The next time the High Court exerted its influence over the choice of king consort, it turned yet again to Western Europe, selecting Conrad de Montferrat (from the Holy Roman Empire) as Isabella I’s second consort. Isabella’s third and fourth husbands, in contrast, were her own choices and in both cases, she chose French men already in the Holy Land. Her fourth husband was a man who had been in the Latin East for decades and had risen to be King of Cyprus largely on his merits. The marriage of Isabella I to Aimery de Lusignan was undoubtedly a means to shore up both kingdoms. Yet it may also reflect the fact that Jerusalem was so fragile and vulnerable at this time that the prospects of finding a high-ranking Western nobleman willing to abandon his secure titles to assume the august but uncertain post of King of Jerusalem were undoubtedly slim.
This political reality is underscored by the High Court’s difficulty finding a consort for Isabella’s heir, Maria de Montferrat. Eventually, John de Brienne came to Jerusalem, but he was unquestionably a nobleman of tertiary rank without great fortune or following. Yet if he proved a disappointment to the barons of Jerusalem, the ‘coup’ of marrying Maria’s successor Yolanda (Isabella II) to the greatest of all Western monarchs, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, proved utterly disastrous.
The marriage of Yolanda to Frederick II demonstrated the drawbacks of the High Court’s predilection for seeking Western consorts in the hope of obtaining greater military protection for the kingdom. Although Fulk d’Anjou, Raymond de Poitiers, Henri de Champagne and the Montferrat brothers William and Conrad were all Western magnates, they had been willing to renounce their lands in the West and resettle in the Holy Land to defend Jerusalem in person. That changed with Yolanda’s marriage to Frederick II. He neither renounced his other titles (king of Sicily, king of the Germans, Holy Roman Emperor) nor took up residence in the Latin East. Altogether, he spent less than one year of his 25-year reign in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. More disruptive yet, he took the ruling hereditary queen away from her kingdom (she travelled to his Kingdom of Sicily to marry him) and denied her her hereditary rights as ruling queen from that day forward. Instead, he confined her to his harem and usurped her authority until she died aged 15. He then usurped the authority of her infant son.
The kingdom never recovered from the consequences of this disastrous marriage, and historians can only speculate on what course history might have taken had the spouses of queens consistently been men resident in and committed to Outremer. Isabella’s choice of Aimery de Lusignan was brilliant, and it is tempting to picture the fate of the kingdom had Yolanda married, say, the heir of Beirut, an extremely competent fighting man, or his nephew, the brilliant jurist John of Jaffa.
Women at the Crossroads of History: Three Case Studies
The role of women in holding together the different cultures that collided in Outremer can perhaps best be illustrated by case studies. Below are three examples of women who forged critical alliances yet whose role has been largely overlooked in more general histories.
Eschiva d’Ibelin: Founder of a Dynasty
Eschiva d’Ibelin, the daughter of Baldwin d’Ibelin, Lord of Ramla, was married at an unknown but undoubtedly early age to a noble but penniless adventurer from France, Aimery de Lusignan. At the time of her marriage, she was not an heiress, and the union was indicative of her husband’s desire to settle in the East and forge ties with the local feudal elite. Why the Lord of Ramla found the third son of the Lord de la March a suitable match for his daughter is unclear, but Aimery must have been a man of considerable charm; King Amalric of Jerusalem had been willing to pay his ransom when he was taken captive by the Saracens, a generosity that was far from common. Indeed, some sources allege Aimery de Lusignan was so charming he became the paramour of the Queen Mother, Agnes de Courtenay.
As time went on, however, Eschiva’s husband and father came into irreconcilable conflict. Eschiva’s brother-in-law Guy had married the heiress of the kingdom, Sibylla, the woman her father had hoped to marry himself. Furthermore, Guy, as Count of Jaffa, became the Lord of Ramla’s overlord, causing him further resentment. When Sibylla usurped the throne and crowned the widely unpopular Guy her consort, Eschiva’s father could take no more. He abdicated his lordships and departed the kingdom. Such a dramatic breach between her father and husband must have been extremely painful for Eschiva, but on the surface, she sided with her husband and remained at his side.
Less than a year later, Aimery and Guy were both prisoners of Saladin, and Eschiva had lost everything. She had several small children, no means to raise her husband’s ransom and was a refugee. With the Lusignans in a Saracen prison, Eschiva almost certainly found support and refuge with her father’s younger brother, her uncle Balian d’Ibelin. Balian was one of only three barons not in Saracen captivity, but arguably more importantly, he was married to a Byzantine princess. She had access to resources outside Saladin’s grasp.
When Saladin released the Lusignan brothers, Eschiva was reunited with Aimery. There is no evidence Eschiva joined him at the siege of Acre, and relations between the Lusignan brothers appeared to have soured. Certainly, when Guy first went to Cyprus after being deposed as king of Jerusalem, Aimery conspicuously did not accompany him. Even more striking, when Guy died within the next year, he left Cyprus not to Aimery – who had endured so much with him at and after Hattin – but to their elder brother, Hugh. Aimery acquired Cyprus from the barons who had settled (and fought) with him in Cyprus rather than his ever-incompetent younger brother Guy.
Then a remarkable thing happened. Cyprus, which had been in open revolt, was pacified in a mere five years. An island that had defied the most powerful militant order in the world (the Templars) became a model of harmonious co-existence between Latin and Orthodox, Frank and Greek. It became an island kingdom famous for its luxury, prosperity and self-indulgent aristocracy. The laws and policies that set it on that course were promulgated by Aimery de Lusignan. No historian has adequately explained this, and the fairy tale repeated in most books that Guy de Lusignan asked and received advice from Saladin is exactly that: a fairy tale. The real key lies with Eschiva and her Ibelin connections.
Eschiva’s pivotal role in reconciling her family the Ibelins with the Cypriot Lusignans cannot be overstated, and the importance of the Ibelins in Cyprus, something historians have puzzled over for centuries, can best be explained by her. It is generally assumed that because the Ibelins opposed Guy de Lusignan, they were also inveterate opponents of Aimery. Yet the Ibelins were perfectly capable of distinguishing between the two Lusignan brothers and, therefore, able to judge Aimery for his strengths rather than condemning him for his brother’s weaknesses.
Eschiva’s role as a mediator between her uncle and her husband explains another mystery that has long baffled historians: how the Ibelins became so powerful in Cyprus so fast. Historians such as Peter Edbury express perplexity at the fact that an Ibelin (Balian’s second son Philip) was named regent of Cyprus by the Cypriot High Court only seven years after the first written reference to the presence of Ibelins on Cyprus. However, in the decade following the Third Crusade, the Kingdom of Jerusalem struggled to re-establish its institutions while the Kingdom of Cyprus was completely inchoate. In short, the first recorded presence of an Ibelin need not be the first actual presence of the Ibelins. It is more likely that Balian d’Ibelin and his wife, Maria Comnena, played an active role in the pacification of Cyprus. This would explain how the Ibelins came to possess vast estates in the island kingdom and the influence they held on the Cypriot High Court.
Indeed, the very fact that Balian d’Ibelin disappeared from the records of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1193, usually assumed to mean he died at this time, more probably reflects the fact that he was active in Cyprus rather than on the mainland. The same thing happened a quarter-century later when the Lord of Beirut disappeared from the witness lists after being regent of Jerusalem during King John’s reign. Despite disappearing from the witness lists, Beirut was very much alive and well. Indeed, he would return to lead the baronial revolt against Frederick II. In short, the fact that Balian d’Ibelin disappears from the witness lists at the court of his stepdaughter Isabella I does not mean he was necessarily dead. It does no more than suggest he was absent from Isabella’s kingdom. The most logical place for him to have been in this period was in Cyprus at the invitation of his niece, Eschiva. The reason Eschiva would seek her uncle’s support for her husband at this juncture brings us to the second woman whose critical role in the history of the Latin East has been neglected: Maria Comnena.
Maria Comnena: The Key to Cyprus?
As noted above, Maria Comnena had already played a key role in forging an alliance between her first husband, King Amalric and the Comnena dynasty in Constantinople. She had arrived in Jerusalem with a large entourage of Byzantine artists and artisans, fostering the spread of Byzantine culture in her new homeland.
In 1190, Maria Comnena played a critical role in re-establishing a viable monarchy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem by convincing her daughter Isabella to put the welfare of her battered and bleeding kingdom ahead of her personal feelings. Maria’s intervention at this time shows the wisdom of the daughter of the Byzantine imperial family. She understood political and military realities and correctly conveyed to her daughter the imperative of meeting the demands of her barons for a militarily competent king. In doing so, Maria Comnena saved the crown of Jerusalem for her dynasty. Had Isabella instead clung to Humphrey de Toron as her husband, the barons would almost certainly have abandoned Isabella altogether and elected Montferrat (or another candidate) as their king. The kingdom would have been fragmented even further by the competing claims to the crown put forward by Lusignan, Isabella/Toron and the barons’ candidate. Maria ought to be praised and admired for her statesmanship rather than vilified for browbeating her 18-year-old daughter into making a rational rather than an emotional decision.
Once the succession was settled by the departure of Guy de Lusignan for Cyprus and Isabella’s marriage to Henri de Champagne, Maria Comnena – like her second husband – seems almost to disappear from the history books. Yet, nothing would have been more logical than for her to go to Cyprus to assist in the pacification of this formerly Byzantine and still Greek Orthodox island. Maria Comnena was related to the island’s last Greek ‘emperor’, Isaac Comnenus. She spoke Greek, understood the mentality of the population, and probably had good ties (or could forge them) to the secular and ecclesiastical Greek Orthodox elites on the island. She had the means to help Aimery pacify his unruly realm, while her husband Balian was a proven diplomat par excellence, who would also have been a great asset to Aimery.
We know that Maria was later credited with brokering a reconciliation between Aimery de Lusignan and her son-in-law, Henri de Champagne. Maria’s tool in this case was a marriage alliance between Lusignan’s eldest son (and heir) and Champagne’s eldest daughter. Yet while Maria’s influence with her son-in-law is logical, it is hard to see what influence she would have had with Aimery de Lusiginan unless she had earlier helped him establish himself in Cyprus by serving as a mediator to his Greek subjects during his early years in Cyprus.
Marguerite d’Ibelin: Bridge Between Rebels
Finally, there is Marguerite d’Ibelin, the eldest daughter of Balian d’Ibelin and Maria Comnena. Marguerite married the Lord of Sidon at an early age and her eldest son by that marriage became one of the most powerful barons in Jerusalem in the thirteenth century. He was appointed regent of the kingdom by Frederick II on two separate occasions and made serious attempts to mediate between his uncle and cousin of Beirut and the Holy Roman Emperor. Meanwhile, his mother had been widowed at a young age and married a second time.
Since she was a widow, Marguerite’s second marriage could not have been imposed on her, and we can assume that she chose her second husband freely. Her choice fell on a certain Guy de Montfort, a crusader from the West. Guy and his elder brother Simon took the cross in or about 1203 but refused to attack fellow Christians at Zara or Constantinople. Instead, they had distanced themselves from the campaign financed by Venice that ended with the capture of Constantinople and travelled independently to the Holy Land. Simon soon returned to France and took command of a different crusade, the crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France. Guy remained in the Holy Land, married Marguerite, and had three children with her, two daughters and a son, Philip.
Marguerite died while these children were all still small, so Guy returned to France, taking his children with him. He turned the upbringing of his children over to his sister-in-law, Alice de Montmorency, wife of his brother Simon. Alice was the mother of Simon de Montfort, later Earl of Leicester. Philip and Simon appear to have been quite close, and nearly half a century later, they took the cross and set out to the Holy Land together. They participated in what became known as ‘the Baron’s Crusade’ of 1239–1241. Like his father, Philip remained in the Holy Land and married there. Unlike his father, he married an heiress and became baron of Toron by right of his wife. He was also one of the staunchest and most steadfast supporters of his cousin Balian d’Ibelin, Lord of Beirut, in the latter’s fight against the Holy Roman Emperor.
The connection between the rebels of Outremer and the rebel Simon de Montfort is a chapter of mediaeval history that has not yet been adequately explored and illuminated. It is, however, hard to believe that Simon de Montfort’s stance against arbitrary and authoritarian monarchy was not, in part, inspired and encouraged by the successful stand of his Ibelin cousins against Frederick II. It is even more notable that the barons of Outremer under the Ibelins had experimented with harnessing the support of the commoners (e.g., the Commune of Acre, non-feudal observers to the High Court) before Montfort did. The fact that the Montforts and Ibelins were cousins made exchanging ideas and sentiments easier than between strangers. Family ties were forged by women like Marguerite d’Ibelin, who brought the ideas and customs of the East and West together in the same household. She was only one of scores of such women, most of whom escape the notice of chroniclers and historians.
Chapter 7
The Legal Status of Women in the Crusader States
Feudal Lords
As noted earlier, the crusader states embodied developed feudalism before it began to degenerate into absolutism. Under feudalism, the monarch sat at the pinnacle of a pyramid of contractual relationships based on oaths of fealty; a person’s status in society depended first and foremost upon one’s place within that pyramid. The barons or ‘tenants-in-chief ’ held their lands and titles directly from the king, forming the second tier of society. The barons’ vassals formed the third tier, their vassals’ vassals the fourth, and so on, to the bottom of the pyramid inhabited by those without land, e.g., farm labourers, itinerant workers, etc. Wealthy merchants and tradesmen represented a rising non-feudal economic sector that, on the one hand, integrated into feudal society via marriage and land purchases and, on the other hand, undermined and brought down the system over time.
In the crusader states, however, feudalism was at its apogee. The key indicator of legal status was the ability to give and receive homage, i.e., to take the feudal oath that elevated the oath taker into the feudal elite of the realm. Within decades of their establishment, the crusader states had recognised the right of women to hold the crown and so receive oaths of homage. It logically followed that women could also give oaths of homage, i.e., as barons and lords right down to the sergeant’s fiefs at the bottom of the pyramid. There are numerous examples in the historical record illustrating this.
The right of women to give and receive homage derived from the laws of inheritance that recognised the right of female inheritance. In the crusader states, inheritance law explicitly gave the direct female descendants of the deceased lord precedence over male relatives from a collateral line. (For example, the lord’s daughter took precedence over the lord’s brothers or nephews.) Furthermore, if a man held more fiefs than male heirs, daughters inherited after their brothers. For example, if a man held three fiefs but had only two sons and one or more daughters, the eldest son would receive the largest and most prestigious fief, his second son the next fief and the eldest daughter the third.43
However, women could not fight in the feudal army. As the entire point of feudalism was to create a structure to defend the kingdom, one of the critical obligations incumbent upon a vassal was to fight in the entourage of his lord. Since women could not fulfil this fundamental feudal duty, the right of female inheritance was limited. First, male heirs were given precedence over female heirs, except in cases where the male was, for some reason, incapable of fulfilling his military obligations.44 This could be because of physical or mental handicaps or due to religious vows. Second, female heirs over age 12 yet under 60 were required to be married to men capable of fulfilling the military obligations that went with the fief, e.g., serving as a sergeant (if it were a sergeant’s fief), as a knight (in a knight’s fief), or personally leading multiple knights as a banneret, if the fief owed more than one knight to the feudal host. (For example, the barony of Ibelin owed 10 knights, the barony of Transjordan owed 40, and the barony of Galilee owed 100.)
In the absence of a suitable male heir, the rights of the eldest daughter were initially accepted as equal to the rights of the eldest son. That is, for the first seventy years, the eldest female heiress received the entire fief just as the most senior male heir would have. However, in 1171, in the reign of King Amalric, the High Court ruled that, except for the kingdom itself and the tenants-in-chief, fiefs should be divided equally among the female heiresses. At the same time, the High Court stipulated that the younger sisters should do homage to their eldest sister for their shares of the fief, making them rear vassals of their elder sister. The point was to increase the number of men who could be called upon to render military service in the feudal host. An unintended consequence was to fragment the holding and possibly impoverish it.
Naturally, the husbands of heiresses not only fulfilled the feudal obligations that went with their wives’ fiefs, but they also enjoyed the wealth and prestige that went with their wives’ titles and properties. One need only think of Reynald de Châtillion becoming ‘Prince of Antioch’, Balian d’Ibelin styling himself ‘Lord of Nablus’, or Raymond of Tripoli’s controversial role as Lord of Tiberias – all titles that derived from marriage rather than through inheritance or bestowal from the crown. Yet these husbands of heiresses, who held the titles and enjoyed the revenues, castles and prestige of fiefs ‘by right of their wife’, lost all when their wife died. At an heiress’ death, her title and control of her fief passed to her heirs (male or female) rather than her husband. There are many prominent examples of this, the most famous of which was Reynald de Chatillon’s ‘loss’ of Antioch after his wife’s death and, of course, Guy de Lusignan’s loss of the Kingdom of Jerusalem after Queen Sibylla died.
The status of a feudal lord, however, was not confined to heiresses alone. The consorts of kings, barons, lords and knights likewise served as the deputies of their husbands. This meant that if their husbands were either absent or incapacitated, their wives took on the role of lord and acted in their husbands’ stead. They managed the household and finances, presided over the feudal court and commanded the garrison and any other fighting men left in the domain. Most important and astonishing, perhaps, in Outremer, women could and did attend the High Court of the Kingdom to represent their fief. They did this as heiresses if they were temporarily without a husband, as guardians for minor heirs or heiresses, or if their husband was incapacitated either by illness or being held in captivity and thus prevented from attending a session of the High Court.
This astonishing right of Frankish women has largely been overlooked in the literature probably because, as a rule, the number of women attending any one session of the High Court was too few to evoke comment. However, in 1261, in the Frankish Principality of Achaea, a situation arose that sheds light on this privilege. In 1259, the Byzantine Despot of Epirus, Michael Comnenus Doukas, allied with the Kingdom of Sicily and the Frankish Prince of Achaea to attack his Byzantine rival, Michael VIII Palaiologos. Doukas took the offensive and was forced to retreat with substantial losses, but when reinforced by his allies, he prepared to take a stand. In July 1259, it came to a battle known alternatively as the Battle of Pelagonia or Kastoria. Due to the discrepancies between the five existing accounts of the battle (three Byzantine and two Frankish), it is challenging to form a clear picture of what happened. The only thing beyond doubt is that mistrust between the Greeks and the Franks resulted in Doukas’ army abandoning the field on the eve of battle. Palaiologos’ forces then greatly outnumbered the Franks and achieved a resounding victory in which the Prince of Achaea, William of Villehardrouin, and thirty of his barons were taken captive. Many other Frankish knights were also killed or imprisoned, leaving the Latin Empire of Constantinople virtually defenceless. Within two years, Constantinople fell to the Greeks under Michael VIII Palaiologos, who re-established the Byzantine Empire and founded his dynasty.
Once he was secure in Constantinople, Michael VIII opened ransom negotiations with William de Villehardoin and the other Frankish nobles still in captivity since the Battle of Pelagonia. The deal struck was that the prisoners would be set free in exchange for oaths never to fight against Emperor Michael again and the surrender of three key fortresses in the Peloponnese (Maina, Monemvasia and Mystras). However, as with Louis IX of France when negotiating with the Mamluks, the Prince of Achaea and his nobles could only recommend the ransom terms. They did not have the power to enforce them. Instead, the terms were referred to the High Court of the Principality, which had the duty to reject or ratify the terms negotiated by men in captivity.
Guy Duke of Athens, the highest ranking of the Frankish lords still at liberty, convened the High Court of the principality ‘as was his duty’.45 Yet only two men attended. Women represented the remaining fiefs. These were either the widows of the dead lords and knights acting in their capacity as regents for minor heirs or the consorts of the men held captive in Constantinople. The latter, just like Queen Marguerite of France after King Louis IX’s capture in Egypt, controlled the fiefs of their husbands for as long as they were prisoners.
The decision of the High Court was no rubber stamp. Guy of Athens himself firmly opposed acceptance of the negotiated settlement. He feared the surrender of the three fortresses would so weaken the Frankish hold on the Peloponnese that it would crumble altogether. Indeed, he offered to take Villehardouin’s place in the dungeon rather than accept the loss of the castles.
The majority of the High Court chose instead to accept the negotiated terms in order to set free all of those who still lived (several Franks had already died in captivity). Furthermore, as guarantees of their good intent, two ladies were sent as hostages to the Greeks. The history of this so-called ‘Ladies Parliament’ demonstrates that women of the feudal elite in the crusader states were expected to fulfil the feudal duty of advising the king (i.e., attending parliament) if their husbands could not do so. It further demonstrates that their advice and vote were equal in weight to that of any male fief holder.
