Cilicia was once again under Byzantine domination. As in the days of Leon I, no sooner had Roupenid control extended into the plain than Byzantium had intervened. But the disaster this time was not complete. Toros II was free, his cavalry was still intact, and he retained his mountain strongholds, for Manuel realized that it was more important to have him in Cilicia, as a vassal who could take part in the fight against the Moslems, than in Constantinople as a captive. We thus see Armenian contingents in the Graeco-Latin expedition against Nur-ad-Din in 1159, and, the following year, among the allied troops led by John Contostephanus against Ki1ij Arslan.
A break between the Greeks and Armenians, which might have [641] had serious consequences, occurred in 1162. The governor of Tarsus, Andronicus Euphorbenus, invited Stephen to a feast, and when the latter's body was found the next day outside the city gates, Andronicus was accused of the murder. Toros and Mleh immediately took up arms to avenge their brother; they massacred the garrisons of Mamistra, Anazarba, and Vahka. But in the face of the constant Moslem menace it was most important to maintain the alliance between the Christian forces. King Amalric of Jerusalem assumed the role of mediator, as his predecessor had done; Andronicus was recalled and replaced by Constantine Coloman. Nor did Manuel raise any objections the following year when Toros helped the barons of Antioch to install Bohemond III, and to expel Constance, who had appealed for help to Coloman. Toros continued to fight side by side with the Greeks and the Latins. He joined the allied forces against Nur-ad-Din (1164) and he and his brother Mleh were among the few leaders who escaped the disaster of Harim.
We have little information about the internal affairs of Cilicia during this period. The Byzantine occupation had no doubt strengthened the position of their Armenian allies of western Cilicia, but after his return from Harim and perhaps after his successful raid on Marash, when he captured four hundred Turks, Toros felt sufficiently strong to attack Oshin of Lampron. The struggle between the two princes alarmed the catholicus, Gregory III, whose family was allied to the house of Lampron, and he sent his brother, Nerses the Gracious, to bring about a reconciliation (12). It was during this journey to western Cilicia that Nerses met Manuel's kinsman Alexius Axouch at Mamistra; this encounter proved to be the starting point of the negotiations between the Greek and Armenian churches, which were to last several years without success (13).
The see of the catholicus had been transferred in 1151 to Hromgla (Qal'at ar-Rum), a fortified position on the Euphrates north of Bira. Ever since 1125 the head of the Armenian church had been residing at Dzovk', but his position had become almost untenable after the conquests of Mas'ud and particularly after the capture of Duluk. The catholicus Gregory, seeking refuge elsewhere, had gladly accepted the offer of Hromgla made to him by Beatrice, the wife of Joscelin II of Courtenay, at that time a prisoner of the Turks. Hromgla seems to have been given at first "in trust", but later the [642] catholicus purchased it from Joscelin III for 15,000 tahegans; the official deed of transfer was kept in the archives of Hromgla, so that--adds the Cilician Chronicle--no member of the Courtenay family should ever claim the castle.
Toros II had accomplished a remarkable piece of work. He had reestablished the Armenian barony of Cilicia, and, although the territories over which he had control were limited and he was a vassal of the Byzantine emperor, he had laid foundations on which his successors could build. His work was almost undone, however, in the years immediately following his death (1168), by the actions of his brother Mleh, whom, a few years earlier, Toros had expelled from Cilicia. Mleh had gone to the court of Nur-ad-Din and had been appointed governor of Cyrrhus. As soon as news of the death of Toros reached him, he invaded Cilicia with the help of Turkish contingents provided by Nur-ad-Din. A first attempt to seize power there proved unsuccessful, though he took numerous prisoners; he was preparing to return with larger forces when the Armenian nobles ceded the barony to him in order to avoid further bloodshed (14). The regent Thomas fled to Antioch, and Toros's young son Roupen II was carried for safety to Hromgla, where, however, Mleh's agents succeeded in killing him.
From the outset Mleh antagonized the notables and the population by his rapaciousness and his wanton cruelty. His ambition and his confidence in the support of his powerful friend Nur-ad-Din encouraged him to undertake at once the extension of his possessions. Using as a pretext the repudiation by Hetoum of his wife, who was Mleh's niece, he beleaguered Lampron, but in spite of a long siege he was unable to capture this strong position; so he turned to the east and wrested from the Templars the castles of the Amanus. With the help of Turkish forces he seized Adana, Mamistra, and Tarsus (December 1172-January 1173), routed the hastily assembled army of Constantine Coloman, made him a prisoner, and sent him to Nur-ad-Din, together with other prominent captives and much booty. Mleh's growing power disturbed the Latins, already aroused by such acts as the seizure and robbing of count Stephen of Sancerre in 1171, while he was proceeding from Antioch to Constantinople. Mleh's hold over the castles of [643] the Amanus constituted a direct threat to the principality of Antioch. Bohemond III and some of the neighboring barons marched, therefore, against Mleh in the spring of 1173, but apparently were not successful at first (15). When news of the conflict reached Jerusalem, Amalric decided to intervene in person, though he invaded Cilicia only after Mleh had eluded his repeated attempts to meet with him personally. Avoiding the difficult mountainous regions, Amalric advanced through the plain, destroying the villages and setting fire to the crops as he progressed. But Mleh was saved once again by Nur-ad-Din, who created a diversion by marching against Kerak. Amalric hastened back to Jerusalem; the other Latin forces probably withdrew at the same time, and Mleh remained master of Cilicia.
The death of Nur-ad-Din in May 1174 spelled the end of Mleh's fortunes. When they no longer had reason to fear Nur-ad-Din's intervention, the Armenian nobles rebelled, and killed Mleh in the city of Sis, which had become his residence. They chose as his successor Roupen III (1175-1187), the eldest son of Stephen, who, since his father's death, had been living with his maternal uncle Pagouran, lord of Babaron.
True to the ideas which had guided most of his predecessors, Roupen reverted to the policy of collaboration with the Latins, and he strengthened these ties in 1181 by marrying Isabel, the daughter of Humphrey III of Toron. He had already taken part in the expedition against Harim, and the withdrawal of the Frankish troops before they had attained their goal must have been a bitter disappointment to the Armenians, for whom the Moslems were then the chief enemy. The Turkoman tribes of Anatolia had been crossing the northern borders for some time. Roupen tried to rid his land of these marauding groups; he killed a large number of them, and took many prisoners and considerable booty. Kilij Arslan II complained to Saladin, who, in the fall of 1180, entered Cilicia. He established his camp near Mamistra, made rapid raids in different directions, and withdrew only after Roupen had promised to release the Turkoman prisoners and to return the booty he had taken. Roupen made his peace with Killj Arslan, and we find the two fighting side by side at the time of the revolt of Isaac Comnenus, who, late in 1182, after the seizure of the imperial [644] throne by Andronicus, had returned to Cilicia. It was probably during this period that Roupen recovered Adana and Mamistra, which had once again been taken by the Byzantines. As for Tarsus, still in Greek hands in 1181, it had passed later to Bohemond, who sold it to Roupen in 1183.
The Byzantine forces in Cilicia were now depleted and the moment seemed opportune to Roupen to overthrow their Armenian allies, the rival house of Lampron, to whom Roupen was related through his mother. Hard pressed by Roupen's siege and no longer able to count on Byzantine help, Hetoum of Lampron appealed to Bohemond III. Officially Roupen and the prince of Antioch were allies, but Bohemond resented the cordial welcome extended by Roupen to the Antiochene barons who had disapproved of his marriage to Sibyl and had fled to Cilicia. Moreover, any increase of Roupenid power was always viewed with suspicion by the princes of Antioch. Under cover of friendship Bohemond invited Roupen to a banquet and, after imprisoning him, invaded Cilicia. However, Bohemond was able neither to relieve Lampron, nor to capture a single town or castle, for Leon, to whom Roupen, his brother, had succeeded in sending a message, and other Armenian barons, valiantly continued to fight (16). Seeing that his efforts were fruitless, Bohemond, having kept Roupen prisoner for a year, decided to release him. Pagouran of Babaron, related both to the Hetoumids and to Roupen, acted as intermediary; he sent several hostages including his own sister Rita, Roupen's mother. Roupen promised to pay a ransom of 1,000 tahegans and to cede the castles of Sarvantikar and Tall Hamdun, as well as Mamistra and Adana. But soon after the ransom had been paid and the hostages had been returned, he reconquered all that he had ceded, and Bohemond was not in a position to retaliate beyond making a few ineffectual raids.
The barony was thus in a strong position when Roupen III transferred the power to his brother Leon II (1187) and retired to the monastery of Trazarg. The menace of the recent alliance between Isaac Angelus and Saladin, and the more immediate threat of the Turkomans, led to a rapprochement between Leon and Bohemond. Large bands of these nomads had again been crossing the northern borders, advancing almost as far as Sis and laying waste on all sides. Leon could muster only a small force, but he attacked them with such energy that he routed the bands, killed their leader Rustam, and pursued the fugitives as far as Sarvantikar, [645] inflicting heavy losses on them. The following year (1188) taking advantage of the troubled condition in the sultanate of Rum that preceded the death of Kilij Arslan II, Leon turned against the Selchukids. A surprise attack on Bragana was unsuccessful, and the constable Baldwin was killed, but Leon returned two months later with a larger army, killed the head of the garrison, seized the fortress, and marched into Isauria. Though we find no specific mention of it, Seleucia must have been captured about this time, for the city was in Armenian hands when Frederick Barbarossa came in 1190. Proceeding northward, Leon seized Heraclea, gave it up after payment to him of a large sum, and advanced as far as Caesarea. It is probably about this time that Shahnshah, brother of Hetoum of Lampron, took, on behalf of Leon, the fortress of Loulon, covering the northern approach to the Cilician Gates, and fortified it (17).
On the eve of the Third Crusade the Armenian barony of Cilicia could be considered one of the vital Christian states of the Levant, and its strong position was particularly noticeable at a time when the Latin principalities, reduced almost exclusively to the three large cities of Antioch, Tyre, and Tripoli, were hard pressed by Saladin. The letters sent in 1189 by pope Clement III to Leon II and to the catholicus Gregory IV Dgha are a clear indication of this, for, while previously the Armenians had been asking for help, now it was the pope who urged them to give military and financial assistance to the crusaders (18).
When Frederick Barbarossa approached the Armenian territories, Leon sent an embassy composed of several barons, with presents, ample supplies, and armed troops. A second embassy, headed by the bishop Nerses of Lampron, arrived too late and returned to Tarsus with the emperor's son Frederick, the bishops, and the German army. Barbarossa's death made a profound impression on the Armenians; we find it recorded in the colophons of many manuscripts written during these years in Cilicia. It was a particularly cruel blow for Leon, in whom Barbarossa's presence and influence had bred high hopes of obtaining the royal crown which he so greatly desired. Nerses of Lampron claims that Frederick had promised this "in a writing sealed with a gold seal," but when Leon asked for the fulfillment of the promise, the German leaders [646] demurred, stating that, since the emperor was dead, they could not act (19).
Leon participated in the wars of the crusaders; his troops were present at the siege of Acre, and he joined Richard the Lionhearted in the conquest of Cyprus. He was intent, at the same time, upon insuring the security of his own realm, and some of his actions undertaken for this purpose ran counter to the interests or aspirations of his neighbors. In 1191 he captured the fortress of Baghras, taken from the Templars by Saladin and dismantled after the arrival of the Third Crusade, and he refused to cede it to the Templars. This brought to a head the growing antagonism between Leon and Bohemond III, and the possession of Baghras was to be one of the principal points of contention in the long struggle between Cilicia and Antioch. For the moment Leon was the stronger of the two. Annoyed by the fact that Bohemond had signed a separate peace with Saladin and had complained to him of the seizure of Baghras, annoyed also by Bohemond's continued delays in repaying the sums lent to him in 1188, Leon hatched a plot to seize Bohemond and to free himself of the suzerainty of Antioch. Soon after the death of Saladin he invited Bohemond to Baghras and seized him, just as several years earlier Bohemond himself had made prisoner Leon's brother Roupen III (20). His attempt to annex Antioch was unsuccessful; though many of the nobles were favorable to Leon, the citizens set up a commune which took an oath of allegiance to Raymond, Bohemond's eldest son, and messengers were sent to the other son, Bohemond of Tripoli, and to Henry of Champagne, ruler of Jerusalem. Leon took his prisoners to Sis, where Henry came to negotiate Bohemond's release in the spring of 1194. Bohemond renounced his rights as a suzerain, and in return for this was allowed to go back to Antioch without paying a ransom; Leon retained Baghras and the surrounding territory. To seal the new friendship, a marriage was arranged between Leon's niece Alice, the heiress-presumptive, and Bohemond's eldest son and heir, Raymond.
Although Leon had not attained his ultimate purpose, that is, mastery or at least suzerainty over Antioch, his position was stronger than it had been before, and he pressed with renewed energy his claims for a royal crown, seeking the assistance of the two most powerful rulers of the time, the pope and the German [647] emperor. The embassies sent to Celestine III and to Henry VI met with success; in 1197 the imperial chancellor, Conrad of Hildesheim, left for the east, taking with him two crowns--one for Aimery of Cyprus, another for Leon. Aimery was crowned in September, but Leon's coronation was slightly delayed, partly through political circumstances--Conrad had gone directly from Cyprus to Acre--partly for religious reasons. The emperor demanded merely to be recognized as Leon's suzerain, but the pope required submission of the Armenian church to Rome, and this created considerable difficulty; there was marked opposition not only from the clergy of Greater Armenia, but from the majority of the clergy and the people of Cilicia. John, archbishop of Sis, was sent to Acre, and shortly thereafter a delegation headed by Conrad, archbishop of Mainz, arrived at Sis.
The bishops called together by Leon at first refused the papal demands, and are said to have agreed to them only after Leon told them that he would submit merely in word and not in deed. But the conditions listed by the historian Kirakos deal with disciplinary regulations rather than with matters of dogma (21). One may wonder whether the first demands, against which the Armenian bishops rebelled, did not directly concern their creed, and whether these demands were not later abandoned, leaving only the clauses to which the bishops, carefully selected by Leon among those more favorable to Rome, could truthfully subscribe. This hypothesis gains strength from the fact that in the subsequent correspondence exchanged between pope Innocent III and his successors on the one hand, and the Armenians on the other, there is no direct reference to any of the points of dogma which separated the two churches, and which had proved such serious stumbling blocks in all the attempts at union between the Greeks and Armenians. Both king and catholicus are lavish in their expressions of respect and submission to the papacy, but this submission must have been considered by them as the homage due to a suzerain lord, and the respect due to the successor of the apostle Peter. Some minor new usages were introduced into the liturgical practices, but there were no basic changes. In a letter written to the pope in 1201 the catholicus Gregory VI tactfully and discreetly explains that the Armenian faith remains what it had always been "without any additions or deletions". The union with the church of Rome is not a conversion, but a union [648] within the universal church to which they all belong, since the regeneration through baptism has caused all men to become the sheep of the same fold, namely the church of the living God (22).
Leon II was crowned with great solemnity in the cathedral church of Tarsus, on January 6, 1198, in the presence of the Syrian Jacobite patriarch, the Greek metropolitan of Tarsus, and numerous church dignitaries and military leaders (23). The catholicus Gregory VI Abirad anointed him and the royal insignia were presented by Conrad of Mainz. There was great rejoicing among the Armenians, who saw their ancient kingdom restored and renewed in the person of Leon.
The Armenian historians and the scribes of contemporary manuscripts also refer to a crown sent by the Byzantine emperor, Alexius III Angelus. But there does not seem to have been a separate coronation ceremony, for the crowns sent by Byzantium, for instance, to the kings of Hungary or to petty rulers, had a symbolic and honorific character, and were not intended to show the promotion of a prince to the dignity of a king, The evidence concerning the date is contradictory, some placing it as early as 1196, some as late as 1198 (24). In 1197 Leon sent an embassy to [649] Constantinople composed of Nerses of Lampron and other dignitaries, and it has been said that the purpose of this embassy was to thank the emperor for the crown that Leon had received. But neither Nerses nor the other contemporaries who speak of this embassy refer to a crown; all of the discussions centered on religious questions, and the sending of the embassy was the last of several fruitless efforts to achieve a union between the two churches (25). Whatever the actual facts concerning the Byzantine crown may have been, it is evident that Leon was much more anxious to be crowned by the western emperor, for this put him on an equal footing with the Latin princes of the Levant.
The succession to Antioch was the main problem of Leon's reign. Raymond had died early in 1197, and in accordance with the feudal laws his son Raymond Roupen, Leon's great-nephew, became Bohemond's heir. The barons had sworn allegiance to Raymond Roupen, but his succession to Antioch was opposed by Bohemond's second son, Bohemond of Tripoli; by the Templars, who could not forgive Leon for keeping Baghras; and by the commune, which was hostile to any Armenian interference. The war of succession, which began after the death of Bohemond III in 1201 and was to continue for almost a quarter of a century, concerned Antioch even more than it did Cilicia and has been discussed elsewhere in this volume (26). Suffice it to say here that, in spite of momentary successes, Leon's plans were defeated in the end; Raymond Roupen, crowned prince of Antioch in 1216, was ousted three years later by his uncle, Bohemond of Tripoli, and all hope of Armenian supremacy over Antioch was lost.
Syrian affairs also involved Leon in warfare with az-Zahir of Aleppo and the Selchukid Rukn-ad-Din Sulaiman II, whom Bohemond of Tripoli had summoned to his aid. In 1201 he repulsed a Selchukid invasion of Armenia, but he was less successful two years later when he had to confront the Aleppine forces on the banks of the Orontes. Hostilities broke out again late in 1205. Leon made a surprise attack on Darbsak, and although he could not take the fort, he laid waste the surrounding territory and inflicted heavy losses. Az-Zahir sent fresh contingents and assumed their command in person in the spring of 1206. Victorious at first, Leon had to retreat before the superior forces when the Antiochene armies joined the Moslems. An eight-year truce was signed, but in 1208-1209 az-Zahir and the Selchukid Kai-Khusrau I, whom [650]Leon had befriended earlier and received at his court, made a sudden attack and seized the fort of Pertous.
However, these were minor reverses and Cilician power was at its apogee during the reign of Leon II. His kingdom extended from Isauria to the Amanus. He had become master of Lampron by seizing and imprisoning Hetoum, whom later he freed and sent as his ambassador to the pope and to the emperor (27). A skilled diplomat and wise politician, Leon established useful alliances with many of the contemporary rulers. Through his second marriage he became the son-in-law of Aimery of Lusignan, king of Cyprus and Jerusalem; his daughter by his first marriage, Rita ("Stephanie"), was wedded to John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem; his niece Philippa married Theodore I Lascaris, emperor of Nicaea. In spite of the difficulties caused by the wars of the succession to Antioch and by the religious problems, Leon maintained, on the whole, his good relations with the papacy. He gained the friendship and support of the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights by granting considerable territories to them. To the Hospitallers, already established in Cilicia in 1149, he gave Seleucia, Norpert (Castellum Novum), and Camardias, thus constituting a march on the western borders of Cilicia and thereby protecting the country from the Selchukids (28). He also ceded castles in the Giguer and along the Antiochene frontier. The Teutonic Knights received Amoudain and neighboring castles (29). The master of the order may even have resided in Cilicia for a while; Wilbrand of Oldenburg, who describes in great detail the ceremonies of the feast of the Epiphany held at Sis in 1211, saw him riding next to the king (30).
Page opens in a separate window.
Return to First Page of Article