In the meantime, however, the Perso-Sassanid dynasty had located Armenia as well as more to the north and overran Christian Georgia. The Persian rulers wanted to impose Zoroastrianism on the Armenians, and due to the troubles that accompanied it, the Armenian bishops were not there in the fall of 451 when the council of Chalcedon settled all kinds of doctrinal discussions within the universal church. The break that thus arose between the Armenian Apostolic Church on the one hand and Catholicism on the other explains Armenia’s centuries of autonomy.
Because because the Armenians were no longer associated with what was then the Greco-Latin culture I Polis Constantinople / Byzantium, the Sassanids again allowed the Armenians freedom of religion. And later Muslim rulers over Persia have continued to do so, for the Armenians were not the ‘ar-Rum‘(Romans) what the Quran is talking about. From the late fifth to early twentieth centuries, successive Persian and Russian monarchs, especially in what they called Karabakh, have always granted the Armenians ample autonomy.
–
