Monarchy: 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?
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:
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.
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
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.
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| Conrad and Isabella's formidable opponent: Richard the Lionheart |
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.
