The Armenian Catholics are a mere handful among the inhabitants of Bitlis, amounting to not more than fifteen families, of which only three or four represent the converts of the former Jesuit Mission, founded here in 1685. The remainder have become Catholics during quite recent years. Persecution and schism have dealt hard blows at the Catholic community. In 1838 they did not number more than fifty citizens, and their priest had been taken a prisoner by the Gregorian Armenians and cruelly beaten at the monastery of Surb Karapet above Mush plain. [143] In the eighties that well-informed and genial ecclesiastic, Father Rhétoré of Van, speaks of them as the most neglected and disorganised body in Bitlis, which had dwindled during the Kupelianist movement and from other causes from thirty to nine families. [144] The advent of an energetic pastor, who had studied in the Jesuit college of Beyrut, has infused new life into the flock. He speaks French fluently, has travelled widely, and is an accomplished man. A school has been recently opened. The Catholics of Bitlis have had good reason to resent their treatment at the hands of the Gregorians; but their spiritual leader displayed an antipathy towards the Armenians of the national persuasion in which religious hatred had overcome the bonds of race. Very different is the attitude of the American Protestant missionaries, whose flourishing establishment is situated in the Avel Meidan within the angle formed by the confluence of the stream from the eastern valley with the main Bitlis river. If their conversions excite the jealousy of the Gregorian hierarchy, their proselytes display no tendency to divest themselves of their nationality, but, on the contrary, remain Armenians to the core. This fact does not increase the goodwill of the Turkish official classes towards the Americans. Founded in 1858, their Mission encountered the same opposition on the part of the Armenian clergy as had formerly been experienced by the Catholics. It was not until after the lapse of seven years that a nucleus of five professed Protestants was formed; and, once a start had been made, progress was rapid. Of late years the labours of the missionaries have been wisely directed to the extension of their schools rather than to the propagation of Protestant doctrine. Debarred from working among the Mussulmans, they have supplied the Armenians with priceless advantages in the shape of a college in the provincial capital, and no less than fifteen schools in the smaller towns and villages comprised within the limits of the vilayet. About one-half of the attendants are and remain Gregorian. The college dispenses three grades of education: the High School, the intermediate and the primary grades. At the time of our visit twenty scholars were included in the first of these categories, fifty in the second, and about sixty in the third. There were fifteen boarders living on the premises.