Christianity was brought to Armenia at the turn of the 1st and 2nd century and took root in the country's multi-ethnic municipal communities. In the early 4th century, under the impact of ideological developments taking place in the Roman Empire, Armenia's protector, the royal court and aristocracy of Armenia embraced the new religion, thereby inaugurating the process which was to turn Armenian Christianity into a national religion. When it first reached Armenia Christianity had the traits of a universal faith, far removed from any ethno-cultural idiosyncrasies. The theory that Armenian Christianity had the character of a state religion right from the start may still be met in the literature of the subject, but it is an erroneous notion. The Christian religion built up its privileged status gradually, as it was assimilated by the nakharars, the ruling class of Armenia. While it is true that in the mid-5th century Sozomen wrote that by issuing just one declaration King Trdat instructed all his subjects to embrace the same faith, we should be very cautious about this remark. Sozomen took a Greek cultural perspective on the spread of Christianity in Armenia, which he viewed through its history in the Roman Empire, where the edicts of Theodosius made it the state religion. But even in the Empire Christianity had first built up a strong position socially. In Armenia, which was much more decentralised in comparison to Rome, it would have been even harder to impose a single religion on all the people by means of just “a single declaration,” and Trdat's decision around 314/315 must have been preceded by an initial reception phase of the new religion in Armenian society. The royal decree should be understood to mean the culmination of this process, not its start. At the time Sozomen was writing his history the Armenian state was no longer extant, albeit the Armenian people still cherished the memory of its first Christian monarch, who, like Constantine the Great, had taken the historic step in the country's religious policy. Armenia's initial Christianisation had not been accomplished thanks to operations prompted by the state; the decisive factor determining its success was its assimilation in the Armenian system of aristocratic families and clans.