The First Christian State, and the Argument About the Date

Armenia's claim to be the first Christian state rests on a distinction worth stating precisely. Christianity was tolerated in the Roman empire from 313 and made its official religion only in 380. What Armenia did under Tiridates was earlier and more complete in one step: the crown adopted the faith, the old temples of Anahit, Aramazd and Vahagn were dismantled or converted, and the church was organized under royal authority. The date the Armenian Church keeps is 301, and the 1700th anniversary was celebrated in 2001 with a papal visit to Etchmiadzin.

Historians treat the date as approximate. Agathangelos was written more than a century after the events and shows clear signs of later shaping. Some scholars place the conversion nearer 314, after the Roman toleration edict, on the grounds that a client kingdom between Rome and Sasanian Persia is unlikely to have made so provocative a break while Diocletian was still persecuting, and note that Tiridates's own regnal dates are themselves uncertain. Others defend the traditional date and read the early break as precisely the point, a deliberate alignment with Rome against Persia.

The consequences are not in dispute. The conversion set Armenia against Zoroastrian Persia for the next two centuries and made religion the marker of Armenian identity under foreign rule, a role it has held ever since. Etchmiadzin, whose name is traditionally explained as the place where the Only-Begotten descended after a vision granted to Gregory, became the mother see of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the invention of the Armenian alphabet a century later was undertaken so that scripture and liturgy could be heard in the language of the people.