Stories
the narratives it tells itself
The king who became a boar.
Agathangelos tells it this way: Trdat had Gregory thrown into the pit at Khor Virap for thirteen years and had the nun Hripsime and her companions killed for refusing him. He was then struck mad and took the form of a boar. His sister dreamed that only the man in the pit could heal him; Gregory was hauled out, healed the king, and Armenia was baptised.
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The Book of Lamentations — the Narek.
Grigor Narekatsi wrote ninety-five prayers around 1002, each headed Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart, and each one an unsparing accusation of himself. Armenians have used the book as medicine for a thousand years — read aloud at a sickbed, kept under a pillow, given at a funeral. Francis named him a Doctor of the Church in 2015.
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