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.
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| 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.
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| 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
