Instead, Sibylla married Guy de Lusignan in haste and secrecy. This meant that with one stroke, Eschiva’s brother-in-law had snatched away from her father the prize he had been pursuing for roughly three years. That act created an irreparable breach between Eschiva’s father and husband. Although her father married a third time to Maria of Beirut, Ramla never reconciled with Guy de Lusignan.
Meanwhile, around 1182, Baldwin IV appointed Eschiva’s husband, Aimery de Lusignan, constable of the kingdom. While this was a prestigious and important position, Eschiva’s joy at seeing her husband raised in status may have been dimmed by rumours that he owed his appointment to an intimate relationship with the Queen Mother Agnes de Courtenay.
At the death of Baldwin IV, Eschiva’s father and husband found themselves on a collision course. Aimery backed Sibylla and Guy’s usurpation of the throne, while Baldwin of Ramla opposed them and sought to crown Sibylla’s half-sister Isabella. Although Sibylla’s coup was successful, and she crowned Guy herself, Ramla was one of two barons who flatly refused to accept it. Rather than do homage to his hated rival Guy, Ramla chose exile, abandoning his third wife Maria, his infant son Thomas – and Eschiva, who probably never saw him again.
While we cannot know what Eschiva felt, it is hard to imagine that she was unaffected by such a bitter break between her father and her husband. On the surface, she remained loyal to her husband, but any joy in the triumph of Guy de Lusignan must have rapidly turned sour. Firstly, Aimery benefitted in no way from Guy’s crown; Aimery was neither appointed to new offices nor awarded lands and titles. Secondly, within a year, Guy had led the kingdom to disaster at the battle of Hattin, and Aimery was a prisoner of Saladin. Soon Ramla and Mirabel, along with Acre, Jaffa and Ascalon, had been overrun by Saladin’s armies. Eschiva was a refugee with young children. Her father had disappeared, her husband was a prisoner, and she had no means to support herself or her children, let alone raise a ransom for her husband. We have no idea where she found refuge in this period of great uncertainty. The most likely scenario is that she joined the household of her father’s younger brother, Balian d’Ibelin, Lord of Nablus.
The Lord of Nablus had fought his way off the field at Hattin and in the immediate aftermath of Hattin was described by contemporary Arab sources as ‘like a king’ among the Christians. He extracted his family from Jerusalem before the siege began and had them taken to an unspecified place of safety, possibly Tyre or Tripoli. Most likely, his niece Eschiva and her children were welcomed into his household and maintained by Nablus as long as needed.
Meanwhile, after a year in captivity, Aimery was released by Saladin along with his brother Guy. He remained loyal to the latter, joining him at the siege of Acre in 1189. However, Eschiva’s whereabouts during this period are unknown. There is no mention of her at the siege camp of Acre. Had she been there, she would have attended her sister-in-law, Queen Sibylla, at the time of her death. It appears she was left somewhere safer. It is also possible that in the wake of Guy’s disastrous reign, she and Aimery were estranged at this time.
At the end of the Third Crusade, Richard of England sold the island of Cyprus to Guy de Lusignan, yet Aimery de Lusignan is conspicuously absent from the names of those who went with Guy to Cyprus to establish his rule there. Instead, Aimery remained in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, where he continued to hold the post of constable. However, his position was undermined by Guy’s resentment at losing the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Rumours spread that Guy with the support of the Pisans was plotting against Queen Isabella and her husband, Henri de Champagne. When Aimery spoke up in favour of the Pisans, Henri de Champagne concluded that Aimery sided with his brother Guy and ordered Aimery’s arrest. The High Court sided with Aimery and pressured Champagne into releasing him. Yet, all trust between the two men was gone. Aimery could ill resume his tenure as constable. Instead, he joined his brother in Cyprus. It is not recorded if Eschiva went with him.
In 1194, Guy de Lusignan died. Despite Aimery’s years of loyal support and service to his younger brother, Guy slighted Aimery to bequeath the island to their elder brother Hugh. For Eschiva, Guy’s ungratefulness would have been particularly bitter since Aimery’s loyalty to Guy had cost her all contact with her father.
Hugh de Lusignan, however, had no interest in abandoning his French lands for distant Cyprus, and the rich island fell to Aimery by default. Aimery seized the opportunity and rapidly proved to be a far more able administrator than Guy had ever been. He pacified Cyprus and opened it to immigration by those made homeless through Saladin’s victories in Syria. Yet wisely, he left the Greek civil service largely in control of the administration and made no disruptive changes to the tax structure. Likewise, although he established a Latin church on the island, he left the Greek Church in possession of most of its lands and tithes. Finally, to elevate his own status, he offered to do homage for Cyprus to the Holy Roman Emperor in exchange for a crown. Emperor Henry VI agreed and sent word that he would crown Aimery when he came to the Holy Land on his planned crusade. In the meantime, the emperor sent the archbishops of Brindisi and Trani with a sceptre as a symbol of monarchy. Aimery styled himself ‘king of Cyprus’ from this time forward.
At some point, Eschiva had joined him in Cyprus. By the time Aimery was recognised as king of Cyprus, she was roughly 30 years of age and had given Aimery six children, three boys and three girls. Two of her sons and a daughter, however, had died young. The surviving children were Burgundia, Helvis and Hugh. Significantly, Hugh was born in 1196, so he was presumably conceived and born in Cyprus after Eschiva had joined her husband there.
That same year, Eschiva took ill from an unknown cause, probably in the aftermath of Hugh’s birth. This led to her becoming a victim of her husband’s otherwise admirable efforts to curb the rampant piracy in the eastern Mediterranean. What befell her is described in considerable detail in the Lyon Continuation of William of Tyre. The account deserves to be quoted in full.
‘[The pirate Canaqui] learned that … the queen and her children had come to stay near the sea in a village named Paradhisi. The queen had been ill, and … had come there to rest and recuperate. As soon as Canaqui knew where she was, he landed with some companions. He was familiar with the lie of the land, and he came at dawn to the village where he surprised the people who were with her, captured the queen and her children, and took them off in his galley.111
‘After he had absconded with the queen, the hue and cry arose in the land and the news came to the king who was greatly angered … The king and queen’s relations and everyone else were very sorrowful at this shameful event that had taken place in the Kingdom of Cyprus … When Leo of the Mountain, who was lord of Armenia, came to hear of the outrage that had befallen King Aimery and his lady, he was deeply saddened because of the love that he had both for King Aimery who was his friend and for Baldwin of Ibelin whose daughter she had been. He immediately sent messengers to Isaac [the backer of Canaqui] to say that if he valued his life, he would have the lady and her children brought to Gorhigos the moment he read this letter. As soon as Isaac heard this order from the lord of Armenia, he accepted that he would have to do as he was told. He sent [the kidnapped lady and her children] to Gorhigos in fitting style, and when Leo heard of their arrival, he went to meet them and, receiving them with appropriate honour, did much to please them.112
‘As soon as the lady had arrived in Gorhigos, he sent messengers to King Aimery telling him not to be angry or troubled for he had freed his wife and children from the power of their enemies. When the king heard this news, he was delighted at the great service and act of kindness [Leo] had done them. He had galleys made ready and went to Armenia, accompanied by his best men. There he was received honourably, and he was overjoyed to find his wife and children safe and sound’.113
Several points are striking in this account. The reference to Baldwin d’Ibelin being a friend of Leo of the Mountain is intriguing, as it suggests that after leaving the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the former lord of Ramla went to Armenia. More significant for Eschiva herself, however, is that there is no hint of sexual abuse or disgrace. On the contrary, much is made of her being greeted with ‘appropriate honour’. Furthermore, Eschiva was clearly welcomed back by Aimery without recriminations or doubts. Was this because the kidnapper was an Orthodox Christian rather than Muslim or because the entire episode was considered political hostage-taking rather than a criminal or military kidnapping?
Even in the absence of sexual abuse, however, the experience of being held hostage by a known pirate must have been traumatic in the extreme for Eschiva, both as a young woman and the mother of two young, possibly nubile, daughters and an infant son. Although Eschiva returned with Aimery to Cyprus, she appears to have never fully recovered from the trauma or the illness that had taken her to Paradhisi in the first place. Although she lived long enough to witness the reconciliation between her husband and Henri de Champagne, who came to Cyprus explicitly for that purpose, she died before she could be crowned. Her husband of more than twenty years was crowned and anointed king of Cyprus in September 1197 without Eschiva at his side. Within weeks, Henri of Champagne fell to his death, and before the end of the year, Aimery had married the widowed Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem.
Eschiva lived in the vortex of Jerusalem politics in the last two decades of the twelfth century. She was an Ibelin by birth and a Lusignan by marriage. She founded a dynasty that would rule Cyprus for more than 300 years. But we do not know if she was politically active. Did she have a say in affairs of state? Did she whisper advice to her husband? Or did she console and support her sister-in-law Sibylla? Did she advise Sibylla not to renounce Guy, no matter how great the pressure from the High Court was? Or did she see what her father and uncle saw in him, that Guy would make a disastrous king and try to talk Sibylla into abandoning him? Unless new sources come to light, we will never know.
Yet it does not take too much imagination to see Eschiva as the bridge that enabled the Ibelins to become the most powerful supporters of the Lusignan dynasty in Cyprus. Historians puzzle over the fact that the Ibelins, who were inveterate opponents of Guy de Lusignan, could quickly become so entrenched in his brother’s Kingdom of Cyprus. Eschiva was likely the key.
Eschiva de Montbéliard, Lady of Beirut (b. ca 1207–1208 – d. after 1250)
The force of Eschiva’s personality rather than her rank or titles earned her a mention in two of the most important and lively chronicles of the thirteenth century, those of Philip de Novare and Jean de Joinville. In both instances, Eschiva acted on her own and in material support of military operations. Yet she was also the heroine of a scandalous love match. Due to her secondary status as a non-royal woman, the historical record has left us with only glimpses of what must have been a forceful and highly intelligent woman.
Eschiva was the daughter of one of the many adventurous younger sons of the French nobility who went to the Holy Land to make his fortune, Walter de Montbéliard. Walter was the second son of Amadeus, Count of Montbéliard, and he took the cross in 1199 but, rather than joining the ill-fated Fourth Crusade, struck out on his own, arriving in the Holy Land sometime after 1201. By 1204, he had already won so much favour with Aimery de Lusignan – at that time king of Cyprus and king consort of Jerusalem – that he was appointed constable of Jerusalem (the same position Aimery had himself once held). At the same time, Aimery gave the hand of his eldest daughter Burgundia to Montbéliard in marriage.
Burgundia of Lusignan was probably already 22 or 23 at the time of her marriage. She had been betrothed briefly to Raymond VI of Toulouse between 1193 and 1196, possibly while still very young and certainly before her father had been crowned. Burgundia may also have been one of the children kidnapped along with her mother by the pirate Canaqui in 1196. If her marriage had recently been dissolved and she had returned to Cyprus, then it would have been considered appropriate for her to help her mother with her younger siblings.
In 1205, Aimery de Lusignan died unexpectedly, leaving the thrones of Cyprus and Jerusalem in the hands of minors. In Jerusalem, Aimery was succeeded by Maria de Montferrat, whose maternal uncle, John d’Ibelin, Lord of Beirut, assumed the regency. In Cyprus, however, the crown fell to Aimery’s only surviving son, Hugh, his last child by Eschiva d’Ibelin. Hugh was only 9 years old at his father’s death, and the High Court of Cyprus chose as regent the husband of Hugh’s heir (his sister Burgundia), Walter de Montbéliard.
Eschiva, Walter and Burgundia’s daughter, was born on the island shortly after her father became regent in 1206 or 1207. While she would have been far too young to notice, her father pursued a highly controversial and aggressive foreign policy that included an expensive expedition to seize the port of what is now Antalya on the southern coast of modern Turkey. In addition, during Montbéliard’s regency, King Hugh’s marriage to Alice de Champagne, the heiress of Jerusalem, was celebrated.
In 1210, Hugh I of Cyprus came of age, and no sooner had he taken control of his kingdom than he accused Montbéliard of massive malfeasance. He demanded Montbéliard return the astronomical sum of 240,000 bezants to the Cypriot treasury. Convinced that the king intended him harm, Walter de Montbéliard fled Cyprus overnight with his wife and his household aboard a Templar ship bound for Tripoli. From there, he made his way to Jerusalem, where his cousin John de Brienne had recently been installed as king consort after marrying Maria de Montferrat. Thus, Eschiva would have experienced a headlong flight from danger at a very tender age.
Just two years later, in 1212, Eschiva’s father died, possibly fighting the Saracens. She was, at most, 6 years old, and again, it is difficult to know how deeply affected she would have been. Her mother was still the heiress to Cyprus and, with her husband dead, appears to have reconciled with her brother, who restored many, if not all, of the properties once held by Montbéliard. In addition, John de Brienne remained protective of his relatives, and in 1220, he named Eschiva’s older brother Odo constable of Jerusalem, the position his father had once held and a lucrative honour. Either Hugh of Cyprus or John de Brienne may have been responsible for arranging a suitable marriage for Eschiva. Sometime between 1220 and 1229, Eschiva was married to Gerard de Montaigu.
Little is known about Gerard beyond the curious fact that he was the nephew of the Master of the Knights Templar, Pedro de Montaigu; the Master of the Knights Hospitaller, Guerin de Montaigu and the nephew of the Archbishop of Nicosia, Eustace de Montaigu. (How three brothers came to hold three such powerful ecclesiastical positions simultaneously is a coincidence unexplained in the source material.) In any case, Gerard died at the Battle of Nicosia on 14 July 1229. He died fighting on the side of the rebel barons led by John d’Ibelin, the Lord of Beirut, against the Holy Roman Emperor’s baillies. Eschiva became a widow at the age of 23, at most, and, more likely, 20 or 21.
Eschiva had no children by Montaigu. However, she was evidently an extremely wealthy widow. Furthermore, while her brother spent his entire career in the Kingdom of Jerusalem serving as constable and briefly as deputy regent, Eschiva’s inheritance and wealth appears to have come exclusively from properties she held in Cyprus.
Heiresses in the Kingdom of Cyprus, surrounded as it was by water, were not required to marry to ensure sufficient fighting men for the feudal army. No one could have forced Eschiva de Montbéliard to remarry after the death of Gerard de Montaigu, but roughly one year after the Battle of Nicosia, she made a love match that scandalised society.
The man she chose to wed was Balian d’Ibelin, the eldest son of the Lord of Beirut. Balian’s appeal to Eschiva is easily imagined. He was roughly her age, or at most a couple years older, but he had already distinguished himself as an audacious knight and effective commander.
His career would have been well known to Eschiva, particularly the fact that in 1228, Balian was one of twenty hostages seized by Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen for the good behaviour of his father. Balian and his younger brother Baldwin were ‘put in pillories, large and exceedingly cruel; there was a cross of iron to which they were bound so that they were able to move neither their arms nor their legs’.114 Although Balian’s father secured his release from this inhumane detention within several weeks, Balian remained a hostage of the emperor (albeit in better conditions) for the length of the emperor’s bogus ‘crusade’.
Yet when the emperor’s baillies set about despoiling Ibelin properties after the emperor’s departure in 1229, Balian was among the small body of troops who accompanied his father to Cyprus to confront the five baillies. He distinguished himself at the battle of Nicosia, rallying dispersed Ibelin troops and leading them back into the thick of the fight after the Lord of Caesarea had been killed and when his father had been unhorsed and was defending himself in a churchyard. That is to say, when the Ibelins were on the brink of a disastrous defeat, Balian turned the battle into a victory. During the siege of St Hilarion that followed, when a sally from the castle overran the Ibelin camp, ‘Sir Balian came … recovered the camp, and, spurring up to the gate of the wall, broke his lance on the iron of the wall gate’.115 At another point, when the later historian and philosopher Novare was badly wounded before the castle, Balian ‘succoured him and rescued him most vigorously’.116 Even taking into account Novare’s bias and affection for his ‘compeer’ Balian, it is clear that Balian had already established his reputation as a bold knight by the time he married Eschiva.
The couple married clandestinely, evidence there was (or they expected) opposition to the match. Since Eschiva’s overlord, King Henry I of Cyprus was a minor, opposition could have come from only one source, the king’s regent and the bridegroom’s father: the Lord of Beirut. On the surface, it appears surprising that the Lord of Beirut would object to the marriage. Balian and Eschiva were equal in rank (she was the granddaughter of a king, and he was the grandson of a queen). Her father had been regent of Cyprus when Beirut had been regent of Jerusalem. Eschiva brought great wealth into the marriage. She was young and healthy, and there was no reason to presume she could not bear children. Most likely, therefore, Beirut’s opposition derived from political considerations. Eschiva’s brother Odo was a partisan of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, while Beirut was the emperor’s most bitter and intransigent opponent.
The fact that the couple went ahead with the marriage suggests this was an affair of the heart for both. The problem with this strategy was that they were related within the prohibited degrees and consequently required a papal dispensation to marry. A powerful baron like Beirut might expect to obtain such a dispensation; two young lovers in their 20s did not have the kind of influence necessary to win over the papal curia.
When their marriage became public, the Archbishop of Nicosia (perhaps not incidentally, the uncle of Eschiva’s first husband) promptly threatened to excommunicate them. Far from intimidating either of them, Balian organised a show of force that drove the archbishop to flee Cyprus altogether. (Notably, Balian’s father was in Palestine at the time and so unable to curb his son’s anger or mediate between the parties.) The offended and outraged archbishop appealed directly to the pope, who obligingly issued a ban of excommunication on both parties, which arrived in the Holy Land in March 1232.
Meanwhile, the emperor’s forces had retaken control of Cyprus while the Ibelins (including Balian) and their knights and troops were on the mainland. The situation immediately became extremely unpleasant.
[The emperor’s men] committed all the abominations and outrages and villainies of which they knew and were capable. They broke into the churches and the Temple and the house of the Hospital and all the religious houses, and they dragged the ladies and the children who clung to the altars and to the priests who chanted Masses…. They put the ladies and children into carts and on donkeys most shamefully and sent them to [Kyrenia] to prison.117
Except for those who had disguised themselves as peasants – and Eschiva. Philip de Novare tells us that Eschiva:
Dressed in the robes of a minor brother … mounted a [castle] called Buffavento. Therein was she received by an old knight named Guinart de Coches, who was there on behalf of the king, and she supplied herself so that she provisioned [Buffavento] with food, of which it had none.118
This underscores that Eschiva had so much wealth she could provision the garrison of a royal castle at her own expense – and that she was exceptionally courageous.
