The "Evil" Greek Queen - Maria Comnena

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 novelists depicting her as a witch poisoning her own daughter -- are based on conscious slander by the opponents of Conrad de Montferrat and Alice de Champagne. Reliable contemporaries such as William of Tyre have only good to say about her. It's time to set the slander aside and reassess Maria Comnena. Below is a short biography based on the known facts. 

A medieval depiction of Maria with her husband King Amalric.

Maria Comnena was probably born in 1154 or 1155, the daughter of John Comnenos, Protovestiarius, the grandson of the Byzantine Emperor John II, and nephew of the ruling Emperor, Manuel I.  As such she was a member of the Byzantine Imperial family, but not in the direct line to the throne. At the time of her birth, Manuel I had already been Emperor of the Eastern Empire for over 30 years, and had consistently pursued a policy of cooperation with the crusader states, which included joint military operations, and a series of marriage alliances. In 1158, one of Manuel’s nieces, Theodora, had been married to King Baldwin III of Jerusalem, and in 1161, Manuel himself took Maria of Antioch, sister of Bohemond III, Prince of Antioch, to wife. Finally, when Amalric I of Jerusalem decided to seek a second wife (the High Court had required him to set aside his first wife in order to be crowned king), he turned to the Byzantine Emperor. An Embassy was sent to Constantinople in 1165, and two years later Maria Comnena landed at Tyre as her great-uncle’s choice for Queen of Jerusalem.

King Amalric’s emissaries to Constantinople had spent two years in the Byzantine capital negotiating the marriage. From the surviving sources, it is impossible to know why the negotiations took so long, but regardless of why they took so long Amalric’s emissaries and the Byzantine Emperor clearly had plenty of time to consider various candidates. Maria was either the most suitable or the most pleasing from the point of view of Amalric’s representatives.

Whatever their reasoning, we can be certain that Maria Comnena had up to this point enjoyed the famously luxurious life-style of the Imperial family, and — more important — the very high level of education typical of the women of her family. The Comnenas were not only literate in Greek classics, but versed in theology and history, as the writings of Anna Comnena, Maria’s great-great-aunt, attest. Furthermore, the Comnenen Emperors had sponsored a significant building program that in turn sparked a revival of Byzantine arts and letters and the introduction of new styles in mosaics and frescoes. Maria would, therefore, have come to Jerusalem with not only a substantial dowry, (her aunt Theodora had a dowry of over 100,000 gold pieces), a large retinue of Byzantine advisors and scholars, but with knowledge and tastes cultivated in the most sophisticated Christian society of the age.

Medieval depiction of the marriage of Maria and Amalric I

Maria married Amalric and was crowned queen at the end of August 1167 at the age of 12 or 13; Amalric was already 30 years old. While Maria’s young age precluded a major role for her in politics, it is nevertheless probable that the magnificent renovation of the Church of the Nativity, a work that included beautiful mosaics with heavy Byzantine influence was initiated after her arrival in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Just as notable, her eldest son by her second marriage (i.e. who was not royal) built a house in Beirut of exquisite beauty featuring polychrome marble, mosaics, glazed windows opening onto vistas, and fountains with elaborate pumps and drainage.

It is also notable that four years after his marriage to Maria, Amalric undertook a state visit to Constantinople, the first Latin king to do so as a reigning monarch. Furthermore, Byzantine sources suggest that he acknowledged Manuel I as his overlord during this trip. While this was a political rather than a personal trip, it is hard to imagine that Maria was not a voice in his ear encouraging this unprecedented step — and just as hard to imagine that he would have listened if he had not respected her opinion or been displeased with his Byzantine bride.

Notably, at the time this trip took place, Amalric’s positive attitude toward his Byzantine bride could not be traced to her fertility because she had yet to give him any children; it is far more likely that he respected her for her education and intelligence, although beauty as a factor cannot be excluded, despite the fact that there is no explicit reference to her attractiveness in existing texts. It was not until the next year, 1172, that Maria gave birth to a live child, a daughter who was Christened Isabella. Maria was by then 17 or 18 years old.

Two years later, her husband was dead. As his widow, she would have taken part in the meeting of the High Court of Jerusalem that elected the next king.  The choice, apparently by mutual consent and without serious dissension, fell on Maria’s step-son, Amalric’s son by his previous marriage to Agnes de Courtenay.  Because Baldwin IV was a minor at the time of his father’s death, the kingdom was placed in the hands of a regent, Raymond of Tripoli.

At this point, Maria retired from court, but there is no indication she did so in disgrace or displeasure. On the contrary, her retirement appears to have been entirely voluntary. King Amalric had settled on her the large and wealthy barony of Nablus as her dower-portion. This lordship, directly north of the royal domain of Jerusalem and lying at an important cross-roads had once been independent but had reverted to the crown in 1161. It owed 85 knights to the feudal levee and included the ancient city of Nablus famous for its perfumes and soaps. It was still inhabited by a sizable population of Samaritans, Jews, and Muslims. Notably, Maria was granted Nablus for life but was not enfeoffed, i.e. the lordship reverted to the crown at her death.

In short, at roughly the age of 20, Maria Comnena found herself a very wealthy widow with complete independence.  She had enough wealth and enough men (85 knights is only the tip of the iceberg of the men at her command) to protect herself, her property and her independence. She was a Dowager Queen, mother of the second-in-line to the throne, and she could not be forced into a second marriage by either her step-son or her great-uncle, although she needed the former’s permission to re-marry. Maria, however, was in no hurry to remarry. She retired to Nablus and made no attempt to interfere in the government of the realm.

It is notable, however, that in mid-1177, the Count of Flanders, who had come to the Holy Land with a small army of crusaders sought her out in Nablus. Flanders was at loggerheads with Baldwin IV and the High Court of Jerusalem about who should select Princess Sibylla’s next husband (her first husband had just died unexpectedly) and also about a proposed campaign against Egypt that was supported by Manuel I. The latter had sent a fleet of seventy warships. Philip wanted assurances that he would be made king of Egypt if he helped conquer it, and Baldwin IV and Manuel I felt that any territory won by the expedition should belong to them, as they brought the greater resources to the campaign. That Philip sought out Maria in Nablus suggests that 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, however, is that as a result of his meetings with Maria he had a change of heart and sent messengers from Nablus to Jerusalem declaring his acceptance of the High Court’s decisions with respect to the campaign in Egypt.  Maria Comnena at 23 was evidently a woman who could talk politics with the savviest of Western noblemen and be persuasive without the least personal interest in the outcome.

In late 1177 Maria Comnena made a surprise second marriage to Balian d’Ibelin, the younger brother of the Baron of Ramla and Mirabel. Although it is recorded that Maria had the explicit consent of the king for this marriage, there is no reason to suppose this marriage was imposed on her. The very fact that the candidate was the younger brother of a local baron from a parvenu family makes it all the more likely that he was her choice; otherwise she would have rejected him as far beneath her dignity and had the backing of the Byzantine Emperor in saying ‘no.’ No one, much less the mortally-ill Baldwin IV, would have risked a break with the Byzantine Emperor over a marriage that brought no apparent advantages to the crown. Agnes de Courtenay, Maria's hated rival, certainly had nothing to say about her marriage.

In short, we can assume that Maria’s marriage to Balian d’Ibelin was a love-match — at least on her side. While Balian’s motives may have been more venal, what followed provides ample evidence that Balian and Maria soon formed a relationship so close that they can be seen as a pair, a team, a partnership. In addition, Maria and Balian had four children, two sons, and two daughters, all born between 1178 and 1183.

Meanwhile, she faced the first serious crisis of her life.  In 1180, her daughter by Amalric, the 8-year-old Princess of Isabella was taken from her (and Balian) and betrothed to Humphrey de Toron, the son of Stephanie de Milly by her first marriage. Stephnie was now, however, on her third husband, the infamous Reynald de Chatillon.  The marriage of Isabella to Humphrey was allegedly idea of the Queen Mother, Agnes de Courtenay, who had been set aside by Amalric and, eventually, replaced by Maria. It can be assumed that Agnes had no kind feelings toward Maria. The timing of the marriage is also significant. Agnes had just engineered (or at least secured her son’s consent to) the marriage of her own daughter to Guy de Lusignan — thereby earning the bitter enmity of Baldwin d’Ibelin, Baron of Ramla and Mirabel, who apparently had had hopes of marrying Sibylla himself.  Certainly, from 1180 onwards, Ramla and his younger brother Balian were staunch opponents of Guy de Lusignan. Under the circumstances, King Baldwin may have felt compelled — or more likely was compelled by the poisonous advice of his mother — to remove his half-sister Isabella from Balian’s control out of fear that, if he did not, the Ibelin’s would use her to challenge Sibylla and Guy’s right to the throne.

The historical record demonstrates that Baldwin was unjustified in imputing treasonous intentions to the Ibelins; both brothers were staunchly loyal to both him and his nephew Baldwin V. Indeed, although Baldwin refused to do homage to Guy after he usurped the crown, preferring to leave the kingdom, Balian honorably served Guy de Lusignan right up until the death of Sibylla in 1190.  Furthermore, there is no objective way to portray this removal of a small child from her mother and the only father she had known to live in an endangered border fortress with one of the most notoriously brutal and unscrupulous men of the entire age as benign. It was a cruel, vindictive act that undoubtedly acerbated the hostility between Maria and Agnes and between the Ibelins and Lusignan, in both cases to the detriment of the kingdom.

For three years, Isabella was denied the right to even visit her mother in Nablus, and it was not until 1183 that Maria saw her daughter again — on the occasion of her daughter’s marriage to 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 Salah-ad-Din laid seize to the castle.  Maria was trapped inside with her daughter, her new son-in-law and hundreds of others. 

The bulk of the barons of Jerusalem, including Balian, on the other hand, were still 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 — not even to go to the relief of their wives, the Dowager Queen, the Queen Mother and the Princesses of Jerusalem. That is quite a resounding vote of “non-confidence” in the incompetent but arrogant Guy de Lusignan. 

Baldwin IV, now completely lamed and going blind because of his leprosy, had to take up the reins of government himself and lead the royal army to the relief of Kerak. Salah-ad-Din retreated before King. Maria — and Isabella — were reunited with Balian.

Karak Castle as it looks today.

One year later, Maria found herself under siege a second time, and this time it was at home in Nablus.  Salah-ad-Din had set-out on a second attempt to capture Kerak but was again thwarted by the timely arrival of the feudal host of Jerusalem. As he withdraws, his army plundered and burned its way north to Damascus.  Nablus, an unwalled town, was in his path, and Maria commanded in the city because Balian, of course, with the knights, sergeants and other feudal levees of Nablus, was with the army. Remarkably, although the city was unwalled and so virtually indefensible, there were no Christian casualties because Maria provided refuge for the entire civilian population in the citadel. This was in  marked contrast to neighboring towns and cities. The citadel of Nablus was not a major castle and it has completely disappeared over the centuries; it was nothing like the impregnable Kerak, and its defense, therefore, all the more remarkable. The over-crowding must have been appalling and the risks enormous, but the Christian army was hot on Salah-ah-Din’s heels and came to Maria's relief — at least that portion under her husband did.

Such an action was unthinkable the next time Saracen forces threatened to overrun Nablus. That was in July 1187 and Salah-ad-Din had just destroyed almost the entire 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. Unlike the port cities  from Ascalon to Beirut, there was also no hope of relief by sea from the kingdoms in the West. Maria was a realist. She abandoned Nablus and with her children (and probably the majority of the other inhabitants) fled to Jerusalem.

The choice of Jerusalem was probably dictated more by sentiment than logic: it was not the closest defensible city. Arsuf, Jaffa, and Caesarea were all geographically closer, and they were seaports with both hope of relief or, in the worst-case, chance of escape. But Jerusalem was the heart of the kingdom and it was a walled city. Furthermore, the Ibelins had a residence there so Maria and her children had someplace to go. In the first moment of shock, as word of the disaster of Hattin seeped into Nablus and Maria could not know if Balian had been killed or captured, it probably seemed like the best place to go. Maria may, however, have come to regret her decision.

Jerusalem was soon flooded with refugees from the surrounding countryside. While the regular population was probably no more than 20,000, a number that swelled to perhaps 30,000 during the pilgrim season, as many as 30,00 to 40,000 Franks sought refuge in Jerusalem after Hattin, bringing the population to over 60,000, or according to some estimates 100,000. Most of those refugees were women, children, churchmen and old people because able-bodied men had been called up to the army and were now dead or enslaved. Yet despite the lack of fighting men (there is said to have been not a single knight in the city) the leaders chosen (by what means we do not know) to represent the city to Salah-ad-Din refused to surrender the city on generous terms. The Franks in Jerusalem may have been commoners with little experience of combat but they felt the weight of responsibility for the sites of Christ’s passion keenly. As they told Salah-ad-Din, they could not surrender Jerusalem because it would disgrace them for all eternity. They did not expect to defend the city successfully, but they preferred martyrdom to shame.

It is unknown how Maria Comnena felt about this stand. She was certainly not part of the delegation, although as Dowager Queen and one of the most prominent people in the city she may have been involved in both selecting the delegation that met with Salah-ad-Din and determining what answer they would give him. It is likely that although she understood it, she was less than enthusiastic about sacrificing her four children, all of whom were under the age of 10.  She was in all probability greatly relieved, not to say ecstatic, when against all odds her husband appeared in Jerusalem to escort her to safety.

The arrival of Balian d’Ibelin in Jerusalem sometime after the Battle of Hattin struck the Christians in Jerusalem as miraculous. He was almost alone in escaping the debacle at Hattin, but more amazing was the fact that having gained the safety of Tripoli, he returned — unarmed — for the sake of bringing 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 to Salah-ad-Din’s sense of honor not to humiliate them. Ibelin took the unprecedented — and risky — step of seeking a safe-conduct from Salah-ad-Din and giving his word to go to the city unarmed (and presumably unescorted) remain there only a single night and then return to Tripoli.

The arrival of a respected and experienced battle-commander in the militarily leaderless city sparked popular jubilation — until the people learned of Balian’s intention to rescue his family and withdraw. They then begged Balian to remain and take command of the city's defense. The Patriarch dramatically absolved Balian of his oath to Salah-ad-Din. Balian decided it was his duty to remain.

Did he decide alone? That is hardly conceivable. He had been married to Maria Comnena for almost 10 years at this point in time, but she remained his social superior by many orders of magnitude. They had been equally impoverished by the loss of Nablus no less than Ibelin, but the habits of ten years are not washed away in an afternoon. Balian would not have been in the habit of dictating to his wealthier, better-connected and higher-born wife, and at this critical moment he would not have abruptly changed his behavior and tried to do so. Maria Comnena must have shared his decision and very likely contributed to it  — without knowing that Salah-ad-Din had another surprise for both of them.

When Balian sent word to the Sultan that he was compelled by the appeals of his countrymen to remain in Jerusalem, Salah-ad-Din was not angry or offended. On the contrary, respecting Balian’s decision, he sent fifty of his own personal guard to Jerusalem to escort Maria Comnena and her children to safety. Why? 

The romantic answer is that he respected Balian so much and was chivalrous. The more realistic answer is that Maria Comnena was related to the Byzantine Emperor and Salah-ad-Din 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 risks of something happening to her and a diplomatic incident resulting were too high. Or possibly, Saladin respected Balian more for being willing to fight and die for his faith than for slinking away to safety with his family.

Maria must have been relieved for the sake of her children to get that escort to safety. She was probably equally distressed to have 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 Balian would pull off yet another miracle: the ransom of tens of thousands of Christian lives even after the walls had been breached.

After the fall of Jerusalem, Maria and Balian were reunited, but they now had no income and were nobody in a kingdom that no longer existed. It is unclear how they survived, but it is notable that at this moment when the Kingdom of Jerusalem had been reduced to the city of Tyre and that was a city under siege and frequent attack, Maria did not choose to return “home.” To be sure, her great-uncle was dead and the new Emperor was a tyrant hostile to the Latin West, but she was a Byzantine Princess, a Comnena, and she had very powerful relatives in the Eastern Empire. That she remained in the pitiable remnants of the crusader states was a tribute to her loyalty to her second husband.

Balian, probably with considerable misgivings and inner revulsion, joined the army that Guy de Lusignan 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. Where Maria Comnena and her children was there is unrecorded. Very likely, she was not at Acre. Certainly in 1190 she was in Tyre.

In 1190, Sibylla of Jerusalem and both her daughters died of fever in the Christian camp outside of Acre. With her death, Guy de Lusignan’s right to the throne of Jerusalem was extinguished. To be sure, he had been anointed king, but without the consent of the High Court of Jerusalem, and in Balian’s eyes that made him a usurper. While Sibylla had likewise been crowned without the consent of the High Court, she was the rightful heir, with or without the consent of the High Court. Thus with her death everything changed for Balian.

The next in line to the throne now that Sibylla and all her children were dead was Sibylla’s half-sister, Maria’s daughter, Isabella. Isabella was 18 years old and still married to the man imposed on her by her half-brother Baldwin IV, Humphrey of Toron. The problem with Humphrey in the eyes of Balian and most of the surviving barons, knights and burghers of Jerusalem was that he was weak (some say effeminate), and was not credited with the ability to play a constructive role in regaining the lost territories of the Kingdom. In contrast, Conrad de Montferrat, who had saved the city of Tyre at the critical juncture when it too had been on the brink of collapse was widely viewed as having the personality and skill to recapture the kingdom. Balian and the only other baron to escape Hattin and still be alive, Reginald de Sidon, decided that Isabella must marry Conrad de Montferrat and that they must head the kingdom. There was no question that Isabella had been too young to consent at the time of her marriage and so there were legal grounds for the annulment of her marriage, but Isabella had grown attached to Humphrey and the chronicles agree that her mother had to “browbeat” her into agreeing to the divorce. (See The Abuction of Isabella)

While this is usually interpreted as an unscrupulous and ambitious woman heartlessly pressuring a sweet young girl into betraying the man she loved, the record is not quite so unambiguous. First, the sources we have are all hostile to Conrad de Montferrat and 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 — not blame — for putting the interests of the kingdom ahead of the affections of her teenage daughter. Third, there is no indication that Maria’s stand resulted in lasting tensions between her and her daughter. Maria and Balian both played roles in Isabella’s court long after Conrad de Montferrat was dead. Fourth, when Conrad de Montferrat was murdered, Isabella did not try to make Humphrey de Toron king. Instead, she accepted the King of England’s choice for her third husband, and would later accept the High Court’s choice for her fourth husband. Isabella, I believe, wanted to be Queen and was willing to sacrifice Humphrey de Toron for that goal. (See Isabella I)

But back to Maria. Isabella’s elevation to the throne opened the gates for Maria to play a role similar to Agnes de Courtenay’s — but she did not. Rather, she appears to have retired with Balian and their children to the much-reduced estates now at their disposal. (The truce between Richard of England and Salah-ad-Din did not include the restoration of Nablus or any of the Ibelin lordships to Christian control, but Balian was explicitly granted the smaller lordship of Caymont northeast of Caesarea.)  Balian, as step-father of the queen, initially took precedence over all other lords, but fades from the historical record after 1193, presumably he became ill or died at about this time.

However, it is also possible that he was simply absent from the Kingdom of Jerusalem, namely helping his niece's husband establish Frankish rule over the Island of Cyprus. (See The Ibelins on Cyprus.) If so, then Maria was again playing a critical role.  Cyprus had been a province of the Greek Empire for centuries, and the last Byzantine governor of the island, Isaac Comnenus, was a relative of Maria. She, therefore, represented a link to the family that the inhabitants considered the legitimate rulers. Furthermore, she spoke Greek and had been raised in the Greek Orthodox Church making her a perfect mediator between the rebellious Greek Orthodox population and the Frankish parvenus.

Maria may also have been instrumental in reconciling Isabella’s third husband, Henri of Champagne, with the House of Lusignan, now established as kings of Cyprus. Certainly, marriages were contracted between Henri and Isabella’s daughters and Aimery de Lusignan’s sons. Maria lived to see Aimery de Lusignan married to her daughter Isabella, and her son John d'Ibelin appointed Constable of Jerusalem. She was also still alive, when John was elected regent for her granddaughter Maria de Montferrat and enfeoffed with the Lordship of Beirut. She personally enjoyed the palace he built there with its lifelike mosaics, polychrome marble and views of the sea.

When Maria Comnena died in 1217, her five-year-old great-granddaughter Yolanda (sometimes also referred to as Isabella II) was Queen of Jerusalem, while her children by Balian had all married into noble families. Her sons John and Philip would both serve as regents of Jerusalem and Cyprus respectively and throughout the next two centuries, Ibelins married into the royal houses of the  Cyprus, Armenia, and Antioch.

Maria is the female protagonist of the Jerusalem Trilogy and a secondary character in The Last Crusader Kingdom.

The Leper King's Mother - Agnes de Courtenay

Agnes de Courtenay is, without doubt, one of the women in the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem who played a decisive role -- but not a positive one. She is an example of how women exercised power in the 12th-century crusader kingdoms and a reminder that female influence was not always benign. 

 

Agnes de Courtenay was the daughter of the powerful Courtenay family. The French Courtenay’s were of distinguished enough lineage for a daughter of the family to marry the younger brother of King Louis VII of France. In the crusader kingdoms, the family derived its importance from the fact that Joscelyn de Courtenay was a first cousin of the Baldwin de Bourcq, one of the leaders of the First Crusade, who had been Count of Edessa before he was elected King of Jerusalem to rule as Baldwin II. At Baldwin de Bourcq’s elevation to King, he invested his cousin Joscelyn de Courtenay with his former County of Edessa, which he ruled as Joscelyn I. 

However, under his son Joscelyn II, the County was over-run and lost to the Saracens, in large part due to the neglect and poor leadership of the count. The city of Edessa was lost to Zengi in November 1144, and by 1150 the last remnants of the once rich and powerful County were in Saracen hands. Joscelyn II himself was captured in the same year by Nur al-Din and tortured. He eventually died, still in captivity, in 1159. Thus his son, Joscelyn III of Edessa inherited his father’s title — but none of the lands or income that went with it. As titular Count of Edessa he was to prove a singularly ineffective (not to say incompetent) leader, who distinguished himself by his greed, by getting captured at a disastrous battle in 1164, playing a key part in the usurpation of the even more disastrous Guy de Lusignan, and finally by surrendering Acre to Saladin in haste when it was completely defensible. His sister was Agnes.

Agnes de Courtenay had not had an easy childhood. She had been married, possibly at an early age, to Reynald of Marash, who was killed in battle in 1149. The following year, her father was captured and never seen again. Her family had fallen in six years from one of the richest and most powerful in the crusader states, to “poor cousins” living on a few estates in Antioch that Agnes’ mother had from her first marriage. Agnes was a widow with no land and no dowry. She was also possibly no more than 10 or 12 years old, as she would have had to be at least 8 at her marriage to Reynald.

Under these circumstances, it appears that Agnes languished for some time in her mother’s much reduced household and was eventually betrothed to a man of comparatively obscure origins and only recent prominence: Hugh d’Ibelin. Hugh was the son of an adventurer of unknown origin, Barisan, who had distinguished himself as a knight and administrator in the reign of Baldwin II and been rewarded with the Constableship of Jaffa and then the newly created barony of Ibelin. Ibelin was small. It owed only ten knights to the feudal levee, and Agnes may have felt it was beneath her dignity as the daughter of a count.  In any case, in 1157, sometime shortly after the betrothal, Hugh d’Ibelin was taken captive at Jacob’s Ford.

This left Agnes in a very difficult position. She was probably about 17 years of age, penniless, her father was still in a Saracen prison, her brother was probably even younger than she was, and now her betrothed was in captivity as well. She may have assumed he would suffer the same fate as her father and never return. She may have felt vulnerable and desperate, or she may simply have been flattered to find that the King’s younger brother took an interest in her. Whether she was the seducer or the seduced, or whether she was outright abducted (as some historians have suggested; see H.E. Mayer, “The Origins of King Amalric”), sometime in 1157 she “married” Prince Amalric of Jerusalem, then Count of Jaffa and Ascalon.

Agnes proceeded to give the Count of Jaffa two children, a daughter, Sibylla, born in or about 1159 and a son, Baldwin, in 1161. Then in February 1163, her brother-in-law, Baldwin III of Jerusalem, died childless. Amalric as his brother, a young and still vigorous man with experience in war and peace, seemed the most obvious candidate to succeed him. But far from being immediately acclaimed king, Amalric faced serious opposition — because of his wife. In fact, the High Court of Jerusalem had such strong objections to Agnes that they refused to acknowledge Amalric as King of Jerusalem unless he set Agnes aside.

Why, we do not know. Officially, the Church suddenly discovered and was “shocked, simply shocked” to discover (after six years of marriage) that Amalric and Agnes were related within the prohibited degrees. But even the highly educated Church scholar and royal insider William of Tyre found this explanation so baffling that he had to do extra research to track down the relationship. The issue of the pre-contract with Hugh d’Ibelin was certainly another canonical ground for divorce, although not explicitly mentioned. 

 

However, the objections of the High Court are not likely to have been legalistic in view of the fact that the High Court explicitly recognized Amalric’s children by Agnes as legitimate.  This strongly suggests that the High Court was not uneasy about the legality of Amalric’s marriage but about the character of his wife — or her relatives as Malcolm Barber suggests. Perhaps it was simply the fact that she was a powerful woman, or already a notoriously grasping one. Or perhaps, as the Chronicle of Ernoul suggests, she was seen as insufficiently virtuous for such an elevated position as queen in the Holy City. Such speculation is beside the point; the naked fact is that Agnes was found unsuitable for a crown by the majority of the High Court. That’s a pretty damning sentence even without knowing the reason, and that’s not just a matter of “bad press,” as Bernard Hamilton suggests.

Agnes then married (or returned to) her betrothed, Hugh d’Ibelin, and, when he died in or about 1170, married yet a fourth time. For a dowerless woman, that’s quite a record, and suggests she may have had charms that are inadequately conveyed by the historical record. She had no children by any of her husbands (or lovers) except Amalaric, and until the death of King Amalric, she had no contact with her children by him. 

In 1176, Baldwin IV took the reins of government for himself and invited his mother to his court. She rapidly established herself here as a key influence upon her still teenage son. This was derived from her apparently affectionate relationship with her son, who was by this point obviously afflicted with leprosy.  She traveled with him even on campaigns, and appears to have taken a motherly interest in his health and welfare. Since Baldwin IV was unmarried, Agnes’ influence was all the stronger.  Thus, although she never wore a crown, she was undoubtedly the most powerful woman at Baldwin IV's court, and by the end of his reign she took part in the sessions of the High Court.

She was also, at this stage in her life, allegedly promiscuous. She would have been in her late 30s when her son invited her back to court and she had been widowed three times. Although technically married to Reginald of Sidon, she is rarely mentioned together with him, and they appear to have lived completely separate lives. While her husband kept to his estates and fought the enemy, Agnes was “at court,” where she is said to have had the Archbishop of Caesarea, a native by the name of Heraclius, as her lover. Either after him or simultaneously with Heraclius, she is alleged to have had an affair with Aimery de Lusignan as well.

While her morals are arguably her own affair and modern sensibilities are not greatly offended by a mature woman finding sexual pleasure wherever she pleases, it was Agnes influence on her son that from a historical perspective was reprehensible.  Within a few short years, Agnes de Courtenay had succeeded in foisting her candidates for Seneschal, Patriarch and Constable upon her young and dying son. These were respectively: 1) her utterly underwhelming brother, Joscelyn of Edessa, 2) the controversial figure Heraclius, who may not have been as bad as his rival William of Tyre claims and may not have been Agnes lover as the Chronicle of Ernoul claims, but hardly distinguished himself either, and finally an obscure Frenchmen, also alleged to have been Agnes’ lover, Aimery de Lusignan. Not a terribly impressive record for “wise” appointments – even if Aimery de Lusignan eventually proved to be an able man.

Worse, Agnes also engineered the marriage of not only her own daughter, Sibylla, but of her step-daughter, Isabella, the child born to Amalric by his second wife, Maria Comnena, after Agnes had been set aside. No other actions in Agnes de Courtenay’s life were so detrimental to the welfare of the Kingdom of Jerusalem as these two marriages.  We are talking here about Guy de Lusignan and Humphrey de Toron respectively.

The latter, Humphrey, was a man of “learning,” who distinguished himself by cravenly vowing allegiance to the former after Guy seized power in a coup d’etat that completely ignored the constitutional right of the High Court of Jerusalem to select the monarch. He then promptly got himself captured at Hattin. Although he lived a comparatively long life and held an important barony, Toron apparently never played a positive role in the history of the kingdom. Not exactly a brilliant match or a wise choice for a future Queen of Jerusalem.

Agnes’ other choice, the man she chose for her own daughter was even more disastrous. At best, Guy de Lusignan was freshly come from France, young, inexperienced and utterly ignorant about the situation in the crusader kingdoms.  At worst he was not only ignorant but arrogant and a murderer as well. (See my entries on Guy and Aimery de Lusignan.)  In a short space of time he alienated his brother-in-law, King Baldwin IV, and he never enjoyed the confidence of the barons of Jerusalem. The dying king preferred to drag his decaying body around in a litter -- and his barons preferred to follow a leper -– than trust Guy de Lusignan with command of the army.

Nor was this mistrust on the part of the barons misplaced. When Sibylla crowned her husband king and all the barons (except Ramla and Tripoli) grudgingly accepted him, he led them to the avoidable disaster at Hattin. In short, Agnes de Courtenay’s interference in the affairs of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, led directly to the loss of the entire Kingdom.

In retrospect, Agnes de Courtenay was clearly an ambitious woman, who clawed her way from comparative helplessness and impoverishment to the pinnacle of power -- behind the throne of her son. She suffered a number of set-backs in her life, most notably the High Court’s refusal to recognize her as Queen, and she must have been embittered by this. She is credited with hating her successor, the woman who was crowned queen in her place, Maria Comnena, bitterly.  The extent to which her subsequent actions were motivated by a consuming thirst for revenge should, therefore, not be under-estimated. Whatever her motives, whether a conscious desire to humiliate those she blamed for her own humiliation or simply a lack of intelligence commensurate to her ambition, her overall impact on the history of the crusader states was tragically negative.

Agnes plays a major role in the first two books of my three-part biography of Balian d'Ibelin:

                                          

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