Saint of the Week: Gregory the Illuminator
3/26/2025
St. Gregory the Illuminator
c.257 A.D. – c.328 A.D.
Many regard Armenia as the first kingdom to officially adopt Christianity, setting a precedent for Emperor Constantine’s legalization of Christianity as Rome’s imperial religion. As a buffer between superpowers Rome and Persia, Armenia endured many shifts of policy, alternating as a vassal states of each. Technically, Armenia’s conversion was preceded by two other small buffer kingdoms, Adiabene and Osrhoene. By the third century, though, neither of those two existed.
While our Apostle of the Armenians’ life blends fact and legend, we believe he was born in 257 A.D. After his Parthian father Anak assassinated Persian King Khosros I, the infant Gregory was saved from certain death by a nanny who fled to Roman-controlled Cappadocia. There, he became a Christian, married, and had two sons. In 280, he felt a call to return to Armenia. While serving in King Tiriades III royal court, Gregory’s refusal to sacrifice to a pagan goddess led the king to have him tortured. Learning who Gregory’s father was, the incensed monarch confined him to a deep well in Khor Virap near Mount Ararat for 14 years. He was freed only after the king’s sister insisted the “holy man” could heal her ailing brother. Gregory did so and also converted Tiridates to the faith. With the monarch’s help, Gregory then converted the entire country to Christianity. He became a bishop in 300 A.D. and established a cathedral at Vagharshapat, although most of his work centered on nearby Echmiadzin (the spiritual center of Armenian Christianity). We’ve no record of Gregory attending the first ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325, but we believe his younger son and successor, Aristages, served as his proxy. His final years were as a hermit in the cave of Manē (near Daranali, Armenia).
