Gregory the Illuminator

Gregory the Illuminator, known in Armenian as Grigor Lusavorich, is venerated as the apostle of Armenia and the first catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The principal early narrative of his life is the History attributed to Agathangelos, a fifth-century Armenian text that draws on older traditions. According to that account he was the son of Anak, a Parthian noble who assassinated King Khosrov II of Armenia. In the royal vengeance that followed, Anak's family was destroyed; the infant Gregory was saved by his nurse and taken to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he was raised as a Christian. Traditional chronology places his birth in the mid-third century, most often around 257. In Cappadocia he received a Christian education, married a woman named Miriam (also given in some sources as Mariam or Julitta), and became the father of two sons, Aristakes and Vrtanes, both of whom later occupied the catholicosal throne of Armenia.

As a young man Gregory returned to Armenia and entered the service of King Tiridates III, son of the murdered Khosrov. When he refused to offer worship before the statue of the goddess Anahit, and when his identity as Anak's son was disclosed, the king had him subjected to prolonged tortures and then cast into a deep pit, later identified with the dungeon at Khor Virap, where he remained for thirteen or fourteen years. During this imprisonment Tiridates, according to the legend, was stricken with madness and is said to have taken on the appearance of a wild boar. The king's sister Khosrovidukht received a vision that only the prisoner in the pit could heal him. Gregory was brought out, restored the king, and preached the Christian faith. Tiridates, the royal family, and large numbers of the nobility accepted baptism. Armenian tradition commemorates 301 as the year the kingdom adopted Christianity as its state religion, making Armenia the first realm to do so; many modern historians prefer a date shortly after the Edict of Milan, around 313–314.

Gregory then went to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he was consecrated bishop by the metropolitan Leontius, and returned to Armenia as the first catholicos of the national church. He oversaw the destruction of major pagan sanctuaries, including the temple of Anahit at Erez and the shrine of Vahagn, and the building of churches on those sites. Tradition holds that Christ appeared to him in a vision at Vagharshapat, indicating where the cathedral of Etchmiadzin (the name is interpreted as 'the Only-Begotten descended') was to be founded; that church became the mother see of the Armenian Church. Gregory organized an ecclesiastical hierarchy, appointed bishops for the provinces, and is credited with missionary work that reached into neighboring Caucasian Albania and Iberia (Georgia). He promoted Christian worship among the Armenian people, although the Armenian alphabet itself was invented only at the beginning of the fifth century by Mesrop Mashtots.

In later life Gregory consecrated his son Aristakes as successor; Aristakes represented the Armenian Church at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Gregory then withdrew to solitude on Mount Sepuh in the district of Daranalis in Upper Armenia, where he died in the early fourth century, traditionally around 331. He was buried at the nearby village of Tordan. His relics were later translated and divided; the most famous remaining relic, the right hand known as the Holy Right, became a principal palladium of the Armenian catholicosate and is still used in the blessing of the holy chrism. Gregory is venerated as the Illuminator of Armenia in the Armenian Apostolic, Eastern Orthodox, and Catholic Churches. The Armenian Church keeps several commemorations connected with his imprisonment, deliverance, and the discovery of his relics; 9 June and 30 September are the dates most widely cited in Catholic and Byzantine calendars. He remains the pre-eminent patron saint of Armenia.