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550 ecclesiastical capital, Etchmiadzin, with the result that the catholicos of the Armenian Church became a Russian citizen. Henceforth that ecclesiastic was responsible to the tsar, though still elected by his own bishops. His powers were now limited by a synod, after the Russian pattern.

Protestant and evangelistic work was commenced in Armenia in the year 1831 by American missionaries. In 1846 the catholicos anathematised all Armenians who accepted Protestant notions, with the result that a separate Protestant Church was founded as the "Evangelical Church of the Armenians." In spite of opposition from France and Russia, the British ambassador succeeded in getting this recognised officially as a millet. The American missionaries founded Armenian colleges on the Bosphorus, at Kharput, Marsivan, and Aintab.

Meanwhile the greater part of the Armenian nation still remaining under the Ottoman government suffered continuously from its ruinous extortion and recurrent acts of violence. Consular reports have poured in an unbroken stream of information as to the outrages perpetrated by the Kurds at the instigation of the Ottoman rulers. By the treaty of San Stephano, Turkey promised Russia to carry out reforms "in the provinces inhabited by the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against the Kurds and the Circassians." But on the insistence of Lord Beaconsfield the treaty of Berlin (1878) abrogated the Russian protectorate of the Armenian Christians, and conferred it on the six signatory powers, to whom Turkey gave the pledge of reforms in Armenia. In the same year, by the Cyprus Convention, the sultan promised Great Britain to introduce necessary reforms "for the protection of the Christians and other subjects of the Porte" in the Turkish Asiatic territories. Thus first the protection of the Armenians was granted to and accepted by Russia; then it was taken from Russia and assumed by Europe, but with an additional responsibility assumed by England in obtaining her own special pledge from the sultan. All