Armenia, reduced from an independent kingdom to a ducal sovereignty, maintained a real independence, though in nominal servitude. The Roman emperors, in the decline of their greatness, were content with the name of homage and the shadow of allegiance. A robe of rare texture and curious workmanship, formed of the hair or wool by which the mother-of-pearl, a shell-fish of the Mediterranean, attaches itself to the rock, was their annual imperial gift that purchased the nominal fealty of the Armenian satraps. But the Church, notwithstanding this political vassalage, preserved its independence. The Armenian priests, in consequence of their ignorance of the Greek tongue, were unable to assist at the Council of Chalcedon, but the doctrines of Eutyches, to which they still adhere, were propagated among them, perhaps, with a slight modification, by Julian of Halicarnassus. From the earliest ages they have devoutly hated the error and idolatry of the Greeks. Like the primitive Christians, they have ever exhibited an unconquerable repugnance to the use or abuse of images, which, in the eighth and ninth centuries, spread like a leprosy through nearly all Christendom, and supplanted all traces of genuine piety in the visible church by the grossest superstition. They are decidedly adverse to the adoration of relics, the worship of the Virgin, or the observation of the feasts and festivals of the Church. They regarded the Greeks as idolaters;—the Greeks accused them of Judaism, heresy, and atheism, and to these accusations, with the feelings they engendered, may be ascribed the unrelenting animosity and persecution that they waged against each other, and which terminated only when the Grecian empire ceased to exist. Armenia has, in all ages, been the theatre of hostile operations. Times without number her cities have been plundered, her harvests consumed, and her flocks slaughtered, to gratify the cupidity or to satiate the hunger of armies, who, in the character of allies, were marching through her territories. The empire of the East has, in many instances, been contested upon her fields; and, though generally in servitude, seldom has she been permitted to enjoy the tranquillity of that state. Yet subsequent to the firm establishment of the Saracen dominion in Asia, they enjoyed a long period of prosperity and repose. When the Saracenic empire became supplanted by that of the Tartars, the consequences to the Eastern Christians were most deplorable.