Constantine IV (Armenia)

Constantine's coat of arms, a combination of the coats of arms of the Lusignans, Jerusalem, and Lesser Armenia

Constantine IV ( Armenian Կոստանդին Բ, translit. Gosdantin , * around 1300; † April 17, 1344 , actually Guy de Lusignan, Guido von Lusignan) was the first elected Latin king of Lesser Armenia from the Lusignan dynasty . He ruled from 1342 until his death in 1344.

Guido von Lusignan was the third son of Princess Isabella of Armenia (Zabel), daughter of Leon III. and Amalrich of Tire , a son of Hugo III. , King of Cyprus , and Isabella of Ibelin. He was governor of Serres from 1328 to 1341.

When his cousin Leon V , the last Hethumid monarch of Lesser Armenia, was murdered by the Armenian barons in 1341, they offered the crown to his younger brother Johann von Lusignan, who urged Guido to accept it. Guido hesitated because his mother and two of his brothers had been murdered by the Armenian regent of Lesser Armenia Oshin of Korykos - but eventually he accepted and took the name Constantine. In order to get the support of the papacy against the Mamluks threatening his country , he convened a council in Sis .

As a Latin Catholic , however, he was extremely unpopular and was killed by the barons on April 17, 1344 during an uprising. His successor was a distant cousin, Constantine V.

Constantine IV was married twice. For the first time he married in Constantinople in 1318 a cousin († around 1330 without descendants) of the future emperor John VI. Kantakuzenos and for the second time in 1330 or 1332 Theodora Syrgiannaina, († 1347/1349) a daughter of the cupbearer Syrgiannes Palaiologos Philanthropenos. With her he had two children, one of them, Isabelle (or Zampea = Maria) de Lusignan (1382-1387), mistress of Aradippou, married after February 26, 1349 Manuel Kantakuzenos , the despot of Morea .

literature

• Stéphane Binon: Guy d 'Arménie et Guy de Chypre. Isabelle de Lusignan à la cour de Mistra. in: Annuaire de l 'Institut de Philologie et d' histoire Orientales et slaves, 5, 1937, 125–142.
• Prosopographisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit I / 1-8 Add., No. 92566, 1988, 168f.
• Henriette Kühl: Leon V. of Lesser Armenia. A life between Orient and Occident under the sign of the crusade movement at the end of the 14th century. Lang, Peter, Frankfurt 2000 ISBN 3631371802 .
• Wilhelm Baum :  Konstantin II. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 28, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-413-7 , Sp. 927-930.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Zabel was also a sister of King Hethum II (ruled 1289–1293, 1294–1297, 1299–1307)

predecessor	Office	successor
Leon V.	King of Lesser Armenia 1342–1344	Constantine V.