The Crusades and the Near East

by Kostick, Conor

  55 MacEvitt asserts that Orderic Vitalis, who described Leon as Alice of Antioch’s uncle, was the only primary source for this information and treats it as suspect, but Rüdt-Collenberg supports the idea ( The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, pp. 49–50), as does Gérard Dédéyan (‘The Founding and Coalescence of the Rubenian Principality, 1073–1129’, in Hosvannisien and Payaslian (eds), Armenian Cilicia, pp. 69–92, and Les Arméniens entre Grecs, Musulmans et Croisés I.413, 502, 515).

  Beatrice may have been an honorary name taken on marriage.

  56 FC 622–3. See also Anon. Syriac Chronicle 58, who placed the marriage not long before Joscelin II’s birth in 1113.

  57 OV VI.108.

  58 ME 212. This may have been part of Kogh Vasil’s will, or an attempt by his heir Dgha Vasil to establish himself. Asbridge, Creation of the Principality of Antioch, p. 67.

  59 ‘Chartes de l’abbaye de Notre-Dame’, no. 13, p. 123.

  60 Asbridge, Creation of the Principality of Antioch, pp. 145–6, 157–9.

  61 According to Dédéyan, he ruled over sizeable areas from the Marash Pass in the north-east to the Amanus Gates in the south-west. Dédéyan, ‘Founding and Coalescence’, pp. 86–7.

  62 Thoros and Rupen. The latter died in captivity. Sempad the Constable, ‘Chronique du Royaume de la Petite Arménie’, RHC Arm. I.617. Poem de Hethoum II mentions other sons, Thoros, Stephan and Mleh: RHC Arm. I.551, as does Vahran of Edessa, Chronique rimée des rois de la petite Arménie, RHC Arm. I.501 and n. 1 (only Mleh and Stephan are mentioned here).

  63 Through the marriage of Leon’s sister Beatrice to Joscelin.

  64 William inherited from his father Robert Fitz-Fulk the Leper after the latter’s capture and death c.1119. See Asbridge, Creation of the Principality of Antioch, pp. 159–61.

  65 One of William’s last acts was to support Alice of Antioch’s bid for power, and he may have died in a Muslim attack on Zardana. Asbridge, Creation of the Principality of Antioch, p. 160.

  66 JK 22. See also Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, pp. 84–5.

  67 Sempad, ‘Chronique’, I.615; Anon. Syriac Chronicle 81.

  68 Gregory the Priest, ‘Continuation’, in ME 152; Sempad, ‘Chronique’, I.616; Ralph-Johannes Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States 1096–1204, J.C. Morris and J.E. Ridings (tr.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 106. Lilie could find no evidence of a Franco-Armenian alliance against John Comnenus’s march through Cilicia in 1137.

  Lilie, Byzantium, p. 118, n. 89.

  69 Michael the Syrian III.245. According to Choniates, Leon’s goal had been to subjugate Seleucia. NC 14.

  70 Michael the Syrian asserts that this was the daughter of Simon of Raban, but Rüdt-Collenberg points out that his lordship was in Joscelin’s hands by 1149. Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, p. 50; Michael the Syrian III.281–2.

  71 WT 781–2; Sempad, ‘Chronique’, I.618.

  72 WT 777; Sempad, ‘Chronique’, I.618. See also Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, pp. 150, 213, 229.

  73 JK 138–9, 142.

  74 Anon. Syriac Chronicle 118.

  103

  N A T A S H A H O D G S O N

  75 JK 96–8. This marriage did not take place, and Constance went on to marry Reynald of Châtillon. See also Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, pp. 221–24.

  76 Michael the Syrian III.324, 326. See also Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, pp. 223–4.

  77 La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr 1184–1197, M.R. Morgan (ed.), Paris: Librairie orientaliste P. Geuthner, 1982, p. 115. NC 376.

  78 RH I.261. Niketas Choniates supports Isaac’s reputation as a ruthless murderer and rapist, but does not mention his Armenian wife, and viewed him as a rebel and despoiler of Byzantine property. NC 161.

  79 ‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur’, RHC Oc. II.163–9; Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, pp. 19, 51.

  80 Itinerarium peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, in Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, William Stubbs (ed.), 2, Rolls Series 38, London: Longman, 1864, I.202.

  81 La Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, Louis de Mas Latrie (ed.), Paris: Vve de J. Renouard, 1871, p. 269 (henceforth Ernoul) and RH III.228. She was Raymond’s fourth wife, following his short-lived marriage to Joanna of Sicily.

  82 Sabine Geldsetzer, Frauen auf Kreuzzügen 1096–1291, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2003, p. 191. Ernoul 352–3. ‘Estoire de Eracles’, RHC Oc.

  II.256–7. See also Peter Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades 1191–1374, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 10.

  83 Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, p. 33.

  84 See Mutafian, La Cilicie, I.400–2. For an Armenian account of Mleh’s rule and relationship with Nureddin, see La Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, Gérard Dédéyan (ed. and tr.), Paris: P. Geuthner, 1980, pp. 53–6. According to Ibn Al-Athir, Nureddin faced criticism for enfeoffing a Christian with Islamic lands, but defended his actions by arguing that Mleh’s antipathy for his co-religionists meant that he could rest his army, which would be ready to fight him if he decided to start raiding against Muslims. Ibn Al-Athir, Extrait du Kamel-Altevarykh, RHC Or. I.588.

  85 Mutafian, ‘Brilliant Diplomacy’, 97. For the marriage, see Anon. Syriac Chronicle 133.

  After Mleh’s assassination her brother Grigor sent her to safety and she was provided for by Rupen.

  86 Jonathan Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations between the Latin East and West 1119–1187, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 101–67; Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land, pp. 87–95.

  87 Lilie, Byzantium, p. 214.

  88 WT 1012.

  89 Michael the Syrian III.389.

  90 Lilie, Byzantium, p. 215. Regesta Regni 478, 493, 511, 523, 524.

  91 Lignages d’Outremer, RHC Lois II.446; M.E. Nielen (ed.), Lignages d’Outremer, Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles letters, 2003, pp. 83, 93, 144, 173.

  92 Michael the Syrian III.389. W.H. Rüdt-Collenberg, ‘A Fragmentary Copy of an Unknown Recension of the “Lignages d’Outre-Mer” in the Vatican Library’, EHR

  98, 387, April 1983, 311–27.

  93 La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, p. 165.

  94 Vaticanus Latinus 7806 A. See Nielen, Lignages d’Outremer, pp. 153–74 and Rüdt-Collenberg, ‘A Fragmentary Copy’.

  95 Rey identified the Isabelle referred to in a letter by Innocent III in 1199 as a fourth new bride but there is also a charter referring to Sybil in that year: the similarity in name suggests they could be the same person. Emmanuel Rey, ‘Histoire des princes d’Antioche’, Revue d’Orient Latin 4, 1896, 321–407, at 381–2; Lignages d’Outremer, RHC Lois II.446; Regesta Regni 753, I.200.

  96 See Rüdt-Collenberg, ‘A Fragmentary Copy’, 313–319, 324.

  104

  I N T E R M A R R I A G E A N D D I P L O M A C Y

  97 Regesta Regni 610, 629, 648, 649, 657c, 680, 689, 695, 753; Fath, p. 139; Abu Shama, Le Livre des Deux jardins, RHC Or. IV.373–4.

  98 WT 1012, 1016.

  99 WT 1013–15. Mleh was murdered in 1075, and Rupen spent a considerable part of his reign in captivity, retiring to a monastery in 1187 and dying in 1188.

  100 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 57–8. They had a child, Alice of Armenia, whose claim to Toron was upheld aganst Frederick II’s attempts to turn it over to the Teutonic Order. See also Bernard Hamilton, ‘King Consorts of Jerusalem and Their Entourages from the West from 1186–1250’, in H.E. Mayer (ed.), Die Kreuzfahrerstaten als multikulturelle Geselschaft, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien, Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 1997, XXXVII.13–24.

  101 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, p. 57.

  102 La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, p. 165. The Florentine continuation agrees with her duplicitous role, p. 164, but this aspect of the story is not so prominent in th
e abridged account given by the Colbert-Fontainebleau Eracles: ‘L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur’, RHC Oc. II.214.

  103 Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, pp. 582–3 n. 3.

  104 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, p. 65. Der Nersessian asserts that this actually took place in 1189, the same year as the marriages of his two nieces, Alice and Philippa, to the brothers Hethoum and Shahinshah of Sassoun. Sirape der Nersessian, ‘The Armenian Chronicle of the Constable Smpad or of the Royal Historian’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 13, 1959, 143–68, at 153. See also Mutafian, La Cilicie, I.409.

  105 La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp. 165–9.

  106 Fath, p. 139; Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, p. 430.

  107 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, p. 68.

  108 See n. 95, above.

  109 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 71–2. Given Leon’s reputation as a poisoner, it is tempting to suggest that he had a hand in Raymond’s fate, but at a time of high infant mortality he would have been taking a serious risk without securing the presence of a healthy male child first.

  110 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 65, 69–71.

  111 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, p. 84.

  112 Kirakos de Ganjak, Extrait de l’histoire d’Arménie, RHC Arm. I.424–5.

  113 Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, p. 53.

  114 ‘Estoire de Eracles’, RHC Oc. II.305. Good relations had been established between Aimery and Leon when the latter rescued Aimery’s wife Eschiva of Ibelin and their children from a kidnapping in Cyprus. La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr, pp.

  163–5.

  115 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 87–8.

  116 For an overview of events, see Mutafian, La Cilicie, I.413–14.

  117 For a description of the fortress and its history, see A.W. Lawrence, ‘The Castle of Baghras’, in Boase (ed.), Cilician Kingdom, pp. 34–83. For a recent interpretation of these events in the context of the Teutonic knights, see Nicholas Morton, The Teutonic Knights in the Holy Land, 1190–1291, Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009, pp. 55–9.

  118 Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, pp. 27–9.

  119 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 89–90. Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, p. 631.

  120 For further detail, see Mutafian, ‘Les princesses arméniennes’.

  121 Regesta Regni 873 I.236. John married Maria of Jerusalem in 1210. She died in 1212

  after producing a female heir, Isabella.

  122 Most sources place the marriage in 1213. La Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, p. 89; Ernoul, p. 411; Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, p. 55. A further match between a niece (or sister) of Leon, Dolete and Bertrand of 105

  N A T A S H A H O D G S O N

  Gibelet, is mentioned in the Lignages D’Outremer. See Mutafian, ‘Les princesses arméniennes’; Nielen, Lignages d’Outremer, p. 115.

  123 He later married the sister of Ferdinand III of Castile in 1224.

  124 Oliver of Paderborn accused him of making excuses, and James of Vitry called him a deserter. Oliverus Scholasticus, Die Schriften des kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal Bishofs von S. Sabina, Hermann Hoogeweg (ed.), Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1894, chs 43 and 45. Lettres de Jacques de Vitry, R.B.C. Huygens (ed.), Leiden: Brill, 1960, p. 135. See also J.M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986, pp. 176–7.

  125 ‘Estoire de Eracles’, RHC Oc. II.349 There were rumours of Stephanie’s ill-treatment at John’s hands, but it seems unlikely that he would sabotage his own claim so effectively. See Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, p. 19.

  126 Ernoul, p. 427.

  127 Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, p. 631.

  128 For the rapprochement between the Armenian Church and the papacy, see Bernard Hamilton, The Latin Church in the Crusader States: The Secular Church, London: Variorum, 1980, pp. 204–7.

  129 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 90–96.

  130 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 95–6. See also Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, pp. 631–5.

  131 Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, pp. 398–9.

  132 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, p. 96.

  133 Cahen, La Syrie du Nord, p. 635 and n. 14.

  134 Chronique du royaume de la petite Arménie par le connétable Sempad, RHC Arm.

  I.648. This information comes from a later redaction of the text not included in Dédéyan’s edition. For more information on the relationship between the texts, see der Nercessian, ‘The Armenian Chronicle’, pp. 141–68.

  135 Hethoum’s brother Leon was due to make a marriage alliance in Cyprus, but died before making the voyage. Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, p. 102.

  136 Chronique attribuée au connétable Smbat, pp. 96–7.

  137 For further detail on these later matches, and progeny of other marriages such as Marie, Dame of Tyre and Toron, see Mutafian, ‘Les princesses arméniennes’.

  138 John of Joinville, Historie de Sainte Louis, Credo et Lettre a Louis X, Natalis de Wailly (ed. and tr.), Paris: Renouard, 1874, p. 286.

  139 ‘Les Gestes des Chiprois’, RHC Arm. II.780.

  140 ‘Les Gestes des Chiprois’, RHC Arm. II.801–3.

  141 Rüdt-Collenberg, The Rupenides, Hethumides and Lusignans, pp. 28–9.

  106

  5

  N AT I O N A L I D E N T I T Y ,

  L A N G U A G E A N D C O N F L I C T

  I N T H E C R U S A D E S T O

  T H E H O L Y L A N D ,

  1 0 9 6 – 1 1 9 2 1

  Alan V. Murray

  Who ever heard so many different languages in a single army? For

  amongst it there were Franciens, Flemings, Frisians, Gauls, Allobroges, Lotharingians, Swabians, Bavarians, Normans, Englishmen, Scots,

  Aquitanians, Italians, Danes, Apulians, Iberians, Bretons, Greeks and Armenians. If any Breton or German had wished to question me, I would not have known how to reply. Yet, despite the diversity of our tongues, we seemed to be brothers united under God.2

  Thus Fulcher of Chartres, writing the first version of his Jerusalemite History around the year 1106, chose to describe the response of Christendom to the call to crusade proclaimed by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095. He gives this catalogue of peoples to make the point that the linguistic diversity of the crusaders was unimportant, because they were united in a common purpose which was overseen and directed by God. Fulcher had been a participant in the First Crusade and subsequently chaplain to King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, and it is scarcely surprising that his work should reflect a sense of wonder about the great events through which he had lived. Even other contemporaries who had not been participants made similar statements to express the idea that divine direction and providence were the only possible explanation for the eventual triumph of a relatively small, diverse and often fractious army against a series of numerically superior enemies.3 Yet at around the same time that Fulcher was writing, a rather different perspective of the same events was being formulated by another French cleric. In his own account of the crusade, Guibert, abbot of the monastery of Nogent-sous-Coucy, recalled an occasion when a certain archdeacon of the bishopric of Mainz had talked dismissively of the French king and people.

  According to his own testimony, Guibert had replied to the German archdeacon: 107

  A L A N V . M U R R A Y

  Non-Romance languages

  Map 5.1 Languages of the medieval Kingdom of France and neighbouring regions If you think them so lazy and feeble that you can denigrate a name

  celebrated as far as the Indian Ocean, then tell me: who was it that Pope Urban turned to for help against the Turks? To whom but the French?

  If they had not taken the lead with their diligence and fearless strength to stop the advance of the barbarian peoples, there would hav
e been no help forthcoming from your Germans, whose name was not even to be

  heard there.4

  Fulcher and Guibert were both natives of northern France, educated clerics writing in Latin. Yet the quotations cited seem to exemplify two diametrically opposed views of the significance of national and linguistic diversity in the genesis of the crusade movement. Fulcher’s understanding of the crusade and its success derives from the fact that it was an enterprise which united Christians despite their 108

  N A T I O N A L I D E N T I T Y , L A N G U A G E A N D C O N F L I C T

  diversity; Guibert stresses national divisions by exalting the part played by one nation, the French, at the expense of another, the Germans. In some cases denigra-tion of other nationalities occurred even when writers accepted their contribution to crusading. The English historian William of Malmesbury was impressed by the fact that crusaders came from the farthest reaches of Christendom to answer the appeal of Pope Urban II, yet he could not resist the opportunity to take a dig at the inhabitants of peripheral countries, who were in his opinion uncivilised compared to those of the Anglo-Norman realm:

  There was no people so remote and so isolated that it did not take part.

  For this love did not only affect the Mediterranean provinces; all who lived in the most remote islands or in the barbarian countries heard the name of Christ. The Welshman left his hunting, the Scotsman left his familiarity with fleas; the Dane gave up his permanent drinking sessions, and the Norwegian abandoned his raw fish.5

  To the modern historian looking back on the period of the crusades to the Holy Land, it must seem that it was Fulcher’s understanding, rather than Guibert’s, which corresponded to the spirit of Pope Urban’s conception of a great popular movement which would unite Western Christendom, irrespective of national divisions, in order to liberate Eastern Christendom from Turkish rule. Yet, paradoxically, as this chapter aims to demonstrate, there is much evidence to show that the mindset exemplified by Guibert took root and flourished over the course of the following three centuries, and indeed into the modern period. When the palace of Versailles was renovated by the French monarchy in 1839, a Salle des croisades was planned as a monument to the French families whose ancestors had taken part in the crusades; eventually a much extended crusade gallery had been designed to accommodate the great number of illustrations and coats of arms of actual, putative and invented crusaders whose claims were put forward, many of them supported by forged documents.6 Most historical scholarship was less crass than this, but it is noticeable how much of the nineteenth-century research on the crusades was intended to record and thus glorify the contribution of individual countries to the movement.