The Armenian Apostolic Church: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

The first nation baptised, and the church that outlived the nation's states.

The church of Armenia, which dates its conversion to 301 and to Gregory the Illuminator, prays the Badarak in Classical Armenian with unleavened bread and unmixed wine, and carries 1915 inside its calendar of saints. Two catholicoi — Etchmiadzin and Cilicia — one communion, and a diaspora larger than the homeland.

DeitiesOne God in three persons; Christ in one united nature, divine and human. The church rejects Chalcedon's formula and the label monophysite along with it.

Founded301 CE · Vagharshapat (Holy Etchmiadzin)

FounderGregory the Illuminator

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment; the dead are remembered on Merelots, the day after each of the five great feasts.

TextsThe Armenian Bible translated by Mesrop Mashtots and his circle · The Badarak — the Divine Liturgy · The Book of Lamentations of Grigor Narekatsi

The map

The Armenian Apostolic Church’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →

c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 301 CE The Armenian Apostolic Church 451 CE Oriental Orthodoxy

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

A nation was baptised, not a congregation. Armenia declared itself Christian around 301 under King Trdat III, before any other state did. The church that resulted has never been one institution among others in Armenian life; when there was no Armenian state, and for most of the last sixteen centuries there was not, the catholicosate was the thing that held the nation's legal and educational life together. Go deeper — context →

One church, two thrones. The Catholicos of All Armenians sits at Etchmiadzin and the Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia at Antelias in Lebanon. Both consecrate bishops and bless the Muron; Etchmiadzin holds primacy of honour. The arrangement is medieval in origin, hardened by the Cold War, and it still produces jurisdictional quarrels in the diaspora — most visibly in North America, where two parallel dioceses cover the same cities. held by most Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

T The Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide. On 23 April 2015, the eve of the centenary, the church canonised the dead of 1915 in a single service at Etchmiadzin — a number usually given as 1.5 million, and deliberately not enumerated in the rite. Their feast is kept on the day before 24 April. It was the first canonisation the Armenian church had performed since the fourteenth century. Domain witness under massacreStanding canonised together at Etchmiadzin on 23 April 2015, the first Armenian canonisation in four hundred years Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The blessing of the Holy Muron. Every seven years the Catholicos boils and blesses the chrism at Etchmiadzin, stirring in muron from the previous blessing so that each batch carries some of the last. It is distributed to every Armenian parish in the world, and every baptism and chrismation for the next seven years uses it. The most recent blessing was on 28 September 2024. When Once every seven years, at the Mother SeeWho The Catholicos of All Armenians with the bishops; the whole church receives the result Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Christianity — 12 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Armenian Apostolic Church — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Armenian Apostolic Church shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

Second Agreed Statement of the Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, Chambesy, Geneva, 1990 where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.