Tiridates III of Armenia

Tiridates III, commonly known as Tiridates the Great (Armenian: Trdat), was a king of the Arsacid dynasty who ruled the Kingdom of Armenia in the late third and early fourth centuries. He is remembered above all for his conversion to Christianity and for the subsequent establishment of the Christian faith as the religion of the Armenian state. Armenian ecclesiastical tradition, preserved especially in the history attributed to Agathangelos, dates this change to 301, which would make Armenia the first kingdom to adopt Christianity as its official religion. Many modern historians, taking account of Roman imperial chronology and the career of Gregory the Illuminator, prefer a date in the second decade of the fourth century, after Constantine’s settlement with the churches. Whatever the precise year, the baptism of Tiridates and his court was a decisive event in the religious and cultural history of the Caucasus and of Eastern Christianity as a whole.

Tiridates was the son of King Khosrov II of Armenia. According to the Armenian historical tradition, Khosrov was assassinated by a Parthian named Anak, after which Armenia fell under Sasanian Persian domination. The infant Tiridates was taken for safety into the Roman Empire, where he was raised and educated. With Roman military and political support he was later restored to the Armenian throne, an episode generally placed in the later third century, in the time of the emperor Diocletian or in the years immediately following. His long reign, conventionally reckoned as lasting until about 330, unfolded in the shadow of the rivalry between Rome and Sasanian Iran, both of which sought influence over Armenia as a buffer and client kingdom.

The conversion narrative that became canonical in Armenia centers on Gregory, later called the Illuminator. Gregory, of Parthian origin and, according to tradition, the son of Anak the assassin, had been raised as a Christian in Roman territory and entered the service of Tiridates. When he refused to take part in the cult of the goddess Anahit, the king had him tortured and confined for many years in a deep pit at the fortress later known as Khor Virap. The same tradition recounts that Tiridates ordered the martyrdom of a group of Roman Christian virgins led by Hripsime and Gayane, who had fled to Armenia. After these events the king is said to have been stricken with madness, described in legendary terms as a transformation into a wild boar. His sister Khosrovidukht, following a vision, procured Gregory’s release from the pit. Gregory healed the king, instructed him in the Christian faith, and baptized Tiridates, Queen Ashkhen, Khosrovidukht, and the royal court. Gregory was then consecrated as the first catholicos of Armenia, and the cathedral of Etchmiadzin was founded as the mother church of the new Christian kingdom.

In the years that followed, Tiridates is portrayed as an energetic promoter of the new religion. Pagan temples were destroyed or converted, churches were built, and the Armenian Church, with its catholicosal see, took shape as a national institution. His wife Ashkhen, often described in the sources as an Alan princess, and his sister Khosrovidukht are commemorated together with him as saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Tiridates and Ashkhen had children, including Khosrov III, known as Khosrov the Small, who succeeded his father, and a daughter Salome, who married into the royal house of Iberia (Georgia). Tiridates died around the year 330; the circumstances of his death are not recorded with certainty in the surviving sources. He remains a central figure in Armenian Christian memory as the royal convert who, together with Gregory the Illuminator, established the church that has defined Armenian identity from late antiquity to the present.