Ե.-Է. դարերի պարսկահպատակ հայոց հայրապետերի իրաւասութեան եւ հովանու ներքոյ գտնուող տարածքները

Abstract

The acts and protocols of the church councils convened in the Greater Armenia and Albania (Aghvank) in the 5th-7th centuries were systemized by the Armenian catholics Yovhannes III Ojnec’i (717-728) in the “Kanonagirk Hayots” (Armenian Book of Canons). The official correspondence and messages by Armenian, Iberian and Albanian patriarchs and nobles were collected by the catholics Komitas I Aghtsetsi (615-628) in the “Girk Teghtots” (The Book of Letters). In additions numerous historical documents of the 5th-11th centuries in the Classical Armenian, Georgian, Greek and Syrian languages allow the author to state: 1. The territories under the ecclesiastical and canonical jurisdiction of the Armenian Catholicosate with its residence in Dvin from 470 remained mainly unchanged. They included those regions (asxarhs) of Greater Armenia that, after its partition in 387, had reached Sasanian Iran and in 428 included parts of Marzapante of Armenia (mid.-Pers Arminan) and parts of the marzpanates of Assyria (mid-Pers. Asur) and Atropatena (mid.-Pers. Adurbadagan). The number of dioceses of the Armenian Catholicosate in Dvin were growing: in the early 6th c. there are 24 dioceses but in the middle of that century 28. 2. This jurisdiction was violated for 16 years: the Greater Armenian territories ceded by the Sasanians’ to Byzantium in 591, were controlled by the Armenian-Chalcedonian patriarchal throne in Avan, which was established by Constantinople, from 594 to 610. 3. The protectorate of the Armenian Catholicosate in Dvin covered the Albanian, partially autocephalous church which consisted of eight dioceses and had its residence in Partaw (before 551 – in Cola/C’ora). It covered as well as one more partially autocephalous church, the Iberian church with its residence in Mtskheta (Metskheta), but only from the late 5th c. until 607. This Iberian church consisted of 12 dioceses in the late 5th c. and 24 dioceses in the early 6th c. Finally, on the eve of the ecclesiastical division between Armenia and Iberia early in the next century, it consisted of 35 church units.