2558

Late 1246/early 1247. Raban Atha (Ara), vicar of the East (the catholicos of Armenia), writes to Pope [Innocent IV], with a long inscriptio (i.e. magnificent pope, father of fathers, intercessor for the Lord’s people, the sun of justice whose light rises over the four regions of the world, the holder of the See of Saint Peter, my lord, the most holy pope of the city of Rome and of all the regions of the world), relating that the pope’s elegant letter reached him (describing at length his joy and admiration). He has heard of the anathema with which the pope has anathematized the emperor and understood that this was done because of his sin and transgression. Yet the pope knows that Christ taught that if your brother sins against you, forgive him, and not just seven times, as Simon Peter asked, but seventy-seven times. This is the foundation of the Church, that one forgives one’s brother his ignorance and forgets his sins. So the [catholicos] asks the pope to forgive the emperor. There are three reasons: because of the slaughter and capture of their Christian brothers, the destruction of the Holy City, and the trial caused by the unprecedented trampling under foot of the Lord's Sepulchre. For these reasons, and his zeal for God and the sorrow in his heart, the [catholicos] petitions the pope, writing these things out of necessity and concern for Christ’s churches. All Christ’s churches, monasteries, and faithful in East and West should wear cilicia (garments of goat’s hair), sit in sorrow, and cry over Jerusalem and the things that have happened in it in their days. These things the [catholicos] has submitted to the pope’s lordship. Now, however, the friars Andreas and his associate, the pope’s special sons, religious and virtuous in all their works, who should be honoured by all men, whom the pope has sent, will tell the pope in person what they saw and heard with the [catholicos], and they will present the [catholicos’] greetings to all fathers, priests, monks, and kings subject to the lordship of the pope’s See as well as to all Christians obedient to the pope’s paternity. The [catholicos] also sends to the pope via the hands of those friars, the pope’s nuncios, a booklet that the [catholicos] brought from the East, from the land of China (Sin), and another booklet on the faith on behalf of the archbishop of the Nestorians (Nesibini), which two other archbishops and three bishops signed. Along with them the [catholicos] asks the pope a second time for archbishop I. of Jerusalem (Ierosolimitanus), who is of the race of the [catholicos], and for their Eastern Christian brothers in Antioch, Tripoli, Acre, and in other lands of the pope, so that the pope recommends them lest anyone offend them, for they are with the pope, as Christ said: ‘Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.’ The letter closes with good wishes.