Armenian Christianity after the Kingdom (Sis to Etchmiadzin)

The Armenian kingdom of Cilicia on the Mediterranean spent the fourteenth century under pressure from Mamluk Egypt and from Latin Europe at the same time: repeated attempts to seal a union with Rome, pressed by kings who needed western help, were resisted by clergy and people who saw the church's independence at stake. The kingdom fell in 1375 when the Mamluks took Sis, and its last king died in exile in Paris in 1393. The catholicosate stayed at Sis for two more generations, increasingly cut off from the great majority of Armenians living far to the east under other rulers, until in 1441 a national council meeting at Vagharshapat elected a catholicos at Etchmiadzin — the church's original see, left behind nearly a thousand years earlier — and the centre of Armenian church life moved home. Sis did not surrender its own succession, so the church has had two catholicosates ever since. Much of what we hear from Armenians of this period comes from colophons. The notes scribes wrote at the ends of the manuscripts they copied, recording who they were and what was happening around them.