – under this priniciple he sought to implement a radical transformation of the Church which would not cause harm, but rather repair its “damaged” part, rehabilitating and restoring the Church through its purification.
There were also some ultraradical reformers in the reform movement of whom the most extreme was Archimandrite Benik.
Throughout his life Benik had fought against various members of the clergy and hence was accepted neither by the conservatives nor by the various factions of the reform movement . Analyzing his articles and books ,one can convincingly state that he was not so much a “reformer” as a “transformer”. As an ultraradical reformer, Archimandrite Benik deeply criticised not only the hierarchy but also the general public.
He called his reform a revolution in the Church. But the revolution he suggested was quite different from the one taking shape in public life because his basis was not the sword or armed conflict to gain power but spiritual education and knowledge. In his opinion cognitive development was higher than any righteousness and the Armenians should gain knowledge and be educated not by the principles of the Old Testament but by the New Testament’s Law of Love. Love should replace the antiquity of the Armenian Apostolic Church and “truth, justice, illumination, equality, and love” should form the basis for the new.
In the reformer’s opinion “love and unity” in Echmiadzin could become the instrument by which to save not only the clergy but the Armenian nation as a whole.
So, at the begining of the 20th century the reform movement was very varied and diversified in its ideological base. Though the impulses of reformers were exceptionally positive, nevertheless, most of their ideas were alien to the spirit and history of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Still, though the efforts of conservative clergy produced results in the short terms and the ideas of reformers did not find an application at that time, now most of their ideas are current and their application today can be profitable for the development and strengthening of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
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