Adde Bagratuni

Saint Adde Bagratuni (also called Adde the Patriarch) is a martyr of the first century, remembered in the Armenian and Syriac tradition and venerated at Edessa. The years of his birth and death are not known.

According to Syriac and Armenian sources, he made for King Abgar V the crowns of woven silk, and by tradition he was of the princely Bagratuni line. When the Apostle Thaddeus came to Edessa, he became his disciple, and the apostle appointed him in his place as spiritual guide and bishop of Edessa. After Abgar's death, his son turned from the right faith, opened the temples of the idols and accepted pagan worship; he asked Adde to make him a crown of fine linen with gold thread. Adde answered that his hands would not sew a crown for an unworthy head that did not worship Christ, the living God. For this the king's soldier cut off his legs with a sword, and he died.

The Armenian Apostolic Church at first commemorated Adde together with King Abgar; later the catholicos Simeon I of Yerevan separated the two feasts. Today his commemoration falls on a movable Monday, after the fourth Sunday of the period called Hisnak.