St. Astvatsatsin Church of Tsakuri (Tsaghkavank)

Historical overview

The village where the church is located, Sargis Jalalyants calls Tsakuri. In the half of the 19th century it had 22 houses with Armenian residents and belonged to the Haykaz Mirzabekyants kin. According to Jalalyants, the construction of the church was not completed, in particular, the dome was not built because the master who built it died. Following the elders, Jalalyants presents an interesting episode from the events that took place during the construction of the church. According to the narrative, the architect gets angry with the apprentice and says: “Let you be bitten by a snake”. It happens that one day while working, the apprentice dies from a snake bite and seeing that and repenting, the architect sculpts a snake’s image on the church in remembrance of the perpetual ones and as an admonition to every miscreant apprentice (Jalaliants 1858, 261-262). Till today that snake sculpture is preserved. It is located in the arched opening of the southern window.

Makar Barkhudaryants mentions the monastery, noting that “Above the prayer hall it (the church) used to have a dome, but it is destroyed. Perhaps, it used to be a monastery, then they changed it to a church, which is 15 meters 25 centimeters long and 12 meters wide” (Barkhutariants 1895, 72, 73).

The building inscription has been preserved on the lintel of the church, according to which the church was built in 1682: “I – Archimandrite Hakob, from Taghlar borough, from the Tankots kin, a disciple of Archimandrite Yesayi from Krtchevan, was appointed by Yeremia – the Patriarch of Aghuank, as the leader of some northern villages. But they did not allow us to live in our native see and wandering in different places, I did not find a more suitable (place) than this. And I wished to live here, and having leveled Indusar (mountain), I turned it into a residence and began the construction of the cathedral church in memory of my soul and my parents – my father Dalvat and my mother Mariam, and for the pardon of nanny-nurses, my two sisters – Sarah, Yashak. I pray for their lives. The holy church was built by the hands of Archimandrite Hakob in the summer of 1131 (1682). However, the khachkar dated to 1196 preserved in the vicinity of the church gives grounds to suppose that the church was built on the site of an older complex (Mkrtchyan 1985, 116).

The longitudinal walls of the prayer hall are accentuated by pilasters on both sides of the arcature (Fig. 3).

Architectural-compositional examination

The church of Tsaghkavank belongs to the two-pilaster composition of the three-nave basilica type churches. Externally the layout is rectangular (15.24 x 12.10 meters) and almost square inwardly (9.3 x 10.3 meters). The pair of pillars (these are connected by arches, with the wall of bema and the opposite wall pillars) divide the interior space of the prayer hall into medium (4.3 meters) and side (2.0 meters) naves. The side naves end in the east with the vestries adjacent to the main altar (Fig. 2). Stairs leading to the roof are built on both sides of the bema. The only entrance to the church is on the western side, on the east-west axis. The almost quadratic symmetry of the hall is conditioned with arched niches of the wide openings in the southern and northern walls. The longitudinal walls of the prayer hall are accentuated by pilasters on both sides of the pillars (Fig. 3). The interior is plastered, the pillars, arches, niches, the stones of the bema facade are lined with bluish hewn stones, and the walls are made of rough stones (Fig. 4).

Bibliographic examination

Sh. Mkrtchyan touched upon the issues of location, architecture and dating of St. Astvatsatsin Church of Tsaghkavank (Мкртчян 1989, 96, 97). By the way, in the author’s 1985 edition, the vestries in the church plan have a circular ending, which does not correspond to reality. They are rectangular, as is accepted in the churches of Artsakh. A brief description of St. Astvatsatsin can also be found in V. Harutyunyan’s book dedicated to the history of Armenian architecture (Harutyunyan 1992, 402).

The condition before, during and after the war

In the Soviet era, after closing in 1920, the church was used as a collective farm warehouse and was empty in the post-Soviet period. However, people visited the church, prayed and lit candles. Aiming to preserve the cultural, religious heritage and traditions of the village region in Artsakh, a group of benefactors initiated a donation fund in 2010 to renovate the church. The idea for the reconstruction of St. Astvatsatsin Church of Tsaghkavank belongs to Svetlana Tatunts, a professor at Moscow State University, who is the granddaughter of the last priest of this church. The restoration project of the church was made by architect Samvel Ayvazyan. The first stage of construction works started in May 2019. In 2019, the first phase of construction work was carried out (foundation reinforcement, repair of walls, windows, portal, roof and other architectural details, Fig. 7, see www.gofundme.com/tsakuri-church-reconstruction). The internal decorative works was interrupted because of the 44-day war, and Tsakuri appeared to be under the Azerbaijani occupation.

In March 2021, during a visit to Hadrut region, and in particular to Tsakur, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, pointing to the inscription on the lintel of St. Astvatsatsin Church of Tsaghkavank, stated that the inscriptions and carved crosses had just been engraved and that it was an Armenianized Udi church (https:youtu.be/blq-Kn1QnMs). This once again speaks of the fact that the Armenian cultural heritage in the occupied territories is being altered and destroyed under the high state patronage.