RITES IN THE UNITED STATES 215 



nople. In 1054 the Greeks seceded in turn from unity with 

 the Roman Church, and nearly three centuries later the Ar- 

 menians became reconciled with Rome, but the union lasted 

 only a brief period. Breaking away from unity again, the ma- 

 jority formed a national church, which agrees neither with 

 the Greek nor the Roman Church; a minority, recruited by 

 converts to union with the Holy See in the seventeenth century, 

 remained united Armenian Catholics. 



The Mass and the whole liturgy of the Armenian Church is 

 said in Ancient Armenian, which differs considerably from the 

 modern tongue. The language is an offshoot of the Iranian 

 branch of the Indo-Germanic family of languages, and proba- 

 bly found its earliest written expression in the cuneiform in- 

 scriptions ; it is unlike the Semitic languages immediately sur- 

 rounding it. Among its peculiarities are twelve regular de- 

 clensions and eight irregular declensions of nouns and five 

 conjugations of the verbs, while there are many difficulties in 

 the way of postpositions and the like. It abounds in conso- 

 nants and guttural sounds ; the words of the Lord's Prayer in 

 Armenian will suffice as an example : "Hair mier. vor herghins 

 ies, surp iegitzi anun ko, ieghastze arkautiun ko, iegitzin garnk 

 ko, vorbes hierghins iev hergri, zhatz mier hanabazort dur miez 

 aissor, iev tog miez ezbardis mier, vorbes iev mek togumk 

 merotz bardabanatz, iev mi danir. zmez i porsutiun, ail perghea 

 i chare." The language is written from left to right, like 

 Greek, Latin, or English, but in an alphabet of thirty-eight 

 peculiar letters, which are dissimilar in form to anything in 

 the Greek or Latin alphabet, and are arranged in the most per- 

 plexing order. For instance, the Armenian alphabet starts o^ 

 with a, p, k, t, z, etc., and ends up with the letter /. It may 

 also be noted that the Armenian has changed the consonantal 

 values of most of the ordinary sounds in Christian names ; 

 thus George becomes Kevork ; Sergius, Sarkis ; Jacob, Hagop ; 

 Joseph, Hovsep; Gregory, Krikori; Peter, Bedros, and so on. 

 The usual clan addition of the word "son" {ian) to most Ar- 

 menian family names, something like the use of mac in the 

 Gaelic languages, renders usual Armenian names easy of iden- 

 tification (e. g., Azarian, Hagopian, Rubian, Zohrabian, etc.). 



The book containing the regulations for the administration 

 of the sacraments, analogous to the Greek Euchologion or the 

 Roman Ritual, is called the "Mashdotz," after the name of its 



