XIX. The Village Church and Priest

After the measure of our humble village life, our church and temple too wear the same humble, unadorned and darkened countenance. If from the ancient forefathers there remains a fair temple, stone-built and firm-founded, that is a piece of fortune for the villagers. There are villages that have a monastery adjoining, as in the district of Rshtunik the monastery of Narek,¹ among the villages of Timar the famed monastery of the Holy Mother of God,² and in other places besides. Such monasteries are counted as church and house of prayer for the villages near by, and this too is a great consolation to them.

But in general the village churches of the land of Vaspurakan are earth-wrought and timber-built: the walls raised of raw brick, ceiling and roof covered over with earth; only the sanctuary and the altar — it is a great thing if these be built of stone and lime. And do not marvel that the villagers' churches alone are timber-built: you must rather marvel that the churches of a city of such renown as Van are wellnigh wholly timber-built. There are only some few churches whose temples are old-built and stately enough, as the church of Surb Poghos in the city's midst.

In the Aygestan³ the church of Ayr-Haruyts had an old-built and honorable temple. A few years since, renewing that church's timber porch, they ran the ancient temple and the porch into one, wishing to make their church resemble the churches of Bolis,⁴ in the belief that the churches of Bolis bear the ancient form and image of the true Armenian temples. Alas — a thousand times alas! — that the remnants of those ancient temples are one after another pulled down, and churches are built in foreign shapes, and altars are fitted out with unseemly, tasteless khachkals — cross-stands.

Let us leave this, Tornik; let me turn and draw the portrait of our own village church only; it is enough that by this portrait you see it before your eye as a picture.

Our village church, then, is likewise earth-wrought and timber-built, hardly renewed a few years ago. See: the altar is plain, unadorned, wood-wrought, with one rudely made khachkal; the vem-stone and the candle-stand steps are covered with a poor soot-grimed linen; at the time of the Liturgy scarcely two candles are lit; at other times a wooden three-legged lamp-stand suffices, and on it an earthen lamp all fouled with oil and soot. And the Lord's image over the altar — see how shapeless and artless it is. On the floor of the church and about the altar only rush mats are spread. The village churches for the most part have no gallery: the men stand in front, the women behind.

Let us leave this material meanness, which before the universal glory of God has no significance — of Him whose throne is heaven, and the footstool of His feet the earth.⁵ Let us come to draw the moral portrait. We have one aged priest, who trembling on his staff scarcely comes to church; his eyes, like the patriarch Isaac's, have long been dim;⁶ but he has much of the church's office by heart, and reads; he is a God-fearing, good and people-loving priest. We had one other priest, of fair schooling, brisk and a man of works; but he grew rich, left the village, and went to the city. It would seem that for village priests to grow rich is no very good thing, for riches push them toward the easy life. Though he is bound by written vow upon the village church when he is ordained priest over it, such men contrive to break faith with their vow, putting forward empty and groundless occasions. Yet to speak straight and to judge fairly, many a time the village priests too are in the right — when the people grudges to give its spiritual officer the dues of his spiritual ministration, which were appointed from the holy fathers of the early church.

The proof of it we see now in our own time: like the people, the priests too turn to exile-for-bread, and leaving village and church orphaned, they linger for years in foreign parts. Oh, that you might see them, Tornik — wandering among the burying-grounds of Bolis they wait, in hope of a funeral, or that one of the pandukht folk may come and have his dead one's grave blessed.

Thus the priest leaves the shepherding of the village's living people, from whom he cannot furnish out his livelihood, and goes to find his family's bread and sustenance from the graves of the dead. Blessed be the memory of those departed ones, who from their graves provide the priest's bread! The grave of the dead also has its fruitfulness, where they have fallen asleep in the Lord, in faith and in the name of Christ.

It seems to me, Tornik, that the village people is counted a no-people before the nation's governors. It is not worthy to have a well-adorned church; not worthy that a schooled priest in seemly vesture should be its shepherd; for it, school, learning and education are counted superfluous; it has not the fortune to hear a vardapet's sermon so much as a few times in the year; the village church lies far from the feet of the diocesan visitation; in a word, it is bereft of every spiritual consolation. No man could draw the portrait of its unregarded condition. Everything is centered in the cities, where the see of the diocese's Prelate is set. The Prelate, you would say, is a monopoly-man of the townsfolk, or a shepherd hired out to them, who belongs to the townsfolk alone: only the city sheep must he pasture — the village sheep of the plain, let the wolves take them. The Prelate sees the villager's face only then, when for some suit he presents himself before him with pleading countenance. The easeful life and the love of glory have quenched the care and the zeal of our spiritual shepherds; and I think the cause of it is the townsfolk and the city life.

One small crumb of consolation is left to the village people — the monasteries, above all in the province of Vaspurakan. The monastery vardapets⁷ from time to time visit the villages of the diocese; true, it is to gather the monastery's dues and fruit-tithe; but there are among them such hard-working monastics as not only fulfill the debt of their visitation and comfort the people in spirit, but also set in order many and divers passing affairs of the village, and at times become peace-making judges of its quarrels and disputes. Alas that the example of such duty-knowing monastics is very rare!

This lesson would give me matter enough and to spare; but Papik, being a layman, a tiller of the soil, I have not the boldness to step outside the round of my husbandry lessons. Spiritual things must be left to the spiritual estate. They are the people's physicians: can they not heal their own sickness? Let them take thought, speak, write, and show forth the medicine and the cure.

Now I pass on to speak, Tornik, of what those means are whereby the village people may at least in some small measure go forward, and better its present condition according to the course of the times.