How the Armenians ruled Byzantium, influenced Kiev and why they moved to the Slavic lands

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There is a joke about Byzantium: she considered herself Romans, spoke Greek, and Armenians ruled. Every joke has its own core of truth. The Armenians became the second ethnos, after the Greeks, determining the culture and history of Byzantium, and, touching upon Byzantine history, it is almost impossible not to touch on the Armenian one.

Armenian nobility of Byzantium

In Soviet times, Italian comedies were popular, with which the public in the USSR began to get acquainted in the fifties. For example, you can remember such as "The Gold of Naples", "Law is law" and others with the participation of the comedian Toto. One can only imagine the surprise of Italians when one day they read the news in the newspapers: a famous comedian is suing a German aristocrat for which of them is the real heir to the Byzantine throne!

The full official name of Toto, as it turned out, is His Royal Highness Antonio Flavio Fokas Not tormented De Curtis Gagliardi, Duke of Byzantine Comnenus. The Komnenos are a family of Thracian origin, which, however, later mixed with Greek and Armenian families, so that the process was heatedly discussed by the European Armenian dynasty. Once they remembered at once that many noble Byzantine families found refuge several centuries ago in Italy, and among them there were … more Armenian. Maybe their offspring are still alive?

So, the Gavras dynasty is considered Armenian - there were no emperors among them, but there were enough duc commanders. The Macedonian dynasty, to which the emperors Basil I, Leo VI, Alexander III, Constantines VII and VIII, Roman II and Basil II belonged. Moreover, the daughter of the penultimate and the sister of the latter was Princess Anna of Kiev, the wife of Vladimir the Baptist, who greatly influenced his policy. Men of the Macedonian dynasty constantly took wives from noble Armenian families, so that the connection with the ethnic group remained.

Famous Armenian families of Byzantium included families with such intriguing surnames as Angels and Dolphins (at least according to some researchers). The angels were related to the Comnenes and ruled for some time after the latter were overthrown. There is no doubt that the Armenian origin of the Lakapin imperial dynasty, connected by a dynastic alliance with the Macedonian, of the emperor Leo V from the Artsruni clan, the family of politicians and commanders of Kurkuasa, Crinita and Mosile. And even many emperors, generals and politicians who were Greek by culture and self-determination had an Armenian mother.

Where did the Armenians come from in Byzantium

The Armenian lands, fertile and full of master craftsmen, were a tasty morsel for the two great powers of the East - the Roman Empire (of which the future Byzantium was originally part, which, in fact, was called not Byzantium, but the Eastern Roman Empire) and Persia. Wars constantly took place on the Armenian land; Armenian princes were conquered, bribed, lured into service, and some of them were generally indifferent to the question of who exactly to pay tribute to, not believing that they had enough strength to completely free themselves from the power of one or another major power.

In 395, the eastern part of the Roman Empire became virtually independent. It is her historians who now call Byzantium. At that time, it included the western part of Armenia, but the empire's ambitions also included the annexation of the eastern one. If initially it was just about claims to a profitable piece of land, then over time, when both Byzantium and the Armenians became Christians, Armenians began to be considered as the most negotiable allies. So, step by step, Eastern Armenia was annexed to Western Armenia, giving so many rights as an encouragement to the new united Armenia that it actually lived as a vassal of Byzantium, and not a part of it. The Armenian Emperor Heraclius, of course, gave her so many rights.

The aristocrats who entered the Byzantine service (and many ambitious Armenians were looking for luck) were sent to the western lands of Byzantium, where many rebellious Slavs lived, often professing paganism. With the aristocrats came their Christian Armenian troops, servants, skilled artisans and the families of all the men belonging to these three categories. Thus, the unruly Slavic (and not only) lands were sown by the Christian population loyal to the empire, which, moreover, was immediately taken to boost the region's economy.

The plan didn't always work out the way it should. So, it is known that one of the uprisings of the Bulgarians was led by the commander of Armenian origin Le Havre, who was already born in Bulgaria. However, in general, the Armenian commanders of the Slavic lands did not think about independence, like the princes remaining in Armenia, as about the Byzantine throne. So, for example, it was not for nothing that the Armenian Basil the Macedonian bore such a nickname - he was born in Macedonia, as part of Thrace was called at that time. It was not in vain that their families put so much effort on the interests of the empire - this gave them the right to define these interests in their eyes. Many Armenian emperors received power through a coup, but this was, in general, usually for Byzantium, and in the same way the Greeks ascended to its throne.

Armenian noble families supplied Byzantium not only with politicians, emperors and generals. Many prominent clergymen of Byzantium came from Armenian families: each of them considered it their duty from time to time to designate one of their sons for a spiritual career. First, that he pray for his family. Secondly … A lot of power was concentrated in the hands of spiritual leaders in Byzantium. A relative like that never hurts.

How Byzantium lost Armenia, and both were very sorry

In the seventh century, the Arabs, who before almost no one took into account, converted to Islam, united and conquered land after land. By 661, they had established their rule over most of the Transcaucasus. The Arabs united all local territories under the name of the people who were perceived as the most influential in the region - "al-Arminiya". Despite the name, al-Arminiya included, in addition to the Armenians, the lands of Georgians and Azerbaijanis.

Many Armenians began to make a career in the Caliphate, but there were also many who were dissatisfied with the domination of the Gentiles. The Armenian nobility raised uprisings - and this ended in mass executions of the aristocrats of Armenia. Not all Armenian lands, however, were lost by Byzantium due to the Arabs. Finally, the empire lost them along with the invasion of the Seljuk Turks. There were still many Armenians in Byzantium, especially in Cilicia, but the break with Armenia greatly weakened the empire and influenced the approach of its end.

The fall of the empire was perceived by the Armenians as the fall of the Christian world. Many Armenians did not perceive the Christians of the West as co-religionists, for them they were barbarians who had barely learned to pronounce the word "Christ". Two major poets of the 15th century, Abraham Ankirsky and Arakel Bagheshsky, wrote poems on the death of Byzantium, but ordinary townspeople refused to believe that the world known to them ended there. It was rumored that Constantine fled to Europe in order to return with help, and when he returned, he would certainly free the Armenians from Muslim rule. Their hopes were not destined to come true. Armenian history entered a new era for a long time.

The history of Byzantium was long, complex and full of peculiar curiosities: 10 emperors of Byzantium who gave up their lives ingeniously, but not on their own.