A Guy for Sibylla

After the death of William of Montferrat, Sibylla of Jerusalem needed a new husband. The kingdom of Jerusalem was in a difficult position. Her brother, King Baldwin IV, was suffering from leprosy and wanted to be able to turn the kingdom over to a man who could lead the armies, so he wanted to get his sister married.

The High Court wanted Duke Hugh III of Burgundy, but he turned down the offer. Baldwin gave the King of France the authority to choose an alternate to Hugh, but since Sibylla already had a son who was in the line of succession through her, who would want to be king and see someone else's son inherit the throne?

According to contemporary chronicler William of Tyre, during the Holy Week of 1180, both Count Raymond III of Tripoli and Prince Bohemond III of Antioch marched to Jerusalem to force Baldwin to have Sibylla marry Baldwin of Ibelin and then give up his power immediately to his sister and new brother-in-law.

The Ibelin family had recently risen to prominence. Hugh of Ibelin (Baldwin's eldest brother), had become the third husband of Agnes of Courtenay, and Sibylla's mother. Sibylla's father, Amalric, after being annulled from Agnes of Courtenay, had married Maria Comnena. After Amalric's death, Maria Comnena had married Balian, the Lord of Ibelin and Baldwin's younger brother. The Ibelin family had become intertwined with the royal family of Jerusalem, then why not have a trifecta and have Sibylla marry an Ibelin?

Well, Bohemond and Raymond were foiled. Baldwin either knew of their plan and did not approve, or out of desperation he hatched his own plan.

A Poitevin knight, Guy of Lusignan, had recently come to Jerusalem. Guy was not the noblest of knights, having been exiled from Poitou because he and his brothers tried to kidnap Eleanor of Aquitaine for ransom. (This was a dumb idea.)

Another contemporary chronicler, Ernoul, records that Sibylla wrote to Baldwin of Ibelin to tell him that she would persuade her brother to let them be married on one condition. The condition was that Baldwin of Ibelin had to get himself out of captivity: he was currently held for ransom by Saladin, by whom he and Templar master Odo of Saint Amand had been captured in 1179. Ernoul, a squire of Balian of Ibelin, was probably saying this to make the Ibelins look better. Modern historians doubt Ernoul's account.

On the other hand, it is said that Saladin learned of the plan to force Sibylla to marry Baldwin and make him king, and Saladin raised the ransom from a knight's to a king's ransom, making it prohibitively expensive to get him released. (He was ransomed later by Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Comnenos.)

So Sibylla married Guy of Lusignan. Tomorrow we'll see how they handled the kingdom.

The Power of Gold

Yes, it's the witch-weighing scene
from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"

There is a medieval anecdote in the so-called "Chronicle of Ernoul" that, though fanciful, is based on a true story. The author, "Ernoul," names himself in his Chronicle and says he was a squire of Balian of Ibelin, one of the Crusader nobles who helped take and maintain (for a short time) Jerusalem. He tells a story of a bride (Lucie) who was put on a large scale by a suitor, who offered her guardian (Raymond III of Tripoli) the lady's weight in gold for the privilege of marrying her.

The true story is just as demonstrative of the power of gold, however, and doesn't need a set of scales.

The lady was Cécile Dorel, who inherited lands in Tripoli upon the death of her father. Raymond III (1140-1187), Count of Tripoli, was her uncle. Raymond was approached by two men for Cécile's hand in marriage (and the coastal lands in Tripoli that she now possessed).

One of the men was Gerard de Ridefort. His origin is uncertain, but by the time of this story he was in the service of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and held the title Marshal of the kingdom, putting him in charge of all mercenaries and disbursement of spoils of war. This would have been a noble match between Gerard and Cécile, but Raymond III acted differently. He married Cécile to the nephew of a Pisan merchant. Why? The bride price was too handsome to ignore. The bride price was money or valuables offered to the family of the bride by the groom or his family in order to ensure the marriage (feel free to read "buy the woman"). The Pisan nephew, whose name was Plivano, offered 10,000 bezants for Cécile. Bezants varied in weight and value, so it is difficult now to determine exactly how much that bride price was worth in today's money. It was clearly, however, an amount not to be ignored—and not easily matched—and so Plivano had his bride.

Gerard took the loss poorly and fell ill. He swore off women, apparently, and became a Templar, going on to a great career in that order. That, however, is a another story.