Armenia is a country that for most of its history has been on the border of rival Empires. Armenia is in the mountains right where Mediterranean Empires like the Roman Empire meet Iranian Empires like Sassanid Persia. For much of their history they have held on like Roman stoics, held on through the difficulties.
Armenian churches show this- they are solid and rugged, like the mountains that surround them, built to withstand great storms.
But once Armenia had a Golden Age.
Once the Empires retreated, letting the Caucasus breathe, letting Armenia and Georgia develop into their own Kingdoms in a great crossroads of the world.
The Bagratid Dynasty led Armenia into a brilliant independent existence as a beautiful independent Kingdom on a crossroads of the world.
Armenia has always been a crossroads of the world. People from all over Asia for millennia would travel to the shores of the Black Sea, and thus the whole of the Mediterranean, through Armenia and Georgia.
From time out of mind the Armenian people had found clever ways to thrive in this stormy crossroads of the world as they held on through the struggles.
Now Bagratid Armenia was an independent kingdom in a great crossroads of the world!
In the later 9th and 10th Centuries!
Its capital, Ani, was a great and beautiful city connencted with the whole world!
But there's more.
Armenians had always had a part in the life of Byzantine Constantinople.
Now the ruling dynasty of Constantinople, of all of Byzantium, was Armenian!
And this was not just any Byzantine Dynasty.
This was the legendary Macedonian Dynasty which led Byzantium through its Golden Age!
The Dynasty of the great Basil I and the great Basil II, the dynasty of Leo The Wise, the dynasty that ensured stability on the throne of Constantinople for 200 years!
And the Dynasty that gave the Macedonian Renaissance, a artistic and intellectual flowering that was named after the Dynasty, not only its name but one of its finest scholars, Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus!
The Armenian Golden Age indeed!
So hold your head high, Armenia, you are survivors and Roman-style Stoics- and you have a Golden Age to look back on!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. I am writing all about this, and the Golden Ages of Bulgaria and Georgia, as we speak in my history of Byzantium! (7/3/21... the preview will be here soon, as soon as I can get help from a friend with my website (but the preview does not yet reach the Armenian, Bulgarian, and Georgian Golden Ages... those are coming too, though!))