Veneration
After his death his corpse was removed to the village of Thodanum (T'ordan - modern Doğanköy, near Erzincan). His remains were scattered far and near in the reign of Zeno. His head is believed to be now in Armenia, his left hand at Echmiadzin, and his right at the Holy See of Cilicia in Antelias, Lebanon. In the 8th century, the iconoclast decrees in Greece caused a number of religious orders to flee the Byzantine Empire and seek refuge elsewhere. San Gregorio Armeno in Naples was built in that century over the remains of a Roman temple dedicated to Ceres, by a group of nuns escaping from the Byzantine Empire with the relics of Gregory the Illuminator.
A number of prayers, and about thirty of the canons of the Armenian Church are ascribed to Gregory the Illuminator. The homilies appeared for the first time in a work called Haschacnapadum at Constantinople in 1737; a century afterwards a Greek translation was published at Venice by the Mekhiterists; and they have since been edited in German by J M Schmid (Ratisbon, 1872). The original authorities for Gregory's life are Agathangelos, whose History of Tiridates was published by the Mekhitarists in 1835; Moses of Chorene, Historiae Armenicae; and Symeon the Metaphrast.
A Life of Gregory by the Vartabed Matthew was published in the Armenian language at Venice in 1749 and was translated into English by the Rev. Father Malan (1868). Gregory is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on March 23.
Read more about this topic: Gregory The Illuminator
Famous quotes containing the word veneration:
“Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himself remained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“It is evident, from their method of propagation, that a couple of cats, in fifty years, would stock a whole kingdom; and if that religious veneration were still paid them, it would, in twenty more, not only be easier in Egypt to find a god than a man, which Petronius says was the case in some parts of Italy; but the gods must at last entirely starve the men, and leave themselves neither priests nor votaries remaining.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)