Holy Warriors (14 page)

As time went on the open hostility between the king and queen caused increasing concern. Close friends of the couple tried to mediate between the two camps, but Melisende was immovable; Fulk had to offer major compromises
to restore a semblance of normality. In the end he managed to persuade her to forsake the open antipathy toward his friends and to permit them to attend public gatherings. William of Tyre tells us of the most crucial concessions made by the king: “From that day forward, the king became so uxorious that, whereas he had formerly aroused her wrath, he now calmed it, and not even in unimportant cases did he take any measures without her knowledge and assistance.”
²⁸

Herein lies the heart of the matter. Running in tandem with the queen’s close relationship with Count Hugh was the fundamental dispute over Fulk’s governance of the kingdom. He had refused to accept King Baldwin II’s deathbed deviation from the original agreement that he should rule in his own right—instead he had tried to forge a path of his own. Rather than exercising joint power with Melisende, he had ignored her. Furthermore, as Baldwin II anticipated, Fulk started to introduce his Angevin henchmen into positions of authority at the expense of the native nobility. He dismissed the royal chancellor and a royal viscount and replaced them with his own men.
²⁹
In other words, a central aspect of the revolt of Hugh of Jaffa was the survival of the native nobility of Jerusalem, represented most dramatically in the person of Melisende herself. The contemporary Anglo-Norman writer Orderic Vitalis made this telling observation about Fulk’s behavior after his coronation:

Although Orderic wrote in northern Europe, his sources had, in outline, given a political narrative—excluding the details of any relationship between Hugh and Melisende—of the 1134 civil war, and provided a concise explanation as to why the uprising had taken place. In Damascus, Ibn al-Qalanisi also understood the problem: “After Baldwin [II] there was none left amongst the Franks possessed of sound judgement and capacity to govern. The new king-count [Fulk] who came to them by sea from their country was not sound in his judgement, nor was he successful in his administration.”
³¹

Fulk had tried to sideline his queen, but through her indomitable will and the resistance led by Count Hugh, Melisende preserved her rightful inheritance and the power of the nobility of Jerusalem. The way in which she gained the ascendancy and forced Fulk to make such huge concessions showed the authority of a woman with strong personality and true bloodline. Fulk had not suspected that Melisende would challenge him with such determination; to his mind a woman should follow the Church orthodoxy and submit to her husband. In dealing with the unknown he had been caught off guard and had behaved ponderously until brought to recognize the wider political reality. As William of Tyre stated, from that time onward the king and the queen acted together—as Baldwin II had decreed. Charters that date from the period after the civil war demonstrate this. A gift to the Hospitallers in late 1136 was confirmed by Fulk “with the assent of his wife Melisende,” and another described an agreement made with “the consent of Queen Melisende.”
³²

It was not just in the kingdom of Jerusalem that the effects of Fulk’s loss of power were felt. Almost as soon as the situation in the south began to resolve itself, Princess Alice of Antioch rose in rebellion. The death of Prince Bohemond II in 1130 had brought turmoil to northern Syria. In 1134, for the third time in six years, Melisende’s younger sister threw off the direction imposed by the king of Jerusalem and asserted her desire to rule the principality as regent for her little daughter, Constance. In 1130, King Baldwin II had traveled north to impose order; two years later, Fulk did the same. On this latest occasion, however, Melisende continued to flex her political muscles. The king was prepared to remove Alice again, but Melisende countered him. She told him not to interfere in her sister’s governance of Antioch and, constrained by his promises to the queen, Fulk meekly agreed. For a brief period in 1135–36, Alice—who remained unmarried—ruled as sovereign
in the principality of Antioch while her sister seems to have been the dominant partner in the kingdom of Jerusalem—a time of genuine female ascendancy. King Baldwin II’s eldest daughters were clearly a remarkable pair of women. To rule (or dominate) two territories at the same time in the macho, violent eastern Mediterranean was a spectacular achievement.
³³

There is a touching footnote to the dispute in Jerusalem because it seems that Fulk genuinely hoped to restore close personal relations with his wife. As well as making good his political failings, the king commissioned a lavish and carefully chosen gift for her. Melisende’s piety was well known and she was also recognized as a patroness of books.
³⁴
Fulk thought hard about the most appropriate present he could give his wife and, to modern eyes at least, he certainly came up with a magnificent peace offering. The Melisende Psalter is an extraordinarily beautiful little book that survives today in the British Museum. It is only twenty-two centimeters tall and fourteen centimeters wide—roughly the size of a modern paperback—but it has a multicolored silk spine and a dozen roundels, studded with turquoise, ruby, and emerald stones that decorate the intricate ivory covers. Inside, it contains twenty-four full-page hand-colored illuminations of scenes from the New Testament, a calendar of saints’ days and observances, as well as prayers, many of which have highly decorated initial letters. The book is not explicitly addressed to the queen, but its contents and decorative themes make such an identification almost certain. The Latin text, for example, is written for a secular woman, rather than an abbess (such as her sister Yveta). There is a special focus on the veneration of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen, suggestive of a connection to the nearby abbey of Saint Mary Jehoshaphat in Jerusalem, a house patronized by the queen and later her burial place. More obviously the calendar has two especially personalized entries amid the daily list of general ecclesiastical commemorations. The twenty-first of August is highlighted as the date of King Baldwin II’s death and October 1 as the passing of Queen Morphia. No other rulers of Jerusalem are mentioned, although the capture of the holy city on July 15 is noted. The inclusion of Melisende’s parents is surely the most obvious
sign that the book was for her. A more subtle indication that the gift came from Fulk—apart from the fact that it must have cost an enormous sum of money, perhaps only affordable by a king—is in the carving of a bird at the top of the back cover. It is labeled “Herodius”—also known as “fulica” in medieval bestiaries; in other words the bird is a falcon, and the name is a pun on Fulk.

The illustrations were produced in a workshop connected to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and four different illuminators painted the pictures. Their work reflects a mixture of influences: English, French, Byzantine, Arab, and Levantine, and they created a genuinely unique synthesis of styles. The ivory covers are particularly striking and their images are a clear indication of the message Fulk wished to convey. The front cover shows stories of King David from the Old Testament in which he proves his strength and fitness to rule, his humility, and his interest in harmony. In between the roundels is a battle between Virtues and Vices, the latter depicted as women with long, disheveled hair, defeated by women with neat head coverings. The monarch on the back cover, placed under the falcon, and dressed in the manner of a king of Jerusalem—the Byzantine-style regalia of a crown and chlamys—is probably meant to represent Fulk. He carries out the six acts of mercy as specified in the book of Matthew, giving out food and drink, clothing, help to the sick, visiting prisoners, and sheltering strangers. In between these roundels, Islamic-style birds and beasts fight. In essence, the covers show the restoration of a state of equilibrium and reveal a penitent king making good his misdeeds. The gift was meant to mark an end to the hostilities; it was a truly sumptuous book and the trouble taken over its subject matter and its production shows Fulk’s desire to apologize to his wife. We do not know of Melisende’s reaction when she was presented with the psalter; but we can judge some return to normality for the royal couple because in 1136 a second son, named Amalric, was born.

As the product of a mixed Frankish-Armenian marriage, Melisende represented a combination of different strands of Christianity, and she displayed this broad cultural background in her enthusiastic support of the Catholic and Eastern Christian Churches. Women had played a crucial role in spiritual matters since the early days of Christianity and the patronage of religious institutions was a familiar way for medieval queens to exercise power. There is a neat contradiction here because in spite of the Church’s portrayal of women as following the fallen Eve figure, many religious
houses and senior churchmen looked to women in authority for advancement and often formed close relations with them. A deeply pious woman, Melisende gave many gifts to monasteries, encouraged the building and improvement of churches such as the Templum Domini or the Armenian cathedral of Saint James, and was known to welcome pilgrim visitors.
³⁵
The queen also commissioned the huge fortified convent of Saint Lazarus at Bethany, east of Jerusalem, for her youngest sister, Yveta, to take charge of. She then donated to it a huge collection of gold, silver, and jeweled religious objects.
³⁶
Most importantly, perhaps, she oversaw the reconstruction of the spiritual heart of Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Melisende’s patronage went beyond religious buildings and she created a school of book-makers and miniature-painters, the style of which again reflected her mixed heritage. She also organized the construction of a vaulted complex of shops in Jerusalem, including the legendary (and still surviving) Street of Bad Cooking.
³⁷

In 1143 the royal couple were out riding near Acre when the king spied a hare and, with his customary enthusiasm for the hunt, he sped after the animal. As he urged his mount onward the horse stumbled and Fulk was catapulted out of the saddle and landed on his head. Unconscious and bleeding from his nose and ears he lapsed into a coma, much to the horror of the men with him. Melisende soon arrived at the scene and became hysterical with grief and anxiety, screaming, crying, and hugging her husband’s inert form. Such intense grief seems to indicate that the marriage had, eventually, been a happy one. The king was carried back to Acre where he lingered for a couple of days, but his injuries proved fatal and he died on November 10, 1143. A funeral cortege soon wound its way toward Jerusalem where the clergy and population came out to meet their monarch. He was buried with his predecessors in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the foot of Mount Calvary.
³⁸

Melisende was left as the queen-regnant for their young son, Baldwin III, but when he came of age she refused to step aside. To survive and prosper she needed a strategy. As a relatively young widow she was in a tantalizing position—chaste yet fertile; she needed male allies, but she was unwilling to
marry and risk creating factional strife. Almost inevitably, however, there were rumors of a lover. Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, the greatest churchman of the age, learned of this situation and warned the queen to maintain the standing of a widow: “I have heard certain evil reports of you, and although I do not completely believe them I am nevertheless sorry that your good name should be tarnished either by truth or falsehood. It is not beneath your dignity as a queen to be a widow. . . . Before God as a widow, before men as a queen. Remember that you are a queen whose worthy and unworthy actions cannot be hidden under a bushel.”
³⁹

To modern eyes, the most obvious manifestation of power is in the political arena. The prime symbol of this in the medieval age was the sword, ceremonially bestowed upon a lord’s son, and the representation of strength, virility, and authority. Almost every royal seal depicts a king holding such a weapon. Women were almost always excluded from the battlefield and so this crucial aspect of medieval rule was denied to them. On the rare occasions that they ventured into battle they were usually condemned as “savage” or “delinquent,” like prostitutes. It was for men alone to fight. This was a fundamental part of the framework in which Melisende had to work. For a woman to survive and to overcome the handicap of her sex she had to employ alternative strategies to succeed. One way of doing so—fighting aside—was to become, in effect, a temporary man. Displays of dignity, resolve, and decisiveness were a vital aspect of the required performance. In 1143, Bernard of Clairvaux advised Melisende: “The king, your husband, being dead, and the young king still unfit to discharge the affairs of the kingdom . . . the eyes of all will be on you, and on you alone the burden of the whole kingdom will rest. You must set your hand to great things and, although a woman, you must act as a man by doing all you have to do in a spirit prudent and strong. You must arrange all things prudently and discreetly so that all may judge you from your actions to be a king rather than a queen and so that the Gentiles [i.e., the Muslims] may have no occasion for saying: Where is the king of Jerusalem?”
⁴⁰