Page:The History of Armenia - Avdall - Volume 1.djvu/288

 toe power of his arm, and the Persian division of Armenia was in the greatest anarchy for a period of three years. All intercourse between the different parts of the country was suspended, and commerce entirely ruined.

Viram also, in seeking revenge for the defeat and death of his general Varah, dreadfully a.d.42o, harassed the inhabitants of the country. St. Isaac, obsenring these calamities, determined to leave that division of the country, and taking with him St. Mesrop and his three grandsons, Vardan, Himayak, and Hamazaspian, went to the Greek division of Armenia. But the chiefs here would not acknowledge him their pontiff, being under the spiritual government of the bishop of Cesarea; neither would they allow St. Mesrop to instruct their children in the know- ledge of the Armenian letters.

St. Isaac^ offended at this, dispatched letters to the emperor Theodosius, and Atticus the pa* triarch of Constantinople, as also to Anatolius, general of the Greeks in the east, then living in the city of Melita, praying to be permitted to exercise the authority of pontiff in the division of Armenia under the government of the empe- ror. He also begged for permission4o institute schools for the instruction of youth in the Arme- nian language by the newly invented characters. These letters were sent by St. Mesrop accom-

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