Nersēs

Patriarch of Greater Armenia (probably between 353 and 373).

Often styled “St Nerses the Great”.


Events 


Date of Birth: unknown.

Place of Birth: unknown.


Date of Death: about 373.

Place of Death: Xa𝜒.

The date is given by Garsoian. Nerses is said in the Epic Histories [V.24] to have been murdered in the village of Xa𝜒. 

Place of Burial: T‘il.

The Epic Histories [V.24] give this location, which is where they put the domain of the Gregorids. It is also said to be the burial place of St Aristaces.


Relationships


Father: At‘anagines.

This relationship is given by Garsoïan (1989, p. 395). It is recorded in the Epic Histories. (See the Evidence section below.) 

Mother: “Bambišn”.

See At‘anagines’s page.


Spouse: unknown.

The Epic Histories do not mention a wife. An anonymous life of St Nersēs states that Nersēs married Sanducht, a daughter of Vardan Mamikonian, in Caesarea in Cappadocia (the modern Kayseri). Movses Khorenats‘i states that he married a daughter of an otherwise unknown “great noble Aspion” in Byzantium. (Garsoian p. 395)


Children: 

(Complete source citations for facts about the children on this page are currently outside of the scope of this project.)


Sahak


Evidence


from the Epic Histories (probably written in the 470s):

(4.3)

Then the mass of the general-council-of-the-realm looked at, named and asked for the one who was called Nerses, the son of At‘anagenes [sic], the grandson of the high-priest Yusik who was the son of Vrt‘anes, the son of the first great high-priest Grigor. The name of his mother was Bambišn [and] she was the sister of the King Tiran. In his youth he had been married and had led a secular life. From his boyhood, [however], he had been nurtured and taught by faithful spiritual-teachers in the city of Caesarea of Gamirk and had earned the love of his companions. But at that particular time he was serving as an official in the military, as the beloved senekapet of King Aršak entrusted with all the affairs of the kingdom, both internal and external.


from an anonymous life of St Nerses (probably from several centuries later) (French translation):

[1]… Alors Iousig maria son fils Athénogène et lui donna pour épouse la sœur du roi Diran , qui s'appelait Pampischen. Elle eut un fils qui naquit sons d’heureux auspices et qu'on nomma Nersès, ainsi que l’ange l’avait annoncé …

[II]…Le jeune Nersès grandit et s’instruisit dans la province de Césarée, ayant avec lui sa femme Santoukhd, de la race des Mamigoniens, de laquelle il eut un fils qu'il nomma Sahag. Trois ans après Santoukhd mourut à Césarée; son père Vartan le Mamigonien  transporta son corps dans le bourg de Thil et l'y enterra. Après cela, Arsace [III] (Arschag) régna à la place de son père Diran [II]. Nersès vint au-près de lui et fut nommé chambellan (chargé de la garde) de tout son trésor, parce qu'il était cousin du roi Arsace.


from Consularia Constantinopolitana (MGH, AA, IX, p. 239):

358. Datiano et Caereale.


from Ammianus Marcellinus (17.5.1-2):

Datiano et Cereali consulibus, cum universa per Gallias studio cautiore disponerentur, formidoque praeteritorum barbaricos hebetaret excursus, rex Persarum in confiniis agens adhuc gentium extimarum, iamque cum Chionitis et Gelanis, omnium acerrimis bellatoribus, pignore icto societatis, rediturus ad sua, Tamsaporis scripta suscepit, pacem Romanum principem nuntiantis poscere precativam. Ideoque non nisi infirmato imperii robore temptari talia suspicatus, latius semet extentans, pacis amplectitur nomen, et condiciones proposuit graves, missoque cum muneribus Narseo quodam legato, litteras ad Constantium dedit nusquam a genuino fastu declinans, quarum hunc fuisse accepimus sensum:...


Garsoïan notes (1989, pp.395-6) that “[t]he core of BP’s account of Nersēs’s career seems clearly grounded on fact, for the patriarch’s embassy of 358 is recorded by both AM (XII.v.1-2) [recte XVII.v.1-2] and the Constantinopolitan records (MGH, AA, IX, p. 239). His exile coincides pace Baynes, with that of the anti-Arian bishops after the Council of Seleucia of 359. His Hellenizing ecclesiastical policy and his anti-Arian orthodoxy, seemingly confirmed by St. Basil’s Letter xcii, were the probable cause of his opposition to the Arianizing Aršakuni kings, rather than the murder of Ašak II’s nephew Gnel (IV.xv) or the depravity of Pap (V.xxii-xxiv) invoked by BP. The Basilian intrusions, however, present problems because they obscure not only the chronology of St Nersēs’s life, but the probable influence of Eustathios of Sebastē on the patriarch’s charitable activity. Moreover, BP’s entire account of its spiritual hero Nersēs is an uncritical panegyric, which provided the basis for the still more elaborately hagiographical Vita.”


On the Epic Histories as a source for the Grigorids’ genealogy more generally, here is my (very non-expert) thinking: The author of the Epic Histories seems to have been a cleric writing in the 470s, holding “the conservative aristocratic view that the patriarchate of Armenia was the hereditary office of the house of St Gregory beyond any interference on the part of the king, repeatedly stressing that the descendants of St Gregory were the legitimate holders of this office and displaying latent or open contempt and even hostility towards non-Gregorid incumbents, for whom he often uses the term “head” or “chief” bishop (glxawor episkopos) rather than the customary "high-priest'' or ''patriarch'' (k‘ahanayapet, hayrapet) invariably used for the Gregorid primates.” (Garsoian 1989, p. 15). He seems to be basing his account on oral tradition. Although his account has the shape of a traditional oral epic, and shows anachronisms, contradictions, and a lack of interest in reliable chronology, I am assuming that his account of the genealogical line of the Gregorids is probably reliable at least as far as it concerns the “legitimacy” of the patriarchs. Garsoian (1989, 1997) accepts it.


References


The Epic Histories Attributed to P‘awstos Buzand (Nina G Garsoïan tr. and comm.) (Harvard U.P., 1989).


Garsoïan, Nina. “The Aršakuni Dynasty” in The Armenian People from Anicent to Modern Times v. 1 (Richard G. Hovannisian ed.) (St Martin’s Press, 1997).


Ghazar P’arpets’i’s History of the Armenians. (Robert Bedrosian tr.) (1985).


“Généalogie de la famille de Saint Grégoire, Illuminateur de l’Arménie, et vie de Saint Nersès, patriarche des Arméniens, par un auteur anonyme du Ve siècle” (Jean-Raphael Emine tr.) in Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l’Arménie v. 2 (1869).  


Russell, James R. “Faustus” in Encyclopædia Iranica (1999, updated 2012, online edition).