made peace again, and an alliance against the Emperor. Theodore (Thoros, 1141-1168) spread his barony at the expense of his neighbours. It was time to make it a kingdom. This was done by Leo II, the Great (1185-1219). When Frederick Red-beard (1152-1190) came a-crusading (1189), Baron Leo got him to promise that he, as Emperor, would make Leo a king. Frederick was drowned in Cilicia (1190), but his son Henry VI (1190-1197) kept his father's promise, acknowledged Leo as King of Armenia, and promised his protection. The Armenians of Cilicia were already Uniate, so Pope Celestine III (1191-1198) sent the new king a crown, and Cardinal Conrad of Wittelsbach, Archbishop of Mainz, crowned him with it in the Church of the Holy Wisdom at Tarsus, on the Epiphany, 1199. The (Uniate) Armenian Katholikos of Sis (p. 416), Gregory Abirad, anointed the king. When the Roman Emperor at Constantinople (Alexios III, 1195-1203) heard of these relations between Armenia and the Crusaders, he was naturally alarmed, and he sent another crown with an invitation that Leo II should rather join the Orthodox. Leo appears to have kept this crown too. As king he waged wars with varying success, died in 1219, and was buried at Sis. He is, after Dikran I, the great political hero of Armenia.[1] The line of kings of the house of Rupen lasted till 1342. Meanwhile, the old native land, Greater Armenia, was ravaged by Jenghiz Khan and his Mongols (1220). Sultan Baibars of Egypt (p. 245) came on the scenes in Syria and Asia Minor and defeated the Armenians in 1266. Since the fall of the last Latin possessions in Syria ('Akka in 1291), the kingdom of Cilician Armenia, their ally and dependent, decayed, oppressed by enemies on every side. In 1342 the crown came legitimately to Guy de Lusignan,[2] first
- ↑ We have noted the Latinization of his kingdom. He appears like a Frank king. He made himself a coat of arms. Hitherto Armenians had borne on their standards an eagle, a dove, or a dragon. He made a lion couchant his royal arms (presumably or in a field gules; see Tournebize: op. cit. 186), which is at any rate one of the coats which has most claim to be the national arms of Armenia. The question of the Armenian arms is naturally now in abeyance. The Armenians have no time for heraldry, and the Turk does not encourage national arms among his subject races, certainly not among Armenians.
- ↑ Guy was son of Amaury de Lusignan and Zabel (Isabelle), aunt of Leo IV.
