Nerses of Lampron

Born at Lampron, Cilicia, Armenia, 1153; died at Tarsus, July 17, 1198. Nerses was the son of the prince of Lampron and the nephew of Saint Nerses Glaiëtsi ("the Gracious"). He was educated at Skeyra Monastery and became an outstanding scholar, theologian, and exegete, skilled in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic.

When his father died, he was ordained in 1169, lived as a hermit for a time, and in 1176 was consecrated archbishop of Tarsus. He strongly supported the reunion of the Armenian Church with Rome at a council at Hromkla in 1179, but nothing came of it when the supporter of the move, Emperor Manuel Comnenus, died the next year.

Nerses actively engaged in the negotiations that led to the reunion of Lesser Armenia (west of the Euphrates) with Rome in 1198. "To me," Nerses declared to critics of his endeavors, "Armenians, Latins, Greeks, Egyptians, and Syrians are all one. My conscience is clear." He died six months after the reunion was confirmed by the crowning of Leo II as king of Lower Armenia (Little Armenia) by the papal legate with a crown sent by Pope Celestine III.

Nerses wrote on the liturgy, scriptural commentaries, hymns, and lives of the desert saints, and translated Saint Benedict's Rule, Saint Gregory's Dialogues into Armenian, and many Western works into Armenian (Attwater, Benedictines, Delaney).