Queens of Jerusalem

The Women Who Dared to Rule

Katherine Pangonis

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781643139241
• eBook ISBN: 9781643139258
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The untold story of a trailblazing dynasty of royal womenwhoruled the Middle East and how they persevered through instabilityand seize greater power. In 1187 Saladin's armies besieged the holy city of Jerusalem. He had previously annihilated Jerusalem's army at the battle of Hattin, and behind the city's high walls a last-ditch defence was being led by an unlikely trio - including Sibylla, Queen of Jerusalem. They could not resist Saladin, but, if they were lucky, they could negotiate terms that would save the lives of the city's inhabitants. Queen Sibylla was the last of a line of formidable female rulers in the Crusader States of Outremer. Yet for all the many books written about the Crusades, one aspect is conspicuously absent: the stories of women. Queens and princesses tend to be presented as passive transmitters of land and royal blood. In reality, women ruled, conducted diplomatic negotiations, made military decisions, forged alliances, rebelled, and undertook architectural projects. Sibylla's grandmother Queen Melisende was the first queen to seize real political agency in Jerusalem and rule in her own right. She outmanoeuvred both her husband and son to seize real power in her kingdom, and was a force to be reckoned with in the politics of the medieval Middle East. The lives of her Armenian mother, her three sisters, and their daughters and granddaughters were no less intriguing. Queens of Jerusalem is a stunning debut by a risinghistorian and a rich revisionist history of Medieval Palestine.

1 MORPHIA AND THE FOUR PRINCESSES

On Christmas Day 1118, a royal couple sat enthroned in the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem. The man was fair-haired with piercing blue eyes and a long beard. The woman was of a different race – Eastern with dark hair and eyes. They were resplendent in intricately embroidered coronation robes made of the finest silks the East could offer, heavily stitched with gems that winked in the candlelight. Seated beneath the dome of the Byzantine basilica which glowed with mosaics that spread across it like molten gold, they were waiting to be made monarchs. In front of the hushed congregation, the man swore an oath before Christ and his angels to conserve law and peace in the Kingdom of Jerusalem for both the church and his subjects. A ring was placed on his finger symbolising his loyalty, a sword was buckled to his waist representing his role as the Kingdom’s military defender, and finally an orb and sceptre were placed in his hands to represent the justice he would dispense and his God-given power on earth. The woman beside him swore to support her husband in his task.

With great solemnity the man and woman sank to their knees and the Patriarch of Jerusalem anointed them with holy oil, transforming them from simple mortals to God’s representatives on earth. The Patriarch solemnly raised and lowered two golden, gem-encrusted crowns onto their brows. The man had been an adventuring knight from France, a second son unlikely to inherit anything. To reach this moment he had traversed Europe and Asia Minor, fought in countless battles and endured years of imprisonment. He had leapfrogged barriers and grasped opportunities to propel himself to this most exalted position. His name was Baldwin, Count of Edessa. The person kneeling beside him was the woman who had stood by him, defended his interests and raised his children for almost two decades. She had borne him three daughters and protected his lands while he languished in Saracen prisons. Before long she would give him a fourth daughter, who would be the first child to be born to a king and queen in Jerusalem. A mysterious woman, a princess of an ancient Armenian kingdom, she was private, strong and dutiful. Her name was Morphia of Melitene: she was the first woman to be crowned Queen of Jerusalem.

Their choice to be crowned in Bethlehem on Christmas Day was steeped in significance. Not only was it the day of Christ’s birth and thus one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, but it was also the day which Baldwin I had chosen for his coronation, and the day when Charlemagne had himself been crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome in the year 800. Not only was Bethlehem the place of Christ’s birth, but it was also the site where David had been anointed King of Israel. In choosing Christmas Day for their coronation, the new king and queen were symbolically associating themselves with the three most important kings of both the sacred and the secular worlds: Jesus Christ, King David and the Emperor Charlemagne.

Coronations were events of unparalleled importance in the Middle Ages and in the newly formed Kingdom of Jerusalem in particular. This was an age before the printing press: there were few forms of mass communication and propaganda available to rulers, and some of the primary ways of communicating power to one’s subjects was through the images on coinage and public spectacles. The coronation of a new monarch was a golden opportunity for the latter. The grandeur of the coronation would set the tone for the reign of the monarch and was an opportunity to win the admiration of the monarch’s new subjects and assert his or her authority and supremacy over the nobility. It was a highly ritualised and meticulously planned affair. Crowds from miles around descended on the area surrounding the Church of the Nativity in the hope of catching a glimpse of the newly crowned couple when they made their exit from the church.

There exists no contemporary description of the festivities surrounding Baldwin and Morphia’s coronation, but we do know that the Franks of the Latin East knew how to throw a lavish party and loved the opportunity to mount displays of wealth and accomplishment. Descriptions of other celebrations in Outremer refer to acrobats twisting and tumbling to music from Armenian musicians, dancing in the streets, mouth-watering banquets and jousting tournaments.

The setting was certainly splendid: the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was built over the site of Christ’s birth, in a cave grotto that had housed a stable just over a millennium previously. Over these humble origins a basilica had been built by Saint Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, when she made her tour of the Holy Land in the early fourth century. During this expedition she ‘discovered’ the True Cross and founded numerous places of worship. Helena’s church was rebuilt by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century with his customary flourish.

Justinian was famous for his ambitious building projects, and the Church of the Nativity was no exception, boasting a soaring domed basilica decorated with gleaming tesserae and frescoes. Among these decorations were depictions of the three magi who brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the newborn baby Jesus. This had been an auspicious addition: when the Holy Land was conquered by Zoroastrian Persians in 614, the invaders were moved when they saw a depiction of the magi dressed in traditional oriental clothes so very like their own, and thus preserved the church.

In the echoing nave of the church cheers rang out for the new King Baldwin II and Queen Morphia. The great and the good of the Kingdom had turned out to witness the coronation, and the leaders of the clergy and the surrounding states were present. Among the spectators watching in awe as sovereignty was conferred upon this unlikely couple were three sisters: Melisende, Alice and Hodierna. They were Morphia’s daughters, aged thirteen, eight and seven, and with the coronation of their parents all three became Princesses of Jerusalem. Their fates and that of Outremer were changed forever.

Princess Melisende, watching the coronation of her parents alongside her young sisters, would become the strongest queen the Kingdom would ever see. Alice and Hodierna would also grow into firebrands and become two of the most prominent political players of their day. Morphia and her daughters were the beginning of a formidable line of women rulers in Outremer.

Morphia, however, was Queen Consort of Jerusalem rather than Queen Regnant. This meant that her position as queen derived from her marriage to Baldwin II, rather than hereditary right. This in turn meant that her role was primarily to support her husband in his rule rather than to wield authority or influence of her own in political matters. Thus the authority wielded by queens consort differed greatly from queens regnant, who ostensibly held the same authority as reigning kings. A distinction must be made, however, between authority and power. Whether either a queen consort or a queen regnant had power depended entirely on the force of her personality and her ability to play the game of politics amid the climate of the time. Morphia wielded more power than any other queen consort in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, until perhaps Queen Maria Komnene some fifty years later.

Morphia was the first woman to preside as queen over the Kingdom of Jerusalem for any length of time, from 1118 to 1127. She was the first to wield influence in the Kingdom, and she was the first to provide heirs to inherit. Technically speaking, however, Morphia was only the third Queen of Jerusalem.

Baldwin II was the third crusading Frank to rule Jerusalem. The first had been Godfrey de Bouillon, who led the armies of the First Crusade over the walls of the city. He had refused the title ‘King’ out of deference to Christ, the only true ‘King of Jerusalem’, and was unmarried and had no heirs. He was succeeded by his brother, the wily Baldwin I, who likewise was childless, thus passing his throne to his cousin, Morphia’s husband Baldwin II.

Morphia’s predecessors as Queen Consort of Jerusalem were the unhappy wives of Baldwin I: one an Armenian princess like herself, named Arete;^I and the other a powerful Sicilian countess, Adelaide del Vasto. Baldwin I shared his successor’s name but not his temperament. He was married no fewer than three times, each more expediently and briefly than the last. He burned through wives at record speed, even for a medieval warlord, more preoccupied with extracting wealth from his brides than wooing them and making heirs.

Baldwin I had a long-standing record of being self-serving and deceitful when it came to personal relationships. During the First Crusade he captured the County of Edessa through a rather dishonourable act of skulduggery. He was welcomed by the city’s ruler Thoros of Edessa, who was childless and took a liking to the charismatic and well-armed crusader from the West. Thoros adopted Baldwin I as his heir, and Baldwin I undertook the somewhat embarrassing ritual of joining his prospective and distinctly middle-aged parents naked under a hair shirt to complete the process of adoption. With this ceremony Baldwin I became the heir to the wealthy county. Just weeks later, his adoptive father Thoros was brutally killed in a civilian rebellion. As the riot progressed he appealed to Baldwin for aid, but Baldwin stood by and watched without lifting a finger to help. The people of Edessa, their bloodlust sated, allowed the succession to follow the writ of law and Baldwin was invested as Count of Edessa just days after Thoros’ death.

This was only the beginning of Baldwin’s political career. Not only was he Thoros’ heir, but he was also his brother Godfrey’s, and Godfrey died less than a year after being invested as ruler of Jerusalem. A chronicler wrote that when Baldwin I learned of Godfrey’s demise, ‘he grieved a little for his brother’s death but rejoiced more at his inheritance.’ Power and glory meant more to Baldwin I than familial relationships, and this would demonstrate itself clearly in his treatment of his wives.

Godehilde, a Norman noblewoman and Baldwin I’s first wife, died during the First Crusade on the journey to the East. Her brief marriage to Baldwin was full of adventure and intrigue. She was one of the very few noblewomen permitted to accompany their husbands on the First Crusade. Caught up in the fervour of the original expedition, she had been held as a hostage in Hungary alongside her husband as surety that the crusaders’ armies would not pillage the Hungarian king’s lands. This was unlikely to have been a life-threatening situation but the couple protested vehemently at being forced to stand hostage. They were released quickly and Godehilde finally made it to Asia Minor. She was received at the glittering court of Constantinople, presided over by the fiery-eyed Alexios Komnenos and under the watchful gaze of his daughter Anna. Godehilde’s expedition to Jerusalem was destined to be cut short: she died before the campaign left Asia Minor, in 1097, in Marash in modern-day Turkey. Little can be said of Godehilde’s relationship with her husband, except that it must have been more successful than his later marriages: she accompanied him on crusade when he was under no obligation to bring her. This indicates that he intended to continue his life with her and settle in the East.

Baldwin I does not seem to have been struck down by grief at Godehilde’s death. He promptly remarried mid-crusade, following his acquisition of the County of Edessa. A council was summoned and advised Baldwin to strengthen his position in his new territory by marrying a local woman of noble birth and with connections to the Armenian rulers. Baldwin followed this advice and chose a local Armenian noblewoman as a bride: Arete. She was the daughter of a lord named Taftoc, and niece to the still more powerful leader Constantine who held a strategically important and well-fortified stronghold in the Taurus mountains and had large armies of elite soldiers at his disposal. Constantine and Taftoc, on account of their great wealth and power, were the most significant Armenian lords of the region and were tantamount to kings.

It was this wealth and power that attracted Baldwin I to Arete. This was a marriage of political convenience, and the bride brought with her the hefty dowry of 60,000 gold bezants. Bezants were minted in the Byzantine Empire and were in this period valuable coins – approximately 4.45 grams of 20.5-carat gold. This dowry was a significant sum of money and could easily pay an army or rebuild a city’s defences. It was, however, never paid in full; only the initial instalment of 7,000 bezants made it to Baldwin’s coffers. This insult would cause problems for Arete further down the line.

Less than three years after their marriage, Baldwin I was made King of Jerusalem and journeyed there to take the throne. Arete was therefore the first Queen of Jerusalem in name, but in practice she was nothing of the kind. When he travelled to Jerusalem, Baldwin left Arete behind in Edessa. The marriage was childless and so far under great strain: Arete’s father had since lost his lands in battle and had fled to Constantinople and had never delivered the remaining sum of Arete’s dowry. As such the marriage had brought neither the wealth nor the sought-after allegiance that had been promised.

After some years apart, Baldwin eventually summoned Arete to join him, no doubt under pressure from his nobles to at least try to father an heir for the Kingdom. She travelled overland to Antioch and then took a ship from the port of St Simeon to Jaffa. When she did arrive in Jerusalem, there is no suggestion that Baldwin I made much effort with his long-absent wife.

There is no record that Baldwin I ever bothered to have Arete crowned and before too long he began the process of repudiating her and having their marriage annulled. They had been married eight years when Baldwin I demanded the annulment based on the claim that Arete had been unfaithful to him on her voyage to join him in Jerusalem. The French chronicler Guibert of Nogent told a rip-roaring tale of rape by pirates during the journey. Despite the gusto with which Guibert relates the tale, it is unlikely to be true: such a scandal would have been more widely reported.

Despite its spurious authenticity, this alleged infidelity, consensual or otherwise, became the reason for Baldwin I to put Arete aside. These were flimsy grounds, and it is likely the true reason why Baldwin wanted rid of her was because her father had failed to deliver her promised dowry and she had produced no heirs. Beyond this, it was simply the case that an alliance with Taftoc of Armenia had been a tactical advantage in the partly Armenian County of Edessa but was politically useless in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Medieval brides were expected to bring their husbands rich dowries, useful allegiances and heirs. Arete had done none of these things, and consequently she was forced to take the veil and enter a nunnery – the only respectable option for cast-off wives.

The nunnery in question was particularly grim. It was the newly consecrated Convent of St Anne, and while today it stands as the most peaceful and beautiful church in Jerusalem, in the early twelfth century it was a far from pleasant or lively place. Only very recently founded and without a superfluity of rich widows, it had only a handful of other nuns living there and so represented an austere and lonely life for Jerusalem’s first queen. It seemed Arete would be expected to live the rest of her life in a glorified prison with scarcely any company. It was also a Catholic establishment, rather than Armenian or Greek Orthodox, and as such it would further alienate Arete. She had been raised an Eastern Christian, and while it is likely she would have adopted her husband’s faith on marriage, it added insult to injury that even after his disposal of her she was imprisoned within a house dedicated to Catholicism.

Unsurprisingly, Arete was not pleased with this prospect and eventually exerted some pent-up will-power to secure a brighter future for herself. She managed to obtain permission from her former husband to leave the convent and travel to join her father in Constantinople. Perhaps seeking to make the most of her new-found freedom lest it be snatched away again, Arete led a colourful life at the Greek court once free of the controlling stare of her husband. William of Tyre asserts that when she reached the city she ‘prostituted herself to men of both high and low rank’. There are subtle implications across several sources that Baldwin I was a homosexual, and it appears that the combination of three years in Baldwin I’s bed followed by a stint in a convent had left Arete sexually ravenous.

Following this embarrassing debacle of a marriage and separation, Baldwin I married for a third time in 1112. This time his bride was Adelaide del Vasto of Sicily. This was a significantly advantageous match and perhaps this is why members of the court and church were willing to overlook the fact that any marriage undertaken by Baldwin I while Arete was still living would be both bigamous and illegal. The king ploughed ahead with the marriage because the Kingdom of Jerusalem, following a rocky first few years of existence under continuous harassment by enemies at the borders, was in dire need of a wealthy new queen. As a rich widow and the mother of the King of Sicily, Adelaide del Vasto would fill the vacancy nicely.

As the reigning King of Jerusalem, rather than the Count of the somewhat obscure Edessa, Baldwin I was now a far more attractive quantity as a bridegroom. Thus he was able to secure for himself a Western noblewoman of high rank and wealth. Adelaide was an odd choice for a childless king who needed an heir; she had a grown-up son and was well into middle age. However, when she travelled to Jerusalem she came armed with both gold and fighting men, exactly the resources Baldwin’s administration in Outremer lacked. William of Tyre described Adelaide as ‘a wealthy woman of great influence… rich and possessed of everything in great abundance’, and compared her wealth to the king’s penury, writing, ‘Baldwin on the contrary was poor and needy, so that his means scarcely sufficed for his daily needs and the payment of his knights. Hence he longed to supplement his scanty resources from her super-abundance.’

Albert of Aachen similarly described the booty that Adelaide brought with her and the great style in which she travelled:

she had two trireme dromonds, each with five hundred men very experienced in warfare; seven ships laden with gold, silver, purple and an abundance of jewels and precious garments; weapons, hauberks, helmets, shields resplendent with gold, and all the other weaponry which powerful men are accustomed to carry for the defence of their ships… [on the countess’s ship] the mast was clad with purest gold and put forth rays from afar like the brilliance of the sun, and both ends of the ship, covered by craftsmanship with gold and silver, were a sight to wonder at… In one of the seven ships Saracen men who were very strong archers and glittered with the brilliance of their precious garments were brought as a gift for the king, and their skill at archery was considered inferior to none in the region of Jerusalem.

In his eagerness to get his gauntleted fists on Adelaide’s wealth, Baldwin I agreed to the unusual condition that if their marriage were childless, the throne of Jerusalem would pass to Adelaide’s son from her first marriage, Roger of Sicily. This agreed, Adelaide set sail for Outremer, laden with gold, grain and a fresh horde of Sicilian-Norman soldiers, and the pair were quickly married.

Given Baldwin I’s track record, it is unsurprising that this relationship ended just as disastrously as his previous marriage. Adelaide did not produce an heir, and the marriage was widely (and correctly) criticised as bigamous, given that Arete still lived. Under pressu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Maps
• Family Trees
• Timeline of Events
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction: The Birth of Outremer
• Chapter One: Morphia and the Four Princesses
• Chapter Two: Alice, the Rebel Princess of Antioch
• Chapter Three: Melisende of Jerusalem
• Chapter Four: The Second Reign of Queen Melisende
• Chapter Five: Eleanor of Aquitaine
• Chapter Six: Constance of Antioch
• Chapter Seven: Agnes and Sibylla
• Chapter Eight: The Beginning of the End
• Epilogue
• About the Author
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright