The Ibelins on Cyprus and the Role of a Byzantine Princess

Last week I explained why I challenged the common myth about the peaceful reception of Guy de Lusignan on Cyprus. There is, however, another “mystery” which I seek to explain in The Last Crusader Kingdom, namely, the roots of the Ibelin influence on Cyprus. 

Historians such as Edbury posit that the Ibelins were inveterate opponents of the Lusignans until the early 13^th century. They note that there is no record of Ibelins setting foot on the island of Cyprus before 1210 and insist that it is “certain” they were not among the early settlers―while admitting that it is impossible to draw up a complete list of the early settlers. Edbury, furthermore, admits that “it is not possible to trace [the Ibelin’s] rise in detail” yet argues it was based on close ties to King Hugh I. Close? Hugh was the son of a cousin, which in my opinion is not terribly “close” kinship.

Even more difficult to understand in the conventional version of events is that the Ibelins became so powerful and entrenched that within just seven years (1217) of their supposed “first appearance” on Cyprus an Ibelin was appointed regent of Cyprus, presumably with the consent of the Cypriot High Court--that is the barons and bishops of the island who had supposedly been on the island far longer and over the heads of King's first cousin.  I don’t think that’s credible. 

My thesis and the basis of this novel is that while the Ibelins (that is, Baldwin and Balian d’Ibelin) were inveterate opponents of Guy de Lusignan, they were on friendly terms with Aimery de Lusignan.  Aimery was, for a start, married to Baldwin’s daughter, Eschiva.  We have references, furthermore, to them “supporting” Aimery as late as Saladin’s invasion of 1183. I think the Ibelins were very capable of distinguishing between the two Lusignan brothers, and judging Aimery for his own strengths rather than condemning him for his brother’s weaknesses.

Furthermore, the conventional argument that Balian d’Ibelin died in late 1193 because he disappears from the charters of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at that date is reasonable -- but not compelling. The fact that Balian d’Ibelin disappears from the records of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1193 may mean that he died, but it could just as easily mean that he was occupied elsewhere. The Ibelin brothers of the next generation, John and Philip, "disappear" from the records of Jerusalem from 1210 to 1217 too, but they were very much alive, active and powerful -- one in Beirut and the other apparently on Cyprus.

Balian's disappearance from the records of Jerusalem could also have been because he busy on Cyprus. The lack of documentary proof for his presence on Cyprus is not grounds for dismissing the possibility of his presence there because 1) the Kingdom of Cyprus did not yet exist so there was no chancery and no elaborate system for keeping records, writs and charters etc., and 2) those who would soon make Cyprus a kingdom were probably busy fighting 100,000 outraged Orthodox Greeks on the island!

But why would Balian d’Ibelin go to Cyprus at this time? 

Because his wife, Maria Comnena, was a Byzantine princess. Not just that, she was related to the last Greek “emperor” of the island, Isaac Comnenus.  She spoke Greek, understood the mentality of the population, and probably had good ties (or could forge them) to the Greek/Orthodox elites, secular and ecclesiastical, on the island. She had the means to help Aimery pacify his unruly realm, and Balian was a proven diplomat par excellence, who would also have been a great asset to Aimery.

If one accepts that Guy de Lusignan failed to pacify the island in his short time as lord, then what would have been more natural than for his successor, Aimery, to appeal to his wife’s kin for help in getting a grip on his unruly inheritance?

If Balian d’Ibelin and Maria Comnena played a role in helping Aimery establish his authority on Cyprus, it is nearly certain they would have been richly rewarded with  lands/fiefs on the island once the situation settled down. Such feudal holdings would have given the Ibelins a seat on the High Court of Cyprus, which explains their influence on it. Furthermore, these Cypriot estates would most likely have fallen to their younger son, Philip, because their first born son, John, was heir to their holdings in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.  John was first Constable of Jerusalem, then Lord of the hugely important port city of Beirut, and finally, after King Aimery’s death, became regent of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for his neice.  Philip, on the other hand, was constable of Cyprus and later regent of Cyprus for Henry I ― notably despite the fact that his elder brother was still alive at the time.

Last but not least, no historian is able to explain why Aimery de Lusignan named John d’Ibelin Constable of Jerusalem in 1198, when John was just 19 years old. It has been suggested that the appointment was “just nominal” and didn’t carry real authority―but there is no evidence of this. On the contrary, the position clearly was powerful throughout the preceding century. Furthermore, even if nominal, why would Aimery appoint the young Ibelin to such a prestigious and lucrative post if Ibelins and Lusignans were still, as historians insist, bitter enemies?   

Postulating a personal friendship between Aimery and John, on the other hand, would explain it. Given their age differences, the relationship of lord and squire is the most plausible explanation. Furthermore, the relationship of lord/squire brought men very close and gave each great insight into the personality, strengths and weaknesses of the other. It was also common for youths to serve a relative, and so quite logical for John would serve his cousin’s husband. 

While this is all speculation, it is reasonable and does not contradict what is in the historical record. It is only in conflict with what modern historians have postulated based on a paucity of records. I hope, therefore, that readers will enjoy following me down this speculative road as I explore what might have happened in these critical years at the close of the 12^th century.

Read the story in:

Buy Now!

Writing Biographical Fiction: Agnes de Courtenay

 

Agnes de Courtenay was the power behind Baldwin IV’s throne and she was a viperous enemy of my leading female character, Maria Comnena. Because of both these roles in history, I had to cede her a place in my novels. Furthermore, despite an attempt by historian Bernard Hamilton to rehabilitate her, the commentary of contemporaries and indeed the naked record of her actions condemn Agnes as a singularly stupid woman whose influence on her son was almost entirely negative. Something which, admittedly, fit in with her being the arch-enemy of Maria and so a prime candidate for a negative character in my novels. All novels need some negative characters after all….

So who was Agnes de Courtenay?

Agnes was the daughter of Joceyln II, Count of Edessa, who lost his county to the Saracens, in large part due to neglect and poor leadership. 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.  As a result, Agnes de Courtenay did not have 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. In just six years, her family had fallen from one of the richest and most powerful in the crusader states, to the status “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 probably no more than 10 or 12 years old, as she would have had to be at least 8 at her marriage to Reynald.

According to historian Malcolm Barber, she was next betrothed to Hugh d’Ibelin (Balian’s oldest brother), but instead married Prince (later King) Amalric of Jerusalem. Whether she did this voluntarily is not recorded. She might have been seduced or abducted, but she might also have been very happy to give up the comparatively obscure and unimportant Hugh in favor of the heir apparent to the throne.  While historians can leave unanswered the question of her feelings, a novelist cannot. Agnes’ feelings toward Hugh d’Ibelin are critical to the character Agnes in any novel about the Ibelins.

The (historical) plot thickens, however, when at the death of Baldwin III, who was childless, the High Court of Jerusalem refused to acknowledge his next of kin, Baldwin’s younger brother Amalric, as King of Jerusalem unless he set Agnes aside. Why, we do not know. There was the issue of being married within the prohibited degrees on consanguinity, and the issue of the pre-contract with Hugh d’Ibelin, both of which were canonical grounds for divorce. 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 rather about the character of his wife. Regardless of their reasons, such action could only have infuriated and enraged Agnes herself. Rather than becoming Queen, she was repudiated and sent back to her former betrothed (or husband) Hugh d’Ibelin. 

While historians don’t particularly need to figure out why Agnes was so despised by the High Court (the fact that she was is enough), for a novelist there is a gold mine here. It appears that Agnes was considered a ‘bad woman.’ Some historians have suggested that meant nothing more than that she was a Courtenay and expected to favor her family, but that was quite normal in the Middle Ages and hardly seems to justify such an unyielding stance on the part of the High Court. To the novelist, the insinuations that she was a woman of “easy virtue” ― alleged to have had affairs with a bishop (the later Patriarch Heraclius) and with Aimery de Lusignan is far more intriguing―even if not proved.

Likewise, while Agnes’ feelings do not much interest historians, they are hugely important to a novelist. How would a woman, who undoubtedly felt she ought to be queen, feel about the man she is forced to (re)marry to after losing a crown? It hardly seems likely that she was fond of Hugh under the circumstances, and the fact that the marriage was childless suggests it may have been no more than nominal. Certainly she was credited with hating the woman who took her place in Amalric's bed and became -- what she could not be -- his queen: the Byzantine princess Maria Comnena. Maria was latter wife of Balian d’Ibelin. 

But before that happened, Agnes had a stroke of luck. In 1176 Baldwin IV took the reins of government for himself and he invited his  mother to his court. Within a few short years, Agnes 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, Jocelyn 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 claim, but hardly distinguished himself either, and finally 3) 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.

Her next acts of influence, however, were little short of calamitous: she arranged the marriage of her son’s two sisters (and heirs), Sibylla and Isabella, to men of her choosing. We are talking here about Guy de Lusignan and Humphrey de Toron respectively. 

The latter 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. Toron then promptly got himself captured at Hattin. Although he lived a comparatively long life and held an important barony, he apparently never played a positive role in the history of the kingdom. Not exactly a brilliant match or a wise choice for the future Queen of Jerusalem. 

Agnes’ other choice, the man she chose for her own daughter according to historian Bernard Hamilton, 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. He certainly alienated his brother-in-law King Baldwin IV within a short space of time, and he never enjoyed the confidence of the barons of Jerusalem. The dying King Baldwin IV 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 after 1183. 

Nor was this mistrust of the baronage in Lusignan misplaced. When Sibylla crowned her husband king and all the barons but Tripoli grudgingly accepted him, he led them to the avoidable disaster at Hattin. In short, Agnes de Courtney’s interference in the affairs of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, led directly to the loss of the entire Kingdom. But by then she was already dead.

As a novelist, I had no particular need to alter any of these facts or to engage in any form of revisionism with respect to Agnes. On the other hand, writing about history through the eyes of the Ibelins presented me with a problem usually overlooked by historians and novelists focused on the history of the kingdom. Namely: Agnes was Balian d’Ibelin's sister-in-law. She must have known both he and his brother very well, and their hostility to her (and vice versa) may have had more personal than political reasons. 

Historians tend to simply dismiss Ibelin hostility to Agnes as “ambition” from a “notoriously” ambitious family. But Balian and his brother belong only to the second generation of Ibelins, and they didn’t yet have a track record of being particularly ambitious or successful for that matter. Indeed, the Ibelins were hardly any different from any of the baronial families at this point. 

Alternatively, historians and novelists point to Agnes’ “natural” hatred of Maria Comnena, who had replaced her in her first husband’s bed and been crowned queen in her place. Certainly, this may have been the root cause of the hostility between Agnes and Maria, and through Maria to Balian and Baldwin d’Ibelin. But the tension might also have been older and deeper. It might have gone back to Agnes’ abandonment of Hugh d’Ibelin when he was in Saracen captivity just so she could marry the Prince of Jerusalem. This is the thesis I chose to expound upon in my novels as it is both logical and adds dimensions to the characters and their relationships.

 Buy now!                                       Buy now!                                               Buy now!

Writing Biographical Fiction: Baldwin d’Ibelin

The Quest for the Holy Grail, Tapestry by Edward Burne-Jones

When setting out to write a biography of Balian d’Ibelin, one of the first things I learned was that he was the third son of the first Baron of Ibelin, and as such started out in life as an insignificant and obscure landless knight. It was, historically, his elder brother Baldwin, who was important ― at least throughout Balian’s youth and early manhood. Furthermore, it was his brother who gave Balian his chance to enter history.

Big Brother Baldwin inherited their father’s modest barony of Ibelin in or about 1170 along with their mother’s significantly more substantial inheritance, the baronies of Ramla and Mirabel. Together, these three baronies owed 70 knights to the feudal army, or more than, for example, the powerful Lord of Oultrejourdain, which owed 60.  Furthermore, unlike Oultrejourdain, all three of these baronies were located on the fertile coastal plain east and south of Jaffa, and must have yielded very substantial revenues and enabled a splendid lifestyle for the period. Although technically Baldwin was a “rear vassal” who held his fiefs from the Counts of Jaffa and Ascalon rather than directly from the king, the Count of Jaffa and Ascalon became King Amalric I in 1162, making Baldwin de facto a crown vassal. Thus when Balian came into manhood he stood very much in the shadow of his elder brother Baldwin. In writing my biographical novel of Balian, therefore, Baldwin had to be an important character. 

But what was Balian’s relationship to his elder brother like?

We know that later chronicles and modern historians, writing after Balian had become the founder of a powerful dynasty that played a key role in the history of crusader states for three hundred years, often lump Baldwin and Balian together. Indeed, there is a tendency to refer to Baldwin and Balian as “the Ibelin brothers,” although this term is anachronistic since Ramla and Mirabel were more important baronies and Baldwin in his own lifetime would have been identified and addressed by these more senior titles. Ibelin, on the other hand, was not only a comparatively insignificant title, but one that Baldwin surrendered (whether willingly or not is an open question) to his younger brother in or about November 1177. He would not have been identified by or with it after that date. This careless lumping of Baldwin and Balian together by the name that was to become important only after both of them were dead, ie. as “Ibelins,” tends to create an impression of closeness and harmony that may be entirely fictional.

To be sure, in the 12th century family ties were imprisoning. Everything revolved around family. Families stuck together through thick and thin. They paid each other's ransoms, they stood as hostages for one another, they were witnesses for one another, they were each other’s clients and lords. Perhaps most important: they fought together. 

Does that mean that all family members got along with one another all the time?  Highly unlikely. On the contrary, the tensions within medieval families could be brutal and bitter. (Witness the Plantagenets: Henry II had to fight wars with his sons, and his sons fought each other in a series of shifting alliances.)  In most families (where there was less at stake or personalities (and egos) less excessive), families usually worked together and presented a common front to the outside world, yet that still did not mean they had no rivalries and tensions among themselves. 

As a novelist, therefore, I had to look beyond the undifferentiated treatment of Balian and Baldwin as two peas in a pod or two interchangeable parts of a pair and look at them as individuals. Furthermore, I had to draw on my understanding of human nature in creating a plausible relationship. Sibling rivalry is one of the most consistent and frequent patterns of behavior across cultures and ages.  It is therefore quite plausible that  Baldwin and Balian were not always the best friends, much less always of one opinion.

For example, William of Tyre claims that Baldwin of Ramla (Ibelin) plotted with Tripoli and Antioch to depose Baldwin IV, and all sources agree that Baldwin refused to take the oath of fealty to Guy de Lusignan. Indeed, in a shocking and unprecedented incident, Baldwin renounced his entire inheritance and went into voluntary exile, rather than take an oath of fealty to Guy de Lusignan. That is the action of a man of great pride, passion and inflexible principles. 

Balian, on the other hand is most famous for his role as a mediator ― between Tripoli and Lusignan, between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. He is also known as a man of compassion and humility, who did not lay claim to particular influence, much less a crown, even when he was step-father to the queen or when the Arab chronicles describe him as “like a king.” Unlike his elder brother, Balian’s loyalty to Baldwin IV and V is never questioned, and indeed he served Guy de Lusignan as long as Queen Sibylla lived. 

In their personal lives also, the brothers appear to have been very different. Baldwin married very young, and then set his wife of almost two decades and the mother of his daughters aside―apparently for no better reason than he hoped to marry the Princess Sibylla. When that failed (for whatever reason), Baldwin married again twice. He had one son, but he abandoned the boy to Balian’s care when he renounced his titles. In short, his pride and principles with respect to Guy de Lusignan were more important to Baldwin than his wife and son.

Balian, in contrast, is depicted even by his detractors as a man very attached to his wife. Strikingly, Balian was not too proud to beg a favor of his worst enemy, the Sultan of Damascus, for the sake of rescuing his wife and children.  Certainly, the idea of riding hundreds of miles through enemy held territory to remove his wife and children from Jerusalem is almost crazy, and suggests ties of affection unusual in this age.  Tripoli, although described as an affectionate husband, had only a few days earlier urged the army not to relieve the siege of Tiberius, although his wife was caught in the fortress and requested relief.

In short, I think it is safe to suggest that historically Baldwin and Balian, no matter how closely they cooperated with one another, were men of very different temperaments and character. As a novelist, furthermore, emphasizing those differences and creating a degree of tension between them was an excellent plot device. In addition, the contrast to Baldwin enabled me to highlight important aspects of Balian’s character. The Baldwin of my novel is therefore not only proud and unbending, he is impulsive, hot tempered, flamboyant and arrogant as well – as I believe many older sons in this age of merciless primogeniture often were.

 Buy now!                                       Buy now!                                               Buy now!