The marriage of Isabella I of Jerusalem to Conrad de Montferrat has been variously described as a medieval scandal, bigamous and incestuous, a power grab by Conrad and the Ibelin faction and a pragmatic solution to two potentially damaging crises. The death of Queen Sibylla and her children during the siege of Acre led to a succession crisis in the kingdom of Jerusalem.
Contemporary chroniclers point to the growing tension between the Court faction which supported Sibylla’s husband, Guy de Lusignan, as king and the Ibelin faction who supported Sibylla’s sister Isabella as the rightful ruler. For the marriage to take place, Isabella’s existing marriage to Humphrey of Toron needed to be canonically annulled. No detailed examination has been made of the validity of the annulment, the validity of the Isabella/Conrad marriage, its reflection on 12th century marriage laws, the short-term and long-term importance of the marriage for the future of the kingdom and in Europe, and its personal impact on Isabella. This dissertation addresses these omissions and seeks to establish that this contentious marriage is more important than just being the medieval scandal portrayed by contemporary chroniclers and later historians.
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT AND FOOTNOTES
1. REVIEW OF PRIMARY SOURCES AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY
2. PRE-CURSORS TO THE MARRIAGE
3. THE MARRIAGE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHRONICLES
4. ANALYSIS OF VALIDITY
5. POST-MARRIAGE CONSEQUENCES
CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APPENDIX 1 CHRONOLOGY[289]
APPENDIX 2: SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF KEY HISTORICAL FIGURES
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my former supervisors, Prof. Dr Thomas A. Fudge and the late Dr John H. Pryor for their guidance.
I would also like to thank my husband, Tony, my brother, Michael and my study buddy, Jo Harman, for their support, suggestions and patience during the writing of this dissertation.
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT AND FOOTNOTES
INTRODUCTION
The marriage of Isabella I of Jerusalem to Conrad of Montferrat on 24 November 1190 was considered by contemporary chroniclers to be a medieval scandal. At least one party, Isabella, had a living spouse and contemporary gossip suggested that Conrad also had at least one living wife. Further, Conrad’s brother, William Longsword, had been married to Isabella’s half-sister, Sibylla, thus leading to a potential claim of technical incest based on affinity. The marriage has been variously described by historians as an unsavoury political solution, a legal farce, a pathetic proceeding and an unseemly wrangle over the succession.[1] It has also been described as a marriage between a couple united by politics and bigamy.[2]
On the other hand, it has been called a sensible solution to the succession crisis which struck the Latin Kingdom on the death of Queen Sibylla in late October 1190.[3] Sibylla’s husband, Guy de Lusignan, had been crowned as a consort but sought to retain the crown by reason of his having been anointed as king.[4] Guy did not have the support of most of the barons, so his position was precarious.[5] The blood heir was Sibylla’s younger half-sister, Isabella, but she was married to a young noble, Humphrey de Toron, who was not suited for kingship being gentle and effeminate.[6] Moreover, like Guy, he was not accepted as the strong military leader which the kingdom arguably needed. The more acceptable candidate was Conrad de Montferrat who had successfully defended Tyre from Saladin’s seizure of most of the Latin Kingdom.[7]
Despite its importance, the Isabella/Humphrey marriage has not been the subject of detailed research. In seeking to remedy the lack of attention given to the marriage, this paper will explore the events leading up to the dissolution of Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey and her remarriage to Conrad, considering the views of contemporary chroniclers and modern historiography. It will expand on the short-term and long-term consequences of the marriage and its importance both historically and for the future of the Latin East. For example, if the divorce from Humphrey and the marriage to Conrad had not happened at all, it is possible that the kingdom would have broken into two separate areas, the Lusignans would never have ruled Cyprus and the Ibelin family would never have come to prominence. The history of regional France may also have been different because Count Henri de Champagne may have gone home in 1192, rather than ruling in Jerusalem. It will also examine Isabella’s putative motivations for agreeing to the marriage and whether any conclusions can be drawn as to her being an active player or a passive victim.[8] The paper will research and discuss the vexed question of whether the marriage was valid in canonical terms through an examination of the contemporary laws of the Latin kingdom, canon law and relevant texts.[9] This is important because any children of the Isabella/Conrad marriage and any subsequent marriage by Isabella while Humphrey was alive might be illegitimate.
The final question which this paper will explore is the question of agency and whether Isabella had any choice about marrying Conrad. While Conrad is a larger-than-life character who has polarised the opinions of chroniclers and historians alike, Isabella is a more shadowy figure. Her character and personality have not been explored in the chronicles other than as an exemplar to prove a point particularly in the Itinerarium and Ambroise while their attitude to her personally was ambivalent.[10] A potential drawback to this exploration is a lack of direct evidence to cast light on Isabella’s thoughts and feelings. However, there are sufficient hints in the chronicles to reach some conclusions about Isabella’s active participation in the decision which would have a wide-ranging effect on her life, as well as the future of the kingdom. This paper will argue that most current historiography has not looked beyond the prejudiced perceptions of the chroniclers.
This research is important on three different levels. On a microscopic level, it will expand the current views of Isabella’s character and the choices she made at the time of her marriage to Conrad. On an historiographical level, it will add to existing knowledge of the long-term consequences of the marriage for the Kingdoms of Jerusalem and France and the Holy Roman Empire. On a macroscopic level, the research may be used as a case study of elite marriages in the twelfth century, of the practical application of the ecclesiastical reform in marriage and of female agency in terms of succession and choice.
The primary research methodology which will be used is qualitative as there is little quantitative data on point. It will involve a detailed examination of primary sources and a consideration of relevant historiography. There are numerous chronicles written about the Third Crusade which is the background to this period. Not all the chronicles were written by eyewitnesses, and many are regurgitated versions of earlier writings. Chapter one will review a selection of the available chronicles for relevance, contemporaneity and accuracy. It will also review the development of historiography from 1651 until the 2000s in writing about the pre-cursors, the marriage and its consequences. Chapter two will analyse the events which led up to the marriage with an emphasis on the progression of endemic factional infighting in the Latin Kingdom and on the rules of succession as these were arguably both causes of the marriage and cast into relief by it. Chapter three will focus on the marriage itself analysing the different factual accounts in the chronicles to try to gain a cohesive account of it. Chapter four will examine the validity of Isabella’s first two marriages by reference to both the canonical laws and the laws of Jerusalem as this is central to the question of what follows. Chapter five will elucidate the short-term and long-term consequences of the marriage for both the kingdom and Europe, particularly France.
The paper will be limited in its ability to look at all references apart from those in Latin, English, Old French and French. One limitation is that of language as some sources are written in German, Italian or Arabic and there are no English translations available. Another limitation is the sheer impossibility of analysing all material written about the period from 1189-1192, to determine its relevance to the marriage of Conrad and Isabella. For the purposes of the paper, only the Itinerarium, Ambroise, Libellus, The Old French Continuations of William of Tyre, Ernoul, the Eracles and Jacques de Vitry will be referred to in detail. While others will be referred to, their use will be limited to corroboration or background information only.
1. REVIEW OF PRIMARY SOURCES AND THE HISTORIOGRAPHY
There is a plethora of writings about the period of the Third Crusade possibly because of the widespread fame of characters such as Saladin, Richard I of England, Philip Augustus of France and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. While neither the primary sources nor the historiography focuses exclusively on the marriage, most mention it in varying degrees of detail. Further, as they relate the events occurring from the defeat at Hattin through to the end of the Third Crusade, taken together they provide a comprehensive explanation of the events leading to the marriage.
Primary sources
Some of the primary sources are documents which as Murray posits are more useful than narratives for prosopography because they place individuals at clearly identified places on specified dates.[11] There are two sets of charters reviewed for this project.[12] While there are some inaccuracies in dating, the charters are a valuable resource if the movements of an individual need to be tracked or the existence or content of a document needs to be examined. Other documents used include witness testimony at a papal enquiry in 1213 and original letters.[13]
The primary sources may take the form of chronicles and histories while others such as the chansons de geste, poems and medieval romances appear to have been written as a form of medieval epic designed to attract a lay audience.[14] Many of the chronicles and histories written about the Third Crusade are biographical in form and concentrate on a “hero” figure such as the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Richard I of England, Philip Augustus of France or Saladin so that the story is crafted to show the “hero” in the best light. [15] One historian has questioned whether crusader narratives are an accurate historical source but most historians argue that even the medieval epics are useful sources because there is a basis in fact.[16] Despite the storytelling spin, many are consistent with the known chronicles and can assist in understanding context.
Using these sources is not entirely free of problems.[17] As other historians have noted, there are some 51 extant manuscripts of the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre and the Eracles, written at different times.[18] As Pryor has postulated, the Eracles was probably written between 1204 and 1234 which is a period of 14 to 44 years after the actual marriage.[19] Investigations by Edbury suggest that some versions were written after the 1240s.[20] Further, there may be many different versions of the same document, some of which are based on no longer extant manuscripts or those existing as fragments only.[21] Even the writings based on eyewitness testimony or those representing the recollections of people alive at the time may resemble a remembrance, rather than a factual account.[22] Some chroniclers just repeat verbatim stories from earlier histories without any analysis whatsoever.[23] An example of this is Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History based on what Roger had read, rather than any personal knowledge of the events he describes.[24]
Indeed, it is open to question how many chronicles are based on eyewitness or contemporaneous reports.[25] According to Edbury, some of Libellus and the early version of Ernoul believed to have been written by Balian d’Ibelin’s squire were likely to be eyewitness testimony.[26] Nicholson posits in “The Silences in The Itinerarium Pereginorum 1” that the early parts of IP1 were also written by an eyewitness, someone in the entourage of Baldwin of Forde.[27] As discussed above, the Eracles is unlikely to have been written by an eyewitness and it is difficult to ascertain what is based on eyewitness testimony. Similar questions arise with the Old French Continuation of William of Tyre and the post 1187 versions of Ernoul. In his article on “Embedded Reporters? Ambroise, Richard de Templo and Roger of Howden on the Third Crusade”, Hosler notes that each of them arrived in 1191 and so had no personal knowledge of the marriage or the events leading up to it.[28] Similarly, only one of the Champenois knights Hugh de St Maurice who testified at the papal enquiry into the marriage in 1213 appears to have been an eyewitness to the events leading up to the marriage. Hugh observed Isabella being escorted from her tent and refusing to return when Humphrey called her: thus being the only known eyewitness to what has been erroneously judged as an abduction.[29] The other witnesses at the enquiry merely testified to events occurring afterwards: to wit, Humphrey IV de Toron’s reaction to the dissolution of his marriage to Isabella and his loss of wife and throne.
The fact that the authors are not eyewitnesses and that the sources may have been produced some years after the event is not the only problem which can occur in using the primary sources. Reliability can also be an issue. The Arab sources, for example, while a valuable resource as to what was being said in Acre at the time, are unlikely to have come from eyewitness accounts at least where the marriage is concerned. The source of the Arab historian’s accounts is therefore likely to have been camp gossip and its reliability needs to be considered carefully. An example of this occurs in the Arab accounts of an ambush which the Muslim forces undertook on 24 November 1190 where not one of the chroniclers was in Acre at the time and the accuracy of the account is therefore open to question.[30]
It is also worth noting that some of the sources show obvious bias. The Itinerarium and Roger de Hoveden for example have a decided English bias while others demonstrate a leaning towards French or German interests. The “English” sources, the later Ernoul and the Eracles show a distinct bias against Conrad de Montferrat and the Ibelin faction. Because of this, as Barber points out, it can be difficult to get a balanced view of events and individual motivations.[31] It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the reasons for this bias in depth. The bias may be societal (based on class), gender-based, religious (Christian or Muslim) or motivated by a desire to impress a sponsor, a religious leader or a ruler. Chronicles and histories were often written by monks or clerics such as Richard de Templo, Roger de Hoveden and Jacques de Vitry, a fact which may explain their horror at the potentially bigamous marriage of Isabella and Conrad. Epics, chansons de geste and biographies may have been written by lay people but the viewpoint they portray may be audience-driven and may be crafted to appeal to that audience, whether it be the readers of medieval romances, followers of the French, English or German rulers or those in religious orders.[32] Lastly, not all the sources are accurate. Isabella for example can be referred to not just as the Daughter of King Amalric or by her first name but also as Elizabeth and, in one case, Milicent.[33] There are also chronological inconsistencies possibly due to later chroniclers’ use of saints’ days rather than religious nomenclature such as calends.[34]
The problems identified above do not devalue the relevance of the primary sources in an examination of information about the events leading to and surrounding the marriage. As Helen Nicholson states in “The Silences of IP1”, greater weight is to be given to a record written close in time to the events it describes and by someone involved in those events.[35] Using this criterion, it is possible to sort those primary sources by their relevance from highly relevant, secondarily relevant, marginally relevant and irrelevant. In this context, the test of relevance is whether the period from the death of Sibylla to the marriage of Conrad and Isabella and the marriage itself are discussed in detail. For a text to be secondarily relevant, it must refer to the marriage in brief and have a detailed account of the background factors leading to it. Marginally relevant texts contain indirectly relevant facts such as a description of the long-term events leading up to the marriage. The final category of texts contains no relevant information at all.
Of the primary texts reviewed, fifteen can be classified as highly relevant with the Itinerarium, the OF Continuations, the Latin Continuations, Jacques de Vitry, the Eracles, Ernoul, Ambroise and Libellus containing the most pertinent information.[36] Thirteen are of secondary relevance including the evidence given at the papal enquiry in 1213, Sicard of Cremona, the Chronicon Anglicanum, the Historia Regnum and three Arab chroniclers being the most useful.[37] Seven including the Bar Hebraeus, the History of Pilgrims are of marginal relevance and the remainder are largely irrelevant.[38] The following chapters will rely on the primary sources identified as the best source of information about the events leading up to the marriage, the marriage and the events afterwards. Even though there are differences in the versions, it is possible to discern and discuss common facts about the marriage, as will be demonstrated in later chapters.
Historiographical review
For the purposes of the historiographical review, twenty-four texts have been chosen, one seventeenth century text, seven nineteenth century texts and sixteen twenty and twenty first century texts. As this discussion will demonstrate, the earlier nineteenth century historians tended to be more favourable to Conrad and three of them posit that Isabella was willing to marry Conrad. As the century wore on, the texts tended to be more inimical towards Conrad and claim the cause of the marriage to be Conrad’s “duplicity”.[39] With the exception of Hodgson in Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative, Nicholson in Women and the Crusades and Schrader in Powerful Women of Outremer whose focus is on the role of women in the Third Crusade, the twentieth and twenty first century texts, if they refer to the marriage at all, tend to follow the Itinerarium and Ambroise interpretations and regard Isabella where they mention her as an unfortunate victim of the machinations of Conrad, Balian d’Ibelin and Maria Comnena.[40]
The first text reviewed, Thomas Fuller’s The Historie of the Holie Warre was published in a fourth edition in 1651. It does not refer to the marriage at all, other than to say that Conrad had seized the throne “by unlawful means”.[41] This appears to reflect the chroniclers’ allegations about the illegitimacy of Conrad’s marriage to Isabella. No eighteenth century texts concerning the Crusades and the marriage have been located. According to Breisach, in Historiography, progressive historians in the eighteenth century lamented the domination of Christian religion in the Middle Ages as indicative of superstition and fanaticism.[42] This may explain why historians of the period did not examine the history of the Latin Kingdom.
The earliest nineteenth century text examined, that of Mills which was published in 1820, proposes that Isabella was willing to divorce Humphrey because she was attracted to Conrad who was gallant and an accomplished knight.[43] This view is echoed in part by Michaud who, writing in 1848, while blaming Conrad for the plot to seize the throne from Guy de Lusignan or Humphrey de Toron stated that Conrad succeeded in gaining the love of Isabella so that she married him willingly.[44] Both of these accounts have Isabella exercising personal choice in marrying Conrad as opposed to her being the involuntary victim of a plot, although the evidence upon which this approach is based seems flimsy at best.[45] Archer similarly states that the divorce occurred with consent, although he is not clear whether the consent was voluntarily given or induced by coercion.[46] The other three texts which mention the marriage deal with it in terms of Conrad’s ambition and machinations and characterise Isabella’s participation in the divorce and remarriage as passive in the same way as the contemporary chroniclers.[47]
This theme is repeated in the twentieth and twenty-first century texts, other than Hodgson, Nicholson and Schrader. All those texts which discuss the marriage focus on Conrad’s desire to become king after the succession crisis with the death of Sibylla.[48] This approach is based on a reading of the primary sources, particularly the later Ernoul, the Eracles, the Itinerarium, Ambroise, Roger de Hoveden and Jacques de Vitry all of whom focus on Conrad’s ambition as the principal factor in Isabella’s divorce from Humphrey and remarriage to Conrad. According to this version of events, Conrad desired the throne and the only way he could achieve this was by marrying the blood heir, Isabella of Jerusalem. As these texts posit, the facts that she was married already and so possibly was he were not insuperable obstacles to his ambition. Consequently, Conrad is cast as the chief villain and a traitor to Guy.[49] Nevertheless, the reviewed texts also consider the factors in Conrad’s favour as a potential ruler. He had the proven ability to defeat Saladin, he had administrative experience to rule and the military competence to lead an army, whereas Guy having lost most of the kingdom lacked baronial support and Humphrey was not considered a leader.[50] Strategically, Conrad had powerful supporters, including Maria Comnena and Balian d’Ibelin who were Isabella’s mother and stepfather respectively, his cousin Philip de Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais and the papal legate, Ubaldo of Pisa, both powerful ecclesiastical figures and. as a relative of the French Royal family and the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad could count on the support of the French and Germans in the army.[51] These texts, therefore, portray Conrad as the prime mover in the plot to replace Guy and as determined to succeed regardless of whether Isabella agreed or not.
In general, these texts portray Isabella as a cypher for the actions of the others around her. Three of the texts, for example, repeat the claim that Isabella was abducted or sequestered and forcibly separated from Humphrey.[52] Others claim that she was browbeaten and bullied into agreeing by her mother.[53] Some accounts accept that Humphrey did consent to the divorce, others comment that he was put under personal pressure to consent and yet a third refers to Humphrey’s refusal to engage in a duel to defend his position.[54] The remaining impediment to the annulment and remarriage was Baldwin of Forde, Archbishop of Canterbury, who refused to either grant an annulment or sanction a marriage between Conrad and Isabella on the grounds of technical incest, consanguinity or bigamy depending on the source consulted.[55] The majority of twentieth and twenty first century texts considered largely accept the orthodoxy of the contemporary chroniclers’ unfavourable opinion of the marriage.
The final texts, that by Hodgson, Schrader in Powerful Women and Nicholson’s Women and the Crusades take a different approach with their focus generally on the position of women, including royal women, in the Crusader States. Hodgson and Schrader’s interpretation is that Isabella was persuaded to separate from Humphrey so that she could claim her rightful inheritance.[56] If this interpretation is correct, it suggests that Isabella made a pragmatic, reasoned decision, rather than her being cast in a passive role as a victim of others’ plots. In other words, as Schrader concludes “Isabella chose the Crown over the man”.[57] Further, as Hodgson reasons, Isabella’s consecutive marriages can be seen as an axiomatic example of the duties of a royal heiress in a weakened political state where the kingdom stood in need of whatever marriage Isabella could contrive.[58] Her sequestration could also be seen as protecting Isabella’s reputation from any additional scandal than that which the divorce was likely to cause. Hodgson makes one further relevant point. Although the chroniclers are largely ambivalent towards Isabella (except for the Itinerarium), the variations of the way in which she is portrayed in competing accounts demonstrates that a widow or heiress in possession of property could be the focus of tensions between competing groups when it comes to remarriage.[59]
As both the primary source and historiography reviews show, there are competing accounts of the roles of the main players in the marriage. Many are inimical to Conrad while most discount Isabella as a moving force in the plot to take her rightful inheritance through marrying a suitable leader for the kingdom. These variations in the accounts will be explored more fully in chapter three.
2. PRE-CURSORS TO THE MARRIAGE
The two main precursors to the marriage were the death of Sibylla and her children which led to the succession crisis and the factional infighting which meant that neither Sibylla’s husband, Guy de Lusignan, nor Isabella’s first husband, Humphrey de Toron, were acceptable to the baronage as ruler. It is tempting to analyse only the events in the month or so preceding the marriage to explain why these pre-cursors arose and why they led to the marriage taking place, but a careful examination of the primary sources suggests that the roots of the factional infighting and the succession crisis took place earlier. The extent and depth of factional infighting in the kingdom has been explored fully in the primary sources and the texts reviewed above as well as numerous articles. The issue of how a claimant to the throne became the monarch has also been raised in many texts and articles. It is proposed to consider each of these causative issues separately. The factional infighting will be considered in different time periods so that the buildup of each issue can be traced progressively from the early 1100s until October 1190 with an in depth analysis of the factional infighting in the final month leading up to the marriage. Finally, it is proposed to examine the way in which successors to the throne were chosen to explain why Isabella’s claim to the throne was preferred by many local barons over that of Guy de Lusignan.
Factional infighting: common historical factors leading to the 1190 crisis
William of Tyre’s account of the history of the Latin Kingdom until the 1170s shows that factional infighting was nothing new and that factional infighting about who should rule was a recurring theme. While it has been said that no evidence in William of Tyre supports an argument of the earlier factions being the foundation of the 1180s in-fighting, the propensity for it was clearly longstanding and very probably endemic.[60] The author of the Syriac Chronicle writes that the Franks were possessed of “wicked jealousy” because they could not bear each other’s success: a statement which strongly suggests that in-fighting was common.[61] Further, according to Smail, the inclination of the Frankish nobles for internal disputes arose because the aristocratic circle was narrow with only thirty lordships over the entire kingdom.[62] In addition, there were close familial relationships between the ruling dynasties of the Latin Kingdom, Edessa, Antioch and Tripoli which led to intense rivalries as the examples of disputes in the first eighty years show.[63] Indeed, some of the alliances and enmities which surfaced in the 1180s had their origins decades earlier.[64] The other common themes which emerge from William’s account and which were to have a direct effect on what happened in October and November 1190 were issues of loyalty and trust: particularly engendered by the Western Europeans’ lack of understanding of or respect for the governing legal procedures in the Latin Kingdom. The final and most potent factor in the factional infighting was that it all centred around a dispute about power and who was entitled to rule.
There were, for example, no fewer than four instances of potential or actual civil war in the Latin Kingdom and Antioch in the period up until 1163, all of which arose out of a dispute as to who should rule. The first was the outright dispute between Alice of Antioch and the Antiochian nobles when she attempted to seize control, a potential civil war settled by Alice’s father, Baldwin II.[65] The second, a narrowly averted civil war between Alice’s sister, Melisende, and her husband, Fulk of Anjou, arose of Fulk’s misunderstanding about the laws of the Latin Kingdom and the treatment his henchmen handed out to one of Mélisende’s relatives. Fulk apparently believed that he should rule in his own right without regard to his wife whereas Melisende and most nobles regarded him only as the consort who needed to consult her as the ruler by blood. [66]. An actual civil war broke out from 1145 to 1152 between Melisende and her son Baldwin III over whether he should rule alone without his mother and was only resolved by Melisende taking a reduced part in government. [67] While none of these early factional disputes over the succession and who held power had a direct impact on the events of the 1180s and 1190, they establish that the propensity for infighting over power and position already existed and that the kingdom may well have broken apart earlier if the diplomacy of various rulers and the nobles’ loyalty to those rulers had not resulted in a resolution of these disputes.
There are three further examples of internal dissension identified by William of Tyre in the period from 1163 to 1179, all of which may be more directly related to the crises in the 1180s and 1190. Each of these examples involves a claim for position, a perceived threat to position or an action to cement a position of power. Arguably, the factional infighting which developed in the 1180s stemmed from the same source and in that sense, taken together with an existing propensity for factionalism, they can be seen as directly related to preceding events.
The first and most significant was a succession crisis which occurred prior to the coronation of Isabella’s father, Amalric I, in 1163. At the time of Baldwin III’s death, Amalric was married to Agnes de Courtenay. According to William of Tyre, there was a discord among the nobles so serious as to almost cause a schism over who was to succeed.[68] The cause of the quarrel was Amalric’s marriage to Agnes. The church and the nobles required Amalric to agree to a dissolution of the marriage as a condition of his succession. William examines a claim that the marriage was consanginuous and finds evidence of the truth of the allegation. The marriage was dissolved but with the legitimacy of their two children secured.[69] This resolution to the potential schism was to have far-reaching consequences in the 1180s. Indeed, it has been said that the seeds of the disintegration of the kingdom and the factional divisions may have been laid at the coronation of Isabella’s father, Amalric I.[70] There is some basis for this claim because it engendered an enmity between Agnes and some of the nobles who pushed for the dissolution of her marriage.[71] It also led to a question over the legitimacy of both Baldwin IV and Sibylla and their right to succeed over the legitimate Isabella. While there may have been no question about Baldwin IV’s succession, the right of Sibylla to succeed was not automatic, as the events of 1186 were to prove. Agnes’ enmity towards some of the nobles and her desire to protect the position of her children, particularly Sibylla, have also been blamed for some of the disastrous decisions made during the reign of Baldwin IV, including the marriages of both of his sisters.
The second incident was an example of baronial bickering parallel to that which had disastrous consequences at Hattin and which had almost caused the civil wars outlined above. It was to have longstanding consequences in cementing internal enmities which resurfaced in the 1180s and split the nobility apart. After Amalric I died, leaving Baldwin IV as a minor, the question of a regent became contentious. Milo de Plancy, a kinsman of Amalric on his father’s side, and the second husband of Humphrey IV de Toron’s mother, Stephanie de Milly, took charge of the kingdom’s affairs as seneschal. Milo was unpopular being accused of arrogance, corruption and potential treason and “rousing intense hatred against himself.”[72] As a result, he was murdered at Acre, allegedly by the Brisebarre brothers, senior Court officials, one of whom married the niece of Raymond of Tripoli’s wife, Eschiva of Galilee.[73] If Raymond of Tripoli did reward the alleged assassins of Milo, this may explain why Milo’s widow was antagonistic to Raymond and why she was one of those conspiring on Guy de Lusignan’s part against the faction initially loyal to Raymond and later to Isabella and Conrad.
The third dispute also arose around the appointment of a regent for Baldwin IV. Raymond of Tripoli whom William supported and described in highly flattering terms put his case to be appointed regent in part as Baldwin’s closest male relative in the Latin East. The matter was deferred due to a lack of barons whom the king could consult but after receiving the support of practically all the nobles including Humphrey II de Toron, the d’Ibelin brothers, Baldwin and Balian, Renaud de Sidon and the bishops, Raymond was appointed.[74] The vote was not unanimous but William does not mention those who did not support Raymond as regent. The involvement of Raymond of Tripoli in the affairs of the Latin Kingdom was to prove divisive and to cause increased factional infighting as described below.
By 1179, the narrowness of the Court circle, the competition for land and position, the existing alliances and enmities and the endemic propensity for infighting was becoming more evident as Baldwin IV’s age and increasing debility gave competing groups more opportunity for what William of Tyre called discord.[75] The faction who supported Raymond of Tripoli and the one which did not were largely formed. For ease of reference, the terms court and baronial party will be used to describe the competing factions until 1187, even though these terms are misnomers.[76] The baronial party comprised Raymond III de Tripoli, former regent for Baldwin IV, Maria Comnena, her husband Balian d’Ibelin, her brother-in-law, Baldwin of Ramla, Reynaud of Sidon and others. Raymond of Tripoli’s detractors centred around Agnes de Courtenay, her brother Joscelin III titular Count of Edessa, Renaud de Chatillon, his wife Stephanie de Milly who held the fief of Outrejourdain, Heraclius (then the Archbishop of Caesarea, appointed Patriarch in 1180) and the royal marshal, Gerard de Ridefort who subsequently became the Master of the Temple in 1185.[77] William of Tyre describes this so-called court party as the king’s mother’s band of evil men, troublemakers who were determined to turn the king’s infirmity to their own advantage.[78] After 1180, Sibylla’s second husband, Guy de Lusignan joined this group.[79] These groupings, excluding those who had died, remained much the same in the succession crisis of 1190.
William of Tyre commented as early as 1183 that the division in the barons at Court was centred on Guy and whether he was fit to rule or not.[80] His supporters thought he would advance their interests while his detractors considered him to be unworthy to be king because of his relative obscurity, his indiscretion and his lack of capability.[81] The detractors’ attitude to Guy whom they also considered to be arrogant, dictatorial, possibly corrupt and overly ambitious echoes the allegations made against Manasses of Hierges by Baldwin III’s supporters and Milo de Plancy by Raymond of Tripoli’s loyalists. This suggests that their distrust of arrogant outsiders was of long standing.
Many events occurred in the years from 1180 to 1187 which would lead to the succession crisis of 1190 and the marriage of Isabella and Conrad. None of these events taken alone would have caused the deep enmity between the two parties but taken together, their cumulative effect was to cause so much distrust that reconciliation would become difficult if not impossible. Three of them occurred in the period from Easter until October 1180. Two of them directly related to the marriage of Sibylla to Guy de Lusignan and one of them indirectly led to it. The first of these events was the alleged aspiration of Baldwin of Ramla, Balian d’Ibelin’s elder brother, to marry Sibylla, first referred to by Ernoul in 1176: an allegation which Hamilton and Helen Nicholson have argued conclusively in The Leper King and Sybil respectively is unlikely.[82] If this tale was true, Sybilla’s hasty marriage may have caused the Ibelins to hold a grudge against Guy de Lusignan.[83] The second incident mentioned by William of Tyre who was not in the Latin Kingdom at the time was the appearance of Raymond of Tripoli and Bohemond of Antioch with armies at the borders of the Latin Kingdom at Easter 1180. William states that, although both were Baldwin IV’s kinsmen, he distrusted their motives and as a result hastened the nuptials of his sister, Sibylla.[84] There is no evidence that this influenced Sibylla’s marriage at all but if William is to be believed, it was a contributory factor to the marriage being rushed and to the dissatisfaction with Guy de Lusignan which followed. The third was the marriage itself which as William of Tyre notes the king arranged for reasons of his own without waiting to consider that “too much haste spoils everything”. At this time, William describes Guy as a young Poitevin man of good rank whose father was a crusader and whose brother, Aimery, was either already the constable or soon to be so appointed. Ernoul claims that the marriage was the result of a plot between Aimery and the king’s mother Agnes de Courtenay who were or had been lovers. Aimery was said to have arranged for Guy to come to the kingdom, then introduced him to Sibylla and her mother who pushed the match to the king. The king then gave his sister to Guy as a wife and made him Count of Jaffa.”[85] There is no satisfactory explanation as to why the marriage took place at Easter when a marriage would be canonically invalid but otherwise Guy met the criteria of being of sufficient rank as a distant relative of Raymond de Tripoli, unmarried, not related to Sibylla, militarily experienced and mature enough to take over for the king.[86] While the marriage does not seem to have caused ructions at the time it occurred, the consequences of it were to be long-reaching. By 1183, as discussed below, it proved divisive as Guy seemed unable to inspire widespread loyalty and support among many of the high ranking nobles.
The next incident which led directly to the succession crisis of 1190 was the betrothal of Isabella at age eight to the fifteen year old Humphrey IV de Toron, the stepson of Reynaud de Chatillon who, as William of Tyre noted, was the prime mover in these negotiations.[87] Several reasons have been suggested for Baldwin IV agreeing to this betrothal which took place in Jerusalem in October 1180. Hamilton suggests in The Leper King that Baldwin may have intended to prevent Guy’s opponents from putting forward an alternative heir to the throne, although this may not have been a pressing concern in 1180. Another suggestion is that Baldwin may have attempted to heal the breaches between the party which supported his mother and that which supported the Ibelins by arranging a marriage between the stepchildren of two of the main factional protagonists. Aimery de Lusignan’s wife was an Ibelin, Humphrey’s mother was a niece of the Ibelins and Isabella’s stepfather was an Ibelin.[88] If that was his intention, it did not work: indeed, it further entrenched both parties in their factions. The contrary view of Baldwin’s intentions has also been suggested; that being he intended to remove Isabella from the Ibelin faction, weaken her position and strengthen the court party.[89] This did not work either as the Ibelin faction seems to have become more antagonistic to the court party. A further suggested reason is a financial one. As part of the marriage agreement, Humphrey was required to surrender his paternal fiefs of Toron, Chastelneuf and Banyas to the Crown. Ruth Morgan in the Old French Continuations suggests that this may have been done to cut off Raymond de Tripoli’s access to Galilee. Others have claimed that the marriage was in part organised by Agnes de Courtenay to whom Baldwin transferred Toron.[90] Whatever the reason, the outcome was to further entrench the growing hostility between the two competing factions and to lead to the events preceding the marriage of Isabella and Conrad. Had Isabella not married Humphrey or married someone more acceptable to the barons, the succession crisis of 1190 would have taken a different course.
Nevertheless, the status quo seems to have been preserved until late 1183, with both parties united in their support of Baldwin IV and in the defence of the Latin Kingdom. By this time, the king was blind and unable to use his hands and feet. He appointed Guy as regent in the presence of the nobles, his mother and the patriarch but he imposed conditions. Guy was required to swear that he would not aspire to the throne while Baldwin IV was alive and that he would not transfer or alienate any castles or cities at that time in the royal demesnes. According to William of Tyre, it was this event which caused the underlying disagreements to solidify. One faction objected because of their own personal interests and private reasons and on public welfare grounds because Guy was not equal to the burden of so great a responsibility, while the other faction was pleased because Guy’s promotion would improve their own position.[91] The nobles refused to work with him at the battle of La Tabarie and William of Tyre dismissed him as wholly incapable and indiscreet.[92] After La Tabarie and Guy’s refusal to swap Tyre for Jerusalem, Baldwin removed him as regent and took back the administration of the kingdom. With the support of his mother, he also made it more difficult for Guy to assume the throne by naming Sibylla’s son, Baldwin, as heir, by having the child crowned on 20 November 1183 and by appointing his paternal relatives, not his sister as regent for the child.[93] This had the effect of further entrenching both sides in their position and increasing the enmity between them.[94] This dispute intensified with Guy and Sibylla staying at Ascalon to which they refused the king entry and from which Guy attacked a tribe of Bedouin who were under the king’s protection in 1184. The scene was therefore set for the internal hostility which became full-blown after the death of both Baldwin IV in 1185 and Baldwin V in 1186.
After the death of Baldwin V, the succession question reared its head. There were three possible successors if one includes Raymond of Tripoli.[95] The most entitled to rule by heredity were the two daughters of Amaric I, Sibylla and Isabella. There were negatives about each of them: Sibylla was married to Guy with questions about her legitimacy and Isabella was about 14. According to the Eracles, Baldwin IV had attempted to prevent the accession of Guy de Lusignan by requiring his barons to swear an oath that there would be no king from overseas and that the advice of Raymond of Tripoli would be sought on the question of who would be king. Further, if Baldwin V died before the age of ten, then the Kings of England and France, the Holy Roman Emperor and the papal legate would decide who should rule.[96] This did not happen with Sibylla and Guy being crowned in September 1186. The circumstances surrounding the coronation were recorded in five different chronicles and show a tale of subterfuge in which the High Court was outmanoeuvred and their position as arbiters of the chosen successor undermined. Joscelin III de Courtenay, Sibylla’s uncle persuaded Raymond of Tripoli to call the High Court meeting in Nablus rather than attending the king’s funeral in Jerusalem and used this opportunity to arrange for his niece to be crowned without the endorsement of the High Court.[97] The court party, thus, supported Sibylla as queen by right of inheritance but Guy’s right to rule with her was not automatic. The LCWT states that they desired Sibylla to choose another husband if she wanted the throne.[98] All five of them record that after Sibylla was duly crowned, she was asked to choose the man to rule with her and her choice being Guy, she (not the patriarch) put the crown on his head.[99] Only the LCWT refers to Guy being anointed. This distinction was to prove important in 1190 after Sibylla died when questions were raised as to whether his coronation was legally binding.
Equally important to the succession crisis of 1190 was what happened in the baronial camp in Nablus. The High Court determined to crown Isabella and Humphrey as she was the “plus dreit heir” because she was born after her father became king and there being no dispute about her legitimacy.[100] They planned to oust Sibylla and Guy because they had the numbers to do so. Humphrey had no desire to be king (il ne poroit mie la peine soufrir).[101] He escaped to Jerusalem at night to seek Sibylla’s pardon and pay homage to Sibylla and Guy. As a result, the barons regarded Humphrey as an unsuitable candidate for king after Sibylla died and sought an alternative husband as Isabella’s consort.[102]
Arguably, the coronation and the way in which it was achieved caused Raymond of Tripoli and Baldwin of Ramla to leave the kingdom without doing homage and set in stone the baronial faction’s opposition to Isabella’s first husband as a potential ruler.[103] The way in which Sibylla’s coronation came about also caused irreparable distrust between the leaders of each faction. The sneaky coronation was an indirect cause of the rout at Hattin because Guy allegedly listened to his own faction, rather than the native Franks who knew the conditions, because he did not trust them.[104]
After the loss at Hattin on 4 July 1187, with the king and most of the nobility captured or dead, the factional infighting temporarily ceased, although the causes of it were not resolved. Guy de Lusignan, the master of the Temple, Aimery de Lusignan and Humphrey IV de Toron were held in captivity in Damascus where Sibylla joined them in 1188. Conrad de Montferrat succeeded in holding the port of Tyre and thus maintained a foothold of territory in the Latin Kingdom. The authors of the CFWT, the post-1187 Ernoul, the Estoires and the Eracles all state that Conrad believed that God had given him the city, the people of the city had made him its lord and it was his right to guard it.[105] The LCWT alone claims that Conrad was entrusted with the city on the condition he would return it to the king and his heirs, a claim which is not substantiated elsewhere.[106] The legitimacy of Conrad’s claim to Tyre was to prove a bone of contention between Conrad and Guy. When Guy de Lusignan was released from captivity in 1188, he and Sibylla sought entrance to Tyre but Conrad closed the gates against them. On Guy demanding entry, Conrad refused to open the gates or offer them food and accommodation on the basis that Guy was not entitled to set foot in the city. The LCWT states that Guy, Sibylla and their knights discovered that the person they hoped would help them was an enemy.[107] Hence, a new factional fight began.[108] Conrad did not recognise Guy as having any right to claim Tyre because Conrad had saved it through his own efforts nor did he recognise Guy as king and a lasting enmity between the two men was formed.[109] The first consequence of this dispute was that Guy, after having camped outside the walls of Tyre for anything from one to a few months, decided to besiege Acre in what became one of the longest sieges in history.[110] The second consequence was that Conrad refused to assist in the siege for almost two months until persuaded by his kinsman, the landgrave of Thuringia, to attend.[111] This robbed the besiegers of valuable resources including military experience before the crusaders from Western Europe began to arrive. The third consequence of the enmity between Guy and Conrad was that it encouraged Conrad’s ambition to be king and it rallied behind him the support of the Ibelin faction who despised Guy. The stratagems in which the Ibelin faction, Isabella and Conrad engaged to arrange the marriage between Conrad and Isabella will be discussed in chapter three.
It can be seen therefore the endemic propensity for factional infighting among the barons of the Latin Kingdom and the alliances and enmities which had developed over time provided a fertile breeding ground for what became a schism between the supporters and detractors of Guy as king. In previous generations, any discord had been resolved but Guy’s personality meant that he could not attract the loyalty of a powerful faction of the nobles. They would support him when the fate of the Kingdom was at stake such as at Hattin or Acre because of their loyalty to the queen, but once she died, they withdrew their support. This led directly to the succession crisis of 1190 and the marriage of Conrad and Isabella.
The way in which a successor was chosen
One of the issues which has been raised in commentary about the kingdom and which was the subject of debate before the Isabella/Conrad marriage was whether the succession was a matter of election by the High Court of Jerusalem or of heredity.[112] Initially, succession was not automatically hereditary even though the first three kings were all members of the family of Godfrey of Bouillon. While Godfrey was never crowned king, his brother, Baldwin, was elected king despite being Godfrey’s youngest brother.[113] The electors and members of the High Court were the barons and the prelates of the kingdom.[114]
After Baldwin I died without an heir, there were two possible heirs to the succession: the king’s elder brother Eustace or his relative, Baldwin of Edessa. The former was in Europe while the latter was in Jerusalem when Baldwin I died. There are different versions of what happened. Fulcher of Chartres merely comments that the people of Jerusalem called a Council and chose Baldwin of Edessa unanimously.[115] William of Tyre who was not actually born when these events occurred claims that, according to the divine right of heredity, Eustace should have been king and that a group of nobles had left for the West to fetch him. However, in their absence, Baldwin of Edessa was elected king with the help of Joscelin I de Courtenay.[116] It therefore appears that there was no “divine right of heredity” before 1131 and that the succession was a matter both of heredity and election. It also appears that politics and strategy could influence the choice of a successor where there were two competing candidates.[117]
Baldwin II had four daughters but there seems to have been no doubt that the eldest, Melisende, was heir, not just because her father nominated her. The only question was who the king consort would be and ultimately Fulk V of Anjou, the grandfather of Henry II of England, was offered the crown matrimonial.[118] The choice of Melisende and Fulk thus was based on heredity for her and of election for him.
Baldwin III was named by his grandfather as ruler with his parents and thus was chosen by heredity, a choice confirmed by the High Court. La Monte has concluded that, by this time, the choice of successor had elements of both heredity and election so that neither method was the more important.[119] When Baldwin III died without issue, his brother Amalric was heir by hereditary right but his succession was not automatic.[120] In fact, William of Tyre tells us that the succession question was the source of much disagreement.[121] Amalric was given the choice of dissolving his marriage to Agnes de Courtenay and being king or staying married to her and losing the throne. There are thus elements of both heredity and election in Amalric’s succession. Amalric made the pragmatic choice. His immediate successors, Baldwin IV and V, faced no such obstacles. Both were named by their predecessors as the next heir to the throne. Sibylla, however, did face an obstacle because of her choice of husband. Given the same choice as her father, she agreed to leave her husband but then after having been crowned, she chose to remain married to Guy.[122] The High Court’s candidate was Isabella, but the election method was trumped by heredity and Sibylla’s pre-emptive action in being crowned before the High Court had decided on which sister was the better candidate.
The issues which arose in 1186 when there was a succession contest between the two sisters were still inherent in the succession crisis of 1190. In 1186, Isabella’s right to be the queen was based on three factors. First, Isabella’s mother argued that, as the only child born while her father was king, she was the rightful heir by reason of porphyrogenita.[123] Second, there were questions about Sibylla’s legitimacy because her parents’ marriage was annulled.[124] Third, Isabella was the choice of the High Court. Humphrey’s defection to Sibylla secured her succession by removing the High Court’s nominee from the equation. This defection and the Ibelin faction’s animosity towards Guy would then fester until 1190 when Sibylla died, leaving no living heir. Another succession crisis ensued because Guy refused to renounce the throne in favour of his sister-in-law. He claimed his right to rule by reason of his having been crowned, despite his having been crowned by his wife, not the patriarch, and his clearly holding the crown matrimonial not regnant.[125] He therefore rejected both heredity and election as the source of royal power. Guy’s intransigence and the baronial party’s refusal to accept him as king also led to the steps taken by Conrad, Isabella and her supporters to bring their marriage to pass, as chapter three will show. It also had long-term consequences for the way in which a successor was chosen after 1190 as discussed in chapter five.
3. THE MARRIAGE: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CHRONICLES
The marriage between Isabella I of Jerusalem and Conrad de Montferrat was almost universally condemned in contemporary chronicles and those which followed shortly afterwards or were based on the Itinerarium, Ambroise, Roger of Hoveden and Jacques de Vitry. While the latter four chronicles are said to be eyewitness accounts, three of the chroniclers were not in the Latin Kingdom in 1190 and none of the chroniclers appear to have played an active role in the ecclesiastical enquiry into the dissolution of Isabella’s pre-existing marriage to Humphrey de Toron and her remarriage to Conrad.[126] To that extent, it is difficult to discern how much of the accounts are camp gossip dismissed by Gillingham as notoriously unreliable, how much is propaganda directed at blackening the reputation of Conrad and how much is accurate.[127] Nevertheless, there is enough similarity in the accounts to suggest a basis in truth. Indeed, even if there is an element of exaggeration or bias in the eyewitness accounts, there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Isabella’s second marriage was the source of controversy, a fact which was also noted in at least two of the Arab sources.[128] In this chapter, it is proposed to discuss not just the facts which are common to the contemporary chronicles but also to explore their differences as these may assist in ascertaining what happened. It is also proposed to consider whether there is any evidence to suggest if Isabella was, as the chroniclers conclude and most contemporary historians assume, a passive victim or an active participant in the divorce from Humphrey and re-marriage to Conrad.[129]
Summary of primary source accounts of the marriage
Before discussing the similarities and differences between the chronicles to construct a likely narrative of the marriage, it is proposed to include a short description of each account. These descriptions will also be used in chapter four to assist in the analysis of the validity of the Isabella/Humphrey annulment and the Isabella/Conrad marriage respectively.
Jacques de Vitry who is the only chronicler likely to have been at the siege in 1190 relates that, after the death of Sibylla, the kingdom devolved by hereditary right on Isabella. His account of events is very short. He merely records that Conrad had an ambition to seize the throne and in pursuance of this, carried Isabella off, separated her from Humphrey de Toron and married her. He does not refer to any ecclesiastical enquiry or determination concerning the dissolution of the Isabella/ Humphrey marriage, which suggests that his knowledge of events was limited. Nevertheless, he accuses Conrad of bribery to garner support for the marriage. Jacques further claims that Humphrey was discouraged by the barons from seeking redress because they could not afford to upset Conrad due to his control of the food supply to the army.[130] There is no evidence cited to support these claims.
The author of Libellus claims that the Duke of Swabia, Conrad’s kinsman, aided him in his aspirations to claim the kingdom. In an account lacking detail, the chronicler relates that Conrad seized Isabella who was the heir to the kingdom by the law of succession and deceitfully married her while Humphrey was still alive so that he might obtain the kingdom. Libellus also details the disgust of Baldwin of Forde, the Archbishop of Canterbury, at this event and the dissoluteness of the army which led to his welcoming his death. The chronology of events is inaccurate, however, because Baldwin of Forde died before the marriage, not after.[131] The brevity of these accounts is suggestive when compared to those of other religious chroniclers such as the author of the Itinerarium.[132] It suggests that this was just one incident in a series of misfortunes, rather than a focal point for scandal and that it was an example of the sinful conduct which led to the loss of the kingdom.
Roger de Hoveden’s account is more expansive but also lacks the dramatic exaggeration of some of the others. Roger alleges that Conrad, seeing no nearer heir than Isabella whom he calls Milicent, held a meeting with the patriarch Heraclius, Maria Comnena and all the chief men of the army demanding that Isabella be given to him as a wife and promising that he would promote the army in future. His plan being assented to, Maria Comnena, Heraclius and the barons effected a divorce between Isabella and Humphrey and gave her in marriage to Conrad. At this point, Roger’s account seems to conflate at least two separate events as he describes Conrad claiming the throne, usurping Guy and ousting Guy from the kingdom. In fact, Guy left the kingdom in 1191 to meet with Richard I on Cyprus. At that time Guy, far from being usurped and exiled, was still claiming the throne and garnering support for his retaining it. Guy finally left the kingdom for Cyprus in 1192 after Richard I and the barons determined to choose Conrad as king over Guy. It is also worth noting that Roger also omits any reference to the ecclesiastical enquiry which took place before the dissolution of the Isabella/ Humphrey marriage.
Ambroise’s account consists of only a few lines. Those few lines are scathing about Conrad, the dissolution of Isabella’s marriage to Humphrey and her subsequent marriage to Conrad. Similarly to other chroniclers, Ambroise blames Conrad for Isabella leaving Humphrey and becoming his wife because he used bribes with and gave promises to men of influence. Ambroise adds the additional assertion that the Isabella/Conrad marriage took place in Conrad’s house against the will of God and all that was right because Conrad had two living wives already. Allegedly, Baldwin of Forde spoke against it and threatened to excommunicate those involved in triple adultery. [133] Ambroise’s final allegation is that Conrad had desired not just the throne but also Isabella herself for a long time.
The other seven accounts are more detailed, more inimical to Conrad and give more credit to Maria Comnena as a key influence in persuading Isabella to agree to a dissolution of her marriage to Humphrey.[134] The various versions of the Continuations of William of Tyre excluding the Latin Continuations are very similar. In this narrative, Conrad formed his plot to seize the throne once Sibylla died and he realised that Isabella was the only heir. He persuaded Isabella’s mother to challenge the Isabella/ Humphrey marriage on the basis that Isabella was too young and could not consent to be married. Maria Comnena remonstrated with a reluctant Isabella telling her that as long as she remained married to Humphrey, she would have neither honour nor her father’s kingdom. At the same time, Conrad is alleged to have consulted with his cousin, the Bishop of Beauvais and the papal legate, Ubaldo of Pisa, to dissolve the marriage and to have corrupted others with gifts and promises. Ernoul claims that Conrad discussed the matter with the bishops, archbishops and barons in council, reminded them of the ”malvaiste de Hanfroi” and obtained their agreement to the dissolution. Humphrey disputed the claim made by Maria Comnena about the invalidity of the marriage on the basis that Isabella consented to it but withdrew when challenged to a physical duel by Guy de Senlis. In at least two versions, Humphrey was counselled not to appeal because he would never be king. The four versions record that Isabella did not give evidence but was brought in by her mother to hear the sentence at which point the barons did homage to her as “le dreit heir”. Isabella returned the fiefs which her brother had taken from Humphrey as part of the marriage agreement stating that as she was separated from him by force, his heirs should not be disinherited. She then married Conrad.[135] It is possible that the author(s) of these histories may not have been motivated by a desire to promote the interests of Richard I or to prove a religious point grind and that their objective was merely to tell a history, even if that history is subjectively hostile to Conrad and Isabella’s mother, Maria Comnena.
The other three chronicles stress that Conrad had wanted the kingdom for a long time and had conspired with the Duke of Swabia to mediate for him but then Sibylla died and a succession crisis arose, giving Conrad his chance. The Latin Continuations describes what happens next in somewhat poetic terms by saying “having desired the glory of ruling, when the marquis saw that the kingdom would be available to him, he boldly undertook to see if he could take Humphrey’s wife as his own.” He allegedly achieved this by canvassing the common people and by using bribery, flattery and the claims of kinship with the princes. The author of the Latin Continuations expresses an almost grudging admiration for Conrad’s industriousness and subtlety and his ability to construct a ground upon which the Isabella/Humphrey marriage could be set aside. He is less than complimentary about Humphrey who was said to have lost the girl and the kingdom by producing her to the ecclesiastical enquiry. Isabella was then sequestered until the enquiry was held. According to this account, the proceeding was worse than the kidnapping of Helen of Troy because Isabella was forcibly abducted in the presence of her husband. Baldwin of Forde was said to have been so stirred to anger by the proceeding and by the dissoluteness of the army that he died. The language used in this chronicle is inflammatory calling the proceeding an outrage, unjust and unfair and describing Isabella as a docile girl following the teaching of those urging her into depravity by going with Conrad willingly. The objective of this account is clearly to not just blacken Conrad’s reputation but also to suggest that the dissolution and remarriage was ecclesiastically invalid. What is notable however is that there is no dispute that the kingdom belonged to Isabella by hereditary right and no claim of Guy as king although the chronicle does point to Guy hoping to recover the kingdom through the support of the nobles of Aquitaine.[136]
The final chronicle examined, the Itinerarium is the most vitriolic. It expands on the tactics employed by Conrad to achieve his ambition to a crown including his indirect attacks on Guy as being incapable of managing the affairs of State and with no right to rule and his use of gifts, flattery, favours, promises and kinship to win over the nobles to his cause.[137] The Itinerarium adds a further additional element to the account of the marriage in that it claims Baldwin of Forde in zealous discharge of his patriarchal duties opposed the marriage because it confounded justice and equity and pronounced an excommunication on all those contracting and consenting to it but that Conrad’s leading three accomplices, Balian d’Ibelin, Reynald of Sidon and Pagan of Haifa threatened to appeal pending the divorce case. The timing of these events is not clear but as Baldwin died some five days before the marriage, the threat of excommunication did not come to pass. As Schrader comments in Powerful Women of Outremer, the author of the Itinerarium, not content with slandering Conrad, then proceeds with a character assassination of Balian d’Ibelin, Maria Comnena and Isabella herself.[138] He dismisses Balian and Maria as amoral and godless, with Maria being steeped in Greek filth (orthodoxy in other words) and preserves his greatest vitriol for women as being changeable and easily persuaded to do what is morally wrong. Thus, Isabella rejoicing in a new embrace and lightly rejecting those she knows or loves, went with the bigamous Conrad willingly. The author of the Itinerarium may well have been influenced by religious fervour and conviction that the Humphrey/Isabella marriage was valid, the dissolution was invalid and the Isabella/Conrad marriage was questionable on the grounds of triple adultery because they had living spouses. It is also probable that the author was influenced by a pro-Angevin bias as was Roger of Hovenden, Ernoul, the Eracles and the Continuations of William of Tyre.[139]
Common assertions about the Isabella/Conrad marriage
An examination of each of these chronicles reveals many allegations but little evidence to corroborate them. Further, even though there are differences in the chronicles, it is possible to discern common assertions about the Conrad/Isabella marriage. These commonalities are explored further below. It is also worth noting what is omitted from these accounts. Not one of them refers to the way in which the question of succession was constitutionally decided in the Latin Kingdom. They seem not to have considered it relevant: in fact, they seem to assume either Guy as the rightful king or Isabella as the rightful heir by reason of heredity, depending on whether the sources were English or Angevin. As discussed in chapter two, the High Court played a significant role in deciding who would inherit the kingdom on the death of a ruler. The barons to whom the chroniclers refer thus would have met once Sibylla died to decide on or confirm a successor and whether Conrad de Montferrat was a candidate for the crown matrimonial. Given their existing enmity towards Guy de Lusignan and their belief that Humphrey was unsuitable to rule, it was unlikely that any decision made by the barons and prelates who comprised the High Court would have favoured either of them. When the omission concerning the role of the High Court is remedied, the actions of Conrad, the prelates and barons assume a far less sinister interpretation than that given to events by the chroniclers. Another notable omission is a lack of detail about the ecclesiastical procedure undertaken by Philip of Beauvais and Ubaldo of Pisa, a subject which will be explored further in chapter four.
Despite these significant omissions, it is worth exploring the similarities between the chronicles. All agree that Queen Sibylla and her daughters died in the summer or autumn of 1190, although the date is not agreed. As a result, there was a succession crisis in the kingdom. Isabella was recognised as the heir to the kingdom by hereditary right because she was a daughter of King Amalric and his wife, Queen Maria Comnena. Further, if Isabella were to succeed, it was accepted that her consort would bear military and administrative responsibility as ruler. There were two obstacles to Isabella’s assuming the throne, Sibylla’s husband, Guy de Lusignan and Isabella’s husband, Humphrey IV de Toron. Guy de Lusignan and his faction maintained his right to rule because he had been crowned by his wife and then anointed by the Patriarch.[140] This meant, or so Guy claimed, that his rule did not cease because his wife had died. The claim does not seem to have been greatly discussed in the chronicles: Guy is simply referred to as the king and the source of the chroniclers’ lamentations seems to have been Conrad’s “unfair and unjust” efforts to seize the throne from either Guy or Humphrey. There is an overt acceptance by the chroniclers that Humphrey had designs on the throne in right of his wife but he was considered by many to be too weak to be king due to his having a gentle manner, being effeminate and speaking with a stammer. His refusal to accept the crown in 1186 was also a potential barrier to his becoming king in 1190.
The chronicles also universally condemn Conrad de Montferrat for his designs on the kingdom and Isabella as the heir by hereditary right. There is a general theme with various degrees of approbation that Conrad achieved his objective by means of bribery, gifts, flattery, promises, reliance on his kinship with the Bishop of Beauvais and the Duke of Swabia and his persuasive tongue. His persuasiveness with Isabella’s mother in enlisting her aid to gain Isabella’s co-operation in dissolving her marriage to Humphrey is the subject of comment. The dissolution of the Isabella/Humphrey marriage is universally condemned as being without foundation or contrary to ecclesiastical law. Baldwin Archbishop of Canterbury is said to be at the centre of the objections to a marriage between Isabella and Conrad but after Baldwin died on 19 November 1190, Philip Bishop of Beauvais and the papal legate, the Archbishop Ubaldo of Pisa, agreed to dissolve the Isabella/Humphrey marriage on the grounds that the bride was too young when married and could not give consent to the marriage to Humphrey. They then allowed Isabella to marry Conrad. Isabella and Conrad were married at Acre on 24 November 1190 and left for Tyre the following day. Conrad was elected king in April 1192 and was then assassinated in Tyre on 28 April 1192, leaving Isabella pregnant.[141] After his death, on 5 May 1192, Isabella married her third husband, Henri de Champagne.
Leaving aside the accompanying character assassinations of Conrad of Montferrat, Isabella, Maria Comnena, Isabella’s mother, Balian d’Ibelin, Isabella’s stepfather, and Humphrey de Toron, which are also contained in the chronicles, there is enough similarity in these assertions to give them the ring of truth. There is also sufficient supporting secondary evidence for some assertions in Ralph of Coggeshall, Arnold of Lubeck, The History of the Expedition of Frederick of Barbarossa, Sicard of Cremona, Ibn Shaddad and Ibn al-Athir, for example, to suggest that these “facts” were not an invention of later authors such as Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Roger of Wendover but were well known to those at the siege in 1190.[142]
Differences between the accounts
Of greater interest to an examination of the Isabella/Conrad marriage are the differences between the accounts as these may suggest where the accounts are unreliable or lead to a better understanding of the chronology of events. The first significant difference lies in the varying dates ascribed to the deaths of Queen Sibylla and her two (or three or four) daughters from disease. The Old French Continuations places the death as early as 25 July 1190, while Ambroise states that the deaths occurred in late August 1190 and the Itinerarium seems to date the deaths at late autumn.[143] The latter date is probably the most accurate as Nicholson has argued in Sybil.[144] Sibylla was a party to a charter in mid-September 1190 and there is no reference to her death in a letter dated 12 October 1190 from Baldwin of Forde to the monks in Canterbury advising of his safe arrival in Acre so she was alive at that time.[145] However, by 21 October 1190 when Baldwin’s chaplain issued a letter to the convent of Canterbury Sibylla was dead.[146] The difference in dating is significant because of the timing or lack of it in which to arrange the Isabella/Conrad marriage. If Sibylla died as early as July 1190, then there would have been no need to wait until Baldwin of Forde, Archbishop of Canterbury, had arrived in Acre in October 1190 for an ecclesiastical decision to be made on the validity of Isabella’s first marriage to Humphrey. Philip de Dreux and Ubaldo of Pisa were already present at the siege in July 1190 as was Henri de Champagne and other nobles from Europe.[147] Further, if, as the Norman and English chroniclers have led us to believe, Conrad and his co-conspirators had already laid their plans for Conrad to claim the throne by marrying Isabella, it is likely that they would have wanted to move quickly to put their plan into action. It is thus more likely as Nicholson argues in Sybil that Sibylla did not die until the week of 16 to 21 October 1190, although she may have been ill for some weeks.[148] This would have left Conrad, Maria, Balian and their supporters a bare month to put their plan into action.
The second significant difference arises between the abduction and the sequestration stories.[149] There is some reason to doubt that the claim of Isabella’s abduction is true: yet it is the version consistently repeated by historians writing about the marriage.[150] As noted above, some of the chroniclers refer to Isabella having been kidnapped or violently taken from Humphrey. This seems to have been a claim made by Humphrey after the event if the admittedly dubious testimony of three “witnesses” given to the papal enquiry into the validity of the marriage (which will be discussed further in chapter four) is to be believed. In contradiction to this, an eyewitness who also testified at the papal enquiry in 1213 is quoted as having seen Isabella leave the tent adjoining Humphrey’s with some knights who are not identified and willingly going in the opposite direction even though Humphrey unsuccessfully calls her to return.[151] In other accounts, Humphrey is requested to produce his wife and she is then removed from his care on the order of the prelates while the question of the validity of the Isabella/Humphrey marriage was determined.[152] The latter is strongly suggestive of her being sequestrated while the prelates made their determination; rather than her being abducted. Hodgson suggests that this was done to protect her reputation.[153] There is no information as to where or with whom Isabella resided while the determination was made, although if the Hodgson theory is correct, she would no doubt have been given into her mother’s custody, rather than Conrad’s as the OF Continuations suggests.[154] The evidence to support the abduction theory is tenuous. Both the Itinerarium and Ambroise tout this claim and some hearsay evidence exists from the 1213 papal enquiry as to Humphrey claiming his wife was stolen from him.[155] Finally, there are the words attributed to Isabella when she restored his fiefs to Humphrey about her having been separated from him by force, but this does not necessarily mean physical force: it could refer to the ecclesiastical intervention which imposed the dissolution on her. It is also worth noting that her statement about not wishing to disinherit Humphrey’s heirs is in direct speech whereas the reference to their separation by force is in indirect speech. This suggests strongly that the latter is a paraphrase, rather than the actual words used, and could be designed to add strength to an otherwise dubious abduction claim.[156] The abduction claim certainly makes for a more dramatic and shocking story for the clerical and lay audiences for which it was intended but its veracity cannot just be accepted without question.[157]
The third significant difference lies in the timing of the events. In some chronicles, Baldwin of Forde objected to the sequestration of Isabella and the divorce enquiry into the Isabella/Humphrey marriage. It is then claimed that Conrad and his accomplices threatened to lodge an appeal against any adverse decision.[158] In other accounts, Philip de Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais and Ubaldo Lanfranchi, Archbishop of Pisa, agreed to dissolve Isabella’s first marriage but Baldwin did not agree, threatening to excommunicate anyone who was associated with any attempt to marry Isabella and Conrad.[159] In another, after Isabella requested the dissolution on the grounds that she had not consented to the marriage, Baldwin could not oppose the dissolution and then died of grief after Conrad and Isabella married.[160] This latter claim is clearly incorrect as the marriage took place after Baldwin died, a fact which is noted in the eyewitness accounts. Further versions suggest that the prelates and the barons met and agreed that Isabella should marry Conrad, but an ecclesiastical determination on the validity of her first marriage needed to be made before Isabella and Conrad could be married.[161] From a careful reading of the four accounts known to have been written close to the events, a likely chain of events can be deduced. Either shortly before or after Sibylla’s death (depending on whether her final illness was drawn out or short), a meeting of the High Court would be held to decide who should inherit the throne. This could well be the meeting referred to as the one in which Conrad allegedly suborned the high nobles, prelates and Maria Comnena into his plot for the throne. As part of the process, there may have been a discussion of the unsuitability of Humphrey. After this meeting, a dissolution of Isabella’s first marriage may have been proposed and once a complaint was received from either Maria or Isabella to the prelates, evidence should have been taken. However, the timing of any enquiry and the taking of evidence is uncertain. Baldwin of Forde is said to have opposed the proceeding and the proposed second marriage on canonical grounds so it is probable that no enquiry was held before Baldwin died on 19 November 1190. After his death, however, there would be no impediment to the remaining prelates holding an enquiry, then pronouncing the dissolution so that Isabella could remarry. The fact that the marriage occurred only five days after the archbishop died suggests that the enquiry was not a detailed one and that is in keeping with the impression of a quick process described in the chronicles. It is not clear if any existing impediment to the Isabella/ Conrad marriage was considered at the time (see chapter four). The conflicts in the accounts are strongly suggestive that none of the chroniclers were privy to what really occurred.
The fourth significant difference concerns the actual marriage. Some chronicles note that, after her marriage to Humphrey was dissolved, Isabella was advised of her freedom to marry whomever she wished. However, because she was in the power of Conrad, her only choice was to marry him.[162] Others suggest that they were married in secret before the determination was made, which does seem unlikely, given that any such marriage would have been bigamous.[163] Others claim that the couple were married in Conrad’s house or that there were two marriages, one privately and then in church.[164] It is quite possible that a church ceremony was conducted in Tyre after a hasty battlefield marriage, although there is no extant record of it, nor is this claimed in more than one chronicle. The most common claim is that the marriage took place immediately after the dissolution was proclaimed and in the absence of any credible alternative claim, this does seem the most likely.
The fifth significant difference relates to the role of Humphrey. In some versions, he acquiesced in the dissolution because of pressure brought to bear on him.[165] For example, he was challenged to a duel by Guy de Senlis, a challenge which he did not accept.[166] In others, he opposed the dissolution and sought to stay married to Isabella so he could claim the throne.[167] Given Humphrey’s refusal to accept the throne in 1186 and his supposedly gentle character, the latter may not be credible. What is certain is that his lack of supporters among the barons and his friendship with Guy and then Richard I, a supporter of Guy, would have made any claim by him to the throne in right of his wife untenable.
The sixth significant difference relates to the events on the night of the marriage. Some chroniclers relate how the wedding celebrations lasted until late in the evening and that jousting tournaments were set up outside the safety of the camp.[168] The Muslims were said to have attacked the merrymakers, leaving twenty killed and Guy de Senlis missing. In the Muslim version, the ambush occurred the night before the wedding, but this version has been discredited because neither of the sources making the claim were in Acre at the time.[169] It seems that the ambush must have occurred although only the Itinerarium and Ambroise mention it and Ambroise uses it as a moral justification for the claim that nothing good could come of such a scandalous marriage.[170]
The final significant difference relates to the motivations and actions of Conrad, Isabella and Isabella’s mother. The four contemporary chronicles all claim that Conrad had been plotting to claim the throne for some time and saw his chance when Sibylla died. He then allegedly instituted a plan by which he conspired with the Ibelin faction, particularly Isabella’s mother and stepfather, plotted with his relatives including the Bishop of Beauvais and the Duke of Swabia, bribed the papal legate with greater concessions for his fellow Pisans and corrupted the barons and army leaders by offering to supply them with food and reinforcements to offset the famine rampant in the camp.[171] He supposedly put this plan into action in the few short weeks between Sibylla’s death and his marriage to Isabella. The truth of these claims cannot be independently determined but as McLeod Gilchrist argues, there is reason to doubt that Conrad was as treacherous and Machiavellian as alleged.[172] Conrad was undoubtedly ambitious and much older than the eighteen-year-old Isabella. He came from a family which did have royal ambitions. His older brother married Sibylla and would have been king of Jerusalem if he had lived. Conrad’s nephew was Baldwin V. The youngest Montferrat brother Rainier married Emperor Manuel Comnenus’ daughter and was assassinated in a coup. Conrad himself had an impeccable pedigree, military experience and executive administrative ability. Contrary to the claims of some authors, he was connected to three of the royal houses of Europe, was a battle-scarred veteran and a shrewd businessman who had ruled Montferrat with his brother in the absence of his father in Jerusalem.[173] He was also an experienced politician (see further Appendix Two). Prior to his marriage to Isabella, Conrad had been regarded as the hero who saved the kingdom and who had sent pleas to the West, notably Baldwin of Forde for help. Further, it is only the Anglo-Norman chronicles who portray him in this unflattering light.[174]
The motivation of Maria Comnena has also been interpreted in a negative light by most chroniclers. While not all of them condemn her as does Richard de Templo in the Itinerarium “as steeped in Greek filth from the cradle”, the almost universal view is that she was suborned partly by Conrad and partly by her hatred of Humphrey into browbeating Isabella to leave Humphrey and marry Conrad.[175] This implies that Maria was not acting in the best interests of her daughter in urging her to claim the throne but was seeking greater influence for herself and her husband. As Hodgson argues, in persuading Isabella that her marriage to Humphrey was invalid and that she had no chance of claiming her birthright if she remained married to him, Maria was simply being an assertive mother, acting to ensure that Isabella became queen.[176] Given that Maria was the great-niece of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comnenus and the dowager Queen of Jerusalem, Maria is unlikely to have believed that any other choice was open to Isabella.[177]
As for Isabella herself, many historians accept the claim in the chronicles that Isabella was browbeaten by her mother into agreeing to accept a dissolution she did not want. One historian goes so far as to state that this broke a happy marriage and put a crusade into jeopardy![178] There is evidence to suggest that Isabella left Humphrey willingly rather than lose the throne. Both the Itinerarium and Ambroise state that she left with Conrad willingly after the dissolution was pronounced, even though the Itinerarium suggests that she, as a fickle female, was unable to discern right from wrong and was easily persuaded into a path of sin.[179] The only evidence to suggest that Isabella loved Humphrey was Imad al-Din’s touching description of her begging for his release in 1187 and the statement that she did not want his heirs disinherited from retaining the lands given back to Baldwin IV as part of the marriage settlements.[180] There is no evidence to suggest that she did not agree to the marriage to Conrad. In fact, she accepted the homage of the barons as queen, an event which would not have occurred had she still been married to Humphrey.[181] It is also interesting to note the parallels between the position in which Isabella found herself and that of her father and half-sister. Amalric, when confronted with the same dilemma of having to choose between his spouse and the crown, chose the crown.[182] Sibylla, on being confronted with the same choice, agreed to the dissolution of her marriage to Guy on condition she could select her own husband, claimed the crown and then chose Guy.[183] Isabella arguably did not have the same latitude as her sister as the kingdom was in a more parlous state in 1190 than it was in 1186 and whoever became king consort needed to be a strong military leader, capable of uniting various factions into a cohesive unit.[184] After the dissolution of her first marriage and her acceptance by the barons as queen, she was given the choice of consort as was Sibylla but the only choice open to her realistically was Conrad. It had nothing to do with whether she was in Conrad’s power as some chroniclers have claimed and everything to do with what was best for the kingdom of the time. Thus, Amalric, Sibylla and Isabella all made the same choice, choosing the crown over their spouse.[185] However, of the three of them, only Isabella is regarded as having been forced into choosing the crown over her spouse! Her subsequent matrimonial adventures arguably suggest that she had a strong sense of duty and what was required of her as a ruler.[186]
The role of Isabella
Finally, there is the question of whether Isabella knew Conrad before the marriage took place. Conrad was accounted to be a good-looking and charming man and at least, two 19th century writers suggest that Isabella may have found Conrad attractive.[187] Ambroise implies that Isabella had some affection for him when he refers to Conrad having seen tears in her eyes as he lay dying, although this may well be poetic hyperbole.[188] The depth and length of their acquaintance can only be a matter of speculation due to a lack of contemporary evidence. If Isabella evacuated to Tyre after Jerusalem fell, rather than Tripoli, then she would have known Conrad for about three years. If, on the other hand, Isabella went with Sibylla to Tripoli rather than with her mother to Tyre, then they can only have known each other for a little over a year at best. The evidence given at the papal enquiry of 1213 supports a claim that Isabella was with Humphrey at Acre and would likely have met Conrad after he arrived there because her mother and stepfather both knew him well. Given the friendship between Conrad, Maria and Balian, a close acquaintance between Isabella and Conrad is not beyond the bounds of possibility. If Isabella knew Conrad before the events of November 1190, it may not have been a hard decision for her to agree to the marriage, despite the age difference between them and there may be some basis for the suggestion that it was easy for her to leave an old love for a new one.[189]
In the next chapter, the validity of the Isabella/Humphrey and Isabella/Conrad marriages will be considered. Some chroniclers base their view of the scandalous nature of the marriage on their belief that there was no valid canonical reason for the Isabella/Humphrey marriage to be dissolved. The issue of Isabella’s age and inability to consent because she was under twelve when the marriage took place seems to have been disregarded as a valid claim. If the dissolution was invalid, then Isabella could not marry Conrad because she had a living spouse. Each of these claims will be considered in more detail in chapter four.
- Quote paper
- Tricia Hutton Jackson (Author), 2024, An examination of the marriage of Isabella I of Jerusalem and Conrad de Montferrat in 1190. Medieval scandal or a matter of political expediency?, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1618272
