[4][5] According to some sources, he was born in the castle of Dzovk in the province of Tluk in Cilicia,[6][7] located southwest of Aintab in the domain of the Armenian warlord Gogh Vasil.

[8] However, other sources claim that Nerses was born in his family's fortress, also called Dzovk, in the historical province of Sophene in Armenia,[4][5] near modern-day Elazığ.

[9] Nerses moved to Dzovk in Cilicia, named after their original home, with his brother, the future Catholicos Gregory III, after the death of their father in 1111.

[6] Later, Gregory's successor Basil of Ani[10] (a cousin of Nerses)[11] placed them under the tutelage of the monk Stepanos Manouk, a highly regarded scholar and theologian.

[7] In 1125, Nerses assisted his older brother, now Catholicos Gregory III of Cilicia, in moving the catholicate to Dzovk near Lake Kharput, on the property of their father, Prince Apirat.

On the conclusion of the synod, Gregory continued on to Jerusalem together with the papal legate Alberic of Ostia, sending Nerses back.

Nerses wrote back to the emperor, informing him of Gregory's death and suggesting that an alternative might be for a discussion in which both the Greek and Armenian churches could present their positions.

In 1171, the emperor sent a delegation led by Theorianus, a theologian from Constantinople, and John Atman, an Armenian member of the Orthodox Church and abbot of the monastery at Philippopolis.

[11] In December of that year Theorianus and John Atman returned to Hromgla with letters from the emperor and the Orthodox Patriarch Michael III of Constantinople.

Nerses wrote out a letter to Constantinople in which he thanked the emperor for his interest, and promised that, at the appropriate time, there would be a council in Armenia formed to take up his proposals.

[16] In James R. Russell's view, Nerses' poetry emphasizes "the imagery of fire and light in a manner at once redolent of Hesychasm and consonant with the Zoroastrian substrate of Armenian Christian culture.

In that work, he related the story he received from some Armenian monks who came to visit him during his time as Catholicos to tell him of how they were able to see the Garden of Eden from a distance.