- Project Runeberg -  Armenia and the Near East /
214

(1928) [MARC] Author: Fridtjof Nansen - Tema: Russia
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ARMENIA AND THE NEAR EAST
214
to the holy virgin Surb (i.e. Saint) Hripsime, who is believed
to have played an important part in bringing Christianity to
Armenia. Living in Rome in the last half of the third century,
she was a nun of royal blood and wonderful beauty ; but
the unwelcome attentions of the emperor caused her to take
flight with the prioress and a number of the nuns ; and after
many wanderings she finally came to Vagharshapat. Here
they were discovered, and King Trdat the Great, blinded by
her loveliness, desired to have her as his wife ; she refused,
however, and we are told how the gigantic king, famous for
his physical strength, wrestled with her again and again,
trying to take her by force. But Hripsime was more than a
match for him and hurled him to the ground. After that she
escaped with the other nuns ; but they were overtaken,
subjected to cruel tortures, and murdered, Hripsime herself
dying on the spot where the church now stands. The king,
who is described as a zealous worshipper of the heathen
gods and persecutor of Christians, was now punished by a
terrible sickness, both he and his men being turned into wild
boars. Not until he had repented of his sin against Hripsime
and her nuns, and after St. Gregory, who had been east into
a deep pit thirteen years previously, had been found alive and
tåken out of it again, was he healed by the same holy man,
after håving been converted to the religion of the true God.
From being an enemy of Christianity he now became an
equally zealous propagator of the faith, and with Gregory
he built a large number of churches.
This church of St. Hripsime is of a markedly rectangular
shape. As we have observed, the typicai ground-plan of the
early Armenian churches seems to have been square, probably
in imitation of the earlier temples of heathenism. Similar
temples seem to have existed also in the countries of the
Mediterranean and among the Etruscans, and may, of course,
have derived their shape, as Strzygowski suggests, from
wooden buildings ; but the ordinary type of stone house in
Armenia is usually square too, and in its simplest form consists
of only one room. It should be remembered that, Armenia
being the first country to adopt Christianity as the state
religion, ecclesiastical architecture had not as yet crystallized

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