Costandin iv

Before accession

Constantine was the son of Baldwin, Lord Negir, the nephew of Tsar Getum I and was a distant cousin to his predecessor, Constantine III. After the assassination of Constantine III in 1344, he tried to destroy all rivals claiming the throne. He ordered the nephews of Constantine III, Bemon and Levon to be killed, but the latter managed to escape by escaping to Cyprus . After the elimination of rivals, Constantine accepted the reign as Constantine IV.

Reign

The period of the reign of Constantine IV fell on difficult times for Cilicia. The country's security was threatened by neighboring Muslim states.

In 1346, Constantine, combining the forces of the Armenian princes, expelled the invading troops of the Mamluks and Turkmens from the country and liberated the strategically important Kapan fortress. In the summer of 1347, he defeated the troops of the Egyptian Sultanate who attacked Cilicia , and in the autumn of that year, with the support of the Cypriot fleet, he liberated the port city of Ayas . Using his successes at the front, Kostandin tried to establish peace with the Egyptians. However, the Sultan of Egypt rejected the offer of Kostandin and, with the support of the Aleppo Emir and the Koni Sultanate , resumed the war. During the war, the Mamluks captured the port of Ayas, the Koni Turkmens - the fortress of Paperon, and the Aleppo emir - the eastern regions of Cilicia. In 1348–1349, taking advantage of the feuds over the throne in Egypt, Kostandin, in alliance with the knights of the Order of the Hospitallers, defeating the forces of the emir of Aleppo , reached the shores of the Gulf of Alexandretta .

Disappointed in the false promises of help from the papacy and Western countries, in 1361, on behalf of Konstantin IV and Catholicos Mesrop I Artasezi, the VIII Sissy Cathedral was convened. The Catholicos rejected the union with the Roman Church and ordered that all the innovations that were the result of the pro-Atlantic policy of the Cilician kings be removed from the rites of the Armenian Church ^[1] .

Constantine IV died his death in 1362, his cousin, Kostandin V , became his successor.

Constantine was married to Mary, daughter of Prince Korikos Oshin and Jeanne of Anjou. From his marriage with Mary, he had two sons Oshin (d. 1356) and Levon (1338-1357), both died in their youth ^[2] .

Kostandin IV is sometimes numbered as III or V. The rulers of Cilicia officially adopted the title “king” after the coronation of Prince Levon II Rubinyan in 1198 . If we number the rulers of Cilicia starting from Levon II (after the accession of Levon I), then Kostandin will no longer be IV, but III.

Also, when Kostandin is numbered (according to the “ruler” criterion), some authors number it as the Vth. In 1129, after the death of the ruler of Cilicia, Toros I, the throne was inherited by his son Kostandin II who, after several months of reign, died as a result of palace intrigues ^[3] . However, the existence of Kostandin, the son of Toros, is disputed by some other authors (for example, Yakov Ghazaryan, Vahan Kurkdzhyan) ^{[4] [5]} .

• Boase, TSR The Cilician Kingdom of Armenia. - Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1978. - ISBN 0-7073-0145-9 .
• Rüdt-Collenberg, WH The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans: the Structure of the Armeno-Cilician Dynasties. - Paris: Imprimerie A. Pignie, 1963.

• History of Cilicia (in Armenian)
• The Lusignan family in this article, Constantine is numbered as the Vth.