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172 Hakalmaz Turaç

Roman emperor, on the other hand tried not to provoke Saladin, aim-
ing to convince him that the Armenians had not sided with the em-
peror but were nonetheless unable to dissuade Frederick’s crusading
army from passing through Cilicia. After Frederick’s death, another
letter was dispatched stating that the German army had been weak-
ened by the emperor’s premature death .
83
Despite this somewhat two-faced policy, Prince Leo II was keen that
his principality should be raised to a kingdom by an emperor and, at
the time, only one was commonly believed to have the capacity to do
this, namely the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, Frederick Barba-
rossa’s son. In an attempt to acquire legitimacy for his authority, Leo
sent envoys to Henry VI as well as to Pope Celestine III, just as Aimery
had done in the case of Cyprus. While negotiating with the western
powers, a delegation led by Nerses of Lampron was also sent to Alexios
III to discuss ecclesiastical issues and the emperor’s intention, precip-
itated by the fact that the negotiations with Henry were now advanced,
to grant Leo a crown. Although Alexios also offered a crown to Leo,
embellished with gold and precious stones, and urged him not to don
a Latin crown but his, since Leo’s lands were closer to his than to
Rome, Alexios III’s offer achieved nothing. Indeed, it can have had very
little significance for Leo’s plans, as he could only hope to be treated
as an equal of the other Latin princes if he were crowned by the Holy
Roman Emperor, their notional superior, not if he were crowned by a
Byzantine emperor whose power they did not recognise . Neverthe-
84
less, Leo received the Byzantine ambassadors kindly and presented
lavish gifts in return, probably hoping not to offend Alexios and to se-
cure room for further discussion if his negotiations with Henry failed.
However, political efforts like this by the Byzantine emperors were
not peculiar to the Armenian rulers. Imperial hopes to recover its for-
mer lands, or at least to spread its sphere of political and religious
influence over those areas once again, had become a fundamental part

83 Ibidem, especially fn. 12. Mutafian notes Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani and Baha al-Din
Ibn Shaddad as the two main sources. See Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, Conquête de la Syrie
et de la Palestine par Saladin, H. Masse [trans.], Paul Geuthner, Paris, 1972, pp. 193,
229-30; Baha al-Din Ibn Shaddad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin, D. S. Rich-
ards [trans.], Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001, pp. 114-17.
84 Rhc Arm., vol. 1, p. 633; For Leo sending and receiving envoys, Rhc Arm., vol. 2,
p. 9-10; B. Hamilton, The Armenian Church and the Papacy cit., p. 70; P. Cowe, The
Armenians in the Era of the Crusades cit., p. 415; For a discussion about the Byzantine
attempt, see K.M. Setton, R.L. Wolff, H. Hazard, (eds.), The Later Crusades: 1189-1311
cit., pp. 648-9, fn. 24. For the Armenians and the Byzantine Empire see also P. Halfter,
L’Église Arménienne entre la Papauté et les Byzantins aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles in I. Auge
and G. Dédéyan, (eds.), L’Église Arménienne entre Grecs et Latins fin XIe-milieu XVe siè-
cle, Geuthner, Paris, 2009.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XIX - Aprile 2022
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