Arates Monastery
The Legacy of Monastic Life in the Mountains of Vayots Dzor
Arates Monastery stands within the historic settlement of Arates in Armenia’s Vayots Dzor Province, on a hill beside the Arates tributary of the Yeghegis River. Developed during several different periods and now preserved in a partly ruined state, the complex includes churches, gavits, chapels, khachkars, gravestones and the remains of an enclosure wall. It represents the multilayered history of a medieval monastic centre in which each new building was added to an already established sacred environment.
The earliest history of the monastery is not completely known. Religious structures may have existed at the site as early as the seventh century, while the oldest written references date from the ninth century. The principal surviving buildings were constructed mainly between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. This long chronology demonstrates that Arates was not created during a single building campaign but developed as a spiritual settlement over several centuries.
One of the earliest principal structures is the tenth-century Church of Saint Sion. It is a single-nave barrel-vaulted building with vestries beside the sanctuary and along the northern wall. South of it stands the eleventh-century Church of the Holy Mother of God, designed as a domed hall. Its interior was organised through a single pair of wall piers supporting the arches beneath the dome.
The most remarkable architectural structure at Arates was the gavit adjoining the Church of the Holy Mother of God from the west. It was constructed by the architect Siranes in 1270. Its roof was created through an original system of intersecting arches, while a stalactite-decorated dome rose at the centre. Although the roof has not survived intact, the remaining sections reveal the engineering confidence and artistic imagination of medieval Armenian builders.
A second square gavit with eastern vestries was constructed between the churches of Saint Sion and the Holy Mother of God. Several chapels were placed between and around the churches. The monastery was once surrounded by a defensive wall, much of which was destroyed in the seventeenth century. Khachkars and gravestones dating from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries testify to the monastery’s long activity and the presence of successive generations.
At the end of the thirteenth century, the historian and church leader Stepanos Orbelian connected Arates with Noravank and used it as a summer episcopal residence. Its cooler mountain climate made it suitable for the clergy during the summer months. Estates were granted to the monastery, while traditions of manuscript production, education and liturgical life continued there. Arates consequently became an important component of the organised spiritual network of Vayots Dzor.
The partly ruined condition of Arates makes it possible to observe the different phases of the complex’s development, including wall joints, reconstructions, blocked openings and traces of earlier roofs. Its importance lies not only in its individual churches but in the unity of the structures, cemetery, khachkars and mountain landscape. Arates demonstrates that a medieval monastery was not merely a place of prayer but also an educational centre, a settlement, an economic institution and a system for preserving historical memory.