History of the Armenians

THIRD BOOK

Saint Vrtanes illuminated and guided them as a father and as a brother. Justice and righteousness were flourishing in that age.

At that time, the chief bishop Vrtanes went to the great and primary mother church of the Armenians, which was in the land of Taron, where at that time the altars of the temples were destroyed by signs and wonders, even earlier, by the great high priest Gregory. He went there to perform, according to the daily custom, the Lord's offering of the cross for salvation, the thanksgiving sacrifice, the remembrance of the suffering, the life-giving and liberating body and blood of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. For so it was the custom of the bishops of Armenia, together with the kings, the grandees, the ministers, and the multitudes of the land, to honor the same places which were formerly sites of idols, and then were cleansed in the name of the Divinity, and became houses of prayer and places of pilgrimage for all. Especially in that principal place, the church, they gathered in memory of the saints who were there, performing the service there seven times every year. They held the same custom, and even more so, in the great prophetic treasury of John John the Baptist. Likewise, they would gather annually in the apostolic shrines of the Lord's disciples, and in the martyriums of the martyrs, rejoicing and assembling on the day of the feast of their memory to celebrate their conduct, their deeds, and their brave lives. Now, it happened at a time when the great high priest Vrtanes had gone to travel alone with a few followers to perform the sacrifice of blessing. Those who still secretly held the nourishment of pagan idolatry original: "znuyn sovorut'iun" - the same custom until that time, gathered in a single unity—about two thousand of them—having formed a plan.