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

Isabella, Princess of Jerusalem

Although she reigned as queen in her own right for twelve years, Isabella of Jerusalem is most often portrayed in history books and literature as a pawn. She was married four times, divorced once, and widowed thrice. She was the mother of six daughters and a single son, who died just weeks before Isabella herself. She had been besieged by Saladin on her first wedding night, was the object of a coup attempt, and endured the hardships of a siege camp during the Frankish siege of Acre 1189-1191. One husband spent more than year in Saracen captivity, another died in her arms after being struck down by assassins, and her third husband died at the age of 33 in a bizarre accident. Isabella died, possibly from the complications of her son’s birth, at the age of 32. 

Isabella’s life was short, eventful and tragic, but writing Isabella off as a pawn of the men around her does no justice to a woman who played a crucial role in the history of the Holy Land. In two entries, I will be examining her life and role in history. Today, her life as princess, and later her life as queen.

Isabella was the daughter of King Amalric (also Aimery) of Jerusalem by his second wife, Maria Comnena, who was a great niece of the Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I. Isabella was born in early or mid-1172, or 11 and 12 years respectively after her father’s son and daughter by his first wife. At the time of Isabella’s birth, her half-brother Baldwin had already been diagnosed with leprosy, so there can be little doubt that her sex was a disappointment to her father; King Amalric had undoubtedly hoped for a son that might replace the stricken Baldwin as his heir. (It was the custom in the Kingdom of Jerusalem for noblemen who contracted leprosy to renounce their secular titles and join the religious Order of St. Lazarus.) Amalric was still young (in his thirties), and his wife Maria not yet twenty, however, so he undoubtedly hoped the vital male heir would yet be forthcoming.

Just two years later, however, Amalric fell victim to dysentery and died suddenly. Isabella’s half-brother Baldwin was recognized as King of Jerusalem, and placed under the regency of the Count of Tripoli. Isabella’s mother was now a widow at just 21 years, and retired from court to the wealthy barony of Nablus, her dower portion. Nablus was known for its scents and soaps, and for its large, cosmopolitan population of Jews, Orthodox, Latin Christians, and Muslims. (The latter were specifically granted the right to engage in the haj to Mecca.) One imagines it must have been an exciting place to grown up.

Three years later, when Isabella was just five years old, her mother chose a new husband. Maria Comnena’s choice fell on the younger (landless) brother of the wealthy Baron of Ibelin, Ramla and Mirabel (see Maria Comnena, Lady of Ibelin). The King, who explicitly sanctioned the marriage, was probably responsible for persuading the Baron if Ibelin, Ramla and Mirabel to transfer the comparatively insignificant barony of Ibelin to his younger brother to ensure he was a more “suitable” match for the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem. Thus, Maria became the Lady of Ibelin, and her second husband, Balian, became Isabella’s step-father ― and, indeed, the first and only father whom Isabella and consciously known.

Initially Isabella remained with her mother and step-father, spending time (one presumes) at both Nablus and Ibelin. She soon had two new half-siblings, a sister Helvis and a brother John, born to her mother and step-father. Her idyllic childhood, however, came to an abrupt end at the age of eight. The King’s mother, Agnes de Courtenay, had long been a bitter rival of Maria Comnena because the latter had replaced her in her husband’s bed and been crowned queen in her place (See Agnes de Courtenay). By 1180, Agnes enjoyed the King’s confidence sufficiently to be able to influence him. She convinced him that his half-sister was a threat, who needed to be completely “controlled” by people loyal to the Courtenays. The means to achieve purely political objective was to betrothe the eight-year-old Isabella to another pawn, the underage nobleman Humphrey de Toron. 

Humphrey was himself firmly under the control of  his widowed mother and her new and already notorious husband: Reynald de Châtillon (See Rogue Baron).  Thus, Isabella was taken from the only family she had ever known -- over the furious objections of her mother and step-father -- to live as a virtual prisoner in one of the most exposed and bleak castles of the kingdom on the very edge of Sinai: Kerak. She was, furthermore, in the hands of the brutal and godless Reynald de Châtillon. To add insult to injury, his lady prohibited the child from visiting her parents for the next three years. In this phase of her life, Isabella was indeed nothing but a pawn.

Interior of Kerak

In late 1183, for reasons lost to history, someone (Châtillon? The King? Agnes de Courtenay?) decided it was time for Isabella and Humphrey to marry. Isabella was only eleven and below the canonical age of consent; she had nothing to say in the matter. Her mother and step-father were not present and presumably not consulted. Humphrey was by now at least fifteen and possibly a couple years older, which may have prompted the marriage as there was the risk that, now that he did have a say over his affairs, he might haven chosen to break the betrothal. A marriage on the other hand could not be so easily reversed. Whatever the reasons, the marriage was planned and the nobility of Outremer invited to attend.

Instead, the castle of Kerak found itself under siege by the forces of Saladin, while the bulk of the barons of Jerusalem were attending a session of the High Court in Jerusalem. Trapped inside were largely their ladies, notably Isabella’s mother, who was seeing her daughter for the first time in three years, Isabella’s half-sister Sibylla (now 23 and married for a second time), and the Queen Mother Agnes de Courtenay. The siege lasted roughly two months before the Army of Jerusalem under Baldwin IV came to the castle’s relief. Although no harm came to any of the high-born guests, Isabella spent her wedding night in a castle under siege and bombardment. (Allegedly, Saladin agreed to spare the tower in which the nuptials were taking place, but continued bombarding the rest of the castle with his siege engines.) Furthermore, we can assume there was considerable uncertainty about when the relief army would arrive and whether food and water would last until help came --  not to mention that the sanitary conditions in a castle crowded with townspeople and extra guests must have been quite unpleasant. It was not an auspicious start to married life, even for an eleven-year-old. 

The next phase of Isabella’s life is poorly recorded. Humphrey de Toron, selected as Isabella’s husband by a woman bitterly hostile to her, lived-up to her expectations of spinelessness. He surrendered (voluntarily?) his important barony of Toron to Agnes de Courtenay’s brother, Jocelyn of Edessa, taking a “money fief” (read: pension) instead. Isabella and he appear to have lived in town houses in either Acre or Jerusalem. For Isabella the implications of her husband’s abdication of effective baronial power may not have been evident (she was only eleven after all), and she probably enjoyed at last being able to visit with her mother, step-father and Ibelin half-siblings (of which there were now four).

Then in 1186, the boy King Baldwin V, who had succeeded the “Leper” King Baldwin IV, died without a direct heir. The barons of Jerusalem had sworn to seek the advice of the Kings of England and France, the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, but they were far away. Furthermore, Isabella’s half-sister, the mother of Baldwin V and sister of Baldwin IV, felt that she ought to succeed to the throne. While no one doubted her claim, the majority of barons and bishops abhorred her husband and so resisted crowning her. Without the consent of the High Court of Jerusalem but with the help of the Templars and Reynald de Châtillon, Sibylla contrived to have herself crowned in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; she then crowned her husband Guy de Lusignan as her consort. 

Sibylla and Guy from the Hollywood Film "The Kingdom of Heaven"

The majority of the barons and bishops were not in Jerusalem to witness Sibylla’s usurpation of the throne; they were meeting in Nablus to discuss options. The news that Sibylla had seized the throne and crowned her detested husband, pushed them to take action. It was agreed that Isabella, as the other surviving child of King Amalric, should be crowned in Bethlehem as a rival (but in this case legitimate because chosen by the High Court) queen to Sibylla. Automatically, her husband would by law become her consort and so king. But the barons had not reckoned with Humphrey de Toron’s cowardice and/or duplicity. Either from fear or simply because he remained abjectly loyal to his step-father, Humphrey foiled the baronial plot by sneaking away during the night to do homage to Sibylla and Guy. Without an alternative rallying point, the baronial resistance to Sibylla/Guy’s coup d’etat collapsed. 

That is all recorded history, but what is left out of it is how Isabella felt. Did Isabella side with her husband ― and the man who had kept her imprisoned for three years? Or did she side with her mother and step-father, who both vehemently opposed Sibylla’s usurpation of the throne? Did fourteen-year-old Isabella want to be queen? Or not? We have no way of knowing. 

But just because the historical record is silent, we should not assume that she simply didn’t care. The historical record that we have is scanty and written almost exclusively by male clerics, who rarely considered the opinions or actions of women important. The fact that they took no interest in Isabella’s feelings should not induce us to do the same. We know that Isabella, like most of the barons except Tripoli and her step-uncle of Ramla and Mirabel, accepted the fait accompli, but most of the barons (and presumably bishops) nevertheless deeply resented what Sibylla and Guy (on one hand) and Humphrey (on the other) had done. Isabella may have been in an identical situation: she had to accept what Humphrey had done and make her peace with Sibylla and Guy, but she may also have resented it, possibly intensely. It might even have created marital tensions.

Whatever her feelings, however, history was about to swamp her with new problems. Less than a year after usurping the crown, Guy de Lusignan led the Army of Jerusalem to an unnecessary and devastating defeat (See Hattin.) Not only was the battle lost, thousands of fighting men were slaughtered, the remainder enslaved, and the bulk of the barons of Jerusalem were taken captive; among them was Isabella’s ever ineffective husband Humphrey.

There are various versions of what happened next. Saladin evidently offered to release Humphrey in exchange for the surrender of the critically important Frankish border fortresses of Oultrejourdain (which Humphrey had just inherited because Saladin had personally decapitated Reynald de Châtillon). According to some (probably romanticized) versions, Humphrey arrived home, only to have the garrisons refuse to obey his orders, at which point he voluntarily (or at his mother’s “loving” urging) returned to Saracen captivity. It is more probable that Humphrey’s release was contingent on the surrender of Kerak and Montreal, and the surrender never occurred (no chivalrous return from freedom to captivity.) Either version of events, however, underlines the fact that Humphrey was 1) prepared to surrender vitally important fortresses just for the sake of his freedom and 2) that the men of the garrisons had so little respect for him they did not follow his instructions.  Both castles, however, were eventually reduced by siege, and at that point Saladin agreed to release Humphrey as he served no useful purpose in prison. 

Humphrey and Isabella were reunited in early 1189 after roughly 18 months of separation. Where Isabella had been between the catastrophe of Hattin and her reunion with Humphrey is unrecorded. Most likely, she was with her mother and step-father, because her stepfather had managed to escape the trap at Hattin. With King Guy and most of the High Court in captivity, Ibelin was unquestionably one of the most important men in the entire kingdom (Arab chronicles from the period refer to him as “like a king.”) Furthermore, he commanded the respect of those fighting men who had, with him, escaped capture. It would, therefore, have been logical for Isabella to seek his protection in this period. 

Ibelin was in Tyre, the only city in the entire kingdom that did not fall or surrender to Saladin in the wake of Hattin. Also in Tyre at this time was Conrad de Montferrat. Montferrat was the brother of Sibylla’s first husband, uncle of Baldwin V, and related to both the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of France, in short a man of very high birth and good connections. More important, he had taken command of the defense of Tyre in a critical moment and enjoyed the support of the people, residents and refugees, crowded into it. If she was in Tyre, Isabella and Conrad would have met and probably known each other well.
 

When Humphrey returned from captivity, however, he joined not the men who had successfully defended what was left of the kingdom but the architect of the disaster: Guy de Lusignan. Thus when Guy de Lusignan (for no logical reason) decided to besiege Saracen held Acre, Humphrey went with him. Significantly, Isabella accompanied him. 

A siege camp is not a pleasant place for anyone, much less a high-born lady, which begs the question: why would Isabella choose to expose herself to the sordid life-style and the mortal hazards of a siege? Was it love of her husband? The passionate desire not to be separated from him again after the eighteen months of forced separation caused by his captivity? Did she go to at the insistence of her half-sister Sibylla, who was also at the siege with her two infant daughters and could have commanded the attendance of her little sister? Did Humphrey insist on Isabella coming with him because he was jealous of a budding friendship between Isabella and Montferrat? Did King Guy command her to come (and Humphrey dutifully comply) because he (Guy) feared she might be used by the barons (who had always opposed him and now detested him more than ever) to challenge his (much tarnished) right to the throne? 

We will never know. The only thing that is certain is that she was still there in November of 1190, when her half-sister Sibylla and both her nieces died of fever. In the eyes of the High Court, which had favored her since the constitutional crisis of 1186, Isabella was no longer a princess but the rightful queen of Jerusalem.

Isabella is an important character in both:

Defender of Jerusalem 

and

Envoy of Jerusalem 

Buy Now!

Buy Now!

“Ruthless and scheming” – Maria Comnena or Agnes de Courtney

Bernard Hamilton (“Women in the Crusader States: Queens of Jerusalem 1000 - 1190” published in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker, Basel Blackwell, Oxford, 1978), argues that Baldwin IV's mother, Agnes de Courtney, had the “misfortune” to have “bad relations to the press.”  He notes that “all contemporary sources are hostile to her”, but argues that that “her influence was not as baneful as the Ibelins and the Archbishop of Tyre would like posterity to presume.” He then goes on to describe Agnes’ rival, Maria Comnena, as “a ruthless and scheming woman.” Now Bernard Hamilton is a noted historian, but my father taught me to judge a person by his/her deeds — not by what others said about them.

Sybilla of Jerusalem as portrayed in the film "Kingdom of Heaven"

So let us look at the record, not the reputation, of the wives of Amalric I of Jerusalem: Agnes de Courtney and Maria Comnena.

Agnes de Courtney was, according to Malcolm Barber, betrothed to Hugh d’Ibelin, but instead married Prince (later King) Amalric of Jerusalem. Whether she did this voluntarily is not recorded. She might have been seduced or abducted, or she might also have been very happy to give up the comparatively obscure and unimportant Hugh in favor of the heir apparent to the throne.  Whatever her motives at the time of her marriage, when Baldwin III died childless, the High Court of Jerusalem had such strong objections to Agnes that they refused to acknowledge Amalric as King of Jerusalem unless he set Agnes aside.

Why, we do not know. There was the issue of being married within the prohibited degrees on consanguinity, and the issue of the pre-contract with Hugh d’Ibelin, both of which were canonical grounds for divorce.  However, the objections of the High Court are not likely to have been legalistic in view of the fact that the High Court explicitly recognized Amalric’s children by Agnes as legitimate.  This strongly suggests that the High Court was not uneasy about the legality of Amalric’s marriage but about the character of his wife. Perhaps it was simply the fact that she was a powerful woman, or a notoriously grasping one, or perhaps, as the Chronicle of Ernoul suggests, she was seen as insufficiently virtuous for such an elevated position as queen in the Holy City. Such speculation is beside the point; the naked fact is that Agnes was found unsuitable for a crown by the majority of the High Court. That’s a pretty damning sentence even without knowing the reason, and that’s not just a matter of “bad press.”

The City of Jerusalem

Agnes then married (or returned to) her betrothed, Hugh d’Ibelin, and, when he died, married yet a third time. Until the death of King Amalric, she had no contact with her children by him, and even after Amalric’s death, during her son Baldwin’s minority, she appears to have been excluded from the court. Then in 1176, Baldwin IV took the reins of government for himself and invited his mother to his court. Within a few short years, Agnes de Courtney had succeeded in foisting her candidates for Seneschal, Patriarch and Constable upon her young and dying son. These were respectively: 1) her utterly underwhelming brother, Joceyln of Edessa, 2) the controversial figure Heraclius, who may not have been as bad as his rival William of Tyre claims and may not have been Agnes lover as the Chronicle of Ernoul claim, but hardly distinguished himself either, and finally an obscure Frenchmen, also alleged to have been Agnes’ lover, Aimery de Lusignan. Not a terribly impressive record for “wise” appointments – even if Aimery de Lusignan eventually proved to be an able man.

Hamilton next applauds Agnes “cleverness” in marrying both heirs to the throne, her daughter Sibylla and her step-daughter Isabella (Maria Comnena’s daughter), to “men of her choosing.” We are talking here about Guy de Lusignan and Humphrey de Toron respectively. The latter was a man of “learning,” who distinguished himself by cravenly vowing allegiance to the former after Guy seized power in a coup d’etat that completely ignored the constitutional right of the High Court of Jerusalem to select the monarch, and then promptly got himself captured at Hattin. Although he lived a comparatively long life and held an important barony, he apparently never played a positive role in the history of the kingdom. Not exactly a brilliant match or a wise choice for the future Queen of Jerusalem.

Agnes’ other choice, the man she chose for her own daughter according to Hamilton, was even more disastrous. At best, Guy de Lusignan was freshly come from France, young, inexperienced and utterly ignorant about the situation in the crusader kingdoms.  At worst he was not only ignorant but arrogant and a murderer as well: he allegedly stabbed the unarmed and unarmoured Earl of Salisbury in the back, while the latter was escorting Queen Eleanor of England across her French territories. He certainly alienated his brother-in-law King Baldwin IV within a short space of time, and he never enjoyed the confidence of the barons of Jerusalem. This is not a matter of “hostile sources” just the historical record that tells us the dying king preferred to drag his decaying body around in a litter -- and his barons preferred to follow a leper – than trust Guy de Lusignan with command of the army.

Nor was this mistrust of the baronage in Lusignan misplaced. When Sibylla crowned her husband king and all the barons but Tripoli grudgingly accepted him, he led them to the avoidable disaster at Hattin. In short, Agnes de Courtney’s interference in the affairs of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, led directly to the loss of the entire Kingdom.

In contrast, there is only one known instance of Maria Comnena actively intervening in the affairs of the Kingdom. This was when she pressured (or “browbeat” according to Hamilton) her daughter Isabella into assenting to the annulment of her marriage with unimpressive and militarily useless Humphrey de Toron in order to marry the man who had just salavaged the last remaining free city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem from destruction. Hamilton portrays this as an act of unbridled, sinister power-seeking on the part of Maria.  Why Agnes’ five appointments should be “clever” (despite the disastrous consequences) but Maria’s effort to rescue the kingdom from the appalling and patently destructive leadership of King Guy should be seen as “power-hungry”  is baffling. It is certainly not an objective assessment of the behavior of the two women.

True, Isabella appears to have become fond of Humphrey de Toron, but she was the heir to the throne and princesses do not marry where their hearts lead but rather for the sake of the kingdom. To an objective observer, forcing an eight year old girl to marry a total stranger is considerably more manipulative and inhumane then for the a mother of a 17 year old princess to put pressure on her teenage daughter to put the interests of the kingdom ahead of her personal preferences. 

To make matters worse, Hamilton reports – with apparent approval! – that Agnes prevented the child Isabella from visiting her mother, effectively imprisoning her in her castle at Kerak from the age of 8 to the age of 11, a period in which, incidentally, Kerak was besieged by Saladin. In short, Agnes was hardly keeping Isabella “safe” – she may even have been courting her capture and death to ensure there was no rival to her own daughter for the throne.  But as that is speculation, I will leave motives aside and focus on the fact that she keep a little girl imprisoned in an exposed castle, denying her the right to even visit her mother.

In short, Hamilton suggests it is legitimate – indeed clever -- to separate an eight year old from her mother and step-father and expose her to danger, but it is devious and self-serving when the mother of a seventeen year old persuades her to set aside the husband forced on her as a child. That’s a warped view of affairs in my opinion.

The English chroniclers and Hamilton attribute to Maria evil motives and accuse her of “scheming” and deviousness without bringing forth a single example to support these allegations – aside from the above instance of pressuring her daughter into an unwanted divorce. In her one recorded act of “interference” she induced her daughter to marry not some adventurer, who would lose the kingdom, but the only man the barons of Jerusalem were willing to rally around after the disaster of Hattin. Her choice for her daughter was a proven military commander, who had just rescued Tyre from falling to Saladin. So even if her “interference” was as selfish and self-seeking as Hamilton implies, it was considerably wiser than Agnes’ choice of Guy de Lusignan.

A 19th Century depiction of a Byzantine Queen

After this one act, although her daughter was queen of Jerusalem from 1192 to 1205 and Maria herself did not die until 1217, there is not a single instance of her “interfering” in the affairs of the Kingdom again – very odd behavior for Hamilton’s unscrupulous, devious and power-hungry woman.  In short, not a single fact supports the allegations against her.

Even taking into account how historians love revisionism, an objective observer ought to recognize that the contemporary sources favorable to Maria may indeed have had justification -- and those hostile to Agnes de Courtney were probably just as right. It’s time modern historians stopped slandering Maria Comnena just for the sake of re-writing history.

Read more about both Maria and Agnes at: Balian and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Maria Comnena plays a major role in my three part biographical novel of Balian d’Ibelin. Read more in:

Book I: Knight of Jerusalem, released September 2014.

A landless knight,

                       a leper king, 

                                  and the struggle for Jerusalem.

Buy now in Paperback or Kindle format!

An Elected Kingship

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Kings of Jerusalem is the fact that they were elected rather than born. 

\

The tradition started, of course, with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. The First Crusade had never had a single leader and there was considerable (often destructive) rivalry between the leading lords that took the cross, notably, Raymond IV Count of Toulouse, Stephan Count of Blois, Robert Count of Flanders, Hugh Count of Vermandois, Bohemond of Taranto and his nephew Tancred, and the brothers Godfrey and Baldwin of Boulogne.  By the time the crusaders reached Jerusalem, Stephan had abandoned the crusade altogether, Baldwin of Boulogne had struck off on his own and captured Edessa, and Bohemond had remained in Antioch to re-establish a Christian state there.  The remaining lords, however, chose Godfrey of Boulogne to rule over Jerusalem.  Godfrey had won the respect of his fellow crusaders by his leadership, and although Raymond of Toulouse probably expected the honor himself, he accepted the choice.  Godfrey reputedly refused to wear “a crown of gold where Christ had worn a crown of thorns” and took the title of “Defender” or “Protector” or possibly just “Ruler” of Jerusalem.  

Just one year later, however, he was dead without an heir. The nascent kingdom was in a more precarious state than ever, since the majority of the surviving crusaders felt they had fulfilled their vow and returned home. Those noblemen remaining in the Holy Land again (not without controversy) selected a successor from among themselves, in this case, Godfrey’s brother Baldwin.  Baldwin did not share his brother’s qualms about calling himself king, and took the title of King Baldwin I. But in 1118 Baldwin I also died without an heir of his body, and the barons of the crusader kingdoms chose for a third time a leader from among their ranks, this time, Baldwin of Bourcq, who thereby became Baldwin II of Jerusalem.

Three such “elections” (with admittedly limited franchise!) set a legal precedent and the Kings of Jerusalem were henceforth always “elected” by the High Court of Jerusalem, the later composed of the leading lords of the realm.  This is the equivalent of the English House of Lords electing the Kings of England!

As the products of European feudalism with strong ties to the ruling houses of England and France, however, the members of the High Court showed a strong bias in favor of blood relatives of the last monarch. Nevertheless, the approval of the High Court was considered a pre-requisite for legitimate rule. Thus every time a king died, there was effectively an interregnum (if not outright crisis) while factions positioned themselves and consensus was established.

Perhaps the most serious succession crisis occurred at the critical period when Saladin had united Islam for the first time in a hundred years and declared his intention to wage jihad against the crusader kingdoms until he had pushed them into the sea. The king at the time, Baldwin IV, suffered from leprosy and was dying limb by limb; he had no children.  His closest male relative was his 8 year old nephew, the son of his sister Sibylla.  To prevent Sibylla’s husband, who the dying king detested and mistrusted, from becoming king, Baldwin IV orchestrated the coronation of his nephew as Baldwin V during his lifetime, thereby ensuring the barons had all sworn their oaths as vassals to the boy.

Recognizing, however, that life was fragile in the Holy Land in the 12^th century, Baldwin IV also made his vassals swear to  consult with the Kings of England and France and the Pope before a electing a king to succeed his nephew, if the boy did not survive into adulthood. This elaborate attempt to curtail the sovereignty of the High Court of Jerusalem failed.  

When Baldwin V died less than a year after his uncle, no one had time for such a lengthy process as sending to London, Paris and Rome for advice.  (The English and French kings could be counted on not to agree on anything anyway, since they were at war with one another.) Instead, while the High Court was meeting in Tiberius, Princess Sibylla and her husband staged a coup: they persuaded the Patriarch to crown and anoint Sibylla queen of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. She then crowned her husband Guy de Lusignan as her consort.

Sibylla at her coronation as depicted in the film "The Kingdom of Heaven"

Without the consent of the High Court, however, Guy de Lusignan was a usurper.  The bulk of the barons were prepared to oppose him by crowning an alternative candidate, namely the husband of Baldwin IV’s other sister, Isabella. With the enemy almost literally at the gates, however, the High Court’s choice for king, Humphrey de Toron, chose not to contest the kingship and took an oath to Guy de Lusignan instead.  While this act made it politically impossible to oppose Guy de Lusignan, Raymond of Tripoli was legally within his rights to refuse to swear allegiance to Guy.

While the High Court was circumvented by Sibylla and Guy’s coup in 1186, the High Court exerted (and revenged) itself effectively six years later when Sibylla and her daughters by Guy died of fever in 1190.  Guy saw himself as an anointed king and sought the support of his father’s overlord, the most powerful monarch in Christendom and only military commander with a chance of restoring the fortunes of the crusader kingdoms: Richard “the Lionheart” of England. Richard unequivocally supported Guy’s claim to the throne of Jerusalem – but the High Court still refused to acknowledge him because, with Sibylla’s death, Guy’s claim to the kingdom was -- in the eyes of the barons of Outremer -- extinguished.  

Since Humphrey of Toron was unwilling or unable to oppose Guy, the High Court pressured a reluctant Isabella, the last surviving child of King Amalric I, to divorce Humphrey and take a new husband, Conrad of Montferrat. Conrad was then recognized by the High Court as the legitimate king of Jerusalem. Since Jerusalem was still in Saracen hands, no coronation actually took place, but after two years Richard the Lionheart backed down and conceded that without the consent of the High Court even an anointed king could not rule the Kingdom of Jerusalem.