commerce with the West, Armenian traders were among them, that every Irish name one meets ending in an, such as Brian, O'Callaghan, Sheridan, as well as the Cornish names of Trevelyan, Tressilian, and others, are but the remains of the Armenian termination ian.

The Armenian King Hurachia is alleged to have assisted Nebuchadnezzar in the capture of Jerusalem, 600 B. C., and King Tigranes I is said to have allied with Cyrus in the overthrow of Babylon (538). And it was Zarmair who took part in the Homeric conflicts against Troy.

The Armenians, however, attained the zenith of their military glory under the reign of Tigranes II, surnamed the Great, 94-56 B. C., who by successful military efforts extended his power in all directions. He founded a new Royal City, Tigranocerta, modeling it on Nineveh and Babylon. "Tigranes made the Republic of Rome tremble before his prowess," writes Cicero; and, according to Plutarch, Lucullus said:

It is but a few days' journey from the country of the Gabiri or Sebastia into Armenia, where Tigranes, King of Kings, is seated upon his throne, surrounded with the power that wrested Asia from the Parthians; that carried Grecian colonies into Media, and subdued Syria and Palestine.

Rome could not brook Tigranes, and finally overthrew him. In deference to his valor, however, Tigranes, under the tutelage of Rome, was permitted to remain on the Armenian throne.

In later years Armenia was overtrodden by Persians, Romans and Greeks. After the fall of the Bagratid dynasty the Armenian nobles took refuge in the inaccessible fastnesses of the Taurus Mountains (Cilicia). Here, in 1080, Reuben founded the Kingdom of Armenia Minor, that might have fared more fortunately had not her government and people spontaneously and generously championed the Crusaders. Pope Gregory XIII writes in his Bull, Ecclesia Romana of the year 1384:

Among the other merits of the Armenian nation to the Church and to the Christian Republic, this in particular is eminent and

deserves special remembrance that when the princes and the armies of Christendom were on their way to the Holy Land, no nation and no people more promptly and more zealously than the Armenians rendered its aid in men, in horse, in arms, in food, in counsel; in a word, with all their strength, with the greatest fervor and fidelity, the Armenians assisted the Christians in these Holy Wars.

But when the Crusades failed, and the Mohammedan fury burst over Armenia Minor, Europe remained indifferent. Sis, the Capital of Armenia Minor, was captured in 1375, and the independence of Armenia came to an end. Her last King, Leo VI, visited the courts of England and France trying in vain to establish an entente cordiale between them, with a view to enlisting their help for the reestablishment of the Armenian State. He died in 1393, and was buried in the Cathedral of St. Denis, Paris.

IV

The Armenians embraced Christianity very early. Tertullian maintains that "the people of the name of Christ" were found in Armenia before the middle of the Third Century; and Eusebius mentions there the existence of "brethren." If the Greek Church claims Orthodoxy; the Roman, Catholicity; the Armenian Church is entitled to Apostolicity, as the Apostles Thaddeus, Bartholomew, and Jude preached Christianity and suffered martyrdom in Armenia. Through the efforts of Gregory the Illuminator, Christianity was made, by the royal edict of King Tiridates, the national religion of Armenia, in 301. The Emperor Constantine merely followed the example of the Armenian king when, in 313, he proclaimed Christianity as the State religion of Byzantium.

How deeply the Armenian soul had become inbued with Christianity can be attested by the subsequent national martyrology. When, in the middle of the fifth century, the Persians essayed, first by promises and them by force, to have the Armenians embrace fire-worship, they entirely failed. The Armenians retorted:

From this faith, no force can move us,-neither angels nor men; neither sword, nor fire, nor water, nor any deadly punishment. If you leave us our faith, we shall accept no other lord in place of you; but we shall accept no God in place of Christ. If after this great confession, you ask anything more of us, lo! our lives are in your power. From you, torments; from us, submission; your sword, our necks. We are no better than those who have gone before us, who sacrificed their wealth and their lives for this testimony!

In the memorable Battle of Avarair, May 26, 451, known as the Armenian Marathon, 66,000 Armenians confronted 220,000 Persians. Their leader, Vartan Mamigonian, perished like a Judas Maccabæus. But "The Angel of Martyrdom is brother to the Angel of Victory;" a Persian general was so impressed by the tenacious resistance of the Armenians, that he exclaimed: "These people have put on Christianity not like a garment, but like their flesh and blood. Men who do not dread fetters nor fear torments, nor care for their property, and who above all choose death rather than life-who can stand against them?" And the Chief of the Magi, accompanying the general, reported to the Persian King: "Even if the immortals aid us, it will be impossible to establish Mazdaism in Armenia.'

Since the days of Avarair, whenever the alternative offered the Armenians has been apostacy or the sword, they have always thundered as did a young Armenian nobleman in the presence of the Mohammedan ruler Yusouf: "We are Christians; we believe in God Who dwells in the midst of Light illimitable."

During the recent Turkish atrocities, many thousands of Armenians who were immolated for their Christian faith could have easily saved themselves by merely pronouncing the formula of Islam and abjuring Christ. They preferred, instead, to suffer fiendish indignities at the hands of the blood-besotted and vice-crazed Turks and to die like martyrs. Lord Bryce said:

Of the seven or eight hundred thousand Armenians who have perished in the recent massacres, many thousands have died as martyrs, by which I mean they have died for their Christian faith when they could have saved their lives by renouncing it.

This has perhaps not been realized even by those who in Europe or America have read of and been horrified by the wholesale slaughter and hideous cruelties by which half of an ancient nation has been exterminated. They can hardly understand how there should be religious persecution in our time.

The Armenian National Church has been distinguished for its spirit of tolerance. Sir Edwin Pears writes:

The Armenians, have been more open-minded than any other of the Christian races in reference to matters of religion. The Greeks will not tolerate a Roman Catholic or a Protestant missionary. But while the Armenian is proud of his millet and does not look kindly on a man who changes his religion, he does not consider that it should prevent him inquiring into the truth of other forms of Christianity, or adopting them if he likes. In the sixteenth century the Armenian Church dignitaries corresponded with Erasmus and Melancthon and other reformers.

With their passion for simplicity, the Armenians have preserved the real spirit of Christianity in their Church. J. S. Stuart-Glennis writes:

It was Armenian missionaries-the Paulician heretics-who sowed in Europe the seeds of its reformation. And in the sixteenth century, that order of the Jesuits called into existence by the success of the Reformation, sent missionaries to Armenia, and carried into the birthland of Protestantism the revenge of Catholicism.

The broad, democratic basis upon which the Armenian Church rests can be best understood by the method of electing the Supreme Primate, or Catholicos, of the Armenian Church, whose seat has, since 309, been at Etchmiadzin, that, with its Supreme Synod, Theological Seminary, and Cathedral, corresponds to the Vatican.

Upon a vacancy of the Throne of the Catholicos, the Supreme Synod issues invitations to all Armenian dioceses, whether in Russia, Turkey, Persia or elsewhere, calling upon them each to name two deputies, one clerical and one lay, who after the lapse of a year shall repair to Etchmiadzin and cast their votes. These deputies, should they be unable to attend in person, may signify their vote by letter The ordinaries of the Armenian Church, also, are elected by diocesan councils, six-sevenths of whose members are laymen.

V

On account of the fluctuating fortune of their temporal power, the Armenians regard their Church not merely a spiritual citadel, but the focus of national aspirations and learning. The Catholicos St. Sahak (353-439) essayed to revive a purely national literature. His difficulties were almost insuperable, as the Armenians lacked an alphabet of their own. But his friend and collaborator, Bishop Mesrop, after long and painstaking labors, succeeded in devising an alphabet (404). It consists of thirty-six characters, "A Waterloo of Alphabet" in the poetic diction of Lord Byron, who studied Armenian at the famous Armenian Mekhitarist Convent, St. Lazare, Venice (1816-1818), and recommended it as "a rich language" that "would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it.

The Armenian belongs to the Indo-European group of languages. Many Armenian words are from the same root as the English, viz., eye, ag; foot, vod; mother, mair; daughter, dooster; thou, too; ass, esh; door, toor; hair, heir; son, san; sore, zor; un-, an-; and -tion, -toun, etc.

Hubschmann, Meillet, Villefroi and St. Martin have made valuable studies of the Armenian language, which has been described as "a plastic and noble language, capable of rendering faithfully, yet not servilely, the Greek Bible and Greek Fathers."

The immediate result of St. Sahak's and Bishop Mesrop's activities was an intellectual and literary revival, known as the "Golden Age of Armenian Literature." During this period many books of didactic, religious and historical character were written, and translations made from the Greek. The first book they undertook to translate was the Bible, from the Greek Septuagint. It was completed in 433, so successfully and faithfully as to be called by La Croze "The Queen of Versions." Other translations were as excellent. It is claimed that were the Anabasis of Xenophon lost, it could be reproduced from the Armenian version. The Chronicles of Eusebius, the Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, and two works of Philo on Providence, survive only in Armenian.