Second Crusade: the Kings, 1147-8

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

The Second Crusade consisted mainly of a huge expeditionary force led by the French King Louis VII and the German King Conrad III. Its story is one of great initial promise and high theater, ending in disappointment and disaster. It was also was the first time that reigning monarchs went on Crusade.

Pope Eugene III came to Paris, where Louis staged a dramatic Mass at the Cathedral of St. Denis. Louis prostrated himself on the floor before the Saint, committing himself to holy war, then immediately set out. Louis was not really a warrior; he had been the second son, devoted to the church, then suddenly called to rule. In his short reign, he had already been forced to lead knights against rebels, but he came away from that experience with a deep sense of guilt, perhaps because he had burnt down a church with a thousand people sheltered inside. His chief purpose was pilgrimage, and his appointed regent was the Abbot who had mentored him, rather than a nobleman or relative. Normally, the regent would be the Queen, but in this case, his wife chose to come along on the adventure.

The German army set out first, with a planned time lag to allow the countryside to recover from provisioning them before the French army passed through. In this way, both came to Constantinople. It was not peaceful; the German army had clashed with Byzantine forces outside the city, even though the Emperor and King were brothers in law.

Both the German and French armies were decimated by Turkish attacks as they crossed the Anatolian plateau. It was so intense that in one assault, King Louis had to climb a cliff, holding onto tree roots while using his sword as rear guard. Both kings arrived in Antioch alive, but their armies were very badly reduced.

The obvious next step was to proceed to Edessa, since its capture by Turks was the casus belli. But they didn’t do that. King Louis wanted to see Jerusalem first, and there, the high council met and chose to attack…Damascus.

The attack on Damascus was foolish in both political and military terms. It was a miserable failure, as well. The allied forces of Zengi’s son Nur ad-Din and the ruler of Damascus pushed back the remnants of the Crusader forces. Had they attacked Edessa, it might have worked, because Damascus probably would have sat on the sidelines.

And that’s the crucial point: this was the first time Europeans faced a united Turkish force. They had underestimated how much difference it would make. The Crusader lords criticized how the European kings had bungled the siege, while the Europeans said the Crusaders had given up too quickly.

When King Conrad went down to Ascalon to see if he could take it, the other kings did not join him. Leaving many captured noblemen to be ransomed by their families as possible, a bitter Conrad went back to Germany.

King Louis and Queen Eleanor went home in separate ships and soon after, they divorced (via an annulment of the “oops I guess we were cousins” kind). More about them next.

Bernard of Clairvaux felt terrible about having encouraged this mess in the first place; among his writings is a formal apology to the Pope.

Edessa never recovered. Nur ad-Din massacred the Christian population of the city, leaving it largely empty. It dwindled in economic importance and eventually became a ruin.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades | Comments Off on Second Crusade: the Kings, 1147-8

Second Crusade: Towns and Merchants, 1147

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

The fall of the County of Edessa to Zengi prompted Pope Eugenius to begin a new call for a Crusade. Although he and Bernard of Clairvaux intended their persuasion to influence kings and counts, many other people heard these arguments and began making drastic changes in their lives, freeing themselves to go and give personal help. But this time, the popular Crusade was well organized and did not end in disaster.

To some extent, that’s because all during this period, the power and self-governing wisdom of towns was constantly growing. Towns began in the early medieval years as land set apart from the usual labor contributions that a baron or count expected. The people living on this chartered plot still owed something, but they could give it in cash, as taxes, not as actual days of the week when they must plow fields or dig ditches. Craftsmen flocked to the new towns and organized guilds, and the guilds elected leaders to create a town council. The council elected a Major as executive, or as it’s come to us in English, a mayor. Every few decades, the towns’ governance grew more detailed and stronger. So now, the popular Crusade now actually worked.

Towns all over Northern Europe, crossing many feudal and national boundaries, agreed on a time and place to meet: the first weeks of May, in Dartmouth, England. There, the regional leaders (guild leaders, landowners, and merchants) made an agreement. Each ship would be viewed as a parish, with a priest and regular church services. For each group of ships, a judge was appointed to settle disputes; they were not to tolerate brawling, since this was a pilgrimage. Important decisions would be made by a council of all the regional leaders. Every participant swore an oath to follow this plan.

Also during this 50-year period, they were building larger and deeper-keeled cargo ships in the North Sea. The merchants who helped organize ships for the pilgrims probably chose cogs, which were shorter and more barrel-shaped than the war-ships that we see depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry. It may be that just in the years since Prince Sigurd set out on pilgrimage by ship, the average sea-going vessel had more cargo capacity and less need to stop so frequently.

Because the voyage was planned in such a decentralized way, there’s no master list or record of who went, or why. Most of what we know comes from a history written in Lisbon, Portugal, because the fleet arrived just in time to assist local Christians to complete their reconquest of Lisbon. It wasn’t a big event in English or Flemish history, but it was huge for Lisbon.

A spate of bad Atlantic weather forced the flotilla to slow down and stop. King Alfonso of Leon and Castile sent men to persuade them to help with the siege, instead of passing on. The Pope had recently announced that fighting the Moors in Spain was just as valid as going all the way to the Holy Land. And so the townsmen agreed to anchor their ships and help with the siege. They would be paid with treasure taken from the Moors when the city was captured, with King Alfonso remaining in control of political decisions.

It took four months to bring Lisbon to the point of surrender, and at that point, all or most of the Muslim residents left as refugees to other taifa cities. Some of the pilgrim sailors chose to stay on in Lisbon, rewarded with land or houses. Lisbon’s account suggests that most of them stayed, so it must have been a significant number, who became an important piece of the city’s new Christian identity.

One Mediterranean account suggests that some of them continued to the Holy Land, but we know nothing about how they fared there. Kings usually traveled with chroniclers, but these townsmen and merchants didn’t think of it. Paper technology was still on its way to Europe; after paper was widely available, common people kept records too (which is why we know so much about the Black Death). But in this time, no.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades | Tagged , | Comments Off on Second Crusade: Towns and Merchants, 1147

Bernard of Clairvaux and the Templars

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

Bernard was a younger son in a noble family of Burgundy. His normal lot would have been war training for knighthood, but Bernard was clearly a scholarly, literary child who preferred the Church, so they sent him to school. As a young adult, he joined a reforming group of monks who wanted to restore holy austerity to monastic life. The house he personally founded, Clairvaux, at first was too austere to maintain even his own health. His rules became known as the Cisterian Order, and they spread during the next century, representing a reform movement.

Bernard was idealistic to a fault. He persuaded his entire family to become monks; apparently it was difficult for anyone to resist his enthusiasm for long. One of his knightly uncles went to the Holy Land and not only chose to stay but became a founding Templar, probably reflecting his nephew’s influence.

Bernard’s enthusiasm for the monastic orders of knights, particularly the Templars, knew no bounds. He had no cynicism about their whole-hearted devotion to God. He was asked to write the Rule of their order in 1128, dictating what they could own or eat, how often they must pray, and things like that. Since he fully accepted his time’s definition of holiness as rejection of the concrete bodily world, he directed the knights to be strikingly austere. He had grown up in the knightly social class, so he knew well their points of vanity.

He directed, for example, that the Templars keep their hair short. He had seen young knights put too much time into maintaining long hair; you may recall the 1950s “Pageboy” haircut for girls, modeled on images of knights with long curls and bangs. The Templars were also supposed to wash minimally, since a dirty face showed they had been hard at work, and they should be proud of it. Nor could they doll up their horses’ bridles with spangles and jewels, as some knights were starting to do. Their barracks in the Temple (actually al-Aqsa Mosque) should also be as stark as possible, with weapons and saddles as the only decorations. Bernard’s praise of the Templar ideal contributed to its rapid growth in volunteers and donations.

He had two other major public projects in his later years. In 1130, while he was still busy promoting and shaping the Templars, Rome experienced a crisis with two papal elections. A number of cardinals believed the first hasty election at the previous Pope’s deathbed wasn’t in good order, so they held a second election. As with so many such things, the true issue appears to have been rival family factions in Italy, so both Popes had supporters and it became a contest of their relative power. The first-elected one, Innocent II, had to flee to France, while the second, Anacletus, was acting Pope until his death in 1138. Bernard was a passionate supporter of Innocent II. He went from one European capital to another, trying to persuade monarchs and cardinals to support him.

Bernard’s success at this persuasive diplomacy made him the obvious choice for preaching the Second Crusade. The Pope who called for the Crusade was one of his own Cistercian monks, too. Bernard, now an old man in his 50s, traveled again from capital to capital, preaching Crusade to the aristocrats. He was as persuasive as ever, to the point where the Crusade became his personal project. This seemed like a really good idea at the time.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Bernard of Clairvaux and the Templars

Egypt: Another Ismaili Split, 1132-40

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

The Fatimid dynasty always tried to combine pragmatic secular rule with idealistic religion. The Caliph/Imam was not only the war leader and ruler, he was also the holiest descendant of Ismail.

We’ve already seen one major split among Ismailis, when the Vizier Afdal promoted younger brother Musta’ali over heir apparent Nizar. During the 12th century, the Nizari Ismailis were mostly in Persia, trying to rebel against Baghdad’s Turkish rule. These Nizaris even took the radical step of composing their holy writings in Persian, not in Arabic.

But in 1132, another split began.

Most Muslims in Egypt accepted Musta’ali’s rule pragmatically, but some believed fervently that the choice of Musta’ali had also been idealistic and holy. When this Imam died, his son al-Amir became Imam after him, so all was still well. In 1130, the birth of an heir-apparent son named Tayyib was celebrated in Cairo. But in 1132, the Caliph-Imam was assassinated. The heir, Tayyib, was no more than two years old.

Hafiz, a half-brother to the dead Caliph, became Regent for baby Tayyib. This kind of plan usually worked out badly in those times. Within a short time, Hafiz declared himself Caliph-Imam, since he too was a son of Musta’ali. Vizier Afdal and everyone who had charge of baby Tayyib were suddenly assassinated. The Nizari Assassins were a convenient scapegoat, but it’s just as likely that Hafiz sent his own team. Tayyib vanished from history, first with a legend of being hidden like Moses in a basket, carried to a mosque for safe-keeping. Then, since he was the true Imam even at this young age, he went into “occultation,” the hidden state where true Imams await their future revealing.

Ismailis in Yemen never accepted Hafiz; they were partisans of Tayyib. This was the next big split among Shi’ites: Tayyibi and Hafizi. Hafizi partisans didn’t have a long run, though; the descendants of Hafiz definitely died out, without occultation or mystery, within a few generations. Remaining Hafizi believers made amends to the Tayyibis and just joined them. There is still a Tayyibi Ismaili Shi’ite sect in Yemen.

During the last years of the Hafizis in Cairo, their Vizier tried to solve the three-way power problem by allying with the Crusader Kingdoms against the growing power of Zengi and his heirs. It was the last stand for Arab rule. Turks and Kurds now held Baghdad, Damascus, and much of Persia; they were taking more and more of Anatolia. However much the last Hafizis might be rejected by Tayyibis and Nizaris, they were undisputed as descendants of Ismail, who was a descendant of Mohammed. If these last Fatimids, fractured by idealistic splits, could not hold onto power against the Turks and Kurds, international Arab aristocracy was basically over.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Egypt: Another Ismaili Split, 1132-40

The Komnenos Imperial Family, 1118-46

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

The Byzantine Empire was central to all of these events, but we often overlook their role in the Crusader kingdoms since the Franks were so often opposed to the Greeks. The Crusaders acted alone most of the time, after the initial invasion was over.

The Emperor who wrote to the Pope back in the 1090’s was Alexios, who remained the ruler throughout the early Crusader kingdom years. Alexios died in 1118, around the time the Knights Templars were established, during the reign of Baldwin II.

His son John had two older sisters (Anna is famous for having taken notes on the Crusaders), and as it so often went in Constantinople, his succession was not simple or assured. His mother Empress Irene preferred Anna’s husband, a powerful general, over her own sons. But John stole his dying father’s ring and proclaimed himself Emperor John II in public, winning support from the city mob. His sister Anna’s history-writing seems to have been prompted by her surplus of free time after she and her husband were exiled.

John II is remembered as The Good or Beautiful (ό καλος). He was very pious, and he set out to reverse Byzantium’s recent losses. First he married the Hungarian princess Piroska, renaming her “Irene” after his mother. They had eight children. He reconquered the Balkans and even his wife’s homeland of Hungary. He set out across Anatolia, putting the Turks on the defensive at last. He was never able to push the Danishmend Turks out of the northeast, but he regained control over many other provinces.

The Crusaders sometimes allied with him against Muslim Syria, but as always, they were very ambivalent about the Greek Emperor. In 1142, John announced to King Fulk that he intended to go on a “pilgrimage” to Jerusalem with several hundred of his closest armed friends. Fulk replied that he’d love to have them, but the land around Jerusalem was just so dry, the economy so poor, etc., he really thought that the retinue should be restricted to maybe a dozen. John lost interest, not willing to go into full war.

John’s best friend and vizier was a Turkish boy captured at the siege of Nicaea, back at the start of the First Crusade. They grew up together, though the Turkish boy may have technically been his slave. In this period, with Mamluks ruling cities, slave and friend were not always rigid distinctions. We see this pattern often, later, in Ottoman Sultans who adopted and promoted a slave best friend.

John’s last acts were an attempt to take back both Edessa and Antioch, which Byzantium had never conceded to the Crusaders. He died in Cilicia in a hunting accident, while he was preparing to besiege Antioch.

John had two surviving sons, the older Isaac and the younger Manuel, and he chose Manuel to become Emperor, stating the Isaac was not fit by temperament. John’s Turkish best friend/vizier helped by leaving the deathbed quickly to arrest older son Isaac in Constantinople. When Manuel was proclaimed Emperor there, he decided to release brother Isaac, but he took the extra safety measure of dipping into the royal treasury to give every house-owner two gold pieces. The city’s citizenry (sometimes known as a mob) was usually the deciding factor in succession.

In the early years, Emperor Manuel looked like he could restore the lost glory of Byzantium. He is remembered as Manuel the Great (ὁ μέγας).

The Crusader Prince of Antioch had to seek help from Manuel after Edessa fell in 1144, so within these first years, Manuel’s influence extended to the very cities his father had wanted back. The German king formed an alliance with Manuel, sealed by sending his queen’s sister to marry the Emperor. Her name was Bertha, but she had to be re-baptized in the Greek rites with a new name. As usual, she was now called Irene, the third Empress Irene in a row. There’s some record that she found the luxury and decadence of Constantinople as a moral shock and never quite adjusted.

This was the period when the Second Crusade ran its course. Germany and Byzantium were allies to keep the Normans of Sicily from assaulting Greece and Albania again. They also worked together to try to win back Edessa from Zengi’s son Nur ad-Din. Manuel achieved a lot, winning back much territory….but in the end, it didn’t really matter. He’ll show up in Second and Third Crusade stories, and after his queen’s death he also married into the “Real Housewives of Outremer” drama of Baldwin’s daughters. But the Turks were on the ascendant and their momentum could only be checked for a short time.

The Komnenoi left another footnote: one of John’s sisters had a son, also John, who converted to Islam and married the Sultan’s daughter. The Sultan probably planned an invasion with this nephew at its head, but it didn’t happen. However, the Ottoman line claims descent from this couple, probably to make their takeover more palatable.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The Komnenos Imperial Family, 1118-46

The Rise of Zengi, 1127-46; the Fall of Crusader Edessa, 1144.

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

The Crusaders put new pressure on the fractured Muslim world. The First Crusade clearly only succeeded because Baghdad’s power had been so shattered by infighting and Turkish conquest. In order to repel the invaders, the Turks had to unite and re-create Baghdad’s former military might. But who would rule a united “Rum,” as they called the region east of Constantinople? Each of them wanted to, so the struggle continued in the face of Crusader pressure.

Zengi was one of the most successful Turkish lords during this time. He became that one strong man who could start ruling more than one city at a time, uniting them into a real kingdom. Baghdad’s Sultan/Caliph was always still king in name, at this time, so Zengi was known merely as an Atabeg or Governor. Atabeg is a compound word, Ata “father, ancestor” + Beg, “ruler, leader.” We usually see Turkish “beg” in its later form, Bey.

Zengi’s father was beheaded for treason in Aleppo, but oddly, the child Zengi was not stigmatized for it. The governor of Mosul adopted him, and he remained a member of the Turkish aristocracy. In fact, he inherited Mosul from his adoptive father.

As Atabeg of Mosul, Zengi quickly took over Aleppo as well in 1128. Sultan Mahmud of Baghdad recognized his rule and counted on his support against rebels, but after the Sultan’s death, a civil war broke out. Zengi end up supporting the losing side. Somehow, he held onto his power bases in Mosul and Aleppo as rival Caliphs and Sultans battled all around Baghdad and Damascus for the next five years.

In 1135, the ruler of Damascus offered to give the city to Zengi to save himself from internal plots, but this ruler was actually killed by order of his own mother before he could finalize it. Zengi besieged Homs and Damascus by turns over the next few years, notably getting a Damascus fortress to surrender by promising safe passage—-and then killing them all. Damascus allied with King Fulk of Jerusalem, but Zengi bested him, too. At length, in 1138 Zengi found peace and true love by marrying the Damascus mother who had ordered her son killed. With this action, he became the ruler of Homs, but Damascus still escaped him.

1144 was a banner year for Zengi and a disaster for the Crusaders. Zengi besieged Edessa, capturing it on Christmas Eve. The first Crusader state to be established, Edessa was also the first to end. Zengi’s gate-crashing of Edessa was heard in Europe: the fall of a major Crusader city became the formal cause of an official Second Crusade.

Zengi didn’t live much longer. Somewhere along the line, he had enslaved a Frank, probably captured in battle against Fulk, but perhaps from some more roundabout way. He was very fond of his Frankish slave, whose name we know only in Turkish. He didn’t realize the Frank secretly hated him. One night, Zengi was very drunk, and the slave stabbed him to death. He ran to Damascus, thinking he would be welcomed, but instead the governor of Damascus arrested him. The slave was sent to Aleppo, where Zengi’s son Nur ad-Din executed him. And now the mini-empire was Nur ad-Din’s.

Zengi’s strategic significance can’t be lost in the colorful details. The Muslim Empire was always balancing regional and cultural powers against each other, and for a while now, Baghdad’s Middle Eastern-Mesopotamian power base had been too fractured to do any balancing. This left the ideologically radical Ismaili regime in Egypt freedom to range far, setting up Shi’ite communities in Baghdad’s back yard, while also venturing as far north as Jerusalem. The imbalance allowed the Crusaders an opportunity to slip in. If Zengi could unify the Mesopotamian power base, the region might return to its classic power struggles by pushing out the Europeans. After unifying just a few cities, he wiped out one Crusader County. What was next?

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on The Rise of Zengi, 1127-46; the Fall of Crusader Edessa, 1144.

Hodierna of Tripoli, 1137

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

Hodierna, Baldwin’s third daughter, didn’t marry until she was about 25 (in 1137). It’s not clear why she stayed home so long when her sister Alice was married off at 16. It may have just been a lack of opportunity; no Prince Bohemund was on the horizon, and they didn’t want her to “marry down.” Hodierna’s husband Raymond II of Tripoli, who was in some ways the boy next door, was only 20.

Raymond II didn’t know what to do with the strong-willed, independent wife he had taken on. They say he tried keeping her in seclusion, but rumors still spread that her first baby was not fathered by Raymond. There were no serious questions raised when a boy was born, since he was a badly-needed heir, but the rumors about little Melisende (the first baby) persisted for years.

There’s an odd assassination episode during the Second Crusade, with Hodierna’s name mixed in. The youngest son of First Crusader Raymond of Toulouse came as a commander, but he died suddenly at Caesarea.  The circumstances of the young Count’s death in 1148 must have been highly suspicious. At the time, people said he had been poisoned. It’s interesting that when Baldwin I died at Muslim-held Caesarea, they didn’t take seriously the notion that he’d been poisoned. But this time, rumors spread that a woman had been behind the poisoning. Some said Queen Melisende of Jerusalem had arranged it at the request of Hodierna.

The Tripoli marriage seems to have been difficult straight through. By 1152, the couple had separated. Hodierna’s sister Queen Melisende came to Tripoli as mediator, but in the end, everyone agreed that it would be best if Hodierna and her daughter just went to Jerusalem for a while. After they were gone, assassins killed Raymond II. Historians seem to think that they were probably Nizari Ismaili agents who targeted a Christian ruler (not their usual) because he had given so much land and money to the Order of the Hospital knights, including the Krak des Chevaliers. Okay, fine, it totally wasn’t done by Hodierna. hm.

Hodierna went back to Tripoli to help her young son Raymond III rule until he was declared an adult at age 15, a few years later. Unlike her sister Alice, she didn’t try to wrest power from him. But in 1160, she suffered a great humiliation. The Byzantine Emperor made a tentative plan to marry Hodierna’s daughter Melisende, and Tripoli began taxing and gathering to give her a good dowry. While they were doing this, however, those old rumors about Hodierna’s lovers came to the Emperor’s ears. He began stalling until a year had passed, and next thing they knew, he had quietly married Alice’s granddaughter Maria, instead.

Raymond III took revenge for the insult to his sister by plundering Cyprus, then a Byzantine stronghold. But there was no real way to fix what had just happened. Young Melisende quietly entered a convent. Hodierna lived long enough to sit at her sister Queen Melisende’s deathbed, then she too passed away in 1164. It doesn’t look like she had any grandchildren, so her line ended.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades, Women | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Hodierna of Tripoli, 1137

Melisende and Fulk, 1129-43

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

Melisende was named after the Countess of Rethel, Baldwin II’s mother; it’s a variant of Millicent, an old Germanic compound name. Now it has become the name of a fairy-tale heroine of an opera, so it sounds fanciful, but when Melisende was named, it was probably just a family name.

The difficulty of finding a husband for Melisende lay in the family’s need for a strong war leader who would be loyal to her interests. Nothing could really stop a powerful man from marrying her, being crowned, and then setting her aside, maybe off into a convent. There was no clear choice among the local lords whose characters and alliances were known; young Bohemund II was allied to Jerusalem via Alice, perhaps because he wasn’t obviously strong enough to handle Jerusalem. The King of France chose the Count of Anjou.

Fulk had been Count of Anjou since he was something like 18, and he had raised a family already. His son Geoffrey of Anjou married the the Princess Matilda of England; together they founded the Plantagenet Dynasty. Fulk’s daughter, another Matilda, married England’s Crown Prince (who died young, so he never became king). Fulk had already made a long pilgrimage to Jerusalem and was an important funding source for the Knights of the Temple. We have to presume that during his pilgrimage, he spent time with all of the Crusader ruling structure—so they knew him. He knew them. He had met the daughter.

Fulk was strong enough to hold Jerusalem against enemies and make wise decisions about internal plots and diplomacy. But was he actually too strong? His marriage was pragmatic and it was soon clear that, in personal terms, it was a disaster. Melisende was no traditional French wife; she was used to attending council meetings. But Fulk expected to be King of Jerusalem outright, on his own.

When Melisende gave birth to a son in 1130, her father saw an opportunity to block Fulk from a possible coup against her. First, he decreed that Melisende had sole custody of the infant Baldwin. Second, kings could have their successors anointed and crowned during their own lifetimes. Baldwin II had Melisende, Fulk, and infant Baldwin III crowned as three joint monarchs.

Fulk took as little notice as possible and began acting as if he were sole king. After Baldwin II died in 1131, it only got worse. Fulk made it clear in public that he had little regard for his wife or her hereditary rights. In 1134, he took the first steps to do exactly what the father had feared: setting her aside, to make room for his family back in Anjou. He began with a splash, publicly accusing her of adultery.

Melisende had always been close to her cousin, the son of Baldwin II’s sister, who was now Count Hugh II of Jaffa. Fulk accused Hugh of treason, specifically of adultery with the Queen. Hugh was convicted by Fulk’s supporters in the council and, to defend himself, went into full military revolt. The Count of Jaffa allied with the Fatimid governor of Ascalon, and then Fulk besieged it. Jaffa held out, but in negotiation, Hugh lost.

Hugh was sent into exile for three years, but as he was waiting for a ship to take him away, he was suddenly knife-attacked by a French knight from a region that was suspiciously close to Anjou. Public opinion had never accepted the allegations against Hugh and Melisende; King Baldwin II had been a popular ruler who left behind much loyal sentiment. Everyone believed that the assault on Count Hugh was an attempted assassination, and in their eyes, the only reason to kill Hugh was to stop him from someday proving the queen’s innocence. Therefore, Fulk must know that she was innocent.

From that day forward, Fulk lost the power he had been trying to build up. Melisende’s supporters in the council enforced her presence and cooperation with all ruling decisions. Fulk was still needed as a war leader, but he had to become a king consort. He withdrew his allegations against Melisende and accepted living with her again. She had one more son, Amalric, before Fulk’s death in 1143.

By the time Fulk died, Melisende had become fond enough of him to seem genuinely grieved by his death. One record of Fulk says he was a cheerful, honest knight who just had difficulty remembering people’s names.

But after Fulk was gone, Melisende ruled for her son Baldwin III. But that’s another story. Melisende is most famous today for her ownership of a Psalter that survived into our times, beautifully decorated and preserved at the British Library.

Posted in Art, Islam History D: Crusades, Women | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Melisende and Fulk, 1129-43

Alice, Princess of Antioch, 1126-36

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

Alice, King Baldwin’s second daughter, was married to the son of Prince Bohemund, the baby who had been born while he was back in Sicily. Bohemund II grew up in Europe. Around age 18, he came to Antioch to take over. Alice was about 16. She began her married life conventionally enough by bearing a daughter in the first two years. Then it was all derailed when her husband died in battle.

The Middle East at this time was a swirl of competing Turkish tribes. Some were more Persianized or had been converted to Islam longer than others. Just when I think I know the names of all of them — Cumans, Pechenegs, Khazars, Bulgars, Danishmends, Seljuks, Oghuz — I run into new names. In looking back, we generalize them to “Turks” and project unity onto them, a unity that came only later with the Ottoman kings. At that time, nobody could see which tribe was going to rise to the top, so they were all trying.

In this case, the Danishmends were coming to the aid of Christian Armenians. The same ruling family that had welcomed the first Crusaders now realized that they were just another invading force. Bohemund II was trying to take more territory, not from Muslims, but from King Baldwin’s brother-in-law. The Crusades were only sometimes stereotypical wars of religion.

Bohemund II and Alice had only been married about four years, and they had only this one child, Constance. The men around Alice wanted to appoint a male regent for the child Princess until she was old enough to be married to a man who could help reign. But Alice, having grown up watching Melisende being treated like an heir, did not see any reason why she could not be a reigning Princess on her own.

Her father, King Baldwin II, saw two very good reasons why not. First, this was a very dangerous neighborhood. He had already chosen to import a seasoned warrior to marry — and rule with — Melisende. Second, he had an opportunity to exert influence over Antioch, making his kingship more real. He had known Bohemund in the old days; suddenly, Bohemund’s legacy came down to this baby girl, and as baby Constance’s grandfather, he could step in and protect her with a regent. He must have known Alice well enough to feel sure that she would not rule the way he wished!

Alice attempted three coups, starting right away. She sent a secret message to the Turkish ruler of Aleppo, asking him to ally with her. Her toddler’s hand in marriage was held out as a reward. But Alice’s father had troops in the area. They caught and tortured her messenger. Then Alice ordered the gates barred against King Baldwin’s entry, but the nobles of Antioch saw no good in defying the King of Jerusalem. They opened the gates. Alice ran into the Citadel, the one that had originally held out against the Crusaders, but she couldn’t really hold out all on her own.

King Baldwin sent Alice away to live in Latakia. Almost certainly, baby Constance stayed in Antioch with her nurse and nanny staff. Medieval royal infants were often separated from their parents, partly as a guard against one good epidemic wiping them all out. Baldwin appointed his old friend Sir Joscelin, now Count of Edessa, to rule Antioch as regent, but the arrangement didn’t last long.

King Baldwin II died in 1131. As Melisende became Queen on her own, Sir Joscelin also died. Alice saw her chance; she came back from her city of Latakia, and seized Antioch again. Joscelin II of Edessa and Pons of Tripoli were willing to ally with her against the new Queen and King in Jerusalem. Only two generations out from the original Crusade, they were rebelling against Jerusalem! When King Fulk, Melisende’s husband, tried to go to Antioch to take control, he had to sail from Jaffa since Tripoli would not let him pass by land. But only one minor battle was fought, and the rebel Counts submitted to the new King. Alice was again out of luck, sent back to Latakia.

Alice tried one more time when Constance was about 7. She started negotiating to have the Byzantine Emperor marry the little girl! Remember that first Bohemund had positioned Antioch as Constantinople’s determined rival and adversary? The nobles of Antioch panicked. They told Alice that they were getting a prince from Europe, Raymond of Poitiers, to come marry her—not the daughter, but Alice herself. The Patriarch played along until Raymond arrived. Then the child was brought into the church and married off at age 7. Raymond, a son of the Duke of Aquitaine, was about 21, so it was assumed that he had time to wait for Constance to grow up. In the meanwhile, his legal marriage effectively blocked the very disappointed Alice.

Where was Alice’s maternal feeling all this time? She seems to have had little of it; perhaps her sisters would have said “oh that’s just Alice, you know how she is.” Perhaps it was a traumatic response to her husband’s sudden death; perhaps it was a projection of hidden dislike for her husband. We can speculate anything, but it’s clear that she wasn’t much like her mother, Morphia, who stayed close to her children. In any case, little Constance was important as a descendant of Bohemund in a way that Alice, the mother, was not. Once Constance had her own household staff and Alice was sent away, they apparently had limited contact.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades, Women | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Alice, Princess of Antioch, 1126-36

King Baldwin’s Feminist Daughters

Posted on February 17, 2023 by Ruth

I’ve described King Baldwin II as a family man, the fact that sets him apart from the other First Crusaders. Coming with the Boulogne brothers as a landless knight, he had inherited Edessa and immediately married Morphia, the heiress of Melitene. When Baldwin came back from his Mosul years as a hostage, their first daughter Melisende was about four years old. Morphia had two more daughters in Edessa, and one more in Jerusalem. Baldwin’s four girls became some of the most edgy women in medieval history.

Let’s start with the youngest, who was born in 1120. She was known as Ioveta (or Yvette) of Bethany, and she became a nun. That sounds dull enough, but wait, there’s more. When little Ioveta was three, she was sent to be a hostage in Shaizar, Syria in exchange for her father’s release after he lost a battle. She stayed there for two years! Can you imagine handing over a three-year-old as a hostage? When Ioveta was returned at age five, probably now speaking Arabic, her sisters must have doted on her; in spite of the fifteen years the four girls spanned, they were close all their lives. Melisende the oldest founded a convent at the Tomb of Lazarus in Bethany, and Ioveta became its abbess. She educated Melisende’s granddaughter, future Queen Sibylla, and she was at Melisende’s deathbed. And Ioveta is the boring one.

Alice and Hodierna were born in Edessa around 1110 and 1112, the only two close in age. They would have been about eight and six when their father became King of Jerusalem. It seems likely that one reason Queen Morphia sent little Ioveta to be the hostage was that the older girls were already in marriage negotiations, which could take several years and were usually planned well in advance. It’s possible that her hostage years ruined Ioveta’s marriage prospects, leading to her vocation as a nun.

We know almost nothing about Queen Morphia, except that her family followed Greek Orthodox tradition while being Armenian, and she adopted Roman Catholicism on marriage. It’s clear that her husband really loved her, since she was not set aside when she bore only girls. Historians of the time said that not only did he angrily reject suggestions of divorce, he delayed his coronation until Morphia could be crowned next to him. We don’t know what in her personality was so compelling, but we can see clues in what she gave her daughters.

Morphia instilled in each one the will to rule on her own, although only Melisende could expect to inherit Jerusalem. Alice and Hodierna would be sent away to be Countesses or Princesses bearing heirs; but that’s not the way they viewed themselves. All of the older girls were willful and wanted to rule alone. They often conspired with each other, even willing to call in hits on the men who were ruining a sister’s life. They never conspired against each other. I think we can give Morphia credit for their strength because if nannies or tutors had shaped them, they would probably have had less loyalty to each other.

In 1126, Alice was married off first, because King Baldwin II was having a hard time choosing a husband for Melisende. Alice went to Antioch, where Bohemund II had just arrived, taking over for the regents who had ruled since his father’s death. Bohemund was 18, Alice about 16.  King Baldwin really hoped it would lead to Antioch’s being pulled into Jerusalem’s direct orbit and tax base.

The King of France was asked to choose a powerful vassal lord to go marry Melisende, and he chose 40 year old Fulk, Count of Anjou. Fulk had himself married young to produce heirs for Anjou, so he had a first family. His grown son Geoffrey had just married Empress Matilda, granddaughter of William the Conqueror. Geoffrey is considered the founder of the House of Plantagenet, one of England’s greatest dynasties. With two sons to rule Anjou for him, Fulk was free to leave, and the King of France may have wanted him to exit the dynastic power struggles of Europe. Melisende was about 24 and had been treated like a co-ruler with her father for a few years. They were married in 1129.

Hodierna wasn’t married off until 1137, when she became the Countess of Tripoli. Her husband was the son of the little 8 year old French Princess Cecilia who had been sent to marry Tancred! We talked about her just a few entries ago. How time flies when it’s all history to us.

The next three entries are about Baldwin’s daughters.

Posted in Islam History D: Crusades, Women | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on King Baldwin’s Feminist Daughters