medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 30. September Roman-rite and Byzantine-rite churches commemorate Gregory, the Illuminator of Armenia (d. betw. 328 and 335); in the Armenian Apostolic Church, which he is credited with having founded, he is celebrated on several days but this is not one of them. According to fifth-century Armenian accounts of a partly legendary nature, Gregory (also Gregory the Enlightener; in Armenian, Grigor Lusavorich) was the son of a Parthian nobleman executed for having killed his king, a Persian. A child at the time, he was spirited away by well-wishers to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he was raised as a Christian. As an adult Gregory moved to (in some accounts: returned to) Armenia, married, had children, proselytized, was imprisoned underground for years after a persecution of Christians, was released, and converted king Tiridates III to Christianity. After Tiridates had made Armenia officially Christian, Gregory, who was consecrated by Cappadocian bishops, became its metropolitan and established his church along Greek and Syriac lines. He is said to have become a solitary near the end of his life and to have died in a mountain cave.
In the earlier ninth-century Marble Calendar of Naples today is shared by St. Jerome and by Gregory. The latter's cult seems to have been brought to Naples not much earlier, along with putative relics of him, by Eastern-rite monks who founded what is still the city's monastery of San Gregorio Armeno (Benedictine since the later eleventh century). In 2000 pope John Paul II gave to the Catholicos Kamekin II at Etchmiadzin relics of Gregory from the monastery in Naples; in the following year he made a similar gift to the Armenian Catholicos of Cilicia. Yet further south (and east) in Italy, Gregory the Illuminator has been patron of Nardò on Apulia's Salentine Peninsula since, it is said, the ninth century and is now also patron the the diocese of Nardò-Gallipoli.
Some period-pertinent images of St. Gregory the Illuminator:
a) Gregory as portrayed (second full-length relief from the viewer's left) on what is said to be the east facade of the tenth-century church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar (Aghtamar, Akhtamar) Island in Lake Van (Van province) in eastern Anatolia:
http://tinyurl.com/pz6pvt3
Detail view:
http://virtualani.org/aghtamar/8179s.jpg
b) as depicted (but shown in a reduced, grayscale image) in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613, p. 74):
http://tinyurl.com/349qt2s
c) as depicted in an early fourteenth-century fresco (ca. 1310) in the church of the Aphendiko at Mistra (or Mystras):
http://tinyurl.com/ybp4vuq
In this view Gregory's fresco is the one in the middle:
http://tinyurl.com/23f4avw
d) Gregory the Illuminator as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century mosaic (ca. 1312) in a cupola of the museum of the former church of the Pammakaristos (Fetiye camii) in Istanbul:
http://tinyurl.com/3jn9s7
e) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1311 and ca. 1322) of the church of St. Nicholas Orphanos in Thessaloniki:
http://tinyurl.com/43ws58n
f) as depicted (at right) in a September calendar portrait in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of the nave of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending on one's view of the matter, Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:
http://tinyurl.com/3ag5alj
g) as depicted (at far right, after St. Chariton of Palestine and St. Cyriacus, hermit in Palestine) in a September calendar fresco (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the narthex of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:
http://tinyurl.com/bwp5w8k
Best,
John Dillon
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