Between Stone, Mountain and Millenia: Monasteries of Armenia

link to MONASTERIES photo gallery

ARMENIA, a tiny landlocked country wedged like a kneecap in a complex joint of nations: Iran and Azerbaijan to the South, Turkey to the West, Georgia to the North. As it sits among the Caucasus it has been yet another historic crossroads between Middle Eastern and Eastern European nations, historic Persia, Mongolia, Greece and Rome, ex-Soviet nations and the Ottoman empire. Its countryside exhibits a sample of the region’s diverse landscapes, from wet wooded mountain valleys, to barren desert hillsides, age old villages and cities that have borne the brunt of thousands of years of history and conflict, crumbling monasteries even older than the trees.
The nation, now a tenth of its historic size—shrunk like many other nations by conquest and war: common themes to regional politics and history—has had many of its monuments and ancient cities scattered throughout Turkey and Azerbaijan: various monasteries abandoned to decay, the great Mt. Ararat and Ani, the “city of 1001 churches”, and historic capital of Armenian kings.

The Armenian nation holds the distinction of belonging to the oldest established Christian church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, with roots in the first century AD and state acceptance in the late third, early fourth century—approximately a decade before the first Roman emperor to accept Christianity, Constantine, opened the doors to the Catholic Church in Rome.

The numerous monasteries and churches of the countryside, bear testimony to this rich history; their pink toufa stone walls, domed spires, crucifix basilicas, and Khachcar grave markers—with carving skilled enough to weave the curls and tangles of ancient vines around crosses and turn them to stone—have hung to the hillsides through the past millennia (some, more), seeking protection from Mongol raids and isolation from worldly troubles, damaged by the region’s proneness to earthquakes. Today, as reconstruction projects are underway, these monuments attract numerous pilgrims and van-loads of tourists and , along tomb stone corridors, and beneath vaulted sanctuaries, provide a space to contemplate this nation’s deep history, a space where the past and present may meet, if only for a moment, a photograph.