Sahag II.
His Holiness Sahag II. Khabayan ( Armenian Սահակ Բ. Խապայան (Եղեգցի) ; * March 25, 1849 at Harput ; † October 8, 1939 in Antelias ) was a " Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia " of the Armenian Apostolic Church .
Gabriel (baptismal name) Khabayan studied in Jerusalem and Constantinople and after his ordination (July 3, 1877) worked under the name Sahag (Isaac) as a monk priest and librarian in Jerusalem and from 1881 in the Caucasus. He became the sacristan of the cathedral from the beginning in 1885 Echmiadzin ordered and same place consecrated bishop on 24 November 1885 by Catholicos Makar I. Ter Petrosyan.
After eight years of vacancy for the Cilician Catholic, the electors, on the recommendation of Mkrtitsch Chrimjan Sahag, elected Khabayan as Catholicos of Cilicia. The consecration took place on April 23, 1903 in the cathedral of Sis (today Kozan near Adana ), at the same time the last that could be carried out in the native Cilicia. Under Sahag II the relations between the two Catholics in Sis and Echmiadzin improved . In the liturgy he gave preference to the name of the "Catholicos of All Armenians", ie the one in Greater Armenia . Sahag II renewed the monastery in Sis and reopened the seminary there in 1906 .
During the Armenian genocide in 1915, Sis and all of Cilicia had to be evacuated by the Armenians. The church treasure, especially liturgical books, vestments and utensils, could be saved with great effort. The Catholicos was forced to settle in Jerusalem.
When in 1916/17 the Cilician Catholic and the two Armenian patriarchates of Constantinople and Jerusalem were dissolved by state law in favor of a short-lived, unified Catholic of all Armenians in the Ottoman Empire based in Jerusalem, Sahag took over the latter's chair, but was exiled to Damascus in 1917 . In 1919 he returned to Cilicia and tried to resettle his historic Catholic in Adana . After France withdrew from Cilicia and incorporated it into Kemalist Turkey in 1921, he first moved to Aleppo and, via intermediate stops, finally to Lebanon (Antelias) in 1929.
To support Sahag II, now 81 years old, Papken I. Gulesserian was appointed Catholicos coadjutor in 1931 , but he died in 1936 after a short term together. At the age of ninety, Sahag II died on October 8, 1939 in Antelias.
Individual evidence
- ^ The Extraordinary Story of the Dawn of the Armenian Theological Seminary. (No longer available online.) Armenian prelature of Antelias, archived from the original on February 26, 2014 ; accessed on January 24, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ The Origin of the Armenian Church. The Catholic of Cilicia, accessed on February 6, 2013 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sahag II. |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sahag II. Khabayan; Khabayan, Gabriel |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia of the Armenian Apostolic Church |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 25, 1849 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Harput |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 8, 1939 |
| Place of death | Antelias |