The Armenian Apostolic Church is the only Church in Christendom that does not add water to the chalice of wine during the Divine Liturgy. According to Armenian sources, this Sacred Tradition was established by the Father of faith St. Gregory the Illuminator, who had taken this liturgical rite from the An­cient Church. Obviously, St. Gregory also took into account the Armenians’ practice of drinking pure wine at their homes for ages. 

The usage of mixed or unmixed chalice becomes an issue for discussion and controversy in Christ’s Church, when liturgical practices of different Church­es receive theological, philosophical and symbolic explanations. It is natural for every Church to defend her liturgical tradition based on the Holy Scriptures, writings of Church Fathers, canonical decisions of Councils, etc. The Armenian ecclesiastical literature is full of writings about this problem, in which fathers and patriarchs of the Armenian Church show the others the theological and symbolic explanations on this matter based again on the Holy Bible, Pat­ristic literature and the decisions of local National-Ecclesiastical Councils.

So, one of the defenders of this Sacred Tradition is Fr. Mik՚ayel Čamčean, a monk of the Mexiťarist Congregation, theologian, historian and philosopher. He defended the position of the Armenian Church’s theological thinking against the Latinophiles showing the “Orthodoxy” of the Armenian Church. He tried to solve the disputes among the members of the Armenian Apostolic and Catholic Churches in Constantinople, showing that the Armenian Church was not heretic, as it was frequently portrayed at that time, and there was no need to shock the Ar­menian nation with new quarrels. He wrote “Shield of Faith”, a theological work of some 1000 pages during four decades (1776-1815), which confirms the Orthodoxy of the Armenian Church beginning with St. Gregory the Illuminator. Unfortunately, a Catholic priest robbed the book and took it to Rome, where it had the impact of a bomb. After four years of discussions and debates, the book was forbidden by the Propaganda Fide and only its short and edited version was published later, after the author’s death in Calcutta in 1873. He dedicated a se­parate chapter to this problem in this work, emphasizing the importance of Ar­me­nian sources to understand the position and theological thinking of the Ar­menian Church. Besides, he referred to this problem in his “History of Ar­me­nia” and “Commentaries of Psalms”.