For long, the Iberian and Albanian Churches formed autonomous ecclesiastical jurisdictions within the Armenian Church. The Iberians, however, seceded from this union in 608, accepting the doctrines of the Council of Chalcedon espoused by the Roman and the Byzantine Churches. Joining the Byzantine break with Rome of 1054, the Georgian Church remains Greek Orthodox to this day. The Albanians attempted to follow the Iberian lead by accepting Chalcedonianism in 700 but were prevented from doing so by the Armenians, who crushed Albanian separatism with the help of the Arabs. The Albanian Church remained within the fold of the Armenian until its suppression by the Russians in 1830.

The Cathedral of Echmiacin

The legends concerning the founding of the monastery of Ejmiacin 'the descent of the Only'Begotten' cannot be taken at face value. All we know for certain is that the original monastery church and the original neighboring churches of St. Gayane, St. Hripsime, and Xor Virap were founded in the fourth century in connection with the conversion of Armenia to Christianity by St. Gregory the Illuminator, and that the four structures remain the incontestable realities around which the later legends took form. The development of the cathedral of Ejmiacin passed through two stages even before the building took on its present appearance in the seventeenth century. Ejmiacin I, the original structure, was erected early in the fourth century as a vaulted basilica of the archaic type with three naves and a single apse similar to the early churches constructed at K'asal, Astarak, Ereruk, and Tekor elsewhere in Armenia. Its roof supported by six pillars, the cathedral was adorned with mosaics and frescoes and had one entrance at the west end opposite the apse and two more in the south side of the building. Built on the site of a demolished fire temple, remains of an altar of which were found beneath the bema, the stagelike flooring under the present altar, during the excavations of 1955-1956 and 1959, this cathedral was destroyed during the Persian invasion and lay in ruins for over a century. In 484, the ruins of the first cathedral were cleared away and Ejmiacin II, the basic core of the present structure, was erected. Certain surviving stones with Greek inscriptions in the fabric of the present cathedral may have been preserved from the original structure. This second church is quite different from the original and consists of a quadri-apsidial hall built of dull, grey stone containing four free-standing, cross shaped pillars destined to support a stone cupola, which for some reason was constructed of wood until the present one was erected in stone in the twelfth century. The new cathedral is in the form of a square enclosing a Greek cross and contains two chapels, one on either side of the east apse. This plan, new to Armenia, represents a blend of the design of a Mazdean temple and the quadriapsidial mausoleum of the classical world. The connecting links between Ejmiacin I and Ii are the four massive pillars supporting the dome, which were erected upon the bases of the original pillars and which divide the interior into nine virtually equal parts lit by twenty-three small and irregularly placed windows. Including the apses, the second structure is 33m long and 30m wide. Beyond this fifth-century core, the rest of the present cathedral-stone cupola, turrets, belfry, and rear extension-represents later additions.