The church is combination of cross forms, which was a very important image in the Eastern church. The importance of the cross in the development of Eastern Christian architecture and especially that of Armenia is illustrated by a number of facts. Eastern Christianity inherited, both from the Old Testament and from the earlier pagan cultures, the tradition of the cosmic symbolism of the cross and the number four. The worship of the dead was practiced in its form, using central-plan edifices (cruciform or square), whose axes of symmetry form a cross (oriented, a feature which originated in pagan cults and was maintained by the new religion), defining, at ground level, or even under ground, the four cardinal points of the compass, above which vertical structures (steles, ciboria shapes, additional levels with halls for worship and conical or pyramidal roofing) were placed, all arranged in a symbolic connection with the center of the earth (the Underworld symbolized by the intersection of the axes of symmetry at the point it met with the heavens). In the vision of St. Gregory, four crosses represent four places of martyrdom, those of the virgins Guyaneh, Hripsimeh and their companions, connected by a large cupola or tent.
The cross, in Armenia, became a true object of worship, taking on dual divine significance, a symbolic meaning, as the ‘sign’ of Christ, symbol of his victory over death, memory of the site of his sacrifice; and a physical meaning, in the sense of a relic, the adoration of which was connected to faith in miraculous effects.
The rejection of the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE, where the doctrine of Diophysitism --the two-nature doctrine-- was approved by the Greek Orthodox church, condemning that of Monophysism --the single nature of Christ doctrine) prompted the Armenians to place greater emphasis on the divine, rather than the human, nature of Christ. This led to an avoidance of representations of the Passion, and to a preference for the sublimation inherent in the symbol of the cross, as opposed to explicit iconography.