• PREFACE
• STRUCTURE & SCRIPT
• SIGHTS & SOUNDS
• CREDITS

1. Introduction
2. The palace of the Roman Emperor, Diocletianus. The envoy of Goths brings the offer of a single combat between the Roman Emperor and the King of Goths. By the advice of courtiers Licinius and Maxentius, Armenian prince Tiridates fights instead of the Roman Emperor. The King of Goths is killed. Emperor Diocletianus crowns Tiridates as the king of Armenia.
3. Armenia. People welcome the new king. Here is Gregory, a friend of Tiridates. Tiridates orders Gregory to pray to his Gods. As Gregory is a Christian, he refuses to take dictation. King Tiridates savagely tortures Gregory for preaching Christianity and puts him in a dark dungeon called Khor Virap (literally - deep pit) full of serpents and scorpions. Gregory remains imprisoned in Khor Virap for twelve long years.
4. The Emperor Diocletanius wants to marry a Christian nun named Hripsime. In order to escape from the Emperor she leaves Rome for Armenia. Here, Tiridates falls in love with the virgin, desiring to marry her. As Hripsime refuses to marry the king, Tiridates orders to beat her to death.
5. Years later, God punishes Tiridates for torturing Hripsime and other Christians by turning him into a wild boar. People are in panic. Tiridates’s sister Khosrovidukht has a vision in which God tells her that only Gregory could cure Tiridates.
6. Gregory is released; he cures the king and converts him into Christianity. In 301 Armenia adopts Christianity as State religion.
7. Tiridates and Gregory together lay the foundation of St. Etchmiadzin, the Mother Church of Armenia's Holy Apostolic Church in the capital city of Vagharshapat, which became the new spiritual and as well as cultural center of Christian Armenia and remained so to this day - for nearly one thousand seven hundred years.