Arkelan Monastery and the Church of Surp Stepanos of Berkri

Overlooking the town of Muradiye (historically known as Berkri or Pergri in Armenian) from a rocky escarpment, the Arkelan Monastery is rather difficult to access though a beautiful site to visit. The Arkelan Monastery was founded sometime before the 13th century, possibly in the 11th during the wave of church and monastery construction that took place at that time. In the 13th century the monastery was home to a monk named Stepanos (Stephen) who had a hermitage or oratory in the cliffs below the convent. This hermitage became a site of pilgrimage and, after the monk had died and was buried a church and tomb were built against the face of the cliff.

The Arkelan Monastery is associated with another monastery on this list: Karmravank the “Monastery of the Red Gem”. Karmravank was founded to house a relic, a splinter of the true cross set in a red gem, from which the monastery took its name. Before Karmravank was founded to house the holy relic, the gem was kept at the upper church at the Arkelan monastery.

At its peak, the Arkelan Monastery was quite large and consisted of an upper monastic complex with its Church of the Mother of God (Astvadzadzin), cells, a scriptorium, buildings for the daily life of the monks, and a lower portion consisting of the Surp Stepanos church with its tomb chamber under the cliff.

The upper church is a classic example of Armenian church architecture in Vaspurakan and built as a cross-in-square with a deep apse, blind arches rather than transversals on the north and south walls, and a wide vault on the west side to extend the church from a square to a rectangular form. At the center was a tall pyramidal cone set atop an octagonal drum.

The lower church was built to a somewhat grander scale with its main body and drum rising dramatically high over the diminutive church floor. The main body of this church is square with a deep apse on the east and a barrel vault over the entry extending its form at the floor level. On the inside of the dome is a large ‘X’ formed by a pair of intersecting ribs rising from corbels at the height of the springing stone. (It is difficult to say how common this detail may have been as many historic church domes have collapsed. The rib detail here at Surp Stepanos is reminiscent of the Surp Hrisime dome where each arm of the ‘X’ is a cluster of three lines.) Next to the church itself you can see a number of caves in the cliff and numerous carved crosses, some of which are quite ornate.

Sadly, the Arkelan Monastic complex is in a terrible state of disrepair. Photographs taken by Thierry in the 1970s show the terrible speed of the destruction with parts of the dome and walls of the upper church having disappeared in less than 30 years. Its now almost impossible to make out the other buildings of the upper convent as all have collapsed and the stones rearranged to form shelters for the flocks that pasture on the high shelf where Arkelan monastery sits. The graveyard has been utterly desecrated and is now very difficult to find.

The Lower church (Surp Stepanos) has faired better than the upper, though it has suffered its share of damage. The lower church has lost its west wall with its beautiful doorway and a large section of the eastern apse has collapsed, likely due to the prevalent myth among treasure hunters that it is in the apse that treasure is buried. Even a number of the crosses carved into the cliffs have been desecrated by looters hoping to find gold buried in the virgin rock. Unfortunately the facing stones of the pyramidal roof have fallen away exposing the mortar and rubble masonry inside the structure which will speed the decay of the structure.

One interesting and rather helpful detail that has managed to survive is the path up to the lower church from the valley below. The path was cut into the side of the slope and built up with stacked stones and can still clearly be made out from below even though the path is now strewn with fallen boulders. This is still your best access to the lower church of Surp Stepanos. From Surp Stepanos to the the upper convent access is rather more difficult. We searched the area but didn’t manage to find an easy access. North of the the lower church the cliff is lower and broken rather than sheer making it possible to scramble up. Everywhere else we looked would require you to climb up the cliff itself. The gully next to the lower church didn’t offer the easy passage that we had hoped to find there. If you know of another route please let us know!

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