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Sybil, Queen of Jerusalem, 1186-1190
Queen Sybil of Jerusalem, queen in her own right, was ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1190. Her reign saw the loss of the city of Jerusalem to Saladin, and the beginning of the Third Crusade. Her reign began with her nobles divided and crisis looming; by her death the military forces of Christian Europe were uniting with her and her husband, intent on recovering what had been lost. Sybil died before the bulk of the forces of the Third Crusade could arrive in the kingdom, and Jerusalem was not recovered. But although Sybil failed, she went down fighting — spiritually, even if not physically.
This study traces Sybil’s life, from her childhood as the daughter of the heir to the throne of Jerusalem to her death in the crusading force outside the city of Acre. It sets her career alongside that of other European queens and noblewomen of the twelfth century who wielded or attempted to wield power and asks how far the eventual survival of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1192 was due to Sybil’s leadership in 1187 and her determination never to give up.
Helen J. Nicholson is Professor in Medieval History, Cardiff University, UK.
Rulers of the Latin East
Series editors Nicholas Morton, Nottingham Trent University, UK Jonathan Phillips, Royal Holloway University of London, UK
Academics concerned with the history of the Crusades and the Latin East will be familiar with the various survey histories that have been produced for this fascinating topic. Many historians have published wide-ranging texts that either seek to make sense of the strange phenomenon that was the Crusades or shed light upon the Christian territories of the Latin East. Such panoramic works have helped to generate enormous interest in this subject, but they can only take their readers so far. Works addressing the lives of individual rulers — whether kings, queens, counts, princes or patriarchs — are less common and yet are needed if we are to achieve a more detailed understanding of this period.
This series seeks to address this need by stimulating a collection of political biographies of the men and women who ruled the Latin East between 1098 and 1291 and the kingdom of Cyprus up to 1571. These focus in detail upon the evolving political and diplomatic events of this period, whilst shedding light upon more thematic issues such as: gender and marriage, intellectual life, kingship and governance, military history and inter-faith relations.
Baldwin I Susan B. Edgington
Godfrey of Bouillon Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c.1060-1100 Simon John
The Counts of Tripoli and Lebanon in the Twelfth Century Sons of Saint-Gilles Kevin James Lewis
Fulk and Melisende: King and Queen of Jerusalem Danielle Park
Baldwin of Bourcq Count of Edessa and King of Jerusalem (1100-1131) Alan V. Murray
Sybil Queen of Jerusalem, 1186-1190 Helen J. Nicholson
A Note on Names
In an historical study drawing on evidence in more than one language, none of them English, it is always difficult to know how best to render names of persons and places, especially as contemporaries were inconsistent. Where there is a general modern consensus on the rendering of a name into English (such as Saladin, Tamar, Jerusalem), I have used that. So, for the name given in Latin as Enfridus and in Old French as Hainfrois I have used Humphrey, which is the modern consensus. Where there is a common equivalent in modern English usage (such as Eleanor, Guy, Henry, or Isabel), I have used it. However, modern scholars working in English do not agree on a single version of the name of King Amaury’s eldest daughter, variously rendering it as Sibyl, Sibylla, Sybil or Sybilla. Here I render the name as ‘Sybil’, as that is the most commonly used modern spelling. Likewise, there is no modern consensus on how to render the name which is given in Latin as Reginaldus or Renaldus, and in Old French as Rainaus or Renaut: I have used Reynald, the version currently most commonly used by English-language scholars. In some cases where there is no consensus on the name of a location I have given the variant versions at first mention and subsequently used the version which I hope is that most familiar to English-speaking readers.
Acknowledgements
I undertook the writing of this book following research on Sybil as part of other projects. I thank Nicholas Morton for commissioning it for Routledge’s ‘Rulers of the Latin East Series’ and thus giving me the opportunity to explore Sybil’s life more thoroughly. I am very grateful to Giuseppe Ligato for generously providing me with a copy of his biography of Sybil, Sibilla regina crociata (2005), to Richard A. Leson and Chris Mielke for kindly sending me copies of material which would not otherwise have been available to me, and to Tom Asbridge, Myra Bom, Andrew D. Buck, Kelly DeVries, Peter Edbury, Marianne Gilchrist, Rudolf Hiestand, Ben Morris, Alan V. Murray, Jonathan Phillips, Thomas W. Smith, Stephen Spencer and other colleagues and friends researching crusading and medieval warfare for their advice, opinions and comments on various points. Some of the material in this book has been presented at conferences and seminars in the UK and the USA, and I thank all those who made comments and suggestions in response to these presentations.
I am also very grateful to my colleagues in the History Department at Cardiff University for granting me research leave in 2020— 2021 so that I could complete this study, and to the School of History, Archaeology and Religion for confirming their decision. I am indebted to the staff in Cardiff University Arts and Social Studies Library, especially the staff in Inter-library Loan, and the staff in the library of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, for their assistance in obtaining copies of research materials during the Covid-19 restrictions. The resources digitised online by the Internet Archive have also been invaluable. Regrettably the Covid-19 restrictions have meant that despite every effort some research material has not been accessible to me. I also thank Cardiff University Optometrists for their support in enabling me to complete this book despite my deteriorating eyesight. My husband has patiently and generously provided computer assistance as required and drew the maps. I drew up the family tree and made all the translations which are not otherwise attributed.
Introduction
‘Regina, regis Amalrici filia, Sibilla nomine’: the queen, daughter of King Amaury, Sybil by name: so a contemporary described the queen as she set out from Jerusalem after surrendering the city to Saladin on 2 October 1187.! Her brief four-year reign was a time of enormous upheaval in the history of the kingdom of Jerusalem. She and her second husband, Guy de Lusignan, had gained the throne as Saladin, ruler of Egypt and Damascus, threatened the very existence of the kingdom. The barons of the kingdom were divided and some refused to do homage to Guy. Following Sybil’s and Guy’s coronation in autumn 1186, Baldwin of Ramla, one of the leading barons of the kingdom of Jerusalem, withdrew to the principality of Antioch, while Count Raymond III of Tripoli placed himself under Saladin’s protection and allowed Saladin’s troops into the principality of Galilee.* In early summer 1187 Saladin defeated the armies of the kingdom of Jerusalem in two engagements, on 1 May and 4 July. King Guy and many of the leading barons of the kingdom were captured, and Saladin went on to seize most of the cities of the kingdom, including Jerusalem.
Sybil never gave up. She defended her city of Ascalon; she negotiated the release of her husband the king, tried to appeal to the West to obtain aid for her kingdom and began the fightback against Saladin. While she awaited her husband’s release she went north to the crusader states of Tripoli and Antioch, which successfully resisted Saladin’s forces; then, when Guy was released, she and her husband assembled an army and took the war back to Saladin. Their relatives in Europe responded positively to appeals for help: Guy’s brother Geoffrey de Lusignan, a famous warrior; Sybil’s Angevin cousins Henry II of England (who died before he could set out) and his son Richard; and her cousin Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders. Sybil died in 1190, fighting to the last to recover her kingdom.
Born between 1157 (when her parents married) and 1161 (when her younger brother Baldwin was born), Sybil was the daughter and sister of kings, granddaughter of Count Fulk of Anjou (and so an Angevin), cousin of King Henry IJ of England and first cousin once removed of King Richard the Lionheart. She was a contemporary of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Countess Marie of Champagne and Queen Tamar the Great of Georgia, all renowned for their cultural patronage. Her grandmother, Queen Melisende of Jerusalem (d. 1161), was the owner of the beautiful Melisende Psalter which now graces the British Museum. Sybil herself probably commissioned the lavish tomb of her son King Baldwin V of Jerusalem.
In many respects Sybil’s life was typical for a royal princess or noblewoman of her time: educated in an elite women’s religious house, married in her midteens, widowed and remarried, regularly giving birth and seeing her children die in childhood, seldom mentioned by narrative records but regularly issuing legal documents which indicate that she was active in administering her estates, defending her own estates when they came under attack and negotiating her husband’s release from prison after he was captured in battle.* Her personal life was dominated by her relatives, who chose her husbands and attempted to force her into divorce. But she was exceptional because from her birth there was always the possibility that she would rule Jerusalem, either as queen of Jerusalem or as regent for her crowned child. She became, as one writer of the late thirteenth century would describe her, /a roine preude femme et bonne dame — a queen, a valiant woman, and a good lady.*
Her contemporaries depicted her as a faithful wife who outwitted her enemies, refused to give up her husband, was prepared to sacrifice her city of Ascalon to recover him alive from Saladin, accompanied him to the dangers of the siege of Acre and died there with their daughters. In contemporaries’ eyes her greatest virtue was her fidelity to her second husband. They reported that at Sybil’s coronation the barons of the kingdom asked her to divorce Guy de Lusignan and choose a more suitable husband, but when Sybil complied she chose Guy, who was, she said, the best husband she could have and the best king for the kingdom. Perhaps she chose Guy for love but given the divisions among the Franks in autumn 1186 she may have truly believed that there was no alternative and that Guy was the only commander who was trusted by the rulers of Christian Europe, who could attract aid from the West, unite the rulers of the crusader states and defeat Saladin.
Sybil’s life was dogged by controversy: before her father, King Amaury of Jerusalem (ruled 1163-74), could be crowned king, he was forced to divorce his wife, Agnes de Courtenay. Sybil and her younger brother Baldwin were legitimated as part of the settlement, but a question remained over their legitimacy to rule. Baldwin’s leprosy was interpreted by the pope as God’s just judgement. When Sybil’s son Baldwin V died, some of the nobles of the kingdom wanted to place her younger half-sister Isabel on the throne instead of Sybil and her husband. Forty years and more after her death, one writer depicted her as if she were a character in one of the new romances, carrying on a long-distance love affair with the nobleman Baldwin of Ramla.° If Sybil regarded herself in such terms, perhaps it would have been as the damsel beset by enemies who appears so often in Arthurian romance, welcoming the arrival of the brave young knight from overseas (Guy de Lusignan) to fight for her against her enemies.
Such legends highlight a problem that any study of a medieval queen must face: gender stereotypes in the primary sources. A queen’s agency and active involvement in government and military affairs would have been limited by cultural expectations. Contemporary sources do not give us a full picture of women’s activity. In a society where respectable women should not be a subject of public gossip, a queen’s actions could be omitted from a narrative simply because it would be demeaning to her honour to mention her involvement. All narrative sources from the medieval period had a didactic and moralising as well as an informative role; those writing about the crusades and the kingdom of Jerusalem especially so because the crusades were regarded as Christ’s special concern and the kingdom of Jerusalem was His kingdom.
The imperative to produce a moralising discourse distorted the depiction of women, recreating them as pious virgins, faithful wives, carers or impious jezebels, with little acknowledgement of their fulfilling wider roles. In addition, each writer had their own perspective on the political disputes within the crusader states and their own views on who was to blame for the disasters of 1187. Depending on each writer’s perspective, Sybil became either a faithful wife or a sly schemer, but we have to read very carefully to discover that she also took an active command role in war.°
Sybil’s reign shows that although twelfth-century queens could have agency and wield power in their own right, not all of them did so.’ Sybil had plenty of models to follow. Queens Urraca of Castile and Teresa of Portugal had established their authority in their kingdoms in the early twelfth century. Her grandmother Melisende had claimed the right to rule the kingdom in her own right and had opposed her husband and fought her son to enforce this right. Sybil’s great-aunts Alice of Antioch, Hodierna of Tripoli, and her first cousin once removed Constance of Antioch all played active roles in government. Her aunt, Countess Sybil of Flanders, twice ruled Flanders while her husband was in the Holy Land.
Her aunt-in-law Matilda of England had claimed the throne of England in her own right; although, like Sybil, she had had to contend with nobles who were unwilling to acknowledge her authority and disliked and distrusted her husband, she eventually established her son on the throne. Eleanor of Aquitaine’s daughter Marie governed Champagne while first her husband, Count Henry the Liberal, and then her son, were in the Holy Land. Queen Tamar the Great of Georgia, the ancient Christian kingdom on the banks of the Black Sea, showed how successful a twelfthcentury queen regnant could be. But Sybil’s contemporaries and surviving charters indicate that after she had seized the throne she handed her authority over to her husband and did not attempt to rule in her own name. She confirmed her husband’s actions but the evidence indicates she did not initiate policy.
This book could have considered only the period when Sybil and Guy were joint monarchs, tracing Guy’s military campaigns in detail and focussing on his response to Saladin. Focussing on only Guy as king is misleading, however, as his authority rested solely on his marriage to Sybil and was challenged on her death. In addition, the problems that Sybil and Guy faced in 1186 did not originate overnight or even in the final years of King Baldwin IV’s reign: they began at least as long ago as the coronation of Sybil’s father. Rather than focus only on the brief period of the reign of Sybil and Guy, this study considers the whole of Sybil’s life, tracing the development of the situation that Sybil and Guy faced on their accession to the kingdom in 1186 before considering how they attempted to face it and how far they were successful.
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