[5] According to medieval chroniclers Faustus Byuzand and Movses Kaghankatvatsi, St. Gregory the Illuminator, the patron saint and evangelizer of Armenia, founded the Amaras Monastery at the start of the fourth century.

At the beginning of the fifth century Mesrop Mashtots, the inventor of the Armenian alphabet, established in Amaras the first school in Artsakh that used his script.

Amaras was later abandoned, and in the first half of the nineteenth century the monastery was used as a frontier fortress by Russian imperial troops.

[10] In 489 Vachagan III the Pious, king of Caucasian Albania, renovated Amaras, restoring the church and constructing a new chapel for the remains of St. Grigoris.

After returning to Armenia, he consecrated and appointed instead of himself his son Vrtanes, filled with his father's virtues, who lived according to the [Christian] teaching and punished and admonished all those who adhered to the heresy of idol-worship.