#armenian

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May Lord protect everyone and keep all innocent lives safe 🙏. ✝️68 AD. Hidden in the mountains of #Iran 🇮🇷. One of the oldest surviving 🇦🇲✝️ #Christian churches on Earth-built on the martyrdom site of an apostle. The #Armenian Monastery of Saint Thaddeus was founded in 68 AD according to sacred tradition on the very spot where Saint Thaddeus, one of the twelve apostles, was martyred and buried This makes it an apostolic-era sanctuary where Armenians have prayed since the 1st century, long before Armenia became the first Christian nation in 301 AD. Its walls have witnessed empires rise and fall. They all came and went, but the Armenian prayer never stopped. The current structure is a mosaic of centuries. The oldest surviving parts, around the altar apse, date from the 7th century, with some traditions linking earlier origins to the 4th century or the apostolic era. After an earthquake destroyed much of it in 1319, the monastery was extensively rebuilt in the 1320s under Bishop Zachariah. Further repairs occurred over the centuries, including in the 17th century. In the early 19th century, under the patronage of Father Superior Simeon, a large western extension (a narthex-like structure) was added, deliberately echoing the design of Etchmiadzin Cathedral, the mother church of the Armenian Apostolic Church. In 2008, UNESCO inscribed the Monastery of Saint Thaddeus (together with the Monastery of Saint Stepanos and the Chapel of Dzordzor, all in Iran's northwestern provinces) on its World Heritage List as the "Armenian Monastic Ensembles of Iran." This recognition highlights their outstanding universal value in Armenian architectural and decorative traditions, cultural diffusion, and pilgrimage heritage. Every year, thousands of pilgrims-Armenians and others-still journey to this remote mountain valley to kneel where an apostle is believed to have fallen. The annual three-day pilgrimage in July venerates Saint Thaddeus and Saint Sandukht (a royal convert martyred with him).

Lianna

102,156 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад

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✝️ 🇦🇲 Heartbreaking words of an #Armenian #Christian grandmother: "I often can't sleep at night. I remember my childhood. I don't sleep..." Every survivor of the Armenian Genocide witnessed unimaginable horrors: priests burned alive in their churches, families torn apart on brutal death marches to Deir ez-Zor, entire villages erased, churches destroyed. Over 2 million blessed Christian martyrs perished: 1.5 million Armenians, 350,000 Pontic Greeks, and over 250,000 Assyrians (Seyfo). It began on April 24, 1915, when hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, clergy, and community leaders were arrested in Constantinople and executed. Communities were left leaderless and defenseless. What followed were systematic forced deportations. Armenian men were separated from their families and murdered on the spot. Women, children, and the elderly were marched southward into the Syrian desert under horrific conditions. These death marches involved starvation, dehydration, and relentless attacks by gendarmes and irregular militias. Countless died from exhaustion and violence long before reaching the camps. Entire villages were depopulated. Churches and cultural sites were razed. Armenian (and other Christian) property was seized and redistributed. Families were shattered. Children were orphaned. 1.5 million Armenian Christians lost their lives. In Deir ez-Zor and elsewhere, many died from starvation, typhus, or were buried in mass graves. The world witnessed. Morgenthau sent urgent cables to Washington. Henry Morgenthau Sr. described it as a "campaign of race extermination." Deniers obscure the truth, but such voices continue to be heard. German photographer Armin Wegner documented mass graves and starving survivors. Missionaries and Near East Relief workers recorded priests burned alive and other atrocities in diaries and reports. Thousands of pages of eyewitness testimony exist from neutral consuls, missionaries, and survivors. Deniers ask: "Where are the graves?" The perpetrators ensured few remained visible. Bodies were left along roadsides, thrown into the Euphrates, dumped in mass trenches, burned, or covered with lime to hasten decomposition. The desert swallowed the rest. Cemeteries, churches, and monasteries were destroyed, erased, or built over. But the truth cannot be buried. Pre-war Armenians numbered around 1.5-2 million in the Ottoman Empire. The campaign decimated them. This was one of the greatest crimes against humanity: The Armenian Genocide - recognized as the first modern genocide by scholars and many nations. Deniers still prosecute their own citizens under laws for calling it genocide. Key Ottoman documents from 1915 to 1923 remain sealed, reclassified, or missing - many archives were removed or destroyed as the CUP leaders fled in 1918. Scholars who accessed them found clear proof - yet access has often been restricted while Armenia has opened its archives fully and calls for independent, international historians to examine all sides' records without preconditions. Do not forget individuals like Mustafa Bey Azizoglu, district governor of Malatya (a key deportation transit point). Though unable to stop the deportations entirely, he hid several Armenians in his home - at the cost of his life. He was murdered by his own son. One of the survivors of the Armenian genocide refused to let the regime's leaders who ordered the massacres walk free. Soghomon Tehlirian, who lost his entire family - including his mother - in the Armenian Genocide, assassinated the chief architect of the massacres in broad daylight on a Berlin street on March 15, 1921. At his trial, he declared: "I have killed a man, but I am not a murderer." Witnesses exposed the Genocide's horrors; the German jury acquitted him. His act became a symbol of justice. Eternal memory to the blessed martyrs.

Lianna

38,242 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад