House of Ibelin: Balian of Nablus

  Balian d'Ibelin has been made famous by a Hollywood movie, which successfully distorts his biography in almost every significant way. The historical Balian was far more interesting, important and inspiring. 

 

The youngest of Barisan’s sons and his namesake was an infant at the time of his father’s death, two years old when his stepfather was exiled, and eight years old at his mother’s death. He first enters the historical record at the age of 17  where he is the only knight amidst barons credited with a prominent role in the important Christian victory at Montgisard in 1177. 

At roughly the same time, Balian made a scandalously brilliant match, marrying the Dowager Queen of Jerusalem, Maria Comnena. With this marriage, he became a relative of the Byzantine emperor and a stepfather of the king’s half-sister Isabella. Possibly as part of the marriage arrangement, Balian was accorded the title of Lord of Ibelin. One presumes his older brother was persuaded to turn this, the smaller of his two lordships, over to his younger brother to make him a more suitable match for a dowager queen.

It is important to remember that, as a widow who was not an heiress, the dowager queen could not be forced into a new marriage. She was financially independent, holding one of the most prestigious and wealthy fiefs of the kingdom, Nablus. This made her "lord" over one of the largest contingents to the feudal host. She did not need to remarry. Maria Comnena’s marriage to Balian d’Ibelin can only have been voluntary.

The dowager queen brought with her into her second marriage her dower portion, the wealthy and strategically important royal domain of Nablus. As Maria’s consort, Balian assumed command of the barony’s feudal levees, including eighty-five knights. Combined with Ibelin’s ten knights, this made Balian one of the most powerful feudal lords — with more than twice the troops of his elder brother Baldwin of Ramla. He was frequently referred to as Balian of Nablus in the records of the time, although the title of Ibelin is more common now. 

In accordance with his new status, Ibelin took part in every major military campaign of the next decade and was also a member of the High Court of Jerusalem. In 1183, when Baldwin IV decided to crown his nephew during own his lifetime to reduce the risk of a succession crisis, Ibelin was selected — ahead of all the more senior barons in the kingdom — to carry the young king on his shoulders to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He also raised Princess Isabella until 1180, when she was forcibly taken from her mother and taken to live with her betrothed, Humphrey de Toron, at the border fortress of Kerak.

When Baldwin V died in the summer of 1186, Ibelin took a leading role in opposing Sibylla’s usurpation of the throne and her devious tactics to crown her unpopular second husband, Guy de Lusignan. When efforts to crown Isabella as a rival to Sibylla failed due to Toron’s defection, the majority of the barons, including Balian, did homage to Guy and Sibylla. After his brother Baldwin’s departure, Balian took control of Ramla’s forty knights, making him leader of one of the largest contingents of feudal levees owed to the crown. He used this power to try to reconcile the usurper, Guy de Lusignan, with the only baron more powerful than himself: Raymond, Count of Tripoli. Like his brother, Raymond was refusing to do homage to Guy, despite the clear and present danger posed by Saladin.  

Ibelin was ultimately successful in his reconciliation efforts. Shortly thereafter, he and Tripoli demonstrated their loyalty to the crown by answering the royal summons to muster under the leadership of Guy de Lusignan to stop Saladin’s invasion of July 1187. Against the advice of Tripoli, Balian d’Ibelin and others, Guy chose to abandon the Springs of Sephoria and march the Christian army across an arid plateau to the relief of the beleaguered city of Tiberius. 

Tripoli commanded the van of this army, and King Guy the centre, and Ibelin commanded the rearguard. The latter was savagely attacked throughout the advance on July 3, decimating the ranks of the Templars fighting with Ibelin. As commander of the rearguard, Ibelin was not with the Count of Tripoli when the latter broke through the encirclement. However, Arab sources note that towards the end of the battle, the Franks Ied several charges, one of which endangered Saladin himself. Possibly, one of these broke through the surrounding Saracen army enough to enable Ibelin and some of his knights to escape. All that is certain is that Ibelin was one of only three barons to fight his way off the field at Hattin. Based on the number of survivors, it appears that roughly 3,000 men escaped with him to Tyre.

Ibelin’s wife and four children, all under the age of 10, however, were trapped in Jerusalem with some 60,000 other refugees. As Saladin’s armies overran the rest of the kingdom and a siege of Jerusalem became inevitable, Balian did a remarkable thing: he approached Saladin and requested a safe conduct to ride to Jerusalem and remove his wife and children.

Saladin agreed — on the condition that he ride to Jerusalem unarmed and stay only one night. Ibelin agreed to these conditions but had not reckoned with the reaction of the residents and refugees in Jerusalem. The citizens and Patriarch of Jerusalem begged Ibelin to take command of the defence. The patriarch demonstratively absolved him of his oath to Saladin. Ibelin felt he had no choice. He sent word to Saladin of his predicament, and Saladin graciously sent fifty of his personal Mamluks to escort Balian’s family to Christian-held territory, while Ibelin remained to defend Jerusalem against overwhelming odds.

And defend Jerusalem he did. After conducting foraging sorties to collect supplies for the population from the surrounding Saracen-held territory, he successfully held off assaults from Saladin’s army from September 21-25. Saladin was forced to redeploy his army against a different sector of the wall. On September 29, Saladin’s sappers successfully brought down a segment of the northern wall roughly 30 metres long. Jerusalem was no longer defensible.

With Saracen forces pouring over the breach and into the city, their banners flying from one of the nearest towers, Ibelin went to Saladin to negotiate. According to Arab sources, Saladin scoffed: one does not negotiate the surrender of a city that has already fallen. But as he dismissively pointed to his banners on the walls of the city, those banners were thrown down and replaced with those of Jerusalem. Ibelin played his trump card. If the sultan would not give him terms, he and his men would kill the Muslim prisoners along with the inhabitants, desecrate and destroy the temples of all religions in the city – including the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque – and then sally forth to die a martyr’s death, taking as many Saracens as possible with them. Saladin relented. 

The Christians were given forty days to raise ransoms of ten dinars per man, five per woman and two per child. Although an estimated fifteen-thousand Christians were still marched off to slavery at the end of the forty days, between forty-five and sixty-thousand Christians survived as free men and women thanks to Ibelin’s skill as a negotiator. Notably, Ibelin offered to stand surety for the ransoms owed by the destitute, while efforts were made to raise their ransoms in the West. Saladin rejected his offer but ‘gave’ Balian 500 slaves as a personal gift; that is, he freed 500 Christians that would otherwise have gone into slavery.

Ibelin escorted a column consisting of roughly one-third of the refugees from Jerusalem to Tyre, the closest city still in Christian hands. The man commanding Tyre at the time, Conrad de Montferrat, however, could not admit 15,000 additional people to a city about to come under siege. They would have risked starvation if relief did not come from the West. So, while the bulk of the non-combatants continued to Tripoli, Ibelin and other fighting men remained in Tyre to continue the fight against Saladin.  

In 1188, when Guy de Lusignan laid siege to the city of Acre, Ibelin – despite his profound disagreements with Guy – joined him there; his determination to regain territory was more important to him than his disagreements with Lusignan. However, when Queen Sibylla of Jerusalem and both her daughters by Guy de Lusignan died in 1190, the situation changed. Guy's claim to the throne was through his wife. With her death, Ibelin’s stepdaughter, Isabella, became the legitimate queen. Recognizing that the kingdom at this time needed a fighting man as its king, Ibelin and his wife played the deciding role in convincing Isabella to set aside her husband Humphrey de Toron. The grounds for annulment of the marriage were that she had been forced into the marriage against her will before reaching the legal age of consent. Having divorced Toron, Isabella immediately married Conrad de Montferrat.[i]

Thereafter, Ibelin staunchly supported Conrad de Montferrat as King of Jerusalem. This initially put him in direct conflict with Richard I of England, who backed Guy de Lusignan, the latter being the brother of one of his vassals. As a result, during the first year of Richard’s presence in the Holy Land, Ibelin remained persona non grata in Richard’s court. In fact, he served as an envoy for Conrad de Montferrat to the Sultan’s court — something Richard’s entourage and chroniclers viewed as treason to the Christian cause.

Richard the Lionheart, however, was neither a fool nor a bigot. He recognised that after he went home (as he must), only the barons and knights of Outremer could defend the territories he had recovered during the Third Crusade. He also reluctantly realised that Guy de Lusignan would never be accepted as king by the barons and knights of the kingdom he had led to such a disastrous defeat at Hattin. So, in April 1192, Richard withdrew his support for Lusignan and recognised Isabella and her husband as the rightful rulers of Jerusalem. 

Thereafter, Richard employed Ibelin as a negotiator with Saladin, and in August, Ibelin negotiated the truce that ended hostilities and allowed free access to Jerusalem for unarmed Christian pilgrims. Like the surrender of Jerusalem five years earlier, this was not a triumph, but it was far better than what might have been expected under the circumstances. Notably, Ibelin’s truce left Ibelin and Ramla in Muslim hands, something he must have negotiated with a heavy heart, despite being compensated later with the barony of Caymont near Acre.[ii]

Richard the Lionheart returned to Europe, and Isabella was crowned queen. Ibelin became the foremost nobleman in his stepdaughter's kingdom, but he disappears from the historical record in 1194. It is usually presumed that he died about this time, but it should be noted that there are other reasons for noblemen to cease signing charters. Both of Ibelin’s sons disappear from the charters of King John de Brienne, not because they were dead, but because they were active in Cyprus. Balian and his Byzantine wife may also have taken an active role in establishing Frankish rule in Cyprus,[iii] or, like his brother Hugh, he might have gone on a pilgrimage to the West or been engaged in diplomatic activities anywhere from Constantinople to Cairo.

From relative obscurity as the youngest and landless son of a rear-vassal, Balian d’Ibelin rose to premier lord of the realm. Yet Balian’s most pivotal role was that of a peacemaker — between Tripoli and Lusignan, between Richard the Lionheart and Montferrat and between Richard and Saladin. He was also instrumental in setting aside the ineffectual Humphrey de Toron, paving the way for the re-establishment of a viable monarchy around which the barons could unite. Yet, his moment of greatest glory was when he offered himself as a hostage for 15,000 destitute refugees who could not pay their ransom. Saladin rejected his gesture, but that does not diminish the spirit of compassion and charity that inspired it.

---

[i] This incident is the source of much slander against both Balian and Maria Comnena. For more details, see: 'Abduction of Isabella of Jerusalem', crusaderkingdoms.com.

[ii] For more on this see, 'Ibelins on Cyprus', crusaderkingdoms.com.

Dr. Helena P. Schrader is also the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades. Balian is the main protagonist of Balian d'Ibelin, Defender of Jerusalem, Envoy of Jerusalem, and The Last Crusader Kingdom.

                         

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For more about the Ibelins and the world they lived in read:

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A Traitorous Baron? Raymond de Tripoli

Raymond of Tripoli, the most powerful baron in the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the last quarter of the 12^th century, has always been controversial figure. His independent truce with Saladin in 1186, threatened the very existence of the kingdom at a time when it was surrounded by a resurgent Islam under a masterful general, Saladin. The Templar Grand Master went so far as to accuse Tripoli of conspiring with Saladin for a Saracen victory at the Battle of Hattin. In short, he has been blamed for nothing short of the disaster at Hattin and the loss of the Holy Land to Saladin. Yet, later historians such as Sir Stephen Runciman, have seen in Tripoli a voice of reason, compromise and tolerance -- a positive contrast to the fanaticism of the Templars and recent immigrants from the West such as Guy de Lusignan.  Tripoli was the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s “Tiberius” in the Hollywood film “The Kingdom of Heaven.”

 

While the Grand Master’s accusations can largely be dismissed as self-serving (the two men detested one another), and Scott’s portrayal is far from fact, even the most reliable and credible chronicler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in this period, William Archbishop of Tyre, has left an ambiguous image. On the whole the Archbishop of Tyre portrays Tripoli in a positive light, yet he also suggests offhandely that Tripoli was plotting a coup against Baldwin IV in 1180.  More recently, revisionist historians intent on challenging the still prevalent portrayal of Reyald de Chatillon as a madman, brute and self-interested rogue, have forcefully come out calling Raymond of Tripoli a "traitor" and the architect of the disaster at Hattin. In their zeal to rehabilitate Chatillon, I believe they overshoot the mark, however. Here is my analysis starting with some background.

The County of Tripoli was created after the liberation of Jerusalem by Raymond Count of Toulouse, one of the most important leaders of the First Crusade. Toulouse was widely believed to have coveted the crown of Jerusalem. When it fell to Godfrey de Bouillon instead, he set about conquering his own kingdom eventually capturing the entire coastal area between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Principality of Antioch. This gave the Latins control of three contiguous states along the shore of the Eastern Mediterranean. Although de jure autonomous, in reality the County of Tripoli did not have the resources to defend itself and so it was always quasi-dependent on the larger, more prosperous neighbors, Antioch and Jerusalem. In return, the Counts of Tripoli usually brought their knights, turcopoles and sergeants to the feudal muster of Jerusalem.

The Raymond of Tripoli under discussion here was the third by that name. His father Raymond II of Tripoli had been Count of Tripoli from 1137 and his mother, Hodiera, was a Princess of Jerusalem, the younger sister of Queen Melisende. However, the marriage was so notoriously turbulent that Queen Melisinde intervened and recommended an amicable separation. In 1152, Raymond II was assassinated, leaving his minor son Raymond III, his heir. The King of Jerusalem served as regent until Raymond came of age, and not long after this, in 1164, Raymond was taken captive by the Saracen leader Nur ad-Din. He was not released for eight years, and became proficient in Arabic while in captivity. It is often imputed by his enemies that it was during this period in captivity that he was "converted" or "coopted" by the the Muslims and in effect became as Saracen "mole" or "sleeper" in the Frankish camp.

When he was set free, it was for a ransom largely contributed by the Knights of St. John, and in exchange for the ransom he gave the Order considerable territory on his western border. Here the Hospitallers built a series of castles including the famous Krak de Chevaliers. 

So far, Raymond’s career had not been very auspicious. 

In 1174, however, King Amalric died suddenly, leaving his 13 year old son Baldwin as his heir.  As the closest male relative of the young king, Raymond of Tripoli was elected, although not immediately, regent. William of Tyre describes him as follows:

He was a slight-built, thin man. He was not very tall and he had dark skin. He had straight hair of medium color and piercing eyes. He carried himself stiffly. He had an orderly mind, was cautious, but acted with vigor.

Contemporary Arab chronicles noted he was highly intelligent, and this was borne out by his sophisticated diplomatic policies in the coming 15 years.

Shortly after becoming regent, Raymond also married for the first time, taking to wife the greatest heiress in the Kingdom, Eschiva, princess of Galilee. She was a widow with four sons by her previous marriage, but William of Tyre explicitly states it was a happy marriage and that Tripoli was on excellent terms with his step-sons. More important, however, the marriage made Tripoli the greatest nobleman inside the Kingdom of Jerusalem, a baron owing 200 knights to the crown. Thus, even after he stepped down as regent when Baldwin IV came of age in 1176, he remained a powerful figure in the kingdom as well as in his own right as Count of Tripoli.

By now, however, it was evident that Baldwin IV was suffering from leprosy and was not going to sire an heir — or live very long. The need to find a replacement was acute. Baldwin had two sisters, the elder of which, Sibylla, was the heir apparent to the throne, but the constitution of Jerusalem dictated that a female heir could only rule jointly with a consort. Sibylla was duly married to a suitable candidate (William Marquis de Montferrat), but he promptly died of malaria, leaving her a young (and pregnant) widow. In 1180, she made a surprise and hasty marriage to a young nobleman only recently arrived in the Holy Land, Guy de Lusignan. There are various versions about why she married Guy (see Sibylla and Guy). The version provided by William of Tyre is that the Prince of Antioch, the Baron of Ramla and Mirabel, and Raymond of Tripoli had been planning to marry Ramla to Sibylla and then depose Baldwin IV, so he married his sister off in great haste — only to regret it latter.

Because Tyre is considered such a knowledgeable insider and sober historian, most modern historians accept this version uncritically. I find it flawed in many ways. First, if Tripoli had been intent on power, he was in a far better position to seize it after becoming regent. Secondly, Tyre admits that the trio of lords came to Jerusalem as if to attend Easter Mass at the Holy Sepulcher, and when they found Sibylla already married they went away peaceably — which hardly sounds like the behavior of men intent on a coup d’etat. Most important, Sibylla’s behavior from this point until her death ten years later was that of a woman passionately in love with her husband. Had she in fact been married in haste against her will to a man far beneath her station by a panicked brother, she would probably have been resentful. She also would have  been receptive to the idea of setting the unwanted husband aside the minute her brother changed his mind. Instead, she clung tenaciously to Guy even when her brother pressed her to divorce him, and later went to great lengths to get her husband crowned king despite the opposition of the entire High Court.

Meanwhile, Baldwin IV was getting weaker. He briefly made Guy his regent in the hope of being able to retire from the world and prepare to face God, but Guy was such an unmitigated disaster that Baldwin was forced to take the reins of government back into his decaying hands. He then took the precaution of having his nephew (Sibylla’s son by William de Montferrat) crowned co-king as Baldwin V, and the High Court (i.e. his peers) selected Raymond of Tripoli to be regent after Baldwin IV’s death. The latter occurred in 1185, and Raymond duly became regent of Jerusalem a second time. He explicitly refused to be the guardian of the young king, however, arguing that if anything happened to the boy he would be accused of have done away with him.

Clearly some people thought him capable of murdering the young king, and Arab sources suggest that he already coveted the crown, but no one suggests that, in fact, he did murder the young king, who was in Sibylla’s not Raymond’s custody when he died in August 1186. What followed instead was not Tripoli's usurpation by Sibylla's, which left the crusader states in the hands of a completely incompetent man -- her husband Guy.

Raymond’s refusal to pay homage to Guy de Lusignan was completely comprehensible under the circumstances. His separate peace with Saladin, on the other hand, was just as clearly treason because it endangered not just he usurper Guy but every man, woman and child in the crusader states. This separate peace is what modern historians point to when calling Tripoli a traitor. But it is not the end of the story.

In Tripoli's defense, however, he soon saw the error of his ways. When Saladin requested a "safe-conduct" for a “reconnaissance patrol” to pass through Tripoli's lands of Galilee, Tripoli felt compelled to grant the request -- but warned his fellow Franks to leave the patrol in peace. The Saracen "reconnaissance patrol" was, however, a provocation that the Master of the Knights Templar felt honor-bound to meet. A combined attack by Templar, Hospitaller and civilian knights led by the Templar Grand Master resulted in a Frankish defeat from which only three Templars escaped. The sight of Templar and Hospitaller heads spiked on the tips of Saracen lances so distressed Raymond that he acceded to the pleas of the Baron of Ibelin and made peace with Guy de Lusignan. He did homage to the usurper as his king, and was received the kiss of peace from Guy. This is a very significant concession on both parts, and underlines how great Tripoli's remorse was.

The problem was that while Raymond’s action (and the abrogation of his treaty with Saladin) healed the fracture of the kingdom, it did not transform Guy de Lusignan into a competent leader. Raymond of Tripoli dutifully brought his troops to the feudal muster called by Lusignan in late June 1187, and he followed Lusignan’s orders, even though he vehemently disagreed with them. The catastrophe of Hattin was not of Raymond’s making; it was Guy de Lusignan and Grand Master of the Temple between them who had engineered the unnecessary defeat. (See Hattin.)

Trapped on the Horns of Hattin, Raymond of Tripoli led a successful charge through the Saracen lines. There is nothing even faintly cowardly or treacherous about this action. On the contrary, a massed charge of heavy cavalry was the most effective tactic the Franks had against the Saracens. It was the tactic used by Richard the Lionheart to win at Arsuf. It was not the charge that discredited Tripoli, but the fact that so few men broke out with him, and apparently no infantry was able to reinforce the breakout. That, however, was hardly Tripoli’s fault. He spearheaded the attack with is knights. It was the duty of the King to reinforce his shock-troops. Something Guy de Lusignan singularly failed to do.

So the Kingdom of Jerusalem was lost, and Raymond of Tripoli retreated to his own county to die within a few months by all accounts a broken man.

In summary, Raymond of Tripoli was a highly intelligent, well-educated and competent man, who as regent and Count of Tripoli ruled prudently and effectively. Yet he was condemned to watch as a parvenu usurper led the crusader states into an avoidable disaster. It is hardly any wonder that he harbored thoughts of seizing the throne himself when the alternative, as history was to show, was to leave it in the hands of a man so totally unsuited to wear a crown. If Tripoli was a traitor, it was for the right reasons: to save the kingdom from destruction. For me he more a tragic figure than a traitorous one. 

Tripoli is a character in my Jerusalem Trilogy, particularly Book II: "Defender of Jerusalem"

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"Hattin" by John France - A Review

Despite its title, this book is not about the Battle of Hattin. Instead, it is a concise history of the historical events that led up to the crushing defeat of the army of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187, and an equally concise discussion of the aftermath and impact of Hattin right up to the present day. For anyone interested in understanding the rhetoric about “crusades” in the context of today’s conflict with ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al Qaida, this book is an incredibly useful starting point.

“Hattin” is only 168 pages long, contains useful maps, a collection of interesting photographs and a useful bibliography. Despite its brevity, on the whole it avoids over simplification and the usual misrepresentations of basic facts. France, for example, makes clear right on page 3 that “many parts of the Middle East, especially those areas seized by the westerners, were not Muslim at all but eastern Christian: their populations often welcomed the new rulers.” He highlights the fact, so often forgotten or ignored today, that Muslim raiders had burned St. Peter’s in Rome in 847 and draws attention to the very real fear of Islamic expansion and conquest that shaped European attitudes right up to the First Crusade. Yet he also notes that once the crusader states had been established “the western settlers were far from fanatical, understanding the importance of exploiting Muslim divisions.” (p.37)

France does a remarkable job of making the complex and (particularly to Western eyes) very confusing divisions and rivalries within the Muslim world comprehensible. He manages to boil down the intrigues that led to Saladin’s seizure of power in Egypt to the essentials, and likewise avoids the usual drivel about the barons of Jerusalem being self-seeking and exceptionally greedy or perversely divided. France notes soberly: “All aristocracies were inevitably divided by factional struggles in which personal likes and dislikes played a major role.” (p.65) In short, there was nothing particularly unique about this in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and nothing inherently fatal about it. France also highlights that “the barons of Jerusalem were not, for the most part, fanatics…but they were fiercely and proudly Catholic and deeply aware of the dangers posed by their Muslim neighbours to their very existence…As a whole they were quite prepared to deal peacefully with the Muslims, but they were also aware that they needed to be strong….”

France does his best to reconstruct the Battle of Hattin itself, but given the absence of first-hand Christian accounts the task is nearly impossible. The contradictions in later accounts written with the benefit of hindsight and designed to serve various contemporary agendas and biases, make a variety of interpretations both plausible and defensible. France’s account is no more than one plausible interpretation, and he only devotes 15 pages to the battle itself. This is completely justifiable as the book far from being about tactical details of no particular relevance in the 21^st century but rather about the impact of Hattin both strategically and ideologically.

France’s most valuable contribution to the literature on the crusades and Hattin is his last chapter titled “Hattin Today: A Poisoned Heritage.” In this chapter he not only traces and explains the emergence of the “chivalrous” Saladin myth in the 13^th and later centuries, he catalogues the various ways in which Saladin and Hattin have been harnessed to modern ideologies and aspirations from the Ottoman empire to ISIS.  France argues, “the European myth of Saladin arose from the desire among the military aristocracy to show the victor as a worthy, indeed praiseworthy opponent who, underneath it all, is ‘one of us’ in some sense.” (p. 142) In the Muslim world, on the other hand, by the 19^th century “the crusader-imperialist linkage catered to the growing sense of victimhood across Islam….” Later, he notes, “the parallel between the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem and Israel, which occupied much the same territory, provided a permanent reminder of the crusading past.” (p. 152) He notes that Saddam Hussein gave one of his divisions the name “Saladin” — and built a statue of himself dressed as Saladin. The PLO had both a “Saladin” and a “Hattin” brigade. The Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS to this day lay claim “to the inheritance of Saladin and aspire to cleave a way to a new Hattin.” (p. 159)

Given the very real fact that Hattin has, as France puts it, “become a rallying cry for radical Islamic groups, and a factor in the politics of hate in the Middle East,” (p. 168) anyone who wants to understand international affairs today owes it to himself to read this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The battle of Hattin is a key event in:

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Defender of Jerusalem won the 2015 Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction set in the Middle Ages and the Silver for Spiritual/Religious Fiction in the 2015 Feathered Quill Book Awards.