Saint Bartholomew Monastery
|Saint Bartholomew Monastery
Սուրբ Բարթողոմէօս Վանք
The monastery as photographed in 1911
|Location||Albarak, Van Province|
|Affiliation||Armenian Apostolic Church|
|Status||ceased functioning as a monastery in 1915|
|Completed||13th - 18th centuries|
The Saint Bartholomew Monastery (Armenian: Սուրբ Բարթողոմէօս Վանք) is a 13th-18th century Armenian monastery built in what was then the Vaspurakan Province of Greater Armenia, now near the town of Başkale (Albayrak) in the Van Province of southeastern Turkey. It was formerly considered one of the most important pilgrimage sites of the Armenian people.
The monastery was built on the traditional site of the martyrdom of the Apostle Bartholomew who is reputed to have brought Christianity to Armenia in the 1st century. Along with Saint Thaddeus, Saint Bartholomew is considered the patron saint of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
At an unknown date after the Armenian Genocide, the monastery came under the control of the Turkish military and its entire site now lies within the compound of an army base and is inaccessible to visitors. The dome of its church was still intact in the early 1960s, but the whole structure is now very heavily ruined and the dome is entirely gone.
- Saint Thaddeus Monastery, a 10-19th century Armenian monastery built in honor of Saint Thaddeus (then in Armenia, now in northwestern Iran)
- "THE CONDITION OF THE ARMENIAN HISTORICAL MONUMENTS IN TURKEY". Research on Armenian Architecture. 2008-10-01. Retrieved 2009-06-01.
- Images of Saint Bartholomew Monastery at the Rensselaer Digital Collections
- Images of Saint Bartholomew Monastery