History of the Armenians, Volumes 2-3

The holy Nuni an abbess or nun, having seen this and understood the injury, gathered the virgins of the monastery. She hastened from the mountain to the Saint. With great laments and tearful cries, she recounted the vision and the coming of God’s wrath upon the province, and she asked to be careful and to devise reconciliation with God through prayers.

Then, suddenly, the Lord’s punishment arrived from above. A palpable darkness seized the entire province for forty days. There was shaking and a violent trembling, as the earth boiled with terrible quaking from the depths and rose up high. Then, like the waves of the sea, it collapsed. Mountains overturned, rocks were broken from their foundations, and houses and beautiful mansions became the graves of their inhabitants. Springs were blocked, rivers vanished, and every place swayed with instability. The voices of human speech were audible from within the depths and from the air above, "Woe to the valley, woe to the valley!" And 10,000 souls of the living were submerged, whom they knew and put into a count, but for the unknown, no one knew the number. For this reason, the name of the province was called Vayots Dzor literally: "Valley of Woe".

After the forty days of punishment, the wrath of God ceased from above. The survivors of the province gathered and summoned the Catholicos. They held a council of monks and, after performing night-prayers for many days, moved the relics of the saint to the monastery of the brethren, the Tanahat Monastery, who were constant in prayer, having removed themselves from...

1. The retribution had already occurred according to his worthiness, and there was no need for unknown places.
2. However, that name was known even in the 5th century. Saint Joseph, the elected Catholicos who was martyred with the Ghevondian priests, is witnessed as being from Vayots Dzor.
3. The ascetics of the place; [they were called Tanahat] because they did not eat hot food or tan a yogurt-based drink.