Gagik II - Final Years

Final Years

Gagik received as compensation for his Kingdom the district of Lycandus in Asia Minor and the town of Bizou, in the vicinity of Caesarea. He was also granted the use of a palace on the Bosphorus in Constantinople and a pension from the Imperial treasury. Several seals testify Kakikios Aniotes (Gagik of Ani) as duke of the thema of Charsianon. Michael Iasites, duke of Iberia was entrusted with the government of Ani. Sarkis went in the service of Bagrat IV of Georgia. The Bishop of Caesarea, named Marcus, lost no occasion to express his scorn towards Gagik whom he considered a heretic. After several insults by Marcus directed against him, Gagik eventually murdered the Bishop, an act that made Gagik even more unpopular among the locals. As the story goes, it is said the Bishop had a dog named Armenen, so as to scorn the Armenians. One day, Gagik visited the Bishop, had the dog put in a canvas bag and beat with sticks. He then had the Bishop seized and placed in the same bag with the dog, now maddened by pain. The bishop died in pain from the wounds inflicted by his own dog. Later, Gagik was killed by the Byzantine governors (three brothers) of Kyzistra who had his body mutilated and hanged from the fort for others to see. His body was later buried outside the fort but was later said to have been secretly conveyed by an Armenian from Ani named Banik to a convent he had built in a city called Piza.

Shortly after Gagik was killed, his youngest son David was poisoned by his father-in-law for suspected treachery. Gagik's eldest son Johannes had married the daughter of the governor of Ani and still lived there, but was in Georgia when it was captured. Johannes had a son Ashot who was poisoned and his body brought to Piza. Johannes did not survive his son by long at which time the posterity of the male Bagratian line of kings of Armenia was extinct. During the reign of Thoros I of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia the death of king Gagik II was avenged by the Armenian forces who took the fortress of Kyzistra and executed the three Byzantines who killed the last Armenian King of Ani.