Armenians in the Crusading movement

Exposed to depredations by their Turkoman neighbours, the Armenians of the Middle East tended to cooperate with western European crusaders from the beginning of the crusading movement in the late eleventh century.

The Armenians were first mentioned by the Greek geographer Hecataeus of Miletus in c. 550 BC., at which time they inhabited the wider region of the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. From the first century BC this area was known as Greater Armenia, and the Armenian highlands subsequently became a contested frontier between the Roman Empire and successive Persian powers.^[1] According to tradition, the Armenians' conversion to Christianity is attributed to Gregory the Illuminator, a Parthian aristocrat who persuaded King Tiridates III, c. 300 AD, to proclaim Christianity the state religion.^[1][2] The Armenian Church was initially subject to the episcopal see of Caesarea within the Roman Empire (now Kayseri, Turkey), but in 374 it repudiated the authority of the Caesarean metropolitans. By the end of the fourth century it had come under the leadership of its own supreme prelates, styled catholicoi.^[1][3] By at least the fifth century, Armenian pilgrims were regularly visiting Jerusalem, leaving inscriptions concentrated in particular around the Church of St James, as well as at other holy sites.^[4]

The theological divergence between mainstream imperial Christianity and the Armenian Church crystallised after the Council of Chalcedon (451), which, in the absence of Armenian representatives, affirmed that Christ existed as one person in two natures. The Armenian Church, by contrast, adhered to the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria on the "one incarnate nature of the Word". Unlike the anti-Chalcedonian Syriac (Jacobite) Church, the Armenians did not deny Christ's humanity and therefore declined communion with them; nevertheless, their rejection of Chalcedonian doctrine rendered them heretical in the eyes of imperial Christianity.^[1][5]

After 428, Armenia lost its independence and was partitioned between the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire and Sassanid Persia, while remaining largely administered by the native aristocracy, notably the Bagratids. By 661, much of the country was brought under the control of the expanding Islamic Caliphate.^[6] Islamic expansion was driven in large part by the concept of jihad, understood a divinely sanctioned struggle aimed at the propagation of belief in God and the establishment of a morally ordered society. The successors of Muhammad, as leaders of the Muslim community, initially bore the title amīr al-muʾminīn ("Commander of the Believers"), before later adopting that of caliph, a term also attested in the Quran, Islam's most sacred text.^[7]

Following 693, Armenia came under the direct rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, administered by Muhammad ibn Marwan, whose governorship was marked by the suppression of the Armenian clergy and nobility. Armenian cooperation with the caliphal authorities nevertheless became a strategic necessity in the face of incursions from north of the Caliphate, leading to the restoration of Armenian autonomy under the Bagratid house in 732. After the fall of the Umayyads, the Abbasid Caliphate sought to incorporate Armenia more fully into its imperial structure, though Armenian resistance persisted. During the reign of Basil I, the Byzantine Empire pursued an assertive policy against the Abbasids, compelling Caliph al-Mu'tamid to consent to the coronation of the Bagratid prince Ashot I as king in 885. In the early eleventh century, Bagratid Armenia became a vassal state of the Byzantine Empire, and its last king, Gagik II, was compelled to abdicate in return for estates in Byzantine Cappadocia.^[8]

Armenian migration into the Byzantine Empire began in the sixth century, and Armenian cavalrymen were regularly recruited into the imperial army, some rising to prominence, notably the general Narses and the emperor Leo V. Alongside settlement in Cappadocia, imperial authorities relocated large Armenian populations to Byzantine Cilicia, where they were governed by Armenian nobles such as Oshin of Lampron.^[9] From the mid-eleventh century, Greater Armenia was repeatedly subjected to Turkoman raids.^[10] These nomadic groups, displaced from Central Asia by renewed climatic cooling, acknowledged the tenuous overlordship of the Seljuk clan. The incursions of the 1060s were especially destructive, marked by widespread massacres and the devastation of cities, monasteries, and churches.^[11] These incursions triggered fresh Armenian migrations southwards into Syria and Cilicia.^[12]

On 26 August 1071, the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan defeated the Byzantine imperial army at the Battle of Manzikert. Although he soon redirected his attention towards the Levant, numerous Turkoman warriors instead turned against Byzantine territories in Anatolia, Syria, and Cilicia.^[13] There they began to found new polities, including the Sultanate of Rum, ruled by a secessionist Seljuk prince, and the realm of the Danishmendids.^[14] In the borderlands, Christian communities sought protection from warlords and mercenaries. Among them, the Armenian Philaretos, a former Byzantine general, rose to prominence, securing the allegiance of other Armenian lords as well as western mercenaries; he died in 1086 or 1087. The historian of religion, Christopher MacEvitt says that Philaretos's rule "not only foreshadowed the success of the crusaders but also facilitated it": the natives adopted a "frontier mentality" in which political and military authority were vested in warlords with little claim to legitimacy beyond coercive force.^[15] Following his death, a power vacuum emerged in which smaller polities took shape: the Chalcedonian Christian Thoros ruled in the city of Edessa, his son-in-law, the Armenian Gabriel, in Melitene, while the fortresses of Gargar, al-Bira, and Kesun were held by Armenian lords—Constantine, Albgharib, and Kogh Vasil respectively.^[16]

Contacts between Armenians and Western Europeans were minimal. Armenian scholars referred only sporadically to the peoples of the West, notwithstanding the presence of western ("Frankish") mercenaries in the Byzantine army.^[17] A letter from Gregory VII to the Armenian archbishop of Sivas suggests that papal correspondence with the Armenian Church was a novelty and that Gregory's knowledge of Armenian theology was limited.^[18] Gregory's pontificate represented the high point of what is conventionally termed the Gregorian Reform, a programme of ecclesiastical renewal associated with his name. Its proponents aimed to free the Church from lay control and to place Christendom under the supreme authority of the papacy. The program brought about conflicts between the papacy and both church leaders and secular rulers.^[19] The bishops of Rome, regarded as successors of Peter the Apostle, enjoyed particular honour, but their claim to universal supremacy was rejected by the senior eastern bishops, especially the Byzantine patriarch of Constantinople. In 1054, mutual excommunications formalised a schism between the papacy and the eastern patriarchates, though they did not in themselves terminate communion between the Western (Catholic) and Eastern (Orthodox) branches of Chalcedonian Christianity.^[20]

In 1074 Pope Gregory VII mentioned both the Byzantines and the Armenians in a letter to Emperor Henry IV, outlining his intention to lead a military expedition for the protection of eastern Christians. The historian Jacob G. Ghazarian suggests, on the basis of primary sources, that the Armenian catholicos Gregory II may have been present in Rome at this time, which may explain Gregory's reference to the Armenians.^[21] Gregory's plan was fuelled by the Turkomans' advance after the Battle of Manzikert, but it proved abortive.^[22][23] Gregory's determination to end royal investiture in bishoprics and abbeys precipitated the Investiture Controversy, a major conflict with Emperor Henry IV. The papacy had already mobilised armed force against secular opponents and non-Christian powers by offering spiritual incentives, and the Controversy accelerated the development of the Catholic conception of just war. By c. 1095, the theologian and bishop Bonizo of Sutri, in his Liber de Vita Christiana, commended those who fought schismatics, heretics, and the excommunicate "for their salvation and the common good".^[24]

In March 1095, envoys of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos approached Pope Gregory VII's successor, Urban II, at the Council of Piacenza, requesting papal assistance in recruiting forces against their "pagan" enemies. After the council, Urban toured France, holding assemblies and preaching publicly at major centres such as Avignon, Lyons, and Cluny, and negotiating with local prelates and aristocrats.^[25] On 27 November 1095, at the Council of Clermont, he proclaimed a military expedition in aid of the eastern Christians and promised spiritual rewards to its participants.^[26] Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy was the first to "take the cross", sewing a cloth cross onto his garment as a visible sign of commitment, thereby establishing a precedent for the crusading vow.^[27]

Urban set 15 August 1096 as the official date of departure, but from March that year several crusading groups—some numbering over 10,000 people of diverse backgrounds—set out in advance. Many of these bands were destroyed for their depredations while still in Europe, and those who reached Anatolia were annihilated by Kilij Arslan I, sultan of Rūm, at Civetot in October.^[28] The main crusading armies departed after the harvest, in August 1096, under the leadership of major aristocrats such as Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, and Bohemond of Taranto. Most reached Constantinople before the end of 1096, where Emperor Alexios secured from all the leaders except Raymond an oath to restore to Byzantium territories taken by the Turkomans. The siege of Nicaea, then the capital of Rūm, was the first major joint operation of the crusaders and the Byzantines and ended with the city's surrender to Alexios's representatives on 19 June 1097.^[29]

The first recorded contact between the crusaders and Armenians occurred during Nicaea's siege when Godfrey's younger brother Baldwin of Boulogne befriended with Kogh Vasil's brother Bagrat, a former Byzantine official. During the crusaders march towards Antioch across Anatolia, the local Armenians willingly cooperated with the crusaders.^[30] After inflicting a major defeat on the Turkomans at the Battle of Dorylaeum, the main crusading army chose a route of over 600 kilometres via Caesarea towards Antioch rather than the shorter, c. 400-kilometre march through Cilicia. The historian John France argues that this was a deliberate choice, which he terms the "Armenian strategy", inspired by Alexios and intended to exploit the hostility of Armenian warlords towards their Turkoman neighbours.^[31][32]