Armenia and its sorrows

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THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA 47
ail' wholly dependent upon the freewill otferings of"
the people. The archbishops, or patriarchs, are four
in luiinber, having tlieir seats at Constantinople,
Jerusalem, Sis, and Etchmiadzin.
For some years j)ast, a Protestant reformation has
been taking place in the country. In 1826 several
Armenian clergymen at Beirut, in Syria, began
travelling throughout Asia Minor preaching the
oosnel, and in 1881 the American Board of Foreign
Missions first sent its agents to the Armenian community
at Constantinople. The movement spread,
and in 1843 a young convert was seized and beheaded
in the streets of Constantinople, and his corpse was
exposed for several days, as an insult to the Christians.
The ambassadors of the great European Powers protested,
and succeeded in extorting from the Sultan
the following pledge :
" The Sublime Porte engages to take effectual
measures to prevent henceforward the execution and
putting to death of the Christian who is an apostate."
Next came trouble from the authorities of the
Gregorian Church. The Catholicos issued anathemas
and excomnumications in great profusion, and, as
a consequence, the Protestants were stoned in the
streets, unjustly imprisoned, ejected from their shops,
invaded and plundered in their houses, bastinadoed,
and abandoned by their friends.
The result was only
to give strength to the new movement. On the 1st
of July 1846, the first Evangelical Armenian Church
was constituted, and before the summer had ended
three more were in existence.
In 1847 the Ottoman Government formally granted
to the Protestant communities "all the rights and
privileges belonging to others "
; and at the close of
the Crimean War the Sultan issued an edict in which
he stated :
" As all forms of religion are and shall be
freely professed in my dominions, no subject of my