Civil War in the Crusader States

 

 Although Frederick II Hohenstaufen spent only a few months in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, his impact on the kingdom was arguably fatal. With the wisdom of hindsight, we can see that the civil war that he ignited and the policy of absentee monarchy that his dynasty adopted doomed the kingdom more certainly than the actions of Saladin or the Mamluks.

The opening volley in this war occurred incongruously at a banquet shortly after Frederick’s arrival in Cyprus on his way to Acre for the Sixth Crusade. Here the emperor's armed men surrounded the unarmed guests and then Frederick proceeded to demand that one of the leading noblemen of he land, the Lord of Beirut, surrender his lordship — without stating a reason much less proving any wrong-doing. 

 

Despite the obvious threat of violence, Beirut responded by saying he held Beirut by right and would not surrender it without a judgement of the High Court. He then walked out of the banquet with the bulk of the Cypriot knights and barons at his back. The bulk of the nobility sided with Beirut because he demanded no more than what his contemporaries viewed as right and just: the right to a trial before his peers. The Emperors response was to threaten violence, to demand hostages, and to allow these to be mishandled while in his custody.

 

A temporary compromise was worked out in which the Emperor agreed to release the hostages and bring the charges against Beirut in the respective High Courts in exchange for Beirut surrendering the castles of Cyprus to the Emperor’s men and joining his crusade. While Beirut, his adult sons, nephews, and vassals were in Syria, however, the Emperor sent the Count of Cotron to Cyprus to lay waste the lands of Beirut, his family and supporters. Furthermore, Frederick attempted to arbitrarily bestow the lordship and castle of Toron on his clients the Teutonic Knights, ignoring the claims of the hereditary heirs thereby alienating another powerful family in Outremer. He likewise attempted to seize control of the Templar castle of Athlit by force. By all these actions, Frederick demonstrated that he had no interest in the laws or constitution of the kingdom. It was clear to all that he respected no one’s rights but his own, and that he was willing to use force against his own subjects to get his way. 

 

When Frederick departed the Holy Land via Cyprus, he sold the regency for the still under-aged King Henry of Cyprus to five Cypriot noblemen. They were ordered to ensure Beirut and his supporters never again set foot in the island kingdom. This demonstrated that all his signed promises to bring his charges against Beirut before the High Court were worthless. He then sailed away never to return.

 

The ‘five baillies’ of Cyprus (as they have gone down in history) began a rapacious regime that undermined their popularity. In consequence, when Beirut returned with a small force, he was able to land at Gastria and advance to the outskirts of Nicosia. The five baillies called up the feudal army of Cyprus and met Beirut’s army at the Battle of Nicosia on 14 July 1229. Although the victory went to the Ibelins, all five baillies escaped to the mountain castles. Beirut was forced to besiege both Kantara and St. Hilarion.  Not until shortly after Easter 1230 did the baillies surrender St. Hilarion in exchange for a full amnesty.

 

Frederick II, however, had not achieved his objectives. So, in the autumn of 1231 he sent the Imperial Marshal Richard Filangieri with a fleet of thirty-three ships loaded with mercenaries to enforce his rule in the kingdoms of both Cyprus and Jerusalem. In the former, Fredrick issued orders to King Henry in his capacity as the “Overlord of Cyprus.” In Jerusalem, Frederick named Filangieri his “baillie” or deputy.

 

Filangieri anchored first off Cyprus and sent the Bishop of Melfi ashore as Frederick’s envoy. In Frederick’s name, the bishop ineptly demanded that King Henry of Cyprus expel the Lord of Beirut and all his relatives from his realm. Henry blandly pointed out that he could not comply with the Emperor’s orders because he was himself a relative of Beirut. He further noted that it was a lord’s duty to defend his vassals — not hound them out of their fiefs without cause or trial.

 

Since Beirut had rushed to Cyprus with all the men and his sons held the ports, the Emperor’s marshal made the wise decision not to attempt a landing in Cyprus against resistance. Instead, he sailed by night and struck the undefended city of Beirut. The town surrendered without a fight, but the citadel with only a skeleton garrison held firm for their lord. Leaving the bulk of his forces investing the citadel, Filangieri continued to Acre where he presented his credentials as Frederick’s baillie and was recognized as such by the High Court of Jerusalem. However, the Court objected to his seizure of the city of Beirut on the grounds there had been no judgement by the Court against the Lord of Beirut. Filangieri, who had just sworn to uphold the laws and customs of the kingdom, answered that he needed to ‘take counsel’ with his magnates. He withdrew from Acre, set up his residence in Tyre, and joined his troops to pursue the siege of Beirut citadel with increased vigor. In short, Filangieri had no more interest in the laws and customs of the Kingdom than did his master Frederick II. The Lord of Beirut had been disseized by force without a judgement of the High Court.

 

Beirut, however, refused to concede defeat. Instead, he made a dramatic appeal to King Henry of Cyprus for aid, and the king responded by personally calling up the feudal army of Cyprus. After a dangerous winter crossing, this army landed on the Syrian coast. Here the former Imperial baillies and some eighty knights (roughly 20% of the Cypriot feudal elite) defected from King Henry’s host and rode for Tripoli. The remaining troops under the Lord of Beirut and King Henry advanced down the coast to challenge the Imperial army besieging Beirut. When it became clear that the Cypriot army was insufficiently strong to lift the siege, Beirut smuggled roughly one hundred fighting men through the sea blockade into the citadel, and then withdrew with the rest of the army to Acre in search of additional backing.

 

Beirut put his case before the High Court. This brought him the direct support of some forty knights, while the High Court sent a high-ranking delegation to Filangieri to remind him of the laws and advise him to end his siege. Filangieri’s referred them back to Emperor Friedrich. His blunt dismissal of the concerns of the representatives of the High Court won over the minority of nobles who until then had  remained loyal to the Emperor

 

In addition, Beirut won the support of the Genoese — who were dogged opponents of the Hohenstaufens in Italy already. In addition, the ‘Commune of Acre’ had been created. This was an ad hoc body with no legal basis or function, which served as a rallying point for opponents of Imperial power from all classes, ethnic groups and religions. The ‘Commune’ elected the Lord of Beirut their ‘mayor.’ 

 

With these forces Beirut felt strong enough to risk an attack on Filangieri’s base in Tyre. The threat to Tyre, forced Filangieri to lift the siege of Beirut Citadel, and offer to negotiate. While the Lord of Beirut was negotiating with Filangieri’s envoys in Acre, however, Filangieri’s army overran the Cypriot/Ibelin camp at Casal Imbert capturing ships, horses, tents, equipment and twenty-four knights. King Henry barely escaped in his nightshirt, riding all the way to Acre to bring word of the debacle.

 

In assessments of this incident, too much attention has been paid to the fact that the Cypriots/Ibelins were caught completely off guard, and too little attention to how the defeat significantly increased popular support for the Lord of Beirut. Filangieri’s surprise strike during a truce was considered treacherous. Like the banquet for unarmed guests in which Frederick hid soldiers and like the Count of Cotron’s attack in Cyprus while Beirut was loyally serving under Frederick in Syria, this attack struck contemporaries as deceitful and dishonorable.  

 

Meanwhile, thinking the Lord of Beirut and the King of Cyprus were effectively knocked out of action by their humiliation at Casal Imbert, Filangieri took his fleet and army to overrun Cyprus. King Henry and Beirut pursued them -- in imperial ships that they expropriated in Acre! They dramatically wrecked this ships on an coastal island, crossed over a ford only passable at low tide, and took Famagusta from the rear without a fight as the Imperial forces fled in the night. Henry was able to re-occupy his capital without bloodshed. 

 

However, Filiangieri still commanded a much larger army of Imperial mercenaries. Furthermore, the king’s sisters were trapped in the castle of St. Hilarion, which was besieged by Imperial forces, and supplies were running dangerously low. This latter fact forced King Henry and Beirut to attempt the relief of St. Hilarion, thereby risking a confrontation with the Imperial forces drawn up on the flank of the mountain ridge separating the Cypriot army from St. Hilarion. 

 

At the sight of the Cypriot/Ibelin army, the Imperial knights charged down the hill confident of overwhelming it. In the ensuing Battle of Agridi fought on 15 June 1232, the Cypriot/Ibelin force decisively defeated Filangieri’s men. The battle is remembered for the role played by the infantry, largely composed of local troops who came out in support of their king. These reportedly killed unhorsed Imperial knights, while helping Cypriot/Ibelin knights back into the saddle. Imperial casualties were huge by the standards of the day, namely sixty knights. Nevertheless, Filangieri was able to withdraw with the bulk of his troops to the coastal castle of Kyrenia.

 

From here Filangieri appealed to Antioch, Armenia, and the Emperor for help; he received none. He and those Cypriots who had sided with the him sailed away to safety, while a garrison held Kyrenia for almost a year before surrendering to royal Cypriot forces. Frederick II never again tried to interfere in Cypriot affairs, and in 1246 the pope solemnized the de facto situation by formally absolving King Henry of all oaths of vassalage to the Holy Roman Emperor. Thereafter, the Kingdom of Cyprus was fully independent.

 

Frederick’s claim to be King of Jerusalem and to rule without the consent of the High Court, however, had not been resolved — and nor had his determination to humiliate the Lord of Beirut. The latter, however, continued to enjoy the solid backing of the bulk of the politically active elements in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, including the Knights Templar, the Genoese and the Commune of Acre. On the other hand, the Teutonic Knights were staunchly Imperial in their loyalties, and the Hospitallers tended to the Imperial side. In addition, a significant minority of knights and burgesses, concentrated in Tyre, remained loyal to the Holy Roman Emperor. Thus, the kingdom was effectively split into two entities.

 

Recognizing that the use of force had failed in the short-term, Frederick II put forward a ‘compromise’ proposal which entailed a general amnesty for everyone who had (in his opinion) committed treason — except the Ibelins. He also recognized the de-facto division of the kingdom into two halves, proposing that henceforth the north of the kingdom would be ruled from Tyre by his baillie Filangieri, while the south of the kingdom with the intransigent Acre would be ruled by a new baillie who he who personally appoint without the approval of the High Court. The proposal shows just how little the Emperor understood the rebellion. The problem was not one of personnel but principle. The Rebels challenged his right to appoint any baillie without the consent of the High Court and objected to his attempts to disseize one of their number without a judgement of the High Court.

 

In April 1234 the pope became involved in seeking a settlement between the Emperor and his rebellious subjects in the Holy Land. The terms he proposed amounted to unconditional surrender by the rebels, recognition of the Emperor’s right to appoint whoever he liked, dissolution of the Commune of Acre, and no pardons for the Ibelins. The rebels shrugged and ignored the offer, bringing down papal wrath, which included not only excommunication for the Lord of Beirut and his supporters but interdict on the city Acre. By October, the pope was frantically rescinding the interdict because so many Franks were simply turning to the Orthodox churches. At last recognizing that one cannot negotiate an agreement by listening only to one side, the pope asked the rebels to send representatives to Rome to discuss terms.

 

The men sent to Rome appear to have been intimidated and bullied into accepting disadvantageous terms because on their return they were nearly lynched. New envoys were sent back to the pope, arriving in April 1236. By now, despite the death of the Lord of Beirut (who was still in full possession of his fiefs and wealthy enough dispense largess with both hands on his deathbed), the pope’s relationship with Frederick II was deteriorating again. Pope Gregory IX suddenly discovered that the rebels might have some valid points after all. Thereafter, he made no further attempt to intervene, and the stalemate continued.

 

In April 1243, the infant boy whose birth had killed Queen Yolanda turned fifteen. In accordance with the laws of Jerusalem, Frederick II’s regency ended. Yet Frederick continued to call himself ‘King of Jerusalem,’ thereby usurping the rights of his own son. Nevertheless, Frederick knew enough about the laws to send instructions to Acre and Tyre in Conrad’s name. The barons weren’t fooled. They became even more inventive in finding transparently self-serving legal arguments for non-compliance. The most important of these was a fictitious claim that when a monarch came of age while absent from the kingdom, his/her closest relative resident in the country held the regency until the monarch appeared in person to take the homage of vassals. By this ploy, Conrad’s great-aunt Alice, the dowager queen of Cyprus, became regent. She demanded the surrender of Tyre to her, and when (as expected) Filangieri refused, Balian of Beirut (John d’Ibelin’s eldest son and heir) seized it by force. Filangieri returned to Sicily where Frederick imprisoned him for his years of loyal service and sent in his stead Thomas of Accera. The later did not dare set foot in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and spent his entire tenure in Antioch instead.  

 

A colorful contemporary account of the conflict written by Philip de Novare, an opponent of the Emperor, has disproportionately influenced modern understanding of the conflict, reducing it to nothing more than a personal struggle between Frederick II and the Lord of Beirut. This is unfortunate. While Beirut was a highly respected nobleman, he did not enjoy the support of roughly four-fifths of the Cypriot nobility, more than half of the Syrian nobility, the Templars, the Genoese and the Commune of Acre because he was such a nice fellow. Rather, the Emperor’s arrogant, arbitrary and unconstitutional attempt to disseize Beirut met with widespread outrage and finally armed opposition because it was recognised as a dangerous precedent. The lords of Cyprus and Jerusalem recognized that if the Emperor got away with disseizing a lord as powerful and well-connected as Beirut, than no one else would be safe from arbitrary Imperial actions.

 

Stripped of personalities and rhetoric, the underlying issue in this conflict between Emperor Frederick and the rebel barons were incompatible views about the nature of monarchy in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Frederick II was a proponent of absolutism, who viewed himself as Emperor and King by the Grace of God. He recognized no fetters on his rights to rule ― neither laws nor constitutions, not institutions nor counsels, nor indeed his own promises, as he reserved to himself the right to change his mind about anything. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, on the other hand, was a feudal state par excellence. Furthermore, by this point in time, the nobility of the Kingdom of Jerusalem had already evolved sophisticated constitutional views and legal procedures.

 

First and foremost, the nobility of Outremer held to the fundamental feudal concept that government was a contract between the king and his subjects, a reciprocal agreement entailing obligations on both sides. Yet Frederick consistently flaunted the laws and customs of the kingdom and especially the High Court.  The baronial faction countered by becoming ever more inventive in discovering ‘laws’ and customs that undermined Hohenstaufen rule rather than submit to a known tyrant. 

---

The bulk of this entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.

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The Civil War in the Crusader States is the subject of Schrader's "Rebels of Outremer" Series starting with Rebels against Tyranny. Buy Now!

 

Altogether, Dr. Helena P. Schrader is the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades.

                         

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Philip d'Ibelin, Regent of Cyprus

 Philip is often lumped together with his brother John, Lord of Beirut, by chroniclers and historians much the same way his father and uncle, Balian and Baldwin, were treated a generation earlier.  Yet, this should not be taken to mean that the brothers were identical, interchangeable or always in accord with one another. While we know much more about the words and deeds of John of Beirut than of his younger brother Philip, there is one revealing incident recorded in Novare that gives us a glimpse of Philip as an individual in his own right ― and a tantalizing hint of a man with passion and loyalty.

In 1224 or 1225 (the date remains unclear) at the days-long tournament to mark the knighting of John of Beirut’s two eldest sons, a knight of Philip d’Ibelin’s household “smote” down a certain Cypriot lord, Amaury Barlais, in a game of “barbadaye.” (No one nowadays knows exactly what this was, but it is assumed to be a kind of melee.) The next day, Barlais and his men waylaid the knight and came near to killing him.  At this point, according to Novare, “Sir Philip, the bailli, was much angered and wished to attack [Sir Amaury]… My lord of Beirut, his brother, intervened between them and held them apart by force and ordered his son, Sir Balian, to conduct Sir Amaury Barlais there where he wished to go.” (Novare, Philip. The Wars of Frederick II against the Ibelins in Syria and Cyprus. Colombia University Press, 1936, p.66.) So Philip was a man who, out of love and loyalty to a man in his service, could become enraged.

Furthermore, Novare tells us, Beirut was so set on reconciling his brother with Barlais, that he “went from Cyprus to Beirut and ordered the seeking out of Sir Amaury Barlais at Easter, and he carried him into Cyprus before his brother so suddenly that the latter knew nothing of it. He [my lord of Beirut] said to his brother that he wished him to pardon Sir Amaury in every manner and in every way; saying that if he would not do this he would never speak to him more….” (Novare, pp.66-67.) This tells us that Philip loved his brother so much that the threat not to speak was enough to make him cave in on a matter that greatly impassioned him.

Yet these are the only incidents that put flesh on the skeleton left by history. How he became the man he did can only be speculated upon based on the known facts.

Philip was the fourth and youngest child of Balian d’Ibelin and Maria Comnena. His earliest possible date of birth was 1181, although he might have been born a year or two later. Like his siblings, he was trapped in Jerusalem after the disaster at Hattin and would have witnessed his father’s dramatic return as well as have benefitted from Saladin’s generosity. Yet, given his young age (at most six and probably younger), it is unlikely that he was shaped by this event.

His childhood years between the ages of roughly five to ten were lived in reduced economic circumstances and great uncertainty. He would surely have been aware that everything might be lost at any moment, and his father would have been frequently absent, particularly during the Third Crusade. His situation, however, would have improved considerably after the Truce of Ramla.  With his half-sister secure on her throne, it is not too far-fetched to imagine Philip obtained his schooling as page and squire at his sister’s court under her husband Henri de Champagne (1192-1197).

Sometime between 1198 and 1200, on turning 17 or 18, he would have been knighted, probably by his brother-in-law the king (now Aimery de Lusignan) or his elder brother John, who was by this time Constable of Jerusalem (1198-1200). In 1205, when Philip was in his early twenties, his sister and her husband died, and his brother John became regent of Jerusalem for their niece Marie de Montferrat. Given how close the brothers were in later years, we can assume that Philip enjoyed substantial trust and power, but we have no details of his actual positions.

In the same year, the crown of Cyprus passed to the 10-year-old Hugh de Lusignan, and Walter de Montbéliard was elected regent by the High Court of Cyprus. Montbéliard was a recent arrival in the Latin East married to King Hugh’s elder sister and heir apparent Burgundia.  Sometime between 1207 and 1210, while Montbéliard was regent of Cyprus and Beirut regent of Jerusalem, they agreed on the marriage of Montbéliard’s sister Alys to Beirut’s brother Philip.  This marriage was clearly a political marriage, possibly designed to bind the two kingdoms closer together ― or possibly to breach differences that had already surfaced between the Montbéliards and Ibelins.

 

I say this because in 1210, when Hugh of Cyprus came of age, he accused Montbéliard of massive embezzlement and effectively drove him out of Cyprus altogether, while turning to his Ibelin kinsmen for support. His ties to the Ibelins had been strengthened by his marriage to their niece Alice de Champagne. Both Ibelin brothers accompanied Alice to her new kingdom. At the very latest, therefore, 1210 was the year in which Ibelin power in Cyprus began to wax. (This is the traditional interpretation. I have argued elsewhere that the Ibelins may already have been well-entrenched on Cyprus long before this late date. See: http://schradershistoricalfiction.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-ibelins-on-cyprus-and-role-of.html) Certainly, Philip became a close friend and confidante of the young king and, again based on what happened eight years later, earned the respect and trust of the majority of Cypriot barons. Unfortunately, we know nothing about how he did that.

Meanwhile, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Marie de Montferrat had married John de Brienne, also in 1210, and Beirut had stepped down as regent. His relationship with King John was evidently cool from the start but deteriorated further after Marie de Montferrat died in childbed in 1212, leaving an infant daughter heiress to Jerusalem.  John de Brienne assumed that he remained king, despite the death of his wife, and continued to rule the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Beirut (and we presume Philip) appear to have questioned Brienne’s claim to rule, following the precedent set by their parents in opposing the rule of Guy de Lusignan after the death of Queen Sibylla three decades earlier. The breach between Beirut and Brienne almost certainly led to the Ibelins spending more time in and building up a client base on Cyprus.  Here they were welcome and either already held or were granted by King Hugh important properties, including at least the lordship of Peristerona and Episkopi. Significantly, during the Fifth Crusade, both John and Philip of Ibelin were listed as vassals of King Hugh of Cyprus rather than King John of Jerusalem, although John d'Ibelin still held the Lordship of Beirut in the latter kingdom.  This suggests either that they had more property in Cyprus, despite Beirut being extremely wealthy, or that they refused to serve under Brienne.

As the crusade got underway, King Hugh and King John quarreled. King Hugh removed himself from the crusade, heading for Antioch. Here he died abruptly (in an accident? of dysentery?) at the age of 23.  He left behind two little girls and a son just nine months old. Cyprus needed a new regent.

According to one of the chronicles of the period, on his deathbed, Hugh recommended Philip d’Ibelin to the High Court as regent for his infant son, Henry. Other chronicles claim that Hugh’s widow Alice of Champagne urged the High Court of Cyprus to select Philip d’Ibelin to “govern the land, hold the court and command over men.” A third version refers only to the knights, nobles, and people of Cyprus selecting Philip d’Ibelin. Clearly, in the eight years since the majority of King Hugh and his death, Philip (not John!) d’Ibelin had established himself as a man who could be trusted with the reins of government. There is no hint of factions or opposition to his appointment, which suggests that he did indeed enjoy widespread support at this time. 

However, the law of crusader kingdoms put him in a more dubious position.  According to the constitution of Cyprus, the regent for minor was the nearest relative, which in this case was the infant king’s mother Alice. At the time of her husband’s death, Alice preferred to name a deputy (the term used was bailli) to rule for her rather than taking up the reins of government herself. Controversial, however, was whether she was at liberty to recall him at any time. Most sources claim that the vassals of the crown swore an oath to Philip until the infant Prince Henry came of age. Other sources, however, suggest that the oath was until either the prince came of age, or Alice remarried.

This is significant because in 1223 or 1224, Alice fell-out with Philip and wanted to replace him. Why is unclear. One source suggests Philip bullied and humiliated Alice. Novare, on the other hand, claims that Philip had “much work and grief, while the queen held the revenues, which she spent freely.” (Novare, p. 63.) One can imagine a situation in which Alice was profligate with her expenditures, perhaps demanding more and more of the revenues, thereby provoking protests, rebukes, and criticism from Philip, which Alice, in turn, felt were “humiliating and bullying.”

In any case, Alice wanted to be rid of Philip, but the High Court wouldn’t hear of it ―clearly siding with Philip. This suggests they did not see him as bullying or over-reaching his authority, but rather as defending the interests of the kingdom. Alice responded by going to Tripoli and marrying the Prince of Antioch.  This only served to weaken her position in Cyprus, however, because she had not bothered to obtain the permission of her knights and nobles. The latter were now more outraged than ever. Rightly or wrongly, they alleged that if Antioch set foot on Cyprus, the life of their “little lord” King Henry would be in danger.

Alice’s position was further weakened by the outrage of the Pope, who claimed Alice and Bohemond were related within the prohibited degrees. He ruled the marriage invalid. Clearly, Bohemond was not going to be able to gain control of Cyprus for her. So Alice tried a different tactic: she appointed the disaffected Sir Amaury Barlais, the man who had already clashed with Philip over the near-murder of one of Philip’s knights, as her bailli.  When Barlais appeared before the High Court of Cyprus to present his credentials as bailli, however, he was accused of treason (because he had sworn an oath to Philip) and challenged to judicial combat by another baron.

In the midst of this power-struggle between Philip d’Ibelin and the dowager queen, Philip had young Henry, now aged eight, crowned king. The move was probably intended to bind the knights and nobles of Cyprus to Henry by oath, and so ensure that Alice and Bohemond ― or Alice and a different husband ― could not so easily depose him. Yet the crowning aroused the outrage of the Holy Roman Emperor, who was technically the overlord of Cyprus.

When the Holy Roman Emperor came east, he accused Philip of misusing the revenues of Cyprus, but by then Philip was already dead. In late 1227 or early 1228, he died of a “mortal malady” that had kept him bed-ridden for at least a year before his death and so weakened him that he had voluntarily offered to resign his position of bailli.

Those are the naked facts, but what do they tell actually tell us about Philip? 

Modern historians are quick to point out that Philip clung to power even though the acknowledged regent no longer wanted him. The allegations of impropriety leveled by the Holy Roman Emperor are also highlighted, casting Philip in a dubious light. Yet the Holy Roman Emperor never allowed his charges to go before a court of law.  On the contrary, he used every kind of force and deceit to ensure they did not come to court ― most probably because he knew his charges were entirely bogus. It is also significant that a large majority (between two-thirds and four-fifths depending on how many knights Cyprus had in this period) of the High Court consistently sided with Philip d’Ibelin. Finally, King Henry was extremely loyal to his Ibelin kin throughout his reign, a poignant hint that he had loved Philip, the man who had been a father for him from the age of one to ten.

Dr. Helena P. Schrader is also the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades. Philip is a character in Rebels against Tyranny.

                         

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John d'Ibelin: The "Old" Lord of Beirut

Contemporaries praised his wisdom and restraint, churchmen called him "exceedingly Christian and energetic,"(1) and modern historians have drawn parallels between him and St. Louis.(2)

Significantly, despite his rebellion, John d'Ibelin was never viewed as a rebel, much less a hothead, and while he won the decisive battles of his war against the Holy Roman Emperor, he was admired not as a military man, but rather as a statesman.

Today I conclude my three part biography of John d'Ibelin.

When the Emperor sailed away from the Holy Land in May 1228, he evidently believed he had succeeded in his objectives. He had obtained the nominal return of Jerusalem to Christian hands (and others would have to worry about the details of defending it), and he had worn the Imperial crown in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, gaining a great propaganda victory in his struggle with the papacy. That he left behind outraged subjects (who expressed their feelings by throwing offal at him) apparently did not bother him in the least. He never once returned to Jerusalem, nor did he send any of his sons to rule the kingdom in his name. Although he claimed the title and the revenues, he left the business of ruling to the lieutenants he appointed. In doing so, he made a major miscalculation: he treated John d'Ibelin as an irritant to be exterminated with the wave of the imperial hand.

On Cyprus, Frederick appointed five men joint "baillies" and ordered them to dispossess the Ibelins and their partisans of their lands and to further ensure that the neither the Lord of Beirut nor any of his sons, kinsmen or supporters ever set foot on the Island of Cyprus again. Note, there had never been a trial before the High Court of Cyprus to establish any wrong-doing on the part of Beirut. The latter had not been given a chance to defend himself before his peers. His sons and supporters were even more innocent of any crime, being guilty only of the "crime" of kinship or loyalty. The emperor's actions were not only arbitrary, they were petty and vindictive.

The five baillies, furthermore, had been appointed in exchange for payment of 10,000 marks. They needed to raise that revenue. Evidently, expropriating the properties of the Ibelins and their supporters did not promise sufficient revenue to pay that debt in full, because they set about raising taxes.  The actions against the House of Ibelin and their supporters resulted in hundreds of women and children seeking refuge with the militant orders, particularly the Hospitallers, while the new taxes simply served to make the baillies unpopular with the rest of the Cypriot population. 

From the Lord of Beirut's perspective the Emperor had now gone back on his word three times. First, at the banquet when he promised to honor his "beloved cousins" and "honored uncle." Second, during the crusade when, despite swearing to forgive all that had gone before, he attacked the women and children of Ibelin and his supporters while their men served in the Emperor's army, and third, by ordering the baillies to dispossess him and his followers without a judgement of the court, a condition that the Emperor had accepted in his signed agreement with Beirut in September 1228.

Beirut had had enough. He raised an army in Syria which included his brother-in-law the Lord of Caesarea. With this small force, he forced a landing at Gastria, and then rode inland toward Nicosia. During this advance, he announced his intention only of securing the safety and control of the properties that had been illegally confiscated.  He stated that he did not seek to secure restoration of his position as baillie of Cyprus.  In short, he attempted to build a bridge to the Imperial baillies, offering them a compromise that would enable them to retain power, as long as they recognized that no confiscations could take place without a judgement of the High Court.  The baillies chose not to accept this compromise.  They called up the Cypriot army and marched out to meet the Ibelins in battle. 

On July 14, 1229 in a plowed field outside of Nicosia, the Ibelins routed the army of the five baillies. However, all five of the emperor's deputies escaped the field and took refuge in the royal castles at Kantara, Kyrenia, and St. Hilarion. The Ibelins successfully besieged these castles, and one by one they fell to the Ibelins, the last being St. Hilarion shortly after Easter 1230. 

Significantly, Beirut -- against the advice of his closest advisorers -- granted amnesty to the five baillies. Equally significantly, the young King of Cyprus, who had been in the custody of the Emperor and, after his departure, the baillies, welcomed the Ibelins. Indeed, for the rest of his life, Henry of Lusignan favored the Ibelins. It is King Henry's staunch support for the Ibelins even after he was king, combined with the fact that he sought independence from the Holy Roman Emperor, that belie the suggestions Beirut was disloyal to his king. 

In 1232, Emperor Frederick sent an army to Outremer under a Sicilian admiral, Richard  Filangieri.  The latter had the explicit mandate to re-establish Imperial authority -- and to confiscate all lands and titles from the Ibelins and expel them from both Cyprus and Syria. As before, no charges were brought against Beirut, certainly not with regards to his right to hold Beirut for which he held clear royal charters. Curiously, roughly a dozen other Syrian lords were also summarily dismissed by the Holy Roman Emperor at this time.  As before, the Emperor felt entitled to act without a hearing or judgement by their peers. Again Beirut, and now a dozen other Syrian barons, was denied the right to defend themselves before a court. This was a blatant and crude violation of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was tyranny.

Beirut got wind of Filangieri's approach and rushed to Cyprus with all his men. On finding Ibelin troops in possession of the ports of Cyprus, however, Filangieri did not attempt a landing but rather sent envoys ashore to King Henry of Cyprus demanding that he banish from his kingdom the Lord of Beirut "and all his relatives." The King replied, he could do neither. First, he could not banish Beirut because he was his vassal and deserving of his support, and, second, he could not banish Beirut's relatives since he too was a kinsman of Beirut. (His mother was Beirut's niece.) 

So Filangieri sailed away and laid siege to John d'Ibelin's power base: Beirut itself. Although the city surrendered quickly, the citadel held out. Beirut mustered all the support he had, including King Henry of Cyprus, and made a dangerous winter crossing to Syria. His initial efforts to lift the siege of Beirut failed, but he managed to slip some reinforcements into the citadel.  He next tried to attract the support of the Prince of Antioch, but this also ended in failure.  Next the Templars, who had initially supported him, turned against him on instructions from the pope, who was temporarily reconciled with the Hohenstaufen.  Meanwhile, his sons suffered a major defeat at the hands of Imperial forces at Casal Imbert.  Nevertheless, Beirut persisted and dramatically won over the commons at Acre and the Genoese to his cause. Imperial forces were at last forced to lift the siege of Beirut.

Meanwhile, King Henry had come of age, and he remained by Beirut's side. Together, they returned to Cyprus where, in their absence, Imperial forces had seized control of the capital, the ports and were laying siege to the Ibelin women and King Henry's sisters in the fortress of St. Hilarion.

 The castle of St. Hilarion

In a full-scale battle, the Lord of Beirut routed the Imperialist army a second time, forcing it to retreat to Kyrenia. The same day he lifted the imperial siege of St. Hilarion. The re-capture of Cyprus took only days, and the population welcomed the return of their King and the Ibelins as liberators. 

Although the siege of Kyrenia dragged on, the surrender was inevitable and the Emperor never again attempted impose his governors or will on Cyprus. Instead, in 1248 the Pope formally absolved Henry I of all oaths he had made to the Holy Roman Emperor, and Cyprus became a completely independent kingdom, no longer a part of the Empire.

The conflict meanwhile shifted entirely to Syria, where Filangieri as the Emperor's representative created increasing hostility to the Imperial cause. Hisautocratic behavior, not least his repeated attempts to expel Beirut from his fief without cause or trial, had turned the majority of the barons and knights against the Emperor.  As a result, over the next several years a series of legal arguments were developed to deny the Emperor and his heirs any basis of power in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 

This did not preclude repeated attempts to mediate between the parties. The Teutonic Knights and the pope himself, among others, attempted to reconcile the barons of Outremer to Hohenstaufen rule. At one point, the Pope threatened the Lord of Beirut and the citizens of Acre, who were loyal to Beirut, with excommunication and interdict respectively -- only to rapidly back down when he learned the citizens of Acre were simply turning to Orthodox Christianity! One of the more creative suggestions that appears to have originated with the Emperor's brother-in-law and brother of the English King, Earl Richard of Cornwall, was that the Emperor should recall Filangieri and replace him instead with his kinsman Simon de Montfort. (Frederick had married the English princess Isabella Plantagenet, whose sister Eleanor was married to Montfort.) Notably, the Lord of Beirut, his sons and two of his nephews were consistently excluded from all the Emperor's promises of pardon, but the barons of Outremer just as steadfastly refused to make a peace without him. 

In 1236, the Lord of Beirut took part in a Hospitaller campaign from Crac de Chevaliers against the ruler of Hamah with 100 Cypriot knights. Beirut, who was now about 57 years old, was involved in some kind of riding accident, in which his horse fell on him. He was so badly injured that he took to his bed, ordered his affairs, and then joined the Knights Templar in preparation for death.

According to the account left by Beirut's loyal vassal Philip de Novare, Beirut "died well." Novare writes: "For his sins he made amends, and for many things he made amends which most men would not hold as sins; his debts he paid for he had at that day great belongings and property besides his fiefs, and all he gave for God and for his soul, by his own hand with good memory; many fiefs he gave his children, and commanded that they should be vassals of and hold from their oldest brother."(3) In short, his protracted struggle with the most powerful monarch on earth had been won so completely that he was not even impoverished at his death!

Looking back on his rebellion, what is most striking is that he could defy the Holy Roman Emperor -- and at times the Pope -- without seriously undermining his own popularity and the support and devotion of his sons, his brothers-in-law, nephews, vassals, the commons of Acre, and the majority of peers. Yes, Barlais and his co-regents on Cyprus fought Beirut bitterly. Yes, Balian de Sidon (one of his nephews) long tried to remain neutral in the conflict and mediate. Likewise, Eudes de Montbeliard was an Imperial baillie and clearly not in Beirut's camp -- to begin with. Yet, it would have been far more normal for the bulk of the knights and barons to side with the "stronger" in any fight, and by any objective measure the Holy Roman Emperor was "the stronger. " 

Frederick Hohenstaufen had destroyed his Welf rival in Germany. He had eradicated the Saracen threat on Sicily and obliterated the last traces of independence among his Sicilian barons. He scattered the forces of the pope simply by landing in Sicily. He had crushed his son's rebellion with ease. He had smashed the army of Milan at Cortenuova. How was it possible he was defeated by an obscure Syrian baron? Was it simply that he never devoted enough force and attention to a problem he considered an irritant rather than a threat to his grand vision of Emperor of Christendom?  Or was the fundamental injustice of his cause the real reason for his defeat?

Frederick II's war was a vindictive personal war against a vassal without a trace of evidence or an attempt to rely on rational argument -- worse even in some ways than his vicious persecution of his decades long "spokesman" della Vigna. For an monarch usually held up by historians as the embodiment of reason in a age of alleged "bigotry" and "fanaticism," Frederick II's war against the Ibelins was a ugly and distasteful vendetta that historians prefer to sweep under the carpet.


1) Wilbrand, Bishop of Oldenburg, quoted in Peter Edbury, John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Boydell, 1997.
2) La Monte, John. The Wars of Frederick II against the Ibelins in Syria and Cyprus by Philip de Novare, Colombia University Press, 1936, p. 49.
3) Novare, Philip. Translated by La Monte, The Wars of Frederick II against the Ibelins in Syria and Cyprus by Philip de Novare, Colombia University Press, 1936, p. 169.

The struggle between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Ibelins is the subject of my next series starting with:

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