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Rh owed his throne to Maurice, who thus acquired paramount influence in Armenia. Chosroes even gave him the province which had been under the Persian dominion. In this way Tiben, where the catholicos then resided, was transferred to the Roman Empire. It was natural, therefore, that an orthodox emperor, accustomed to rule over the Church in his dominions, should expect the Armenians to come into line with the rest of his subjects. But Moses, who was Armenian patriarch at the time, declined to change his creed at the bidding of a Greek despot, and refused to communicate with those bishops of the transferred province of Taron who had given in their submission after a conference at Constantinople. Then Maurice appointed a rival catholicos, John of Cocosta. On the death of Moses, his successor, Abraham of Arastune, summoned a council of bishops, presbyters, and archimandrites, which decreed that all who refused to anathematise the council of Chalcedon should be banished from the country. This led to a formal secession from the Church by John and his party.

In the year 632 the Emperor Heraclius assembled a council of Greeks and Armenians at Carana (the modern Erzeroum), which after a month's discussion came to an agreement in anathematising the decisions of Tiben and accepting the Chalcedonian position. The one champion of Armenian orthodoxy was John Maracumensis, who was a candidate for the post of catholicos. He was condemned at this council to banishment, condemned again at a second council, branded on the forehead with the figure of a fox by the prætor of Roman Armenia, and driven away to Mount Caucasus. But he had his disciples who cherished the seed of the old Armenian faith, and who eventually succeeded in restoring it in the national Church. Then came the Mohammedan conquest. But again the country was forced to a nominal acceptance of Greek orthodoxy, when Justinian temporarily recovered Armenia to Christendom, and the catholicos Isaac  and his bishops were summoned to Constantinople, where they were induced