Aristakes

This excerpt from the Armenian historian Aristakes is pretty amazing, describing how the kingdom of Armenia has come to ruin.


The solemn places in the monasteries became dwelling-places for robbers, as did the churches in them. These churches with their glowing structures, their gorgeous adornments, their ever-lit candles and candelabras whose light, mixing with the air, flickering here and there, resembled the waves of the sea at rest when gentle zephyrs cause them to ripple, gently embracing each other. The generously donated incense, whose smoke rose fragrantly up from the power of the fire, resembled the spring mists settled around the summit of a mountain which blocks and covers the sunbeams. As for the clerics who dwelled in the monasteries, what language is sufficient to describe them? Their sweet songs and ceaseless singing of psalms, their reading of Scripture, their commemorations of the Lord's feast-days and of the martyrs, their united will, and their enthusiasm for the divine, and much else.

Things were once this way. But now, the churches are stripped and denuded of everything, devoid of all glories, sacked. In place of those mellifluous songs, now we have the cries of owls and screech-owls who have become the choirmasters. In place of psalm-singing, the dove and turtle-dove are singing, as the prophet said: they sweetly summon their young. The candles have been extinguished, the sweet fragrance of incense has passed. The holy altar which at one time had been adorned and embellished like a new bride wearing a crown of glory, has now become a pitiful spectacle, one worthy of many tears: stripped of adornments, covered with dust, and a perching place for crows.