Armenian Rite

[twf]

We often make sweeping generalizations of “West vs East”, but what makes the Armenian Rite oriental - is it simply a matter of geography? There seems to be a number of elements that the Armenian Rite shares with the Latin West that it does not share with other Eastern/Oriental rites - eg. pointy mitres, unleavened bread, the Last Gospel. The one Armenian temple I’ve visited (Orthodox not Catholic) looked extremely “Western” to me - the images, the stain glass…looked almost identical to what one would find in a Latin church.

In a video of an Armenian Orthodox liturgy I was watching, the celebrant (a bishop) clearly had a Roman style collar under his vestments (which also struck me as very similar to the vestments of a Roman bishop in the Extraordinary Form).

 

[Mar044]

reginal…

jesus was born in the middle east and it’s surrounding nations…i’m sorry unless your morman that teaches american centre church, it is what it is, a billion Catholics on this earth…small fraction…are american.

eeesh

 

[malphono]

We often make sweeping generalizations of “West vs East”, but what makes the Armenian Rite oriental - is it simply a matter of geography? There seems to be a number of elements that the Armenian Rite shares with the Latin West that it does not share with other Eastern/Oriental rites - eg. pointy mitres, unleavened bread, the Last Gospel. The one Armenian temple I’ve visited (Orthodox not Catholic) looked extremely “Western” to me - the images, the stain glass…looked almost identical to what one would find in a Latin church.

It is, of course, more than mere geography. The Armenian Apostolic Church is part of the Oriental Orthodox communion.

The Armenian liturgical rite is somewhat of a hybrid of Syriac and Byzantine, with a certain amount of latinization that stems from the failed reunion attempts in the 15th century (I think it was). For example, there are the tall episcopal mitres (and the latin-style crosiers), as well as the “Last Gospel” from the list. It’s interesting to note that Vartapeds in the Armenian Church use a Byzantine-style mitre, as well as a Byzantine-style crosier. The use of unleavened altar bread seems to predate the latinization trend (as is also the case with the Maronites who formerly used both leavened and unleavened).

In a video of an Armenian Orthodox liturgy I was watching, the celebrant (a bishop) clearly had a Roman style collar under his vestments (which also struck me as very similar to the vestments of a Roman bishop in the Extraordinary Form).

The Armenian episcopal vestments that I’ve seen follow the general Syriac style.

 

[Aramis]

The term “oriental” in context to them means mostly that they were in communion with the pope of Alexandria at one point.

The Oriental Orthodox Communion is those churches in Communion with the Pope of Alexandria. It’s an imperfect and casual terminology.

The Eastern Orthodox by comparison refers to those churches in communion with the patriarchs of Constantinople and/or Moscow.

Neither is a canonical term.

 

[twf]

reginal…

jesus was born in the middle east and it’s surrounding nations…i’m sorry unless your morman that teaches american centre church, it is what it is, a billion Catholics on this earth…small fraction…are american.

eeesh

I’m not sure what this post has to do with the topic of the thread - which is on the Armenian Rite as practiced by the Armenian Apostolic Church (Oriental Orthodox) and the Armenian Catholic Church - as developed in Armenia in West/Central Asia…

 

[dzheremi]

Hmm. I never knew that the Maronites previously used both leavened and unleavened bread. That’s interesting. Do you have any references for that, Malphono? I’d like to read up on it.

As far as the Armenians are concerned, the others are right – “Oriental” is Christological shorthand of sorts, not a geographical term. There are native Christian churches in France and Britain which are also “Oriental”, ultimately arising out of recent missionary efforts of the Coptic Orthodox Church in those countries which resulted in natively-run churches in full communion with the other OO. If you watched the liturgy at which the new Pope was chosen last night (broadcasted live from the Cathedral of St. Mark in Cairo on Coptic TV channels Aghapy and CTV), you would have seen the French bishop (I can’t remember his name at the moment) alongside his brother bishops, reciting one line from the commemoration of the Patriarchs in his native French language (they each took a turn saying one line from this rather lengthy text, though I can’t remember which he ended up with; the melody in French sounds pretty amazing, I must say).

As I understand it, before the invention of the Armenian alphabet by St. Mesrop Mashots at the beginning of the 5th century, the Armenians worshiped in Syriac, and their liturgy still retains many affinities to that form of the liturgy (and indeed there is a rather large corpus of Armenian words that find their ultimate origin in Syriac, particularly words dealing with religious concepts). According to modern Armenian historians such as Richard G. Hovannisian, St. Mesrop had visited Edessa, center of Syriac Christianity, sometime prior to inventing the alphabet. Previous efforts to write the Armenian language had been taken by a Syrian bishop by the name of Daniel, and while his system ultimately proved unsuccessful, the fact that he would have done such a thing does point to heavy Syrian missionary activity among the Armenians at a very early stage (Armenia, you’ll remember, was the first country to officially adopt Christianity, in 301 AD – some 36 years before Constantine the Great was baptized – so I guess everything relating to Armenian Christianity could be described as occurring at very early stage ).