It possibly takes its origin from a site in the Berdats Por district of Tayk – then a hereditary Mamikonian fiefdom – where the royal army (Արքունի բանակ, Ark'uni Banak) was headquartered during the rule of the Arshakuni in the 1st century.

[2] While the scholars such as Ekvtime Taqaishvili, Shalva Amiranashvili, and Stepan Mnatsakanian tend to interpret the passage literally, Chubinashvili, Vakhtang Beridze and Tiran Marutyan identify Adarnase as a renovator, not a builder of the church.

This view, now shared by some art scholars,[3] dates the Bana church – clearly modeled on the contemporaneous Zvartnots cathedral near Yerevan – to the mid-7th century.

It was when the Chalcedonian-Armenian catholicos Nerses III, who presided over several important religious projects Zvartnots included, resided in exile in Tayk c.

[4][5] Devastated during the 8th century by the Byzantine–Arab war, the region of Tao was gradually resettled by its new masters, the Georgian Bagratids, and under their patronage a monastic revival took place.

It was also the seat of the Georgian Orthodox bishop of Bana, whose diocese also included the neighboring areas of Taos-Kari, Panaskerti, and Oltisi.

During the Crimean War (1853–1865), the Ottoman military converted the church into a fortress, adding the crude bulwark still visible on the south side.

[4] In 1983 the American archaeologist and art historian, Dr. Robert W. Edwards, completed a scientific assessment of the complex as well as an accurate plan drawn to scale.

What remains of the church is part of the lower-level floor half-submerged in its own ruins, including the east apse with one column of its colonnade with a carved capital.

At some period prior to the 19th century the church suffered a major structural failure (perhaps an earthquake) that necessitated the rebuilding and stabilization of the walls with a coarse masonry and massive amounts of mortar.

There is no structural evidence that the Ottomans converted the church into a fortress during the Crimean War (e.g., adding open portals for guns and cannons or a surrounding circuit wall).