Iveta, never subject to a husband or brought to childbirth, lived to the comparatively old age of 56 or 57, dying sometime between 1176 and 1178.
Maria Comnena, Princess of Constantinople, Queen Consort of Jerusalem and Lady of Ibelin (b. ca 1154 – d. 1217)
Ever since Richard I’s chronicler depicted her as ‘godless’ and ‘fraudulent’, novelists and historians alike have vilified the Greek wife of King Amalric, Maria Comnena. These portrayals of her, which include one novelist depicting her as a witch poisoning her own daughter, are based on the slander spread by opponents of Conrad de Montferrat and Alice de Champagne respectively. Reliable contemporaries such as William of Tyre have only good to say about her. It’s time to set the slander aside.
Maria Comnena was probably born in 1154 or 1155. She was the great-niece of the ruling Byzantine Emperor, Manuel I, and, as a member of the Byzantine imperial family enjoyed the famously luxurious lifestyle of Byzantine royalty in her youth. More importantly, she undoubtedly also benefited from the high level of education typical of the women of her family. The Comnenas were literate in Greek classics, well-versed in theology and history and wrote the latter.
When Amalric I of Jerusalem decided to seek a second wife, he turned to the Byzantine Emperor and sent an embassy to Constantinople in 1165. Although we do not know why, Emperor Manuel and Amalric’s ambassadors settled on Maria as the most suitable candidate. Two years later, Maria Comnena landed at Tyre. She was, at most, 12 or 13, while her bridegroom, King Amalric, was already 30.
While Maria’s young age precluded a major role in politics, she may have had a guiding or oversight role in the magnificent renovation of the Church of the Nativity. This work, which included beautiful mosaics with a heavy Byzantine influence, was initiated after her arrival in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and employed many Byzantine master craftsmen. It is also notable that four years after his marriage to Maria, Amalric undertook a state visit to Constantinople. Amalric was the first Latin king to do so as a reigning monarch. Furthermore, Byzantine sources suggest he acknowledged Manuel I as his overlord during this trip.
In 1172, Maria gave birth to a daughter, Isabella. Since Maria was, at most, 18 at the time, expectations for further children would have been high. Instead, two years later, King Amalric was dead, succumbing to dysentery following a short military campaign. As the crowned queen of Jerusalem, Maria would have taken part in the sessions of the High Court of Jerusalem that followed, including the one that elected the next king. Without serious dissent, the choice fell on Amalric’s only son, Baldwin, a son from his first marriage. Baldwin was crowned King Baldwin IV. Tragically, he was already suffering from leprosy.
Maria, now the dowager queen, retired from court and did not attempt to interfere in the government of the realm. She withdrew to her dower lands, the barony of Nablus. This wealthy and important lordship, directly north of the royal domain of Jerusalem, owed eighty-five knights to the feudal levee, making it militarily one of the strongest baronies in the kingdom. It was home to a diverse population of Samaritans, Jews and Muslims, in addition to Latin settlers. Thus, at the age of 20, Maria Comnena was an independently wealthy and powerful widow. Furthermore, the laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem ensured that she could not be forced into a second marriage by her stepson or great-uncle.
Notably, rather than scheming, as historians and novelists would have you believe, Maria had so little involvement in the politics of the realm that she did not appear in the historical record again until mid-1177. Philip II, Count of Flanders, had come to the Holy Land with a small army of crusaders and sought Maria out in Nablus. Flanders was at loggerheads with Baldwin IV and the High Court of Jerusalem about a proposed campaign against Egypt. The Byzantines and Latins were undertaking this campaign jointly, and Manuel I had sent a fleet of seventy warships. That Flanders sought out Maria in Nablus suggests he saw her as a woman who could advise him on the likely reaction of the Byzantine Emperor to his actions and demands. Even more noteworthy, as a result of his meetings with Maria, he had a change of heart. From Nablus, he sent messengers to Jerusalem, declaring his acceptance of the High Court’s plans for the campaign in Egypt. Maria Comnena, at 23, was obviously a woman who could talk politics with the savviest of Western noblemen and be persuasive without the slightest personal interest in the outcome.
In late 1177, Maria Comnena made a surprise second marriage, selecting as her husband the landless younger brother of the Baron of Ibelin, Ramla and Mirabel, Balian d’Ibelin. Although it is recorded that Maria had the explicit consent of the king for this marriage, there is no reason to suppose the marriage was imposed on her. The fact that the candidate was the younger brother of a local baron from a parvenu family makes it all but certain he was her choice; otherwise, she could have rejected him as beneath the dignity of a Comnena. No one, much less the weakened Baldwin, would have risked a break with the Byzantine Emperor over a marriage that brought no apparent advantages to the crown. In short, we can assume that Maria’s marriage to Balian d’Ibelin was a love match, at least on her side.
Shortly thereafter, Maria faced the first serious crisis of her life. Her daughter by Amalric, 8-year-old Isabella, was taken from her against her will in 1180. The king, allegedly on his mother’s advice, had betrothed his half-sister Isabella to Humphrey de Toron, and Isabella was sent to live with her future husband. Humphrey, still a minor, was living with his mother and her third husband, the infamous Reynald de Chatillon. The timing of the marriage is significant. Agnes had just engineered (or at least secured her son’s consent to) the marriage of her daughter Sibylla to Guy de Lusignan. She thereby earned the enduring enmity of Baldwin d’Ibelin, Baron of Ramla and Mirabel, who had harboured hopes of marrying Sibylla. Due to this ill-advised marriage, the Ibelins (and other barons of Jerusalem) became bitter opponents of Guy de Lusignan. Under the circumstances, King Baldwin ostensibly felt it was advisable to remove his half-sister Isabella from Ibelin control.
The historical record demonstrates that King Baldwin was unjustified in imputing treasonous intentions to the Ibelins; both brothers remained staunchly loyal to Baldwin and his nephew and heir. Furthermore, there is no objective way to portray the removal of a small child from her mother’s care to place her in the hands of a notoriously brutal and unscrupulous man as benign. It was a cruel, vindictive act that undoubtedly acerbated the hostility between Maria and Agnes – and between the Ibelins and Lusignans – to the detriment of the kingdom.
For three years, Isabella was denied the right to visit her mother in Nablus. It was not until 1183 that Maria saw her daughter again when Isabella married Humphrey at the age of 11. No sooner had Maria, Agnes and other wedding guests arrived at the bleak castle of Kerak set atop a mountain overlooking the desert than Saladin laid siege to the castle. Maria was trapped inside with her daughter, her new son-in-law and hundreds of wedding guests.
Meanwhile, the bulk of the barons of Jerusalem, including her husband, were gathered in Jerusalem at a meeting of the High Court. It was a stormy session in which the barons unanimously refused to accept Guy de Lusignan as regent or go to the relief of Kerak (and incidentally both princesses of Jerusalem). That is quite a resounding vote of “no-confidence” in Guy de Lusignan. Baldwin IV, now completely lame and going blind because of his leprosy, had to take up the reins of government and personally lead the royal army to the relief of Kerak. Saladin retreated.
One year later, Maria found herself under siege a second time, this time in her barony of Nablus. After a second siege of Kerak had been thwarted by the timely arrival of the feudal host of Jerusalem, Saladin withdrew, plundering and burning his way north to Damascus. Nablus, an unwalled town, was in his path. Since Ibelin was with the feudal army summoned by the king, Maria commanded at Nablus. Remarkably, there were no Frankish casualties because Maria provided refuge for the entire civilian population inside the citadel, in marked contrast to neighbouring towns and cities.
The next time Saracen forces threatened to overrun Nablus, such a response was unthinkable. In July 1187, Saladin obliterated the Christian army, killing or enslaving roughly 17,000 men and taking the king of Jerusalem, most of his barons, and the grand masters of both the Templars and Hospitallers captive. In short, like every other city and castle in the crusader kingdom, Nablus had no hope of relief because there was no longer an army capable of coming to its aid. Maria was a realist. She abandoned Nablus and fled to Jerusalem with her children, household, and probably most of the other inhabitants of her barony.
Jerusalem was flooded with refugees from the surrounding countryside. Most were women, children, churchmen and elders because able-bodied men had been called up to the army and were now dead or enslaved. The leaders selected (by what means we do not know) to represent the city refused Saladin’s generous terms for surrender. They answered Saladin by saying they preferred martyrdom to shame.
Maria Comnena was not part of the delegation, but as dowager queen, she had probably been involved in selecting both the spokesman and the answer. Yet it is hard to imagine she was not relieved when – against all odds – her husband appeared in Jerusalem to escort her and her four young children (all under the age of 10) to safety.
The arrival of Balian d’Ibelin in Jerusalem sometime after the fall of Hattin struck the Christians in Jerusalem as miraculous. He had escaped from the debacle at Hattin and gained the safety Tyre or Tripoli, yet he returned unarmed to bring his wife and children to freedom. This act, more than any other, suggests the depth of feeling Balian had for his wife. Other lords, notably Raymond of Tripoli, abandoned their wives to their fate, trusting Saladin’s sense of honour not to harm them. Ibelin, in contrast, took the unprecedented – and risky – step of seeking a safe conduct from the victorious sultan. He also gave his word to go to the city unarmed and remain only a single night.
The arrival of a respected and experienced battle commander in the militarily leaderless city sparked widespread jubilation until the people learned Ibelin intended to rescue his family and withdraw. They begged him to remain and take command of the city’s defences and resistance. The patriarch graciously absolved the Christian baron of his oath to the Muslim Saladin. Ibelin decided it was his duty to remain.
Did he decide alone? That is hardly conceivable. He had been married to Maria Comnena for almost ten years, yet she remained his social superior by many orders of magnitude. Ibelin would not have been in the habit of dictating to his wealthier, better-connected and higher-born wife. Maria Comnena must have shared his decision and very likely contributed to it – without knowing that Saladin had another surprise for them.
When Ibelin sent word to the sultan that he was compelled by the appeals of his compatriots to remain in Jerusalem, the sultan showed understanding and respect for the baron’s decision. He sent fifty of his personal guard to Jerusalem to escort Maria Comnena and her children to safety. Why? The romantic answer is that he was chivalrous. The more realistic answer is that Maria Comnena was the first cousin of the Byzantine Emperor, and Saladin had signed a truce with the Byzantines. He had no desire to muddy the waters by having a Byzantine princess caught in a city he had vowed to take by storm. The risk of something happening to her, resulting in a diplomatic incident, was too high.
Maria must have been relieved for the sake of her children to get that escort to safety. She was probably equally distressed to leave her husband behind to almost certain death. She could not have known as she rode out of Jerusalem sometime in early September 1187 that Ibelin would pull off yet another miracle: the ransom of tens of thousands of Christian lives after the walls of the Holy City had been breached.
After the fall of Jerusalem, Maria was reunited with Ibelin, but they had lost their estates, castles and income. Yet although the Kingdom of Jerusalem had been reduced to the city of Tyre – a city under siege and frequent attack, Maria did not choose to return to Constantinople. Her decision to remain in the pitiful remnants of the crusader state was unquestionably a tribute and sign of her loyalty to her second husband.
Ibelin, probably with considerable misgivings and inner revulsion, joined the army that Guy de Lusignan had raised after his release in 1188 and took part in the Christian siege of Muslim Acre. Many women were in the Christian camp, including Queen Sibylla and her two daughters by Guy, and Maria’s daughter Isabella, but Maria remained in Tyre. In November 1190, Sibylla of Jerusalem and her two daughters died of fever in the siege camp at Acre. With her death, Guy de Lusignan’s right to the throne of Jerusalem was extinguished.
The next in line to the throne was Maria’s daughter, Isabella. Isabella was 18 years old and still married to Humphrey de Toron, the man imposed on her as a child of 8 by her half-brother, Baldwin IV. The problem with Humphrey in the eyes of most of the surviving barons, knights and burghers of Jerusalem was that he was weak (some say effeminate). He was not credited with the ability to play a constructive role in regaining the lost territories of the kingdom. Perhaps more significantly, he had betrayed the barons once before. Following Guy de Lusignan’s usurpation of the throne, most of the barons in the High Court wanted to crown Isabella, but Humphrey had slipped away in the dark to do homage to Guy and Sibylla. As a result, several barons refused to recognise Isabella as queen unless she first divorced Toron and married the candidate of their choice, Conrad de Montferrat.
Since Isabella had been married to Toron at age 11 (before the legal age of consent for girls in the twelfth century), there were legal grounds for the annulment of her marriage. However, Isabella had grown attached to Humphrey, and the chronicles agree that her mother had to ‘browbeat’ her into accepting a divorce. This is the source – the only source – for all the negative commentary about Maria Comnena’s character.
The image of an unscrupulous and ambitious woman heartlessly pressuring a sweet young girl into betraying the man she loved has captured the imagination of chroniclers, historians and novelists alike. Yet it is a gross distortion of the facts. First, the sources are hostile to Conrad de Montferrat and/or Alice de Champagne should, therefore, be treated with caution. Second, the divorce was undoubtedly in the best interests of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Maria should be given credit rather than blame for putting the interests of the kingdom ahead of the affections of her teenage daughter. Third, there is no indication whatsoever that Maria profited from her daughter’s marriage to Montferrat, as would have been the case had she acted from base motives. Finally, when Conrad de Montferrat was murdered, Isabella did not seek to marry Humphrey de Toron and make him king, although as an anointed queen, she was free to choose her husband. This makes clear that her attachment to him was less than critics of Maria would have us believe. Nor should this single incident outweigh Maria’s demonstrated lack of meddling, grasping and self-aggrandisement throughout the rest of her life as queen, dowager and queen mother.
Isabella’s elevation to the throne opened the gates for Maria to play a similarly sinister and interfering role in the politics of the kingdom as Agnes de Courtenay had done; she did not. Instead, she appears to have retired with Ibelin and their children to the much-reduced estates at their disposal. (Although the truce between Richard of England and Saladin did not restore either Nablus or any of the Ibelin lordships to Christian control, Ibelin was explicitly granted the smaller lordship of Caymont, northeast of Caesarea.) Ibelin, as the queen’s stepfather, initially took precedence over all other lords in the kingdom, but he disappeared from the historical record after 1193. It is usually assumed that he became ill or died around this time, although he may have been active in Cyprus instead.
Maria Comnena is credited with helping reconcile Aimery de Lusignan with her son-in-law Henri de Champagne. She may also have acted as a go-between in the negotiations between Walter de Montbéliard, regent for Hugh I of Cyprus, and her son John of Beirut, regent for her granddaughter Maria de Montferrat, concerning the marriage between Hugh and her granddaughter Alice de Champagne. As the unquestioned ‘dowager par excellence’ of the family, she would have played an influential role in the education of all of her grandchildren.
Maria Comnena died in 1217 when her 5-year-old great-granddaughter Yolanda was queen of Jerusalem. Her descendents dominated the history of the Latin East for the next century; the progeny from her first marriage ruled as queens of Jerusalem and Cyprus, while the offspring of her second marriage became the powerful, semi-royal Ibelin family that brought forth regents, constables, and seneschals for both kingdoms and multiple queen-consorts for Cyprus.
In the first two decades of her life, Maria was no less a pawn than any other princess sent to a foreign court to fulfil the diplomatic objectives of her family. Yet, from the day she became the dowager queen of Jerusalem, she took control of her fate. She married wisely and exercised influence prudently. In all recorded instances of her doings – whether advising Flanders to tone down his demands, defending Nablus from Saladin’s troops, convincing her daughter to put the interests of her kingdom first, or reconciling her son-in-law with the king of Cyprus – her actions and intentions are characterised by selflessness and intelligence. Rarely, has a woman with such an unblemished record of wise behaviour suffered from such a baseless reputation for evil and intrigue. Few women are more deserving a revisionist reappraisal than Maria Comnena.
Maria de Montferrat, Ruling Queen of Jerusalem (b. 1192 – d. 1212, reigned 1210–1212)
Maria did not live long enough to leave much of an imprint on the historical record, much less a legacy, but as a ruling queen, she deserves a short biography.
Maria de Montferrat was the first and eldest child of Isabella I of Jerusalem. She was born to the uncrowned but acknowledged queen of a kingdom that had almost ceased to exist five years earlier. At the time of her birth, Maria’s future kingdom clung to existence by its bare fingernails only after a massive intervention from the West known in history as the Third Crusade. She arrived in a world exhausted by warfare and entering a fragile three-year truce. Furthermore, her father, Conrad Marquis de Montferrat, was already dead, the victim of an assassin only months earlier.
As the ruling queen’s firstborn, Maria was heir apparent from the day of her birth, but she would have grown up knowing that the birth of a brother would instantly displace her in the succession. That probably meant less to her as a child than the fact that she was raised by parents who were fond of one another. She soon had three half-sisters, Marguerite, Alice and Philippa, the daughters of her stepfather, Henri de Champagne.
When she was five, however, tragedy struck. The only father she had ever known fell to his death from a window in a bizarre accident. Such a loss would have been bad enough, but it occurred when the Saracens were threatening Acre. Maria would surely have been acutely aware of the alarm and distress of those around her.
Her mother rapidly married again, and Maria had a new stepfather, Aimery de Lusignan. He was substantially older than Henri de Champagne, having been born in 1153, so he was 44 at the time of his marriage to Isabella I. He already had several children by his first marriage. Although we cannot know for sure, it seems unlikely that Maria would have formed strong bonds with him.
She soon had two more half-sisters, Sibylla and Melisende, and in November 1204, a brother Amalric was born, displacing her as heir apparent. Her brother lived less than six months, however, dying in February 1205. Two months later, her stepfather died of food poisoning, and shortly after that, her mother also died. At 13 years of age, Maria de Montferrat was the queen of Jerusalem. It is hard to imagine that she rejoiced at her sudden elevation. No matter how ambivalent her feelings for her stepfather and infant brother may have been, the loss of her mother must have been devastating.
At 13, Maria was not of age to rule, so the control of her kingdom was put into the hands of her nearest male relative until she married. Her regent was her mother’s half-brother, John d’Ibelin, Lord of Beirut. The Lord of Beirut would have been a frequent visitor at court and was unlikely to have been a stranger to her. Yet there is no reason to believe they were particularly close before he was appointed regent. Aside from keeping the Saracens at bay, his primary job was to find a suitable consort for Maria in cooperation with the High Court. The court initially pursued a possible marriage with the king of Aragon, but when this fell through, they sent to the king of France requesting him to suggest a candidate. King Louis’ choice fell on John de Brienne. Maria had no say in the matter.
