Saint Nerses the Great (died 373)

An heir of Saint Gregory the Illuminator

The Church of Armenia is, historically, the first nation to have adopted Christianity as the state religion, at the very beginning of the 4th century, through the work of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, who converted King Tiridates III and became the country's first catholicos. The catholicosal throne then passed, for the most part, within his descendants: the Gregorids. Nerses is the grandson of Catholicos Husik, himself son of Vrtanes, son of Gregory the Illuminator^[7][8].

Through his mother Bambishn, sister of the Armenian king Tiran (sometimes identified with Tigranes VII)^[9], Nerses also belongs to the Arsacid royal dynasty of Armenia; his father, Athanagines, is of the ecclesiastical nobility which, since Gregory, had regarded the catholicosal office as a family inheritance^[10]. This twofold belonging — blood of the founding saint, royal blood — explains both the exceptional moral authority of Nerses and the scale of the conflicts that would later set him against the kings of Armenia: he could not be brushed aside without offending both the Church and a good part of the aristocracy^[11].

A Hellenistic education at Caesarea in Cappadocia

According to the custom of the great Christian Armenian families of that time, Nerses received a Hellenistic education at Caesarea in Cappadocia (Caesarea Mazaca, today Kayseri in Turkey), the same Greek metropolis that would see, a generation later, the episcopate of Saint Basil the Great^[12][13]. It was there, most probably, that he married Sandukht, a princess of the powerful Mamikonian family — the great house of generals that would defend Christian Armenia until the 5th century — by whom he had a son, Sahak, who would himself in turn become catholicos^[14][15].

Back in Armenia after the premature death of his wife, Nerses entered the service of King Arsaces II (Arshak II) as chamberlain (senekapet), a position of trust at the royal court, before events carried him toward a wholly different vocation^[16][17].

The sources on his life

The life of Nerses is known principally through the Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ ("Epic Histories"), long attributed to a certain "Faustus of Byzantium" but today regarded by scholars — notably Nina Garsoïan, who produced the standard English translation — as the work, around the 470s, of an anonymous Armenian cleric close to the local nobility, writing directly in Armenian rather than translating a Greek original^[18]. This chronicle covers the reigns of Arsaces II and Pap and devotes several whole chapters to Nerses: his election, his consecration, his governance, his clashes with the kings, and his death^[19][20]. It is supplemented by the historian Movses Khorenatsi (Moses of Khoren) for the episode of the poisoning^[21], and, on the Western side, by the Catholic Encyclopedia and modern academic works on early Armenian history^[22][23].

Marriage to Sandukht and the birth of Sahak

The marriage of Nerses to Sandukht Mamikonian united two of the greatest houses of the kingdom: the Gregorids, hereditary guardians of the catholicosate, and the Mamikonians, hereditary guardians of the sword. From this union was born Sahak, who would himself succeed to the catholicosal throne (387–439) and would later be one of the craftsmen, with Mesrop Mashtots, of the invention of the Armenian alphabet — an episode that lies beyond the scope of this article, but which recalls that the work of Nerses continues directly in that of his son^[24][25]. Sandukht died young, leaving Nerses a widower; only after this bereavement did his life turn toward the service of God.

Chamberlain of King Arsaces II

After his widowerhood, Nerses became chamberlain to King Arsaces II, a position that placed him at the heart of Armenian power, between the court, the nobility and the diplomatic affairs of the kingdom^[26]. At this stage, nothing seemed to destine him for the episcopate: it was the death of the reigning catholicos that would precipitate events.

An election within the nobility

On the death of the catholicos who preceded him, the Armenian lords assembled demanded that Nerses, whose birth and virtue were known to all, be consecrated at their head. The Buzandaran reports that Nerses protested his unworthiness, but that King Arsaces II had him ordained by force, having his long hair cut — the sign, in the custom of the time, of passage to the clerical state — and clothing him in ecclesiastical garb^[27].

"It is said that he protested his unworthiness, but King Arsaces had him seized, had his superb locks, which had no equal, cut off, and clothed him in clerical dress." — Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book IV, ch. 3, summarizing the forced ordination of Nerses^[28]

This initial reluctance, far from being a mere literary motif, is a constant trait of the hagiography of great pastors: like so many saints before him, Nerses did not seek the office; he received it.

Consecration at Caesarea in Cappadocia

According to the custom established since Gregory the Illuminator himself, the newly elected had to be consecrated by the archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, the metropolitan see on which the Armenian Church then canonically depended. A delegation of Armenian dignitaries therefore travelled to Caesarea with gifts and royal letters, asking for the consecration of Nerses. It is the Buzandaran (Book IV, ch. 4) that names the consecrator: Eusebius, archbishop of Caesarea — the prelate who, a few years later, would ordain Saint Basil the Great priest, before the latter succeeded him on that see in 370^[29][30]. But this name raises a chronological problem, for Eusebius became metropolitan of Caesarea only in 362, on the death of Dianius — nearly ten years after the consecration of Nerses, dated to 353. Modern historians judge this detail of the narrative anachronistic^[31].

Tradition reports that at the moment of ordination, wondrous signs accompanied the ceremony: a white dove is said to have come down above the altar and then to have rested on Nerses' head, a sign received by the assembly as a heavenly confirmation of his election^[32].

"A white dove came down above the altar […] then came and rested on the head of Nerses. The whole assembly proclaimed him worthy." — Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book IV, ch. 4, on the consecration of Nerses at Caesarea^[33]

This Caesarean consecration of 353 makes Nerses the last Armenian catholicos to have been consecrated at Caesarea in Cappadocia: his successors, beginning with his own son Sahak, would be consecrated by the Armenian bishops themselves, marking a decisive step in the autonomy of the Armenian Church with regard to the Cappadocian metropolis^[34][35].

A catholicos turned toward the people

Back in Armenia, Nerses at once undertook a considerable work of restoration: he had leprosaria and hospitals built, established pensions and provisions for the poor throughout the land, rebuilt churches and launched a profound ecclesiastical reform^[36]. His patriarchate marks, in the words of modern historians, a new era in the history of the Armenian Church: until then largely identified with the royal family and the nobility alone, it now opened, with Nerses, to the whole people^[37][38].

Background: an Armenia still half pagan

Three generations after the conversion of Tiridates III by Gregory the Illuminator, Christian Armenia still kept many customs inherited from Zoroastrianism and ancestral cults: marriages between close relatives, excessive funeral rites, devotional practices mingling Christianity with residual paganism^[39]. Nerses understood that the evangelization of the land could not stop at the court and the aristocracy: it had to reach down into the everyday customs of the people.

The first council of the Armenian Church

To this end he convened, around 354–356, at Ashtishat, in the province of Taron — the country's first episcopal see, cradle of Gregorian evangelization — what is regarded as the first council in the history of the Armenian Church^[40]. Both bishops and the principal representatives of the lay nobility sat there, a sign that the reform willed by Nerses engaged the whole social body of the kingdom, not the hierarchy alone^[41][42].

The canons on marriage, mourning and morals

The council promulgated a series of canons touching on marriage — notably forbidding unions between close relatives — on mourning — proscribing excessive funeral lamentations, judged incompatible with Christian hope — and on divine worship^[43][44]. It closed the Zoroastrian schools and temples, forbade teaching in the Persian language in favour of Greek and Syriac, then the dominant languages of Christian instruction in Armenia^[45].

The founding of a hospital and charitable system

But the most lasting contribution of the Council of Ashtishat is social and charitable. It ordered the creation, throughout the kingdom, of orphanages, houses for the poor and hospitals, funded by a special tax on towns and agricultural estates — an organized system of beneficence which prefigures, in an Armenian setting, what the Basileias of Saint Basil the Great would be, a generation later, for the Church of Caesarea^[46][47]. The Buzandaran stresses the personal scale of Nerses' commitment: he "himself took the initiative, consoled, provided for and supervised" the poor populations and the lepers of the kingdom^[48].

"He himself took the initiative, consoled, provided for and supervised" the poor and those stricken with leprosy; he rebuilt and restored many churches throughout the Armenian land. — Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book V, ch. 21, on the charitable work of Nerses^[49]

Schools, monasteries and monastic evangelization

Beyond charitable institutions, Nerses organized a genuine network of episcopal supervision in every province of the kingdom and sent evangelizing monks travelling through the countryside to preach the Gospel there and root the Christian faith in popular customs^[50][51]. This twofold action — charitable institutions and monastic mission — gives his patriarchate the coherence of a true project of Christian civilization for Armenia.

Overview of the Ashtishat reforms

The embassy to Emperor Valens and the first exile

The Buzandaran (Book IV, ch. 5) relates that Nerses travelled, with ten Armenian satraps, to the Roman emperor Valens to renew the peace agreements between Armenia and the Empire. The narrative reports that on this occasion, as the emperor's child fell ill, Nerses offered prayers for his healing, but demanded in return that Valens renounce the Arian heresy. This public denunciation of "the error of the Arian heresy" threw the emperor into a fury: he had Nerses imprisoned, then exiled, while sending back the Armenian nobles who accompanied him "laden with rich gifts", a diplomatic gesture that ill conceals the disgrace inflicted on the catholicos^[58]. But the imperial designation raises a chronological problem: Valens reigned only from 364 to 378, whereas the emperor reigning around 358, the traditional date of this embassy, was Constantius II (337–361). It is the Buzandaran that names Valens ("Vaghes"), and the modern translation by Nina Garsoïan itself signals this fluctuation by recalling that the Roman emperors contemporary with the reign of Arsaces II (350–367) were successively Constantius II, Julian, Jovian, then Valens^[59].

"Nerses denounced before the emperor the error of the Arian heresy; Valens, angered, had him imprisoned and then exiled, but sent back the Armenian lords who accompanied him laden with rich gifts." — Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book IV, ch. 5, on the embassy to Valens^[60]

This exile, which several sources place near Edessa, lasted several years — the Buzandaran and modern studies speaking of about nine years^[61][62].

The return and the destruction of Arshakawan

Returned to Armenia, Nerses found his suffragan Khat (Khad) faithful to virtue during his absence. But he learned that King Arsaces II had, in his absence, built the city of Arshakawan, a refuge offered to all manner of fleeing criminals and debtors. Nerses confronted the king directly, reproaching him for having "forgotten the Lord and abandoned His commandments", and announcing to him that this city, built "in impiety, wickedness, plunder and many sins", would be delivered to ruin if he did not destroy it himself^[63].

"Why have you forgotten the Lord and abandoned His commandments, He the Creator who made all things out of nothing?" — Saint Nerses, addressing King Arsaces II on the subject of the city of Arshakawan, according to the Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book IV, ch. 13^[64]

The king mocked the warning. Three days later, according to the traditional account, an epidemic — the text speaks of "ulcers" likened to plague — struck the city: of twenty thousand households, not a single person survived^[65]. Whether one receives this account as an attested providential fact or as a prophetic warning amplified by popular memory, the Buzandaran reports it as a divine judgment confirming, in the eyes of the 5th-century Armenians, the word of the catholicos they already venerated as a saint.

The consecrating see of Caesarea and the aftermath of Nerses

The link between Nerses and the Church of Caesarea in Cappadocia did not end with his consecration of 353. That metropolis, which in 370 would see the accession of Saint Basil the Great to the episcopate, remained, in Nerses' own lifetime, a point of reference for the Armenian Church. Basil himself, in his Letter 99 addressed to Count Terentius, attests his personal intervention, in the early 370s, in the affairs of the Armenian Church: there he reports having restored peace among Armenian bishops, examined slanderous accusations brought against Bishop Cyril, and answered the request of the Church of Satala to give it a bishop — while acknowledging that the internal divisions of the bishops limited the reach of his action^[66].

"I found that these accusations were nothing but lying calumnies invented by his enemies […]. It was impossible for me to obtain more, so divided were the bishops themselves." — Saint Basil of Caesarea, Letter 99, on the troubles of the Armenian Church^[67]

This letter, written in the last years of Nerses' life, does not name him explicitly in the passage consulted, but it documents, first-hand, the real and continuing involvement of the Church of Caesarea in Armenian affairs at the very time when Nerses was still governing — a fact attested independently of any legend^[68].

The rupture after the death of Nerses

The importance of this Caesarean link appears by contrast in the episode that followed the death of Nerses: when King Pap proposed a candidate of his choice, a certain Yusik, to succeed him, Basil of Caesarea refused to consecrate him. This refusal, reported by modern studies of the period, put an end to decades of Caesarean consecrating tutelage over the Armenian Church and helped worsen relations between Pap and Emperor Valens^[69]. Thus the figure of Nerses — the last catholicos consecrated at Caesarea — marks, through his life and his death, the turning point toward Armenian ecclesiastical autonomy.

A young king, Arian or returning to Zoroastrianism

On the death of Arsaces II, in 369–370, his son Pap ascended the throne. According to the sources, Pap leaned either toward the Arianism defended by Emperor Valens, or toward a renewed sympathy for the Zoroastrianism of the Persian court; other explanations suggest he sought above all to limit the now considerable economic and landed power of the Church^[70]. Whatever the exact cause, Pap first recalled Nerses from exile to restore the churches of the kingdom — before the two men entered into open conflict.

Nerses, tireless censor of the king

The Buzandaran describes a Nerses who "never ceased reproaching, rebuking and severely blaming King Pap" for his sins, to the point of barring him from entering the church^[71]. He instructed him through the testimonies of Scripture, warning him of eternal judgment, "so that he would come to himself, become good and follow the commandments of righteousness" — but Pap, far from yielding, "resisted him with great hostility"^[72]. Only fear of a popular uprising — the people deeply venerating their catholicos — then held the king back from acting openly against him^[73].

"He [Nerses] never ceased reproaching, rebuking and severely blaming King Pap [for his sins] […]. But King Pap paid no heed to what he said, and instead resisted him with great hostility." — Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book V, ch. 23, on the rebukes of Nerses to Pap^[74]

The banquet in the village of Khakh (373)

In 373, according to the traditional account handed down by the Buzandaran and taken up by Movses Khorenatsi, King Pap invited Nerses to a banquet of reconciliation at his residence in the village of Khakh (Xax)^[75]. There the catholicos was poisoned. Back in his lodgings, Nerses revealed to the nobles present a bluish swelling on his breast, the size of a small loaf, a sign of the poison already at work within him^[76].

When remedies were offered to him, Nerses refused them, preferring to offer his life:

"For me, it was a great grace to be granted to die for having set forth the commandments of Christ." — Saint Nerses, according to the Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book V, ch. 24, shortly before his death^[77]

"I am exceedingly glad soon to be delivered from this impious and profane world." — Saint Nerses, Book V, ch. 24^[78]

The account reports that he spent his last moments in prayer, kneeling to ask forgiveness for his murderers and for men of every rank, before raising his hands toward heaven:

"Lord Jesus Christ, receive my soul." — Last words attributed to Saint Nerses, Buzandaran Patmutʻiwnkʻ, Book V, ch. 24^[79]

This forgiveness granted to his own executioners, on the threshold of death, brings the figure of Nerses close to that of the protomartyr Saint Stephen, stoned as he prayed for those who were killing him: from one martyrdom to the other, three and a half centuries later, the same supernatural charity triumphs over hatred.

A historiographical debate: poison or illness?

The account of the poisoning, handed down without interruption by Armenian tradition, has not failed to stir discussion among modern historians. The Armenian historian Leo judged it a legend presented as fact by later ecclesiastical chroniclers concerned to blacken the memory of Pap; Malachia Ormanian and Yeghiazar Muradian held a natural death more likely — a pulmonary or cardiac illness — occurring the very day of the banquet or the day after, giving rise afterwards to the rumour of poisoning; Josef Markwart and Hakob Manandian likewise rejected the account, arguing that Pap would certainly have had to answer for it before Saint Basil of Caesarea^[80].

Conversely, historians such as Nina Garsoïan and Noel Lenski, among the best current specialists of the period, do not dispute that Pap had Nerses poisoned, recalling that he was not the first Arsacid king to have a catholicos murdered: his own grandfather, King Tiran, had already had Catholicos Husik put to death — who is none other than the grandfather of Nerses himself^[81]. The secular historian Ammianus Marcellinus, a contemporary of the events, keeps silent on this alleged murder, though this silence alone is not enough to settle the question one way or the other^[82].

This scholarly discussion, real and legitimate, must not however make us forget the essential: whether the death of Nerses was hastened by poison or came through a concurrent infirmity at a final clash with a king he had just rebuked once more, the Church has always received it as a confessor's death, incurred in punishment for his faithfulness in denouncing the sin of a sovereign — which suffices to ground, independently of the medical detail, the veneration paid to him for more than sixteen centuries.

Funeral and burial

Despite his responsibility for the death of the catholicos, King Pap himself attended the funeral, feigning innocence, and had the body carried from the village of Khakh to Til (T'il), where Nerses had himself established his residence, to bury him there "in the resting place of the martyrs"^[83]. A sanctuary rose over his tomb, becoming a place of pilgrimage until the Arab invasions of the 7th century, which swept the sanctuary away like so many other Christian monuments of the region^[84].

A cult shared by several traditions

The cult of Nerses crosses, without discontinuity, the great Christian families issued from that period. According to secondary sources, he is commemorated around 19 November in the Armenian and Byzantine traditions^[85][86], some calendars also giving the date of 30 September^[87]. This plurality of dates, far from weakening his cult, testifies on the contrary to his simultaneous reception by several distinct liturgical traditions — Latin Catholic, Armenian Apostolic and Byzantine — all issued, at that still-united epoch, from the same undivided Church prior to the great Christological separations of the following century.

Posterity: Sahak the Great and the line of the Gregorids

The posterity of Nerses continues directly in that of his son, Saint Sahak I the Great, Catholicos of Armenia from 387 to 439, the last great representative of the Gregorid line on the patriarchal throne. Under the patriarchate of Sahak, Mesrop Mashtots developed, around 405, the Armenian alphabet, at last giving the Bible and the liturgy a national script — an achievement that far exceeds the biographical scope of this article, but which prolongs, in the order of culture and Scripture, the work of restoration begun by Nerses in the order of charity and ecclesiastical discipline^[88][89].

Two kings, two confrontations

The governance of Nerses is framed by two royal reigns, each of which tested, in its own way, his measure:

In both cases, the same logic repeats: an Armenian sovereign tempted by the abuse of power, and a catholicos who refuses to cover his excesses with the complicit silence of the Church — at the cost, the second time, of his own life.

Charity as the first language of faith

What strikes us, in the little that history has preserved of the interior life of Nerses, is the total identity between charity and faith. He did not theorize charity: he built leprosaria, hospices and orphanages, even before the council he presided over made it a general law for the whole kingdom. As Saint Basil the Great would say, a generation later and in another land, of his own Basileias, the best theology is worthless unless it issues in concrete care for the poor and the leper.

The courage of truthful speech before power

Nerses left no treatise, no theological letter comparable to those of the great Cappadocian Fathers: his doctrine is his very life. Before Arsaces II as before Pap, he systematically refused the comfort of complicit silence. He recalled the law of God to power, at the risk of his office, his exile, then his life — faithful to the end to the word of the prophet and the Baptist rather than to the prudence of the courtier.

Forgiveness as the last word

Finally, and this is perhaps the most luminous trait of his life, Nerses died forgiving his murderers. This forgiveness erases nothing of the gravity of the crime committed against him; on the contrary, it reveals its full depth, since it was spoken by the very one who had just been betrayed by him whom he had welcomed, exhorted and served for years. The last reported word of Nerses — "Lord Jesus Christ, receive my soul" — echoes almost word for word that of the protomartyr Saint Stephen^[109].

More than sixteen centuries later, Saint Nerses the Great remains a strikingly relevant figure for every pastor, every leader, every Christian engaged in public life. He reminds us first that a reform of the Church is worthless unless it reaches the people: Nerses did not merely legislate at Ashtishat; he built, funded and brought to life concrete institutions for the poorest.

He reminds us then that no office, even royal, places one above the law of God: Nerses paid with his exile, then with his life, for refusing to cover with the silence of the Church the crimes of two successive kings. He reminds us finally that forgiveness completes the witness: to die praying for one's executioners is the ultimate seal of a life wholly given to the charity of Christ.

• Saint Basil the Great — bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, the consecrating see of Nerses, drawn a few years later into the affairs of the Armenian Church.
• Saint Stephen — the protomartyr whose final forgiveness of his executioners finds a direct echo in the last words of Saint Nerses.
• Saint Sahak I the Great — son of Nerses, last great catholicos of the Gregorid line, craftsman with Mesrop Mashtots of the Armenian alphabet.
• Saint Gregory the Illuminator — evangelizer of Armenia and ancestor of Nerses, founder of the Gregorid catholicosal line.
• The Eastern Catholic Churches — of which the Armenian Catholic Church, distant heir of the see Nerses governed, is today a part.