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Khrimyan HayrikCatholicos of All Armenians since 1893
Rating: 5.00, visits: 2242 (today: 1)
Birthdate: 04.04.1820
Death date: 29.10.1907
Mkrtich Khrimyan, also known as Khrimyan Hayrik, was an Armenian writer, newspaper editor, political and religious leader, Catholicos of All Armenians since 1893.
Khrimyan was born in Van on April 4, 1820. After receiving his primary education, he studied Grabar or classical Armenian as well as Armenology. In 1854, he was ordained an archimandrite and entered priesthood in the monastery of Aghtamar.
He served as the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople (1869-1873), Prelate of Van (1880-1885) and Catholicos of All Armenians (1892-1907). He devoted his life to the betterment of the Armenian people, especially the peasantry in eastern Anatolia. Elsewhere, his sermons won him public admiration and affection among Armenians. Khrimyan was known to be an excellent orator, his speeches full of color and emotion.
In 1878, Khrimyan headed the delegation to represent the will of Armenian people at the Berlin Conference. Upon his return he stated in an eloquent speech entitled, “The Paper Ladle,” that the hopes of the Armenian people for self-determination were ignored by the European community of nations. His attempts to solve the Armenian Question with the help of negotiations failed.
In 1895 he asked Russian Tsar Nikolay II to help Armenian people avoid the Turkish pogroms. In the eyes of native people the personality of Khrimyan rose instantly; therefore in 1892 Khrimyan Hayrik was unanimously elected Catholicos of All Armenians. He moved to the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin as head of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Because of his fatherly love and dedication to the common people, Mkrtich Khrimian was affectionately called Khrimian "Hayrik", which means "father" in the Armenian language.
In 1903 the Czarist government of Imperial Russia ordered the confiscation of all Armenian ecclesiastical and educational properties. Khrimyan, then acting Catholicos, waged a heroic struggle against the decision, which came to success in 1905 when the Czar published a decree reopening Armenian schools and returning church properties.
In 1907 Catholicos Khrimyan died leaving a grieving nation. Khrimyan’s life was an outstanding and extraordinary example of a leader’s dynamic accomplishment in drawing his people closer and closer to their native land and sense of nationhood, both physically and spiritually. He is the author of a number of moral-ethical, religious-philosophical works.
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published: 2010-02-02 12:50:40
last updated:2010-02-02 12:56:21
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