Baronial Scholars of Outremer

 It is still common for people today to believe (and tell others) that most noblemen and knights in “the Middle Ages” were illiterate. Even authors of otherwise quite credible historical fiction make this assumption about their knightly and even noble characters. In reality, the noblemen of Outremer were not only literate, many of them spoke multiple languages -- including a command of written Arabic, Latin and Greek as well as the vernacular French, some were themselves composers of lyrics and poetry, and many more were highly sophisticated scholars and jurists.

 

Kenneth Setton notes in Volume IV of his comprehensive "A History of the Crusades," for example, that a number of noblemen from Outremer distinguished themselves as translators of Arabic into French. He names specifically Renard de Sagette of Sidon, Baldwin d'Ibelin, Yves le Breton, and Stephen of Antioch. The latter, for example, translated the medical texts of the Arab physician Ali ibn Abbas. (See Setton, Kenneth M. ed, A History of the Crusades, Volume 4: The Art and Architecture of the Crusader States, University of Wisconsin Press, 1977, p. 21.)

The court-system in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, meanwhile, required both jurors and counselors at every trial and these men were all drawn from the knightly class. They all had to be versed in the law and capable of entering and refuting pleas, of debating, deliberating and rendering judgement based on a legal opinion.  Indeed, every knight in the realm had the right to sit in the High Court and deliberate on such existential issues as the selection of regents, taxes and treaties. They were expected to know the law, and that meant reading about it.

Even more extraordinary, in the mid-13^th century, an entire school of legal scholars evolved that wrote no less than seven books on legal issues and six other scholarly works. These men, none of whom were in Holy Orders and all of whom held fiefs, fought with sword and lance on horseback, and commanded troops, wrote histories, books of poems, philosophical works and legal discourses. Riley-Smith goes so far as to write: “Perhaps the greatest monument to the western settlers in Palestine, finer even than the cathedrals and castles still dominating the landscape, is the law-book of John of Jaffa, which…is one of the great works of thirteenth-century thought.” (The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1174 – 1277, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Macmillan Press, 1973, p. 230.) 

These books were not, however, merely philosophical or scholarly. They were also meant a practical handbooks for the ordinary knight and burgher involved in litigation, for his counselors and jurors. Thus, in addition to discussing the theories and issues, these books provided practical advice on the procedures for filing cases, how to protect witnesses, how to answer an opponent and test his evidence, the importance of using the right words ― even how to use the law to one’s advantage!

Moving from the abstract to the specific, let me introduce you to some of the most prominent among them:

 

Royal Wisdom:

Arguably the first of the great jurists of Jerusalem was none other than Aimery de Lusignan, the elder brother of the incompetent Guy de Lusignan (who usurped a crown only to lose the kingdom in less than a year). Aimery was a very different man than Guy, notably popular with the same barons who detested his brother. He had been in the Holy Land since about 1175. He was named Constable of the Kingdom by Baldwin IV in 1182. He fought and was taken captive at Hattin. Released in 1188, he joined the siege of Acre in 1189 and fought throughout the Third Crusade. In 1193, he joined his brother on Cyprus, and after Guy’s death he succeeded him as lord. He negotiated with the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor to make Cyprus a Kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire, and in 1196 was granted the title of King of Cyprus. In late 1197, after the death of Henri de Champagne, he was selected by the High Court of Jerusalem as the fourth husband if Isabella of Jerusalem and in January 1198, he was crowned in Acre.

Between 1198 and his death in 1205, King Aimery either wrote (or commissioned the writing) of a book intended to capture all known laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been lost when Jerusalem fell to Saladin in 1187. It is questionable whether the laws of Jerusalem had really been neatly written down, sealed and stored in the vaults of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but this was what contemporaries claimed. Certainly, when Aimery set out to collect and transcribe the laws of his kingdom, he was working from oral records based on a consensus of what people remembered about the laws and customs of the Kingdom of Jerusalem during its first century of existence. Throughout the twelfth century, those laws had been evolving largely through practical necessity, but from this point onwards there was a clear point of reference: Aimery de Lusignans “Livre au roi” ― the Book of the King.

The “three wisest men this side of the sea”

After Aimery (who is revered more for compiling than analyzing or interpreting the law), came three men who in subsequent generations were revered as exceptionally wise. These were:

·      Ralph of Tiberias – the Socrates of the Barons. Ralph was a son the Prince of Galilee, a step-son of Raymond of Tripoli. He had fought at Hattin but escaped with Tripoli rather than falling into Saracen captivity. He participated in the siege of Acre, and in 1194 was named Seneschal of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a position he held for the next thirty years. Like the real Socrates, he passed on his wisdom in oral form to the next generation of jurists rather than writing himself, but by the mid-thirteenth century he was viewed by his successors as “the finest jurist there had ever been in the kingdom.” (Riley-Smith, p. 157.)

·    John d’Ibelin, Lord of Beirut ― “The Old Lord of Beirut.” John was the eldest son of Balian d’Ibelin. He had been no more than eight years old when the Kingdom had been lost at Hattin, including his home and inheritance at Ibelin. He spent the next five years in considerable uncertainty in Tyre, while his father and the other surviving lords fought to regain the Kingdom. In 1192, his father was granted the small lordship of Caymont, but the Ibelins never seemed to identify with it. John was appointed Constable of Jerusalem in or about 1198 by Aimery de Lusignan, but he traded the office for the newly conquered lordship of Beirut. Here he built a magnificent palace much admired by visitors. While Beirut was his principle base of power, he also held extensive fiefs (unnamed) on Cyprus, also from Aimery de Lusignan. John of Beirut was the leader of the baronial revolt against the Holy Roman Emperor and his lieutenants, which was based strictly (at least initially) on a point of law, i.e that the King of Jerusalem did not have the right to “lay hand on vassal or his property without a judgement of the High Court.” According to Riley-Smith, John of Beirut enjoyed such prestige in later years that his opinions effectively decided cases. (Riley-Smith, p. 123).

·   Balian of Sidon. Balian was the son of Reginald (also Reynald/Renaud) of Sidon, an important baron in the later half of the twelfth century, and his wife Helvis d’Ibelin, Balian d’Ibelin’s eldest daughter. Reginald had escaped Hattin and for a period defied Saladin at his castle Belfort, but he was eventually forced to surrender Belfort after being seized and tortured by Saladin. Allegedly, as an act of remorse, Saladin restored a portion of his barony to him, and King Aimery restored the rest after it had been recaptured in 1197, which is interesting as Sidon had been a staunch opponent of Guy de Lusignan.

The Writers of Legal Wisdom

·       Philip of Novara. His origins are obscure and he is used as an example of how a man could make a fortune through legal scholarship and practice. Eventually he held a fief on Cyprus from the Ibelins, but his fame rests on his literary works. He wrote a history of the war between the barons and Friedrich the II, poetry, philosophy and a legal tract on “how to plea.”

·   John of Jaffa: The Plato of the Barons. John was the son of Philip d’Ibelin, Balian d’Ibelin’s second son, who had been regent of Cyprus 1218 – 1227. He fought with his uncle against the Emperor, and was severely wounded at the Battle of Casal Imbert. In 1241 he acquired the old Ibelin fief of Ramla, and in 1247 was granted the County of Jaffa and Ascalon. He spent much of the rest of his life trying to defend that exposed fief on the borderland. He took part in Louis IX’s crusade against Egypt. And he is the man described by Jean de Joinville in his account of the crusade as follows: “He arrived most nobly of all, for his galley came painted below the waterline and above with escutcheons of his arms ― or a cross paté gules. He had at least 300 oarsmen in his galley….As he approached it seemed as though his galley flew as the oarsmen drove it forward….” (Joinville, Life of St. Louis, Chapt. 4) I think we can safely say he was not particularly humble, but maybe he had no need to be. He is also the author of the book sited above as the most impressive legacy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem!

·       Geoffrey le Tor. Like Philip, a man of knightly rather than baronial estate, his family held property in and near Acre in the twelfth century, and he later received a fief on Cyprus from King Henry I. He was also chamberlain in the Kingdom of Cyprus, and twice served as ambassador to the Holy See. He is credited with writing one of the seven surviving books on legal practices.

The Others

Lest you think this a paltry number of men to make my claim that most of the knightly class were well-educated and highly literate, the above are the leaders, but the following men are also recorded as being notable and respected jurists among an even wider class of jurors and counsellors including men of bourgeois origins: Renier and Arneis of Gibelet, Rostain Aimer, Reynald Forson, Paul of Nablus, Philip Lebel, William Raymond, Philip of Baisdoin, Raymond of Conches, Raymond and Nicholas of Antiaumes, and James Vidal.  Riley-Smith argues that “the practice of law was a route to fame and status in the Latin East.” (Riley-Smith, p. 124).

I hope I have laid to rest any remaining doubts about whether the barons and knights of Jerusalem were illiterate and uneducated brutes….

Recommended Reading: Riley Smith, Jonathan, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1174 – 1277, MacMillan, 1973.

Dr. Helena P. Schrader holds a PhD in History.

She is the Chief Editor of the Real Crusades History Blog.

She is an award-winning novelist and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. Her three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin won a total of 14 literary accolades. Her most recent release is a novel about the founding of the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus. You can find out more at: http://crusaderkingdoms.com

The Short Reign and Tragic End of Henry of Champagne

As the consort of Queen Isabella of Jerusalem from May 1192 until September 1197, Henry of Champagne was recognized by the High Court of Jerusalem and by all his contemporaries, domestic and foreign, as the rightful King of Jerusalem ― yet he preferred to call himself the Count of Champagne to the day he died. We can only speculate on whether that preference sprang from humility or a failure to identify with his adopted kingdom. Certainly, Henry of Champagne came to the throne unexpectedly and with little preparation, and had he lived longer, he might well have come to feel more comfortable in his role as King of Jerusalem. But his life was cut tragically short in an accident at the age of 31.

His reign started auspiciously. His first act as King of Jerusalem appears to have been to persuade his uncle the King of England to remain through the campaign season rather than depart for England at once. As a result, the crusading army was kept together long enough for a second (albeit equally unsuccessful) attempt on Jerusalem. 

Richard of England then set his mind to regaining the coast between Tyre and Tripoli, a clear means of strengthening Henri’s new kingdom, but Saladin’s sudden assault on Jaffa forestalled him. Richard immediately took a handful of knights in a few ships and set off for Jaffa to stiffen the defense long enough for relief to come by land.  

Henri meanwhile mustered the Army of Jerusalem and started down the coast to relieve Jaffa. When the army found its advance blocked just south of Caesarea by Saladin’s forces, however, Henri followed his uncle’s example and took ship with just a few men for Jaffa ― abandoning his army. It was not a particularly regal or strategic thing to do, but Henri appears to have gotten away with it. The relief of Jaffa was eventually successful, and his ignominious behavior at Caesarea was forgotten.

A month later, a truce had been signed with Saladin lasting three years and eight months or until April 1196. Richard Plantagenet was free to return to his besieged inheritance in the West, taking with him not only the bulk of the crusaders but the enormous shadow he had cast over Henri. Henri was at last in a position to show his merit as a king.

Unfortunately, Henry stumbled at once. Almost immediately after Richard’s departure, the Pisans started attacking shipping going to Acre. Whether this was state-piracy or instigated by the still-embittered deposed-King Guy de Lusignan is not clear. In any case, Henri blamed the Pisan Commune in Acre of abetting their countrymen, and when Aimery de Lusignan, the  older brother of Guy, defended the Pisans, Henri saw a Lusignan plot against him. He ordered Aimery de Lusignan arrested for treason. 

This only had the effect of angering Henri’s vassals and the Masters of both the Knights Templar and the Knights of St. John. Aimery de Lusignan, unlike his younger brother Guy, had been in the Holy land for nearly two decades by this point and he enjoyed the respect of his peers. He had been appointed Constable of the Kingdom by Baldwin IV, long before the catastrophe of Hattin.  Furthermore, and most important, the King of Jerusalem did not have the right to arrest the Constable ― only the High Court did.  Henri was forced to back down, but Aimery (not surprisingly) did not want to remain in a Kingdom ruled by a man who had arrested him unjustly. He surrendered the office of Constable and went to join his brother on Cyprus.

Henry’s next known act is considerably more to his credit. Sometime during the truce with Saladin ca. 1195, King Leo of Armenia seized Prince Bohemond of Antioch during a state visit in revenge for a similar incident years earlier. He demanded the surrender of Antioch to Armenia. Prince Bohemond ordered the surrender (to secure his own release), but the citizens of the city led by his own sons and the patriarch refused to follow his orders. Instead they sent to Henry of Champagne to negotiate the release of the Prince of Antioch on more reasonable terms. Henri appears to have carried out this diplomatic mission successfully, arranging that an Armenian princess marry Bohemond’s heir. 

On his return trip, Henri traveled via Cyprus, where Aimery de Lusignan had not only succeeded his brother as lord of the island but persuaded the Holy Roman Emperor to make him a King. Meeting now as equals, the two men were reconciled, and to symbolize their new friendship (and secure the future of their houses) they agreed that Aimery’s three sons should be betrothed to Henri’s three daughters by Isabella of Jerusalem. 

Henri then returned to his own Kingdom as the truce with the Saracens drew to a close.  Saladin had meanwhile died and his brother al-Adil had successfully eliminated Saladin’s eldest and second sons to seize power for himself in Damascus and Cairo. As the truce ended, he took a large force to attack Acre, evidently seeking to bolster his popularity and support by delivering a victory against the Franks. 

Champagne went out to meet al-Adil with a force composed primarily of German crusaders, who had since arrived in the Holy Land in anticipation of the end of the truce, and the knights and barons of Jerusalem. These proved insufficient to defeat the threat, and Champagne had to call up the commons as well, who then managed to thwart the invasion and send al-Adil back across the border. Little is really known about this engagement, but the Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre gives the entire credit for this victory to a local baron, Hugh of Tiberius, with Champagne simply taking advice. While implausible as written, the account may be indicative of a general feeling among the local barons that Champagne was not a terribly effective battle commander, certainly not comparable to his famous uncle Richard the Lionheart.

 

His death, however, may have contributed to this retroactive assessment of him. On September 10, 1197 Henry of Champagne accidentally fell from a window into a courtyard of the royal palace at Acre and broke his neck. There was no question of foul play. One version says he stepped backwards into the window and lost his balance. Another says he leaned out of the window and the railing gave way. Apparently his jester, a dwarf, either tried to stop him and also lost his balance, or flung himself after him in grief. Either way he allegedly landed on top of Champagne, ensuring his injury was fatal. 

Henry of Champagne left behind three young daughters, the eldest of which died young, and the second of which, Alice, became Queen of Cyprus in accordance with the agreement he had made with Aimery de Lusignan. 

He also left behind an ugly law-suit. Since he had never returned from the Holy Land, his brother Theobold laid claim to the County of Champagne and his sons after him, but Henri’s surviving daughters, Alice and Philippa, challenged their cousins claim. They argued that as the daughters of the elder son (Henry) they were the rightful heirs to Champagne. In an effort to negate Alice and Philippa’s (very valid) claim, Theobold’s son attempted to argue that Henry’s marriage to Isabella had been bigamous, thereby making his cousins Alice and Philippa illegitimate. The reasoning was that Isabella’s divorce from her first husband Humphrey de Toron had been bogus and so she was still married to him (since he was still alive) at the time of her marriage to Henry. This claim was spurious and never accepted by the courts, but it colored the chronicles (all written in France).  As a result, this court case has left lasting legacy of distorted historiography, which casts Isabella’s divorce from Toron is a lurid light and makes villains of all who supported it -- from Henry himself to Isabella's  mother, Maria Comnena, and her step-father Balian d'Ibelin.

Henry de Champagne is a significant character in “Envoy of Jerusalem,” where his relationship to Isabella is developed and examined.

Buy now!

Isabella, Queen of Jerusalem

Isabella of Jerusalem was the founder of two dynasties. Her daughters wore the crowns of Jerusalem and Cyprus and all subsequent monarchs of both houses were her direct descendants. She was the vital link between the proud first Kingdom of Jerusalem, established by the First Crusade, and the much diminished second Kingdom of Acre established on the rubble of the first Kingdom. Yet most historians and novelist dismiss her as a mere pawn. 

Her reign began with an abduction. 

In November 1190, Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem died of fever in the siege camp at Acre. She had been pre-deceased by her brother, King Baldwin IV, her son, King Baldwin V, and both her daughters. The only remaining direct descendant of her father, King Amalric, was her half-sister, Isabella, who now became the heir apparent to the throne of Jerusalem. 

Shortly after her sister’s death, in the middle of a November night, Isabella, Princess of Jerusalem, was dragged from the tent and bed she shared with her husband Humphrey de Toron, and taken into the custody of the leading prelates of the church present at the siege of Acre. Among these were the Papal Legate, the Archbishop of Pisa; Philip, the Bishop of Beauvais, and Baldwin, the Archbishop of Canterbury along with two other unnamed bishops. They informed her that an ecclesiastical inquiry was to be conducted on the validity of her marriage to Humphrey of Toron.

Now, Isabella had by this point in time been living under the same roof as Humphrey  de Toron for fourteen years. She had been married to him for eleven. Although she had no children and, it is questionable if the marriage had ever been consummated, she nevertheless viewed herself as legally married. All accounts agree that she initially objected to being taken from Humphrey and resisted the efforts to annul her marriage because she “loved” him. They also agree that within just a few days, she had changed her mind and consented to the annulment. 



Why? 

Clerics in the service of the English King and bitterly hostile to her second husband attribute her change of heart to the misogynous thesis that “a girl can easily be taught to do what is morally wrong” or the fact that “a woman’s opinion changes very easily.”[i] A more neutral chronicle attributes her change of heart to the influence (often described as brow-beating) of her mother. Either way, contemporary clerics depict Isabella as a mindless pawn of those more powerful, and modern historians and novelists have generally accepted this thesis uncritically ever since.



In doing so, they ignore a fundamental fact: in November 1190 the Kingdom of Jerusalem had been reduced to the single city of Tyre following the disastrous Battle of Hattin, and the desperate bid to re-capture the city of Acre had bogged down into a war of attrition with the besiegers themselves besieged by the army of Saladin. Jerusalem needed not just a legitimate queen, it needed a king capable of leading the fight for the recovery of the lost kingdom.

Isabella’s husband, Humphrey de Toron, was not that man. Contemporary chronicles describe him as “cowardly and effeminate”[iii] or “more like a woman than a man: he had a gentle manner and a stammer.”[iv] Thus regardless of Isabella’s impeccable claim to the throne of Jerusalem, the High Court (which consisted of the barons and bishops of the kingdom) was not prepared to recognize her as queen unless and until she set aside Humphrey de Toron and took another husband more suitable to the High Court.


The evidence that this was the key factor is provided by the arguments put into the mouth of her mother, the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem and daughter of the Imperial House of Constantinople, who is said to have reminded her daughter of: 

"the evil deed that [Humphrey] had done, for when the count of Tripoli and the other barons who were at Nablus wanted to crown him king and her queen, he had fled to Jerusalem and, begging forgiveness, had done homage to Queen Sibylla….So long as Isabella was his wife she could have neither honor nor her father’s kingdom. [Italics added.] Moreover…when she [Isabella] married she was still under age and for that reason the validity of her marriage could be challenged.[ii]

Significantly, the High Court had taken the same stance with regard to her elder sister, who had also been married to an unsuitable man when the death of her son made her the rightful queen.  Sibylla had agreed to divorce her detested husband Guy de Lusignan on the condition she be allowed to choose her next husband -- only to blithely announce that she chose her old husband as her “new” husband after she was crowned and anointed. This incident must have been very much in the minds of the barons when they faced a similar situation with her sister Isabella in 1190. They were determined not to repeat their mistake of four years earlier. Isabella had to be legally separated from Humphrey and married to a man they deemed suitable before the High Court would acknowledge her as queen. Once the situation was made clear to her, Isabella changed her testimony and once her marriage to Humphrey was dissolved, she married the man selected by the High Court, Conrad de Montferrat. (For more details on Isabella's highly controversial divorce see:http://defendingcrusaderkingdoms.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-abduction-of-isabella.html)


What this all says is that isabella preferred to wear the (at that point almost worthless) crown of Jerusalem over remaining married to the man she “loved.” So maybe she did not “love” Humphrey all that much? Or she was more ambitious than people give her credit for. Either way she made a choice.

Her second husband, Conrad de Montferrat was a man with a formidable reputation at arms. He had almost single-handedly saved Tyre from surrender to Saladin in July 1187 and defended it a second time in December that same year. Before that, however, he had charmed the court in Constantinople with his good-looks, manners and education. He was also roughly twice Isabella’s age at the time of their marriage. 

Isabella would have had no illusions about why Conrad was marrying her: for the throne of Jerusalem. As a royal princess that would neither have surprised nor offended her. Isabella and Conrad, one can argue, chose one another because together they offered the Kingdom of Jerusalem the best means of avoiding obliteration. The legitimacy of Isabella and the military prowess of Conrad gave the barons and people of Jerusalem a rallying point around which to build a come-back. Notably, she called on her barons to do homage to her immediately after her marriage to Montferrat; that is the act of a woman determined to establish her position and remind her vassals of it.

Unfortunately for both Isabella and Conrad, the King of England out of feudal loyalty or sheer petulant hostility to his rival the King of France (who was related to and backed Conrad), chose to uphold the claim of Sibylla’s widowed husband Guy de Lusignan to the throne of Jerusalem. What this meant for Isabella was that despite her marriage to the man preferred by the High Court, she was not recognized or afforded the dignities of queen because the powerful King of England (who rapidly seized command of the entire campaign to regain lost territory in what became known as the Third Crusade) opposed her husband. 

Conrad and Isabella's formidable opponent: Richard the Lionheart

Conrad responded by refusing to support the crusaders and by seeking a separate peace with Saladin. The Sultan, however, snubbed him, rightly seeing Richard as the greater threat with whom he needed to conclude any truce. We can assume that this was an incredibly frustrating experience for Isabella, but she was perhaps cheered the fact that she at last conceived in early 1192.

In April 1192, the English King finally relented, and word reached Tyre that he was prepared to recognize Isabella and Conrad as Queen and King of Jerusalem. The city of Tyre, fiercely loyal to Conrad ever since he’d saved them Saladin, was seized with rapturous rejoicing. In a dramatic gesture, Conrad asked God to strike him down if he did not deserve the honor of the crown of the Holy City. He then walked out into the streets to be stabbed by two assassins. Mortally wounded, he was carried to his residence where he died in agony in Isabella’s arms. She was not yet twenty years old.

She was, however, still the last surviving direct descendant of the Kings of Jerusalem, and her kingdom had never needed her more. The King of England had already received news that made it imperative for him to return to the West. The precarious gains of the Third Crusade needed defending. Isabella had to remarry, and she had to remarry a man acceptable to the High Court and the King of England. She was given just eight days between the assassination of her second husband and her marriage to her third.

A pawn? Or a queen who put the interests of her kingdom ahead of her own feelings?

Notably, the man selected by the High Court (accounts claiming the “people” of Tyre chose him are nonsense) was the nephew of the Kings of England and France, a grandson of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henri Count of Champagne. The Count had been one of the first to “take the cross” and come out to Outremer to fight for the recovery of Isabella’s kingdom. He was, furthermore, only 26 years old and apparently gallant and courteous. According to Itinerarium, far from being greedy for a crown, he was a reluctant candidate, who was distressed by Isabella’s situation and only persuaded to consent when she herself assured him that it was her wish. Certainly, he never styled himself “King of Jerusalem,” preferring the title to which he had been born, Count of Champagne.

In the five years of her marriage to Champagne, Isabella gave birth to a posthumous daughter by Montferrat, Marie, and three daughters by Champagne, Marguerite, Alice and Philippa. It was during this marriage that a degree of stability descended over her kingdom with a three-year, eight month truce with the Saracens signed Sept. 2/3, 1192. But on September 10, 1197, Henri fell out of a window to his death. The circumstances remain obscure. A balcony or window-frame possibly gave way, or he simply lost his balance when turning suddenly. No allegations of foul play were ever made.

Isabella was again a widow and the truce with Saladin had expired. The kingdom was again in need of a king capable of leading armies in its defense. Although they according Isabella four months of mourning this time, in the end the High Court selected Isabella’s next husband. Their choice fell on the ruling King of Cyprus, her former brother-in-law, Aimery de Lusignan. They were married and crowned jointly as King and Queen of Jerusalem in Acre in January 1198.

Their first child, a daughter Sibylle, was born the same year as their marriage (1198) and a second daughter Melusinde, two years later. Their son, named Aimery for his father, was born last but died in February 1205. Two months later, on April 1, 1205 King Aimery died of food poisoning, he would have been between 55 and 60 at the time of his death. Isabella died shortly afterwards, likely shattered by the loss of her only son and her fourth husband in such quick succession. The cause of her death is unknown. She was 32 to 33 years old.

Four of her daughters survived her. The eldest, Marie de Montferrat, now thirteen-years-old and the posthumous daughter of Conrad de Montferrat, succeeded to the crown of Jerusalem. Isabella’s eldest surviving daughter by Champagne, Alice, married her step-brother, Aimery de Lusignan’s eldest son by his first marriage, Hugh I, King of Cyprus. Her eldest daughter by Aimery de Lusignan married Leo I, King of Armenia. Her youngest daughter Melusinde married Bohemund IV, Prince of Antioch.

Isabella’s life was short by modern standards and filled with drama from her separation from her family at age eight to her dramatic divorce, the assassination of one husband, and the death of two more. Yet throughout Isabella consistently did what was in the best interests of her kingdom. That suggests to me that she was more than a mere pawn. She was certainly more admirable than her elder sister, whose stubborn loyalty to the man she loved had led to the catastrophe at Hattin and the loss of nearly the entire kingdom.

Isabella is an important character in both:

Defender of Jerusalem 

and

Envoy of Jerusalem 

Buy Now!

Buy Now!

---

[i] Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi

[ii] The Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre.

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi