This is the parish church of the village of Gue(r)z [Gözköy], situated a few kilometers west of Garin / Erzurum [Erzurum], at 39°55’ N and 41°10’ E. In 1915 the locality had some 160 households, over four fifths them Armenian.
According to a note contained in a breviary conserved there, the church of Saint Menas was built in 1790. A new building has replaced an older church, the likely source of a small cross-stone (khachk‘ar) dated 1740 and set in the west wall and, on the altarpiece, an icon of the Virgin, dated 1732, which has now disappeared. Another small cross-stone, kept in a secondary place of worship in the village, mentioned work carried out in 1571.
Plan (Thierry, 2005, fig.10).
Saint Menas is a basilica with three vaulted naves and four central columns delimiting three bays. It measures 15.4 m in length and 12.3 m in width. The pitched roof culminates at 8.25 m. It is extended to the east, over the apse, by a lower pitched roof starting beneath the space reserved for an oculus. Light enters the church through eight large windows with wide molded frames, and through four oculi. In front of the church, on the west side, once stood a wooden bell tower, built in 1907, patterned on that of the cathedral church at Garin / Erzurum. Paintings and icons adorned the apse and some of the walls. A nearby building was used as a school.
Coupe (d’après RAA).
Confiscated after the Great War and now privately owned, the church at Guez was relatively spared. Nevertheless, certain vaults that were still intact in 1993 now let in daylight, the roof having lost its covering slabs. The bell tower has been pulled down. Inside, the icons have disappeared and the paintings in the apse are for the most part faded or erased. There, too, looters have dug deep holes in the choir and at the base of the columns. Quite exceptionally, the present owner has taken steps to restore the church after plans had been made to demolish it, as had been the fate of most of the churches in the Erzurum Plain.
Kossian, 1925-1926, II, 176-180. Thierry, 2005, 43-44.