St. Hripsime: A Seventh-Century Armenian Apostolic Church in Vagharshapat
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Armenia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Armenian, Qajar, Russian, Safavid, Sassanid
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page16 sections
History
St. Hripsime is a seventh-century Armenian Apostolic church in Vagharshapat, Armenia, dedicated to the Christian martyr Hripsime. Built in 618 during the early medieval period, it is an active church of the Armenian Apostolic Church and is associated with the Armavir and Araratian Patriarchal dioceses. The building became an influential example of medieval Armenian architecture, and its distinctive plan shaped later Armenian and Georgian churches.
The martyrium of Hripsime
Armenian tradition holds that Hripsime, a Roman Christian virgin, fled persecution by the Roman emperor Diocletian with several companions. After she rejected the advances of the Armenian king Tiridates III, she and her companions were martyred in Armenia. Tiridates later converted to Christianity, an event traditionally linked with Armenia’s adoption of Christianity in the early fourth century. Together with Gregory the Illuminator, regarded as the principal missionary and first catholicos of the Armenian Church, the king built a martyrium, a Christian shrine associated with a saint’s burial or martyrdom, at the place where Hripsime died.
The first shrine was destroyed around 363 by the Sasanian king Shapur II and his Armenian Zoroastrian ally Meruzhan Artsruni, during a wider destruction of Christian sites. In 395, Catholicos Sahak Partev built a replacement chapel-martyrium. It was later described as low and dark. Excavations in 1976–78 revealed the foundations of a small single-nave basilica about 10 metres east of the present church. This building is probably Sahak’s late-fourth-century chapel. Christian-style burials discovered in the area were identified by scholars and the Armenian Church as those of Hripsime and her companions. A letter from 608 mentions a priest of St. Hripsime, showing that the chapel remained active shortly before the present church was built.
Komitas and the seventh-century church
Catholicos Komitas, who held office from 615 to 628, demolished the earlier martyrium and commissioned the present church in 618. The date is calculated from the twenty-eighth year of the reign of the Sasanian king Khosrow II and is supported by two inscriptions that record Komitas’s responsibility for the construction. Komitas was also a hymnographer, and some scholars consider it possible that he designed the church.
The two inscriptions commemorating Komitas are among the earliest surviving inscriptions in the Armenian language after the inscription at Tekor Church. One, conventionally dated to 618, is carved on the exterior west wall and states that Komitas built the temple of the holy martyrs of Christ. The other, dated to 628, is inside the eastern apse behind the altar and names him as the builder of St. Hripsime. It was uncovered beneath plaster during the 1898 restoration and suffered slight damage.
Medieval use and early modern decline
The church and monastery remained intermittently active during the medieval period. An inscription from 1296 records the monastery’s exemption from tithes and other taxes on cotton. Another inscription, dated 1302 and placed on the western entrance, records a donation of 1,000 silver coins.
The church was abandoned and severely neglected after Shah Abbas deported Armenians to Iran in 1604–05. It became undefended, and its doors and altar disappeared. The roof and walls partly collapsed, the foundations were disturbed, and livestock were driven inside. Facing stones were also quarried from the building during periods of neglect. Two Augustinian missionaries reportedly removed Hripsime’s relics in 1610, but with the assistance of Shah Abbas I of Persia, the relics were recovered and returned.
Restoration and changing use
Catholicos Pilipos restored the church between 1651 and 1653. The work repaired the pediments and dome roof and added an open western porch, or narthex, an entrance hall attached to a church. The church then regained a regular congregation. Later catholicoi added auxiliary buildings, supported the production of manuscripts, and helped revive the monastery. Six inscriptions from the 1720s record donations of supplies, including salt, oil, incense, rice, candles, and wine.
Catholicos Simeon I of Yerevan raised a new cross on the dome in 1765 and fortified the monastery in 1776. Catholicos Ghukas Karnetsi added a rotunda-shaped belfry above the western porch in 1790. A two-story monastic residence was constructed within the walls in 1894–95, while the eastern and southern portions of the perimeter wall were rebuilt in stone. The church underwent substantial renovation in 1898.
A Soviet decree nationalized the church in February 1921 and placed it under the Cultural-Historical Institute, but it was returned to the Mother See in January 1922. It was nationalized again in the early 1930s, when the church and adjacent buildings became the Vagharshapat Archaeological Museum. Unauthorized excavations around the foundations in 1926 exposed them to rain and snow, and part of the facing collapsed in 1932. Restoration begun in 1936 reinforced the foundations and repaired the roof, dome, walls, and monastery buildings. Architect Alexander Tamanian initiated the work, which was supervised by archaeologist Karo Ghafadaryan.
From 1936 for nearly a decade, the church functioned as a museum and lapidarium, a display of stone archaeological and architectural fragments. More than 110 objects were exhibited, most of them from nearby Zvartnots Cathedral. The collection was transferred mainly to the History Museum of Armenia. The church and monastery were returned to the Mother See in spring 1945 after Catholicos Gevorg Chorekchyan appealed to Joseph Stalin. The residential quarters continued to be used by municipal accommodation services and the militia as late as 1951.
Extensive restoration and archaeological work took place from 1955 to 1962 during the tenure of Catholicos Vazgen I, and the church was reconsecrated in September 1962. Further restoration followed in 1985, and the belfry was renovated in 1986–87. A new baptismal font was consecrated in 2012, and the church’s 1,400th anniversary was marked in 2018. St. Hripsime was recognized as a national monument during the Soviet period and reaffirmed as such by Armenia in 2002. Since 2000, it has formed part of the UNESCO World Heritage property Cathedral and Churches of Echmiatsin and the Archaeological Site of Zvartnots, inscribed under criteria (ii) and (iii).
Remains
Setting and overall plan
St. Hripsime stands on a small natural elevation on the eastern outskirts of Vagharshapat, on an open plain outside the ancient city walls. The surrounding area now forms part of an urban environment, and the church lies near Etchmiadzin Cathedral, St. Gayane Church, the ruins of Zvartnots Cathedral, and Shoghakat Church. The church and its surrounding grounds cover 6.2 hectares.
The building is an inscribed tetraconch, a four-apsed central plan enclosed within a rectangle. Its octagonal central bay sends four cross arms toward apses, while diagonal, three-quarter-cylindrical passageways lead to four identical corner chambers or sacristies, each measuring about 4 by 4 metres. Two entrances open on the west and south. The church rests on a solid three-stepped stylobate, the stepped platform supporting a building, and measures approximately 22.8 by 17.7 metres externally. Its interior covers about 212 square metres, and the building rises roughly 23 metres to the inner dome and about 32 metres to the top of the cross.
Stonework and exterior design
The church is built from finely cut dark-grey tuff, a relatively light volcanic stone widely used in Armenian construction. The blocks form precise ashlar masonry, with carefully cut stones laid in regular courses and mortarless joints. The walls are about 110 centimetres thick and have three layers: dressed stone faces surround a rubble core bound with lime mortar. The pyramidal massing, low centre of gravity, reinforcing niches, lightweight hollow crown of the dome, squinches, buttresses, ribs, and corner turrets all contribute to the building’s resistance to earthquakes.
Deep, tall trapezoidal niches divide each of the four façades. They reduce the weight of the walls and conserve building material while producing strong vertical divisions between light and shadow. These niches are regarded as the earliest dated examples of this dihedral form. Exterior decoration remains restrained. Carved arched moldings over the windows carry floral and geometric motifs, while the drum of the dome contains thirty-two simple circular medallions made from concentric rings.
The southern wall is approximately 53 centimetres longer than the northern wall. The differing dimensions and positions of the windows, doors, apses, and niches may reflect successive building phases. The church has remained largely intact and is especially well preserved internally. Later alterations changed the original roof angles, removed grand portals, and added the western portico of 1653 and the belfry of 1790. The building has sustained no major earthquake damage.
Dome and structural system
Dome structure
The dome rises above a slightly rectangular bay measuring approximately 10.10 by 9.52 metres. It rests on a low, sixteen-sided drum, the upright base supporting a dome, which has twelve windows and a conical roof. The drum and dome are unusually large in relation to the church’s overall size. A hollow space inside the conical apex lowers the dome’s centre of gravity. Four small, hollow, round turrets stand at the corners of the drum’s cubical base. They connect the cornice walkway with the space above the squinch vaults, reinforce weak points, transfer stresses to the main supports, restrain outward pressure, and mediate visually between the rectangular base and polygonal dome.
Squinches and cupola decoration
Four large arch-shaped squinches, structural devices that carry a dome across a corner or angled space, stand above diagonal exedrae. Eight smaller squinches above them complete the transition from the octagonal central bay to the circular drum. Their construction has been compared with Iranian, Cappadocian, Byzantine, and other late-antique traditions, although the precise origin of the design remains debated. Twelve elongated relief rays spread from the centre of the cupola and narrow toward its upper centre, forming four cross-like groups. This pattern has been associated with the mosaic cross formerly depicted in Hagia Sophia and with solar motifs in Sasanian domes, but the connection is interpretive. Fan-shaped decoration appears beneath the dome.
Restoration in the 1950s revealed mason’s marks matching those in the body of the church, supporting a seventh-century date for the dome rather than the previously proposed tenth- or eleventh-century date. The external dome roof was probably restored in the 1650s, and one interpretation holds that the original roof was spherical and tiled.
Interior, burials, and archaeological evidence
Interior arrangement and furnishings
Four apses and diagonal niches form a spacious, unified, cross-shaped interior. Eight massive wall piers emphasize the verticality of the prayer hall. Hollow spaces between the apsidal vaults and their roofs improve the church’s acoustics and provide concealed spaces. During the 1959 excavations, the original floor was found about 40 centimetres below the later level and was lowered to its earlier elevation. Removal of white plaster and lime deposits in 1958 exposed the original dark grey-brown tuff and a system of eight large and sixteen small squinches beneath the circular drum.
The grounds were enhanced with tuff paving and a basalt drinking fountain designed by Rafayel Israyelian. Israyelian also designed a new altar table in 1960 and a chandelier in 1967. The altar includes an altarpiece of the Virgin Mary by Hovhannes Minasyan.
Burials and cemetery
The eastern apse contains Hripsime’s tomb in an underground barrel-vaulted chamber entered from the northeastern corner. The crypt’s date is disputed. Some scholars place it in the early fifth century, while another interpretation regards it as integral to the seventh-century church. The present gravestone dates from 1986 and depicts Hripsime holding a cross.
A stone slab in front of the altar is thought to mark the tomb of Catholicos Komitas. Catholicos Pilipos was buried in the northern apse after his request for burial at Etchmiadzin was refused. His marble tombstone was erected by Catholicos Yeprem I in the early nineteenth century. Two graves found outside the western entrance in 1958–59 were traditionally associated with Catholicoi Astvatsatur and Karapet II. Their earlier tombstones had disappeared by the early nineteenth century, and replacement marble stones were installed during the restoration of the 1950s.
A cemetery east of the church contains about fifty surviving tombstones, approximately thirty of them inscribed, dating from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The perimeter wall built in the 1890s divides the cemetery into two sections. One notable burial is that of Stepanos Lehatsi, a scholar and church member who died in 1689.
Earlier architectural fragments
Three fragments of an ornamented black-tuff Ionic cornice were found upside down beneath supporting columns during the 1958–59 excavations. Their Hellenistic decoration resembles the cornice of the Temple of Garni. They may have belonged to a pre-Christian structure on the site, although another interpretation holds that they came from a pagan building elsewhere in Vagharshapat and were reused in the church foundations. The fragments are displayed beneath protective glass.
Architectural influence and representation
The plan of St. Hripsime is commonly called the Hripsime type. Related examples include Jvari in Georgia and the Church of Avan, the earliest precisely dated example of the type. The form was revived in later Armenian churches, including Aghtamar, the Holy Apostles Church at Ani, Varagavank, and Gndevank, and it also inspired modern Armenian diaspora churches.
The church has been represented in a 1686 engraving by Guillaume-Joseph Grelot, a 1691 drawing on a map by Eremia Chelebi, a 1783 watercolor by Mikhail Ivanov, an 1897 landscape painting by Vardges Sureniants, and a 1945 painting by Martiros Saryan. It also appears in a twentieth-century floor mosaic in the Chapel of Saint Helena at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on postage stamps issued by Vatican City, the Soviet Union, and Armenia, and on Armenian 200-dram banknotes circulated from 1993 to 2004.
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