The monastery of Saint John is located in the Armenian canton of Darôn – the Taronid – at some 1950 m altitude, west of Moush [Muş] and on the edge of the Sassun mountains, on the wooded slopes of Mount Sim, or Sev Sar [Karakaş Dağ], at *** N and *** E. The name comes from the tradition that brings Saint Gregory the Illuminator to these parts in the 4th century bearing the relics of Saint John the Baptist and Saint Athenogenes as a double offering to the monasteries of the Holy Precursor (n° 53) and Saint John. The two monasteries face each other on the north and south sides of the eastern Euphrates Valley, or Aradzani [Murad Çay], in the Moush plain. In reality, both bear the same dedication: to the Holy Precursor of Christ, John the Baptist.
The monasteries are said also to have been presented in Apostolic times with a small bottle of holy oil, which was deposited near a spring in a certain stand of willows and later found at the foot of one of the trees. This tree, a rare non-deciduous variety protected by an enclosure next to a chapel and venerated by pilgrims, or the stand of trees around it, have given their name, Eghërti, “willow”, or Eghërtud, “willow stand”, to the monastery, where the ancient bottle was placed in a valuable reliquary. Another relic, the Holy Sign of the Eagles, or Deposited by the Eagle (Ardzwaper Surp Nëshan), a fragment of the Cross, also designated the monastery. No one knows the founding date of any of the monastery’s three churches, but it has been supposed that Saint John, which is a single-vessel nave building with a barrel vault, is the oldest, or even the first martyrium, built near the willows by Saint Gregory. The typology of other two churches, dedicated to Saint Stephen and to the Holy Mother of God, could place them in the 10th-12th centuries. A cross-stone used as a right-hand pillar or the lintel of the door to a lateral chamber in the church of Saint Stephen bore the date 1153.
The monastery was known to the great Church Doctor, John Vanagan (Hovhannes Vanagan, † 1251), and is mentioned in a bull of 1445 by Catholicos Gregory X of Magu (Krikor Magwetsi), the second occupant of the restored seat of Edchmiadzin, in Vagharshabad (see nos 7, 9). In the years that followed, at the time of Archbishop John (Hovhannes, † after 1466) and until the end of the 17th century, the community operated a scriptorium. The monastery was also a music school, and a tradition of sacred song seems to have been kept alive there until the early 20th century. The monastery was very active at the beginning of the 16th century: Gregory of Darôn (Krikor Darôntsi), whose presence is also noted at the Holy Precursor of Moush (n° 53) and at Saint James of Nisibe (n° 46), completed the restoration of Saint John’s narthex; the copyist and poet Garabed of Paghesh [Bitlis] (Garabed Paghishetsi) spent time there in 1513 before transferring to the Holy Precursor and then going on to the community of the Holy Apostles, of which he would later become superior (n° 54). Another Gregory, known as Gregory of Moush (Krikor Mchetsi), was appointed abbot there by Catholicos Philip I of Aghpag (P‘ilibbos Aghpaguetsi, 1633-1655); he was to restore one of the drums and the roofs; he should probably also be credited with building in 1654, within the jurisdiction of the monastery, the church of the Mother of God of Sëndzënud [***].
Under the reign of Abbot Peter (Bedros), more important work on the three churches and the north enclosure was financed and carried out in 1707 by the monk Sergius (Sarkis), from the Amirdol School (n° 59). The church of the Mother of God was again restored in 1809, while in 1828 the superior, Ghazar, and the architect, Boghos Kalfa, built a porch north of the narthex of Saint John, surmounted by a bell tower with rotunda. A school that would also serve as an orphanage was opened in the monastery buildings in the mid 19th century. In 1866 the monastery was struck by an earthquake, which weakened the dome of Saint Stephen’s church; but above all, two years later, it was attacked and plundered by Kurds. Leaving in ruins numerous Armenian villages in its jurisdiction, the massacres of 1894-1895 completed the material degradation of the monastery. In 1906, the superior was Father Arakel Mouradian, vicar of the primate of Moush.
The monastery of Saint Jean or of the Willows includes:
• The church of Saint John (Surp Hovhannes), a single-vessel nave construction with a barrel vault and pitched roof measuring some 7.5 x 5 m. Regarded as the oldest of the three monastery churches and home of the relics of Saint John and Saint Athenogenes, the building was initially roofed in lead sheeting.
• Against the south wall of the church of Saint John, that of the Holy Mother of God (Surp Asdwadzadzin), a cross-in-square with drum and pyramid. On either side of the apse, two absidioles surmounted by side chambers; two-story chambers also occupy the opposite corners.
• Against the south wall of the preceding, the church of Saint Stephen, (Surp Sdép‘anos), 7.6 x 6.9 m, taller but with an identical ground plan. It was decorated with a finely worked baldachin over the altar.
• Extending the church of Saint John 8.5 m to the west, a narthex resting on four pillars of circular cross-section, restored in 1511. Opening to the north, the narthex had a gate decorated with a handsome pattern in polychrome stonework, probably made on this occasion.
• Extending out the same length to the west from the churches of the Holy Mother of God and Saint Stephen, a second narthex communicating with the first.
• On the north wall of the narthex of the church of Saint John, a porch with a three-story bell tower and rotunda some 25 m2 built in 1828.
• A walled courtyard, enlarged to the northwest at the start of the 18th century, against which were built, on two levels, the prelacy, the dwellings, the bursar’s office, the oven, the school and the stables.
• Behind the east end of the three churches and outside the walls, the monks’ cemetery.
• On the same side, the chapel of Saint George (Surp Kévork), collapsed before the Great War and nearby, the enclosure of the Eghërti tree.
• Outside the walls to the east, sheepfolds.
A major pilgrimage site, the monastery of Saint John owned vast woodlands, grazing lands and plow lands, in particular on the edge of the plain around Guialakhôl [***] and Blel [Bilir], where they had their farm with barns and an oil press, and in the mountains at Dadrakom [***] and Avazhogh [***]. At the time of Abdul-Hamid II, the southeast portion of the monastery domains, in Sassun, had been confiscated by the Turkish government and used to settle Kurds. The monastery’s jurisdiction, described in 1588 in a text included in the bull of Gregory X (1445), extended on the left-hand side of the eastern Euphrates from Guinj [***], located on the far western side of the plain of Moush, to Khroronk‘[***] and K‘artzor [***]; while to the south and southwest it took in several districts of the Sassun mountains, like Dalworig [***], Khulp‘[***] and Khian [***], and extended downhill to Hazro [***], Silvan [***] and Lëje [***], northeast of Dikranaguerd [Diyarbakır].
Sacked and then confiscated after the Great War, the monastery of Saint John was systematically demolished and abandoned. At the start of the 1980s, all that remained was a piece of the outer wall and a few sections of the foot of the walls of the porch and of Saint Stephen’s church. Nothing survived of its collection of 34 ancient manuscripts dating from 1177 to 1858. And nothing of the relics, with the exception of a reliquary of Saint Cyriacus, received in 1754, which is now in the treasury of the Saint James convent in Jerusalem.
Akinian, 1952, 574-581. Oskian, 1953, 91-129. Mouradian & Mardirossian, 1967, 218-219. Thierry, 1983, 398-406. Der Garabédian, 2003, 68-90, 141-146. A. To, 1912, 106, 117-118.