Transcending the strength of women, the lady queen, Melisende, a prudent woman, discreet above the female sex, had ruled the kingdom with fitting moderation for more than 30 years, during the lifetime of her husband and the reign of her son.21
William’s backhanded compliments about Melisende transcending the normal weakness of women do not change the fact that it was she who ruled for more than thirty years.
We also possess, as we do surprisingly often for 12th-century figures, an item that Melisende owned personally. In Melisende’s case it is a beautifully decorated ivory and silk cover for a psalter (book of psalms), now in the British Library, and it is indicative of the kinds of beautifully decorated objects that 12th-century aristocrats could own. The embroidered spine has patterns of crosses in silver and silk thread, and the ivory covers show episodes from the life of King David (who was believed to have composed the psalms) and a king performing the Six Corporal Works of Mercy. All the work is in a typical 12th-century Byzantine style, and the king represented on the back cover wears Byzantine dress, confirming the obvious point that the Byzantine Empire was the source of luxury goods for the Kingdom of Jerusalem.22 Beautiful as it is, the real interest in the psalter comes in its calendar, where there are notes recording the deaths of Baldwin II in 1131 and Fulk in 1143, and as mentioned earlier, the tantalizing graffito on the cover saying ‘herodias’ may refer to a nickname for Fulk.
We have now seen the first example of Angevin marriage trumping Norman conquest – Bohemond had to endure the siege of Antioch to create his principality, but Fulk V married Melisende and received the crown of Jerusalem. Equally, William the Bastard had to conquer England, but Geoffrey Plantagenet married Matilda and their son gained the throne, then married Eleanor to gain at a stroke the vast domain of Aquitaine.
This contrast was noted by contemporaries. Henry of Huntingdon reports that when the Anglo-Norman army was preparing for the Battle of the Standard against the Scots in 1138, a bishop summarized the Norman achievement as follows:
No one resists you with impunity; brave France has tried and taken shelter; fierce England lay captive; rich Apulia flourished anew under your rule; renowned Jerusalem and noble Antioch both submitted themselves to you.23
There could be no more succinct summary of the Norman achievement in the 11th century. Yet the chronicler Ralph of Diceto made an even more succinct rejoinder when, in commenting on the various ways of gaining territory, he ended by saying, ‘And you, happy Anjou, marry’.24
The kingdom Fulk and Melisende ruled was still a beleaguered colonial outpost, and now a Muslim ruler emerged who seemed capable of leading a united opposition to the Christian states. This was Zengi, the ruler of Aleppo and Mosul, and the greatest threat to the Crusader States since their foundation. Zengi had designs on Damascus, and the thought of a united Aleppo, Mosul and Damascus was one to terrify the Christians. They were not the only ones to fear this, and the ruler of Damascus also sensed the threat to his independence presented by Zengi’s ambitions. In 1138 the Damascenes first approached Jerusalem with the offer of an alliance, which was rejected. However, by 1140 the threat presented by Zengi was much more apparent, and when his army moved to besiege Damascus, the alliance was offered again and it was accepted. Fulk mustered an army and marched on Damascus; Zengi retired without offering to fight.25
The earlier kings of Jerusalem had certainly not been averse to accepting Muslims as subjects, but this full-blown alliance with one of the most significant Muslim states was unprecedented. It shows the pragmatism that consistently marked policy in the Crusader States, but this would inevitably cause problems with newly arrived Crusaders who could not countenance such intimacy with the ‘infidel’.
The alliance with Damascus was the most important achievement of Fulk’s reign, but he did not benefit from it very long, as he died in November 1143 after being thrown from his horse while chasing a hare. He and Melisende had two sons, Baldwin and Amalric. Baldwin was thirteen when Fulk died, but there was no problem of a minority, since the claim to the throne was still Melisende’s, and she and Baldwin III were crowned jointly on Christmas Day. This demonstrates the kingdom of Jerusalem’s fundamentally different outlook on female succession to the kingdoms of Western Europe, notably England, where Henry I’s acknowledged heir Matilda was deprived of her throne and ultimately had to give up her own claim in favour of her son, with no hint of co-rulership. Of course Matilda’s son was the Angevin Henry II, so we should leave Jerusalem and return to Anjou to take up the story of Fulk’s eldest son, Geoffrey Plantagenet.
Geoffrey Plantagenet and the Empress Matilda
Geoffrey was born in 1113. Jean of Marmoutier wrote a biography of Geoffrey in around 1173, when Geoffrey’s son Henry II was established as the most powerful king in Europe, so although it is filled with interesting details it should be used with some caution. Once again we have an Angevin name to discuss, this time one that is instantly recognizable to modern readers. All contemporaries agree that Geoffrey was called le Bel (‘the Handsome’), but they also state that he was called ‘Plantagenet’, and both names have followed him through history.
There isn’t much need to explain a nickname like ‘the Handsome’, but why was Geoffrey called ‘Plantagenet’? We simply don’t know. Later historians in the 16th century – once the name had been adopted for the English ruling family from the 12th to the 15th centuries – claimed that it came about because Geoffrey liked to wear a sprig of the broom plant (planta genista, in Latin) in his hat, and this is the definition of the name that is usually given even today. That doesn’t explain how this name, without being attributed to anyone else in the English royal family in any written source, somehow persisted for the next 300 years until it was publicly adopted again by the house of York in the 15th century as a way to emphasize their right to rule. A modern historian speculates that there were obscene connotations to the name (‘hairy stalk’) that celebrated Geoffrey’s generative powers in conjunction with his beauty, and that kept prudish chroniclers from mentioning it but allowed it to retain currency in speech, until in the 15th century it was so inextricably connected to the royal line that it could be used openly.26
However, if the name does arise from the broom plant, it should be Plantagenest, not Plantagenet, and this is clearly what it was in Geoffrey’s time, and still is in French. In French the name is written Plantagenêt, and the circumflex is essentially an abbreviation for the letter ‘s’. As an aside, remembering which words in French require a circumflex can be maddeningly difficult when learning the language, but it’s easy once you know the circumflex replaces an ‘s’: forêt/forest, côte/coast, bête/beast. In English we have dropped the circumflex, but haven’t returned the ‘s’, giving us Plantagenet.
Geoffrey not only gives his name to the royal family, but he is also intimately bound up in the symbols of England. Geoffrey is a key figure in early heraldry as his tomb bears an enamel portrait of him carrying a shield decorated with lions in a distinctly heraldic fashion, making him one of the first figures to be represented bearing a heraldic device and possibly the first to use one. The lion was also used by the Normans, and Geoffrey was given clothing decorated with lions when he was knighted by Henry I. Was Geoffrey simply a person who liked to collect badges and nicknames, though perhaps more systematic in his use of them than his contemporaries?
Geoffrey’s biography, while perhaps not particularly accurate about him, does give us an insight into aristocratic life in the 12th century. We have a vivid portrait of Geoffrey’s journey to Rouen to be knighted by Henry I before his marriage to Matilda. The ceremony of knighthood is described in detail, and obviously the Angevin chronicler wants to highlight the respect shown to Geoffrey by the king, not least because Henry gave him a sword made by Weyland, the legendary Germanic smith, who most famously turned his enemies’ skulls into drinking cups (and was a great favourite of the Anglo-Saxons, as shown on an exquisite 8th-century casket in the Sutton Hoo room of the British
Museum). Already by 1128 the ceremony of knighthood had a defined place in court ceremonial and included such elements as a ritual bath and the public viewing of the knight after the private ceremony.
Of special note in this story is the description of the lion emblems that decorated Geoffrey’s shoes and his shield, which were described as ‘lion cubs’, possibly a reference to the fact that they were lions ‘passant’, that is walking on all fours with their bodies horizontal, rather than ‘rampant’, standing on their hind legs. These lions passed from Geoffrey through Henry II to Richard the Lionheart to become the heraldic symbol of England. Geoffrey was one of the pioneers in using such personal imagery, mediating the heraldic representation of England to a substantial degree.27
All the Plantagenets were patrons of learning, as well as of conspicuous display. Geoffrey Plantagenet’s biographer comments that as much as Geoffrey loved hunting, he loved reading more, and tells the story of how Geoffrey, when the castle of Montreuil-Bellay successfully resisted a siege, consulted the work of the Roman military historian Vegetius and discovered the way to take the castle.28 Geoffrey was also said to enjoy music like his older troubadour contemporary William IX, and the story was told that when Geoffrey had taken some Poitevin knights prisoner, they composed and performed a song in his praise that pleased him so much that he released them.29
Two particular stories in Geoffrey’s biography bear repeating, not because they are necessarily true, but because of what they reveal about 12th-century life. The first involves a tournament arranged between the Normans and Bretons near Mont Saint Michel. Geoffrey attended with his new Norman kinsmen William Clito, Theobald of Blois and the future king Stephen to fight on their side, but when he saw that the Bretons were substantially outnumbered, he chivalrously decided to join them.
Naturally Geoffrey was conspicuously the best fighter and ‘deprived many of their lives’. Jean of Marmoutier seems to have forgotten that this was a tournament rather than a battle, unless he intended Geoffrey’s behaviour, gallant as it was, to be a lesson in the disorder caused by tournaments, which would have pleased the notoriously tournament-hating Henry II. The climax of the tournament came when the defeated Normans challenged the Bretons to single combat, and a gigantic Saxon ‘taller than any human by far’ appeared and taunted the Bretons. Of course Geoffrey rose to the occasion, impaling the giant with his spear and cutting off his head as a trophy.30
This is very similar – too similar? – to the story about Geoffrey Greymantle killing the giant Dane in the Gesta, and it may have been a conscious echo to show that Geoffrey followed in his illustrious predecessor and namesake’s footsteps. It is also quite striking in its portrayal of the Normans as overpowered and fleeing from the Bretons (and an Angevin) after being defeated, a mischievous touch that surely would have appealed to Henry II.
The second story involves Geoffrey getting lost in the forest when hunting, and finding a charcoal burner who leads him back to Loches without recognizing him. Geoffrey asks the peasant what he thinks about the count, and is given a catalogue of all the ills of the country including oppressive taxation and extortion by Geoffrey’s officials, though the peasant says he is sure the count doesn’t know about this and is betrayed by his subordinates. Geoffrey promises himself to reform the laws and punish the offenders, then takes the man back to his court and reveals his identity. The man is horrified at having criticized Geoffrey’s rule to his face, but Geoffrey entertains him royally and sends him on his way with his freedom and gifts. This is a standard type of tale that shows the good ruler listening to his people (there are similar stories about Haroun al-Rachid in the Arabian Nights and James V of Scotland in the 16th century), and shows how Jean of Marmoutier took what was essentially the blank canvas of Geoffrey Plantagenet and shaped him into the image of the model ruler.31
Henry I’s reasons for turning to Anjou for a marriage alliance can be discerned with some confidence, and it probably wasn’t because Geoffrey exhibited the perfection credited to him by Jean of Marmoutier. After the death of William Aetheling, Henry had promoted the interests of his nephews Theobald, Stephen and Henry of Blois. Although the eldest, Theobald, was fully occupied as count of Blois (under the guidance of his mother Adela, William the Conqueror’s daughter), Henry I raised Stephen and Henry of Blois at his court. His favour to them culminated in 1125 when he arranged Stephen’s marriage to the heiress to the county of Boulogne and in 1126 when he made Henry abbot of Glastonbury. Things were happening very quickly at this point, because it was also in 1126 that Matilda was recalled from Germany and in January 1127 Henry recognized her as his heir.
Also in 1127, Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, was murdered as he knelt in prayer, and William Clito, the son of Robert Curthose, now became count of Flanders through the influence of the French king. With no son of his own, Henry faced the genuine threat that Clito could use his base in Flanders to launch a bid for the English throne after his death. Henry controlled England and Normandy, and Blois was an ally, but France and Flanders were implacably opposed to him, and he needed to secure the succession. Geoffrey was the right age to marry Henry’s daughter, and an Angevin alliance would provide a bulwark to Normandy and Blois from the south, neutralizing a potential enemy. As we saw previously, Fulk V had first sought an alliance with Clito, but Henry I proved as adept a diplomat as a warrior, and turned Anjou into an ally.
There may be another factor: Henry at this point was staking everything on Matilda succeeding him. Many contemporary historians noted that Matilda’s marriage to an Angevin made her unpalatable to the Normans, and I will argue below that this explains Geoffrey’s otherwise inexplicable failure to assist her in England. However, Geoffrey was still a teenager at the time of the marriage. This seems puzzling since we might expect Henry, like Baldwin II of Jerusalem, to choose a strong warrior who could support and defend his daughter’s claim. Much is always made of the fact that at the time of their marriage, Matilda was twenty-six and Geoffrey was fourteen32 and she, with all the haughtiness of an Empress, despised the boy she was forced to marry. But isn’t that the point? Norman law was categorical that all a woman’s property and rights were controlled by her husband33, but wouldn’t Henry have expected Matilda to dominate the relationship? An aggressive, successful count of Anjou acting as a king would have been repellent to the Normans, but an untried boy who might be dominated by his imperial consort could grow into someone much less objectionable. Henry could hope to shape the character of his son-in-law for some years, especially as Fulk soon left for Jerusalem and Geoffrey was isolated at the Anglo-Norman court. It was for just this purpose that Henry prepared the elaborate ceremonies of knighthood described above.
Unfortunately for Henry, events conspired against him. William Clito died of an infected wound almost immediately after Geoffrey and Matilda’s wedding, ending the threat and freeing Henry of the necessity for an Angevin alliance. It is intriguing to speculate about the consort Henry would have chosen for Matilda had the threat of Clito not hung over him, though he had already turned to Anjou before so perhaps things would not have been very different. With Fulk V’s departure to become king of Jerusalem in 1129, the young couple took over Anjou, though they seem to have spent more time in Normandy, where their position as Henry’s heirs was more prestigious.
By the 1130s Henry had reconciled himself to the fact that he would not father another legitimate son, and he took steps to ensure the succession of Matilda as England’s queen. He required all the barons to swear to uphold her succession, which they did so willingly that they even quarrelled for the privilege of being the first to swear, with Henry’s illegitimate son Robert of Gloucester losing out, ironically, to Stephen of Blois, who would usurp the throne. When Henry fell ill in Normandy in 1135 (after gorging on too many lampreys, according to tradition) he again called on all his barons present to swear to acknowledge Matilda as queen, then died on 1 December.
Henry I had failed to anticipate the bold action of
Stephen of Blois. Stephen was married to the countess of Boulogne, and controlled one of the best places to cross the Channel. Stephen crossed immediately to England and seized the royal treasury at Winchester, which helpfully was controlled by his brother Henry, who was now Bishop of Winchester, and asserted his own right to the throne as William the Conqueror’s grandson. With the help of powerful local barons who convinced the Archbishop of Canterbury to break his own oath to support Matilda, Stephen was crowned and anointed on 22 December 1135. Meanwhile, the Norman barons in Rouen had themselves wavered and invited Stephen’s brother Theobald Count of Blois, as William the Conqueror’s oldest surviving grandson, to be their duke, but when they heard that Stephen was already crowned, they recanted and sent Theobald away. Stephen swiftly took possession of Normandy too, and Matilda and Geoffrey seemed to have been completely defeated. They had been curiously inactive at this critical moment, and it is believed that Matilda was pregnant.34
Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500 Page 10