The following material on the Armenian people, their history, culture, religion and place in world history has been prepared by Annals Australia with the valued assistance of Father Anton Totonjian, chaplain in Sydney to the Armenian Catholic Community. We offer this small tribute to a people who share our faith, and who have suffered much, not simply through persecution but also through the silence of many who looked on and did nothing.
Genocide of the Armenians - from a painting.
ARMENIANS REMEMBER 1915
Armenians in Australia
The first Armenians to come to Australia were those living in China and other Far Eastern countries. They came during the gold rush of the 1850s. At the end of the gold rush, most of them returned to their countries of origin.
In 1950 only 50 Armenian families were living in Australia. It was in 1960 that the Armenians started migrating in important numbers to Australia.
The situation for minority groups in the Middle East was deteriorating and the Armenian population that had settled in Middle Eastern countries after the genocide of 1915, started migrating. The intelligentia and many of the wealthy families settled in France, U.S.A. and Canada. In general, the poorer and working class Armenians came to Australia.
From 1974 onwards the Syrian invasion of Lebanon, the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war pushed more Armenians out of the Middle East.
In 1985 we can count about 30,000 persons of Armenian origin in Australia. 20,000 of them live in Sydney, about 6,000 in Melbourne and the others are scattered all over the continent.
The Armenian people traditionally do not feel at ease when working for someone else. For this reason many Armenians are tradesmen or self-employed businessmen.
In Sydney, an Important percentage of Armenians work as goldsmiths, auto-mechanics and auto- electricians garage owners. The second generation is interested in tertiary studies, and we have a good number of students in all fields. But you will find that Armenians show a preference for History, and the Liberal Arts.
As in the rest of the world the vast majority (about 87%) of Armenians in Australia belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Head of the Apostolic Church in Australia is Bishop Aghan Baleozian. He has two married priests in Sydney, and another in Melbourne. Their Church is at Chatswood.
The Catholic Church counts 10% of the Armenian population among her faithful. Their Church is at Lidcombe, and their chaplain resides at the Catholic Presbytery, Auburn.
The remaining 3% of the Armenians belong to different Protestant denominations. Armenians are gathered either around cultural centres or around their churches, which provide cultural activities too. There are eight Saturday schools in Sydney where over 700 Armenian children between the ages of 4 and 15 are learning their language and imbibing their culture.
This year a new Armenian school started in Lidcombe, N.S.W. where children are following bi-lingual programmes. At present there are two classes, but each year, with the new intake, a class will be added. Children travel over 15 kms every day to come to this school which is conducted by the Sydney Armenian Catholic Community. The Armenian Cultural Society intends to start a school in the near future..
N.S.W. Armenians have a number of cultural activities open to them, including 2 Theatre groups, 2 Armenian folklore dance groups and an Armenian Choir. Besides the monthly bulletins of the Catholic and Apostolic Churches, a number of periodicals are published from Sydney communicating mainly Armenian news.
Armenia the Land
Mount Ararat where according to the Bible (Gen. 8) the ark of Noah settled, is the symbol of Armenia. Now it is situated in Turkey, but this majestic mountain, 5,160m high, was once in the heart of historic Armenia.
Slightly bigger than the State of Victoria (300,000km), historic Armenia is a mountainous and volcanic country. It comprised the land bordered on the north by the Kura River, on the east by the Caspian Sea, on the south by Mespotamia, and on the west by the Euphrates River.
In the second millenium B.C. this land was inhabited by the Hayas, Armens, Azzis. According to Hittite sources, a vast kingdom called Hayassa was situated on the eastern side of Hittite empire. The word Hayassa reminds us of Hayasdan, the name given by the Armenian people to their fatherland. Hayassa was a powerful state and became the ally of the Hittites.
In the 13th Century B.C., conquerors from the west came and overtook the Hittite empire, and the Hayassa name disappeared with them. The Assyrians called it Nayeree (Land of the rivers). But the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks called it Armenia.
In the 9th Century B.C. the tribes living on this land were united and formed the Urartian State with Toushba (Van) as their capital.
Between 612 and 582 B.C. tribes, apparently coming from the Thrasic Phrygian Tsuph invaded the country and eventually blended with the Urastian people. This people were the Hai people whom others, including the Persian Emperor Darius called Armenians.
Armenia was placed between East and West and thus was a buffer state, and victim of many wars between the then superpowers.
Artashes was appointed governor by Antiochus the Great (223-187 B.C.) and is said to have founded Artashat. Tigranes II, after extending his reign over the whole of Armenia was defeated by Lucullus and Pompey (66 B.C.). Tiridates was crowned in Rome by Nero (A.D. 66), in 296 A.D. Armenia became a Roman protectorate, under the reign of Tiridates III. Tiridates III was converted to Christianity and in the year 301 Christianity became the state religion, thus making Armenia the first state in the world to accept the Christian faith.
After the death of Tiridates in 330, Armenia underwent a century of wars and anarchy. The country was able to survive thanks to the tenacity and devotion of some of the noble families, specially that of the Mamikonians which supplied Armenia with great war chiefs. One of the greatest is Vardan Mamikonian who fought the Persians in 451. He lost his life but saved the faith and saved Armenia. The Armenians celebrate with a great patriotic ceremony the feast of Vardan in February each year.
In this troubled century an event of extreme importance occurred, without which the Armenians would have lost their identity. The Armenians, who were using the Greek and Syrian languages for writing, received, thanks to St. Mashpotz Nashdotz, a new alphabet.
The Armenians fought against the expansion of Islam in the 8th Century A.D. but accepted Moslem rule, without accepting the Islamic faith. Armenia was devastated by wars for more than 150 years. The renaissance of the country was the doing of Ashot Bagratooni. The Arab Caliph helped him, and then named him Prince, Governor and in 885 enthroned him as King of Armenia.
Ashot received two crowns. The Byzantine Emperor desirous of Armenian goodwill towards them, gave Ashot a second crown. Ashot's son, Sembat likewise received two crowns.
His grandson Ashot III took the capital to Ani and the Armenian golden age began. Ani was a city with 40 gates, had 100 palaces and 1000 churches. It became a bulwalk of western and Christian civilisation facing Asia.
Ani, the most beautiful of Armenian cities was consecrated capital of Armenia in 952, but a century later, 1064, it was destroyed by invading Touranians (Turks).
Armenia had disappeared, but not the Armenian people. A Bagradite prince, Rouben, undertook an extraordinary migration, together with his people, towards the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. There he founded a new state, which became the New Armenia. This is the Cilician Kingdom, known also as Little Armenia. Rouben's son saw the arrival of the 1st crusaders. All through the crusades, Armenia became an important ally of the west.
In 1342, through marriage a French nobleman came to the Armenian throne. He wanted to do away with Armenian traditions and way of life. But the Armenians revolted against this westernization and the country was virtually handed over to the Moslems in 1375. This marked the end of Armenian independence.
Since then the conserving and uniting force of the Armenian people has been its Church.
In 1678 the head of Armenian Church, Hagop IV, left Etchmiadzin to go to Rome and ask the Pope to provoke the interventions of the western powers to free Armenia. He died en route, and the delegation returned home with their mission unaccomplished. Centuries of persecution followed. In the late 1800s 200,000 Armenians were massacred — a foretaste of what was to follow.
When at the beginning of the 19th Century Russians appeared in the Caucasus, the Armenians had high hopes. The Russians took over an important part of Armenia which was under Turkish rule, and a great revival seemed to be under way. Unfortunately this euphoria did not last. The Russians began to interfere in the religious affairs of the Armenian Community and even tried to impose the Orthodox religion upon them, as was the case among the Catholic Ukrainians, Lithuanians and others. Whether in Turkey, Russia, Lebanon or elsewhere in the Middle East the Armenians still suffer for their faith and their desire to be free.
Turkish Genocide of the Armenians
No one can deny the brutalities and the atrocities that occasioned the death of a great number of Armenians between 1915 and 1918. Could this be considered a genocide? The Turks prefer to say that war was being waged and State security made it imperative to displace the Armenians; during this displacement some died!
The irreplaceable losses suffered as a result of the genocide and the consequent forced exodus have been described on numerous occasions. It is an irrefutable fact that, in their determination "to finish once and for all the Armenian problem", Turkish political and military leaders unleashed their fury on anything which, by its mute presence, could bear witness to the history and culture of the rightful owners of the devastated regions. Religious edifices, as monuments of art and civilization, as centres of worship and culture, were too eloquent witnesses. Hence they were pillaged and profaned, dynamited, and set on fire with children, women and old men inside them.
Besides the 1,500,000 persons killed [ ¾ of the then Armenian population] the Armenian Catholic Church lost:
— 156 Churches and Chapels,
— 110 Missions,
— 148 Schools for boys and girls,
— 32 Monasteries and Convents,
— 6 Seminaries.The Apostolic Church lost more than 1000 Churches and Monasteries which were levelled to the ground; 691 other edifices were half-destroyed; 1727 religious and cultural possessions of the Armenian people were totally destroyed or put to other uses by the Turks.
The fate of the monuments that were allowed to survive has not been a particularly happy one. Those that were better preserved were transformed into municipal depots, electricity stations, barns, home for Turkish peasants, or after some hasty additions, into mosques. To travellers and tourists reaching these regions, the monuments are presented as the remains of authentic samples of Seljuq or Ottoman architecture.
These rare travellers bring back from Turkish Armenia a general impression of desolation, misery, savagery, and the memory of architectural treasures abandoned to their fate or condemned to slow deterioration. Some foreign journalists even wonder, naively, how Turkish archaeologists can tolerate such a state of affairs.
It is a fact that we can actually find in eastern Turkey a considerable number of recently built rural homes whose walls are made of stones bearing inscriptions or reliefs in the Armenian language.
Sadly, the destruction of the vestiges of Armenian civilization in all territories occupied by the Turks has never ceased since the genocide. The monuments of Van, according to the testimony of Lord Kinross, suffered new atrocities nearly two decades ago. In the fifties another calamity befell the magnificent ensemble of the churches of Khetzkonk (situated to the south-east of Ani) when these were dynamited without any justification. It was a deliberate act of vandalism. To this day only the most important monuments, those too well-known and appreciated by historians of art and architecture, such as the ones of Aghtamar and some churches of Ani, for example, or the church of the Apostles of Kars are spared. Their sudden disappearance would arouse the curiosity of the international archaeological world and create too much of an outcry.
For a long time Armenians tried to raise public opinion on this matter, but political and economic expediency made it difficult for Armenians to be heard.
24 Turkish diplomats have been killed since 1971. While the great majority of Armenians could not condone such acts of violence, they are sympathetic towards the authors and towards their cause. Sadly, an insensitive world, and the frustration created through lack of sympathy and support for a just cause, often leads to violence.
A Martyred Nation
"In the course of a quarter of a century — between 1895 and 1920 — the Armenian race lost a million and a half persons by the gun or the bayonet, deliberate starvation, and by privation and pestilence. About a third of all Armenians in the world died a gruesome, painful death. This national catastrophe is comparable to that suffered by the Jews under the Hitler regime. No Armenian household today is free of memories of this holocaust."— David Lang
Armenia seems always to have been attacked by its powerful neighbours. These attacks historically were aimed at the state as well as at the Armenian Christian faith. But the Armenians stood firm in their faith and preferred persecution and death to material well-being.
Armenians lived under Ottoman Turkish rule for over six centuries. At different times they were persecuted and massacred. But they were given a certain religious freedom too.
In the 19th century, when the rest of Europe was experiencing an upsurge of nationalism, nationalistic feelings were aroused in the Armenian people, and these asked the Western World for help in obtaining a degree of autonomy.
When Turkey was at its weakest and the Russians were advancing against the Turks, the Western powers undertook to help Turkey if the latter would promise to treat minority groups better, particularly the Armenians. Sultan Abdul Hamid, better known as the Red Sultan because of his massacres, accepted the reforms asked in favour of the Armenians, but seems to have resolved to render these reforms meaningless by exterminating all the Armenians.
Firstly he isolated the Armenian provinces from the rest of the world, and the massacres started in September 1895.
The British intervened, and the Sultan had to stop, but restarted in 1896. The Armenian political party, the Dashnaks decided to draw the attention of the world opinion to what was happening. One morning twenty six Dashnaks fully armed, entered the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople and took it over. They agreed to hand themselves to the French or British powers.
This did not stop the killings in Turkey. During the siege of the Bank 7000 Armenians were killed in Constantinople, and over 200,000 Armenians were massacred or martyred at this time. [In October 1981 Pope John Paul II beatified seven of those massacred in Marash.]
The siege of the Bank had the effect of stirring public opinion in Europe. Protest demonstrations were organised in Paris, London, Brussels, Rome and Vienna.
In July 1908, the Turkish army in Macedonia seized power and forced the Sultan to rule according to the constitution. This movement was directed by a group called the "Young Turks". At the beginning they promised equality to minority groups, but later on they became intransigent and preached pan-Turkism policies. The Armenians who had helped the young Turks, became disillusioned and once again asked for European help. But the war of 1914 brought to an end any hope of European intervention. Shortly before the First World War broke out in 1914, the Dashnak party held its eighth party conference in Erzerum. During the conference, Young Turk representatives approached the Dashnaks and suggested that they should foment a rebellion across the frontier, in the Russian Caucasus. In return, Turkey would set up an autonomous Armenia under her own protection. The Dashnaks turned down the plan, proposing instead that Turkey should stay neutral in the impending conflict; but in the event of Turkey joining the war, Armenians everywhere would be advised to do their duty as Ottoman citizens.
When war broke out, most Turkish Armenians behaved as loyal Ottoman citizens. An estimated 250,000 were conscripted into Ottoman armies. When Enver Pasha was defeated by the Russians at Sarikamish, it was Armenian soldiers who saved him from being killed or captured by the Tsarist forces. However, some Armenians fled from Turkey into Russia, and joined volunteer regiments which the Tsarist authorities were encouraging. In Cilicia, Armenian leaders instigated a revolt against the Ottoman government, but this came to nothing.
Soon events took a tragic turn. Turkish Armenians in the Ottoman army were disarmed and herded into labour battalions, where they were starved, beaten or machinegunned. On 24 April 1915, on the eve of ANZAC attacks on Gallipoli, two hundred and fifty-four Armenian intellectuals in Instanbul were arrested and deported to the provinces of Avash and Chankiri, where nearly all of them were murdered by the authorities.
Having lost both its able-bodied male population (to the army) and now its intellectual elite, the Armenian community was now almost leaderless, and the authorities turned upon it with fury. In every town and village of Turkish Armenia and Asia Minor, the entire Armenian population was ordered out. The men were usually led away and executed; a different fate awaited the women and children: they were forced to walk southwards in huge convoys to the burning deserts of northern Syria. Few survived the privations of these terrible death marches; for months afterwards, the roads and tracks of Anatolia were littered with corpses and skeletons picked clean by the vultures. There were variations on this pattern. In Trebizond, the local Armenians were put on boats, and thrown overboard when well out in the Black Sea. A number were murdered by being hurled down the Kemakh Gorge, near Erzinjan.
Those who survived the long journey south were herded into huge open-air concentration camps, the grimmest of which was that at Deir ez-Zor, in Syria, where they were starved and killed by sadistic guards. A small number were able to escape through the secret protection of friendly Arabs in villages in northern Syria.
This systematic genocide resulted from decisions taken at the highest government level. The Interior Minister Talaat Pasha told Morgenthau, the American ambassador, that the massacre and suffering were "inevitable". The government itself was an instrument of the Young Turk party, the 'Committee of Union and Progress', whose dominant ideology was pan-Turkism. The massacres were not just a matter of 'isolated incidents', but carefully thought out and planned months, if not years, in advance. Nor did they result from religious intolerance, though the Young Turks mobilized the innate fanaticism of village Mullahs, and the greed of many people within Turkey. There were in fact Muslim leaders who were shocked by the measures taken, and protested against them. So who carried out the killing? In some cases it was ordinary village and town police. The government also recruited a 'Special Organization' mostly composed of common criminals released from. prison in Western Anatolia, on condition that they engage in the slaughter of the Armenians.
How many Armenians died? Viscount Bryce, speaking in the House of Lords on 6 October 1915, put the figure then at 'around 800,000'. The slaughter continued well into 1916, and beyond. The Turkish offensive into the Russian Caucasus in the summer of 1918 claimed many thousands of victims. The Turks used Armenian refugees as targets for bayonet practice. When the Ottoman army captured Baku in the autumn of 1918, 15,000 Armenians were butchered. Scores of thousands died of famine and pestilence after the October Revolution. As late as 1921, a British colonel in Erzerum found the Kemalists beating and starving Armenian captives to death.
Before 1914, we know that over two million Armenians lived in Turkey; since the First World War this figure has rarely exceeded 100,000. Thus the number of Armenians who died may safely be put at around 1,500,000. Another half-million became homeless refugees, whose descendants, with their tragic memories, can be found in more than 50 countries today.
The Armenian Rite
Within the Catholic Church there are 18 canonical rites that are of equal dignity, enjoy the same rights and are under the same obligations as the Latin rite. The particular rites possess their own hierarchy, differ in liturgical and ecclesiastical discipline and possess their own spiritual heritage.
For historical reasons, most of the rites have two hierarchies: one in union with the Pope in Rome and the other autonomous. Usually, the liturgical discipline is common to both.
The Catholic Armenians, a certain section of the Armenian community which has remained attached to Rome throughout the centuries, have the same faith as all Catholics, and follow the Armenian Rite Liturgy.
The main doctrinal characteristic of non-Catholic Armenians is their nominal Monophysitism. Because, although they believe in the two natures of Christ, they insist on rejecting the Council of Calcedon which took place in 451 A.D. This rejection is on political grounds only, and from a religious and liturgical point of view Catholic and non-Catholic Armenians are much closer than, for example, Catholics and Protestants.
Under Byzantine influence, the non-Catholic Armenians omit the "procession of the Holy Spirit" from the creed.
Although five liturgical days of commemoration of the dead are celebrated each year, the doctrine of the existence of purgatory is denied. This ecclesiology is a loose expression of their own decentralized organization.
Armenian Catholics suffered severe losses between 1915 and 1922 in Turkey. The whole Catholic Pariarchate was shattered, but the church was re-organized in 1928 through a Synod held in Rome. The seat of the Patriarchate was transferred to Bzommar in Lebanon. The Patriarch bears the titles of Patriarch of the Catholic Armenians and Catholics of Cilicia. An outstanding Patriarch well-known to Western Catholics was Gregory Peter XV Agaginian, elected in 1937 and made a cardinal in 1945. He resigned as Patriarch in 1962 because of his many activities as head of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Patriarch Cardinal Agaginian visited Australia twice: in 19S3, he went to Melbourne for the International Eucharistic Congress, and he visited Australia again in 1958). The present Armenian Catholic Patriarch is John Peter XVIII Kasparian.
The Liturgy of Armenian Catholics developed as a compilation from the Liturgy of St. James and that of St. John Chrysostom, and has much in common with other Byzantine liturgies.
Armenian Katchkars
"Katchkars" are a special feature of Armenian religious architecture, and are thought by some to be connected to the characteristic Gaelic stonework so beloved of the Irish.
Prominent among the original forms of Armenian medieval art are the monuments known as Khatchkars (stone crosses) which are found throughout Armenia.
Beginning from the second half of the 9th Century, as a result of the weakening of the Arab Caliphate, political power was restored in Armenia and new Kingdoms were formed. This contributed greatly to the progress of national culture. It is in this period that Khatchkars appear.
The oldest Khatchkars that we are aware of date from the 9th-10th Centuries. The earliest Khatchkars, with their characteristics as yet incompletely formed, bear witness to the creative search for the composition of form.
If the purpose of the engraving on the facades of the 4th-7th Century obelisks and temples was to propagate and confirm the Christian religion, then the main purpose of the late 9th Century monuments was to secure the salvation of the soul. On the facades of the churches built for this purpose, the reliefs of the benefactors are engraved holding the Maquet of the temple. Donations are given to monasteries, and shrines and khatchkars are erected for the salvation of the soul. With this same idea as a basis the khatchkars represents the symbolic image of the Crucifixion and the Redemption.
In Armenia, the struggle for liberation from Arab domination and for re-establishment of national independence during the 8th-9th, Centuries, and partly at the beginning of the 10th Century, was closely linked to the idea of the Crucifixion and the redemption of the Son of God.
However, Khatchkars appear also with other significances. They were being erected on different occasions to commemorate military victories, immortalize historically important events and to commemorate the completion of churches, fountains, bridges and other constructions.
Khatchkars were also erected on the occasions of restoration of churches and donations to monasteries. Also numerous are the Khatchkars which are set into church walls and which, on the whole commemorate gifts made to the Church. But the Khatchkars served also as grave stones, and numerous such cemetery monuments exist.
There also exist Khatchkars connected with various traditions and folklore. Those are Khatchkars erected in memory of holy persons, unfortunate lovers or to commemorate important events.
Khatchkars are also valuable for their lithographs which frequently include important historical information, help to date the monuments, reveal the names of the commissioner and the master stone-mason and the occasion for erecting the Khatchkars. In this sense, Khatchkars represent important documents of the history of the Armenian people.
As original works of art, Khatchkars have had their periods of gradual development and perfection. The 12th-13th Centuries are the period of final improvements and perfection.
The development and stylistic changes of Khatchkars took place in step with medieval Armenian architecture. Being the original embodiment of the mentality in fine arts of that period, Khatchkars synthesise within themselves all kinds of thematic and ideological problems in concrete forms of style and expression which are linked to the course of historical development, the typical fashion in fine arts of the period, the individuality of the creating master craftsman ancl other factors.
Khatchkars having the architectually final form, independent of their positioning, are stone slabs sometimes reaching large dimensions, having twice their width in height, or more. Their western facade is completely engraved and the reverse side is smooth or covered with inscriptions. On the engraved face, the cross (on a graduated or "rosette-like" base) is found in the centre of the image. The remaining surfaces are completely covered with delicate, complex networks of botanical or geometrical decorative engravings, similar to gaelic patterns found in Irish architecture. As the Celts originally came from Asia Minor, do we have in the Khatchkars a link between East and West?
In medieval Armenia the mastership of stone work is most richly expressed in the art of Khatchkars. While maintaining the canonic structure, beginning from the 11th century the complex, woven geometrical-linear and botanical decorations predominate in the embellishment of the Khatchkars. In these, the intersected line, forming a real geometrical pattern, is not interrupted even when it ceases to be predominantly perpendicular and becomes enclosed in another geometrical shape (circle, square). Their regular succession and enchainment, creating a definite rhythm, form an outline for the Khatchkar. The linear network appears to be without start and without an end, in the course of its movement, transmutes from one form to the other without defining the start or end. In this instance, the vignette, due to its uninterrupted weave, becomes the expression of the idea of infinity and eternity.
The charm of the Khatchkar lies in the harmony of the decorative motifs. In the course of time the network, becoming finer and more delicate, reaches such a stage that the decoration engraved on the stone, resembling in its elegance goldsmith's art or needlework, does not give the impression of being overloaded. The delicate botanical weave, going deep into the stone mass in layered succession, does not spoil the whole grandiose appearance of the Khatchkars. On the other hand, the decorative engravings, as if lightening the weight and dematerializing the stone, add to the expressiveness of the obelisk.
The Khakchars are a part of the Armenian art of sculpture, they have a pure national character, expressing the Christian faith, the patriotism and high culture as well as the aesthetic sense of the Armenian people.
For these reasons they occupy a worthy place in the treasury of World Art, even if they are relatively unknown in the West
Note from F. John Loughnan:
I have included in this reproduction only two of the sixteen photographs contained in the original "Annals" article.
1.5 dead Armenians (but don't tell the EU)
More pictures of the Armenian Holocaust - by a German Officer in Turkey
Armenian National Institute
From "Annals Australasia," formerly "Annals Australia" - April 1985
Subscription Rates to "Annals Australasia" and "Catholic Answers to Bible Christians"
See "Annals Australasia's Un-official Home Page
What's New? at Sean Ó Lachtnáin's Home Page
Sean Ó Lachtnáin's Home Page