156 Memoir of St. Nierses Clajensis. [March", 



shortly to be convened. Moreover he deputed one friar Stephen with 

 a letter, inviting the Armenian clergy of Ani and Haghbat to the pro- 

 posed assembly. 



But alas ! how often human endeavours and expectations are frus- 

 trated before they have attained to maturity ! On the lapse of a few 

 months, while Nierses was engaged in preparations for holding the 

 council of union, his earthly career was by the inscrutable dispensa- 

 tion of God terminated, Anno Domini 1 1 73, in the seventy-third year 

 of his age. He enjoyed the supreme dignity of a pontiff for seven 

 years, and in that period ordained only seven bishops. His remains 

 lay in state for several days, during which time numbers of Armenians 

 thronged to the pontifical house with a desire of kissing the hand of 

 the deceased. Among those who had assembled there to pay their 

 last tribute of veneration to the virtues of the deceased pontiff of Ar- 

 menia, were Nierses Lambronensis and several bishops and friars of 

 distinction. 



This melancholy event plunged the nation into the greatest distress, 

 for they had lost in Nierses the Graceful a vigilant pastor, a kind 

 father, a faithful friend, a gifted divine, and a most zealous advocate of 

 the truth of Christianity. Gregory Basil, the nephew of the deceas- 

 ed pontiff, who was living at a great distance from Hiromcla, on hear- 

 ing of the dangerous illness of the latter, immediately repaired thither 

 to see his uncle ere he breathed his last. On his arrival at that place, 

 he found Nierses dead. He evinced the greatest sorrow at the lamen- 

 table catastrophe which had fallen on his family and the nation in 

 general. The funeral of the deceased pontiff was performed with the 

 greatest pomp and honors, that his rank and exalted station deserved, 

 being attended by almost all the dignitaries of the Armenian Church, 

 the nobility and other distinguished members of the nation, whose 

 heartfelt sorrow, at the irreparable loss which the Church and the state 

 had sustained, could distinctly be read in the melancholy expressions 

 of their downcast countenances. His remains were deposited in a 

 sepulchre which was dug near that of his brother Gregory, and a 

 very splendid mausoleum was afterwards raised over him, bearing 

 upon it a suitable inscription commemorative of his moral and Chris- 

 tian virtues. 



News of this melancholy event reaching Constantinople, filled the 

 heart of the emperor with the most poignant grief, and spread general 

 regret throughout the Greek empire, every Greek sympathising with 

 the Armenians for the loss which they had sustained in the person of 

 their gifted pontiff. When his grief had comparatively subsided, the 

 emperor wrote a letter of condolence to Gregory Basil, who had by 



