Holy Warriors (12 page)

While the nobility of Jerusalem had universally endorsed the choice of Fulk as ruler, evidently they had now reconsidered; some may have feared that he would cast Melisende aside. After all, his father, Fulk le Réchin, had, in spite of his nickname, married four, possibly five times, and Fulk himself had an adult son, Elias, from his first marriage. At the time of his father’s negotiations to wed Melisende, Elias had been expected to succeed to the county of Perche in northern France, but had since been cheated out of this by his father-in-law. Could the next king of Jerusalem lever his own son into the line of succession in the East?

After Baldwin had revealed his final wishes he removed himself from any further controversy when he donned a monk’s cowl and took vows of holy orders. Like many nobles of the time he chose to end his life as a cleric and forsook the secular world to be closer to God. On August 21, 1131, the king died. He was buried near his predecessors in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the foot of Mount Calvary, the place of Christ’s Crucifixion.

Within a month Fulk, Melisende, and the young Baldwin were crowned. The coronations of Baldwin I and Baldwin II had taken place at the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem, but the 1131 ceremony was moved to the
focal point of the kingdom, the Holy Sepulchre—an early indication that Fulk wanted to change direction. The court officials chose September 14, the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a commemoration of the discovery of the relic of the True Cross, as an auspicious and appropriate day for the occasion.

The coronation was a great public event, designed to cement in the minds of everyone who witnessed it the beginning of a new period of divinely sanctioned rule. In a society without means of mass communication, such carefully staged displays were vital opportunities to reinforce notions of power and splendor. Detailed descriptions of thirteenth-century coronations allow us to reconstruct the events of 1131 with some confidence; we also have the evidence of an early twelfth-century coronation oath.
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The minutely calculated ceremonial emphasized the royal dignity, the position of the senior nobility, especially the great officers of state, as well as the authority of the Church. Many parts of the ritual can be traced back to the settlers’ homelands and dated from the age of Charlemagne, giving them further gravitas by the weight of tradition.

Once the coronation date had been announced the preparations began. The nobility of Jerusalem traveled to the capital to take part in the ceremony, as did representatives from Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa. Bishops, abbots, and all the other churchmen of the realm also started to assemble. A more exotic touch was added by the presence of an embassy from Fatimid Egypt; serious political turmoil prompted the new vizier, Kutayfat, to seek a truce with the Christians and his envoys carried a beautiful gift, a carved ivory tau or staff, to advance their cause.
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Most of the annual pilgrim visitors were still in the Holy Land and they must have been delighted to witness an event of such importance. As the great day approached, people were drawn toward the holy city to watch or take part in the coronation; Jerusalem must have been overflowing with visitors staying with friends, fellow religious groups, or in the many hostels.

On September 14 Fulk and Melisende dressed in the royal palace, assisted, as ever, by their servants. They wore special robes, beautifully embroidered dalmatics—wide-sleeved tunics, open at the sides—and stoles. The family assembled in the Temple complex at the entrance to the royal palace where the marshal and the constable awaited them with horses and the royal standard. This was a square of white cloth with a cross at each corner and one in the center to represent the wounds of Christ. Fulk and
Melisende mounted their horses, specially caparisoned for the event, and the chamberlain pointed the way forward with the royal sword. Behind the couple came the seneschal carrying the scepter and the constable holding the standard. Given the scale of the entourage it is likely that the procession went along Temple Street, one of the wider thoroughfares of the city—perhaps seven meters across, rather than the two to three meters of most byways. Temple Street ascends gently uphill for about three hundred meters until a small dogleg moves onto David Street. The way was thronged with cheering spectators crammed in doorways, leaning from windows, standing in front of shops and up on the flat roofs of the houses. The route was decorated with highly colored banners and a swell of noise and anticipation rolled ahead of the approaching party. After another couple of hundred meters the procession turned right onto Patriarch Street and moved alongside the western wall of the Hospital of Saint John before turning right into the courtyard in front of the Holy Sepulchre itself. The street plan of this district of Jerusalem is barely changed today and many of the buildings that rise either side of these roads are crusader in origin. Almost claustrophobic, and often in heavy shadow because of the narrow streets, the area has a truly medieval feel. The absence of traffic, the bustle of people buying and selling; the slower, less certain pace of strangers visiting holy sites; the smells of cooking food and exotic spices, and the mounds of brightly colored merchandise provide the modern tourist with some echoes of the crusader age. Fulk and Melisende dismounted at the courtyard of the Holy Sepulchre. The constable handed the royal standard to the marshal and took the horses’ bridles. Standing in the doorway of the church, waiting to welcome the royal couple, was Patriarch William I of Jerusalem, accompanied by his senior churchmen and the Eastern Christian religious hierarchy, all wearing their finest robes. The party moved from daylight into the holy of holies, the candlelit rotunda that contained Christ’s tomb. The building in place today was (as we will see later) the product of a reconstruction program initiated by Fulk and Melisende soon after their coronation, but in September 1131 the Sepulchre area was already laid out in a basic circular shape. As the candles flickered and incense wafted through the air, everyone knelt in worship and the patriarch led prayers for a successful reign. William then asked Fulk and Melisende to take the coronation oath. No previous rulers of Jerusalem had been designated joint monarchs in the way that Baldwin II had prescribed, but given Fulk’s and Melisende’s status—and the events that followed—we
should assume that they both took the same oath. The infant Baldwin must also have been present, but for obvious reasons only as a witness.

The text of the twelfth-century coronation oath has survived and in this case probably resembled these words: “I, Melisende [or Fulk] promise, in the presence of God and his angels, from this day and henceforth, to conserve law, justice and peace for the Holy Church of God in Jerusalem and for my subjects.”
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They also agreed to seek the advice of the best churchmen of the land where needed. After swearing the oaths the king and queen promised to maintain and defend the crown. William then kissed the couple, turned to the clerics, nobles, and visitors who packed into the church and asked them to confirm that Fulk and Melisende were the lawful heirs to the throne. Three times he asked the question and on the third, a shout of “Oill!” (Yes!) echoed around the building. A further acclamation came through the open doors of the church from those unable to squeeze inside, then everyone sang the hymn “Te Deum Laudamus.”

Another solemn procession then entered the rotunda. Senior nobles had taken the royal crowns out of the treasury of the Holy Sepulchre and carried them forward. The king and queen sat in their choir stalls near the altar and Mass was said. William proclaimed a blessing and began to anoint them. This was one of the most crucial elements of the coronation ritual; the blessing of kings and queens with consecrated oil set them apart from all other laymen. Dukes and counts made oaths and received insignia, but royalty were the only secular people anointed in such a way. The patriarch, holding a horn that contained holy oil, dipped his fingers into it and then touched the head and shoulders of Fulk and Melisende. They now had divine sanction. Next Patriarch William moved on to the symbols of office; given that a joint coronation was unprecedented, either a duplicate of each object had to be found or, more likely, they were given to Fulk alone. A ring, to symbolize loyalty, was put on the king’s finger and he was girded with a sword to indicate justice and the duty of defense. Then he was crowned, given a scepter in his right hand to signify the punishment of sinners and an orb in his left to show dominion. At this point, Melisende must have been crowned queen.

The two monarchs turned to the senior churchmen present, said, “Long live the king/queen in prosperity,” and kissed all of them before turning to their thrones. The Mass ended with Communion. The patriarch blessed the royal standard and gave it to the constable. One wonders what was running
through the minds of Fulk and Melisende. In some ways, both must have felt elated by the sense of occasion, their being the center of attention, the bellow of acclaim from the audience, the special ritual of anointing and the placing of the crowns upon their heads. Fulk must have been conscious of his elevation: from the ranks of the senior nobility as count of Anjou he had now reached the very top echelon, that exclusive level of royalty. Exactly how unwilling he was to share this with Melisende would soon become evident. Nothing from his experiences in western Europe would have prepared him for an equal division of authority with a woman; indeed he almost certainly believed that his wife should obey him in all things. The day secured Fulk’s handhold on royal status, but he resolved to ignore the element of joint rule that lay at the heart of the ceremony and he began to exercise power in the way he felt to be appropriate and his due.

Melisende too had moved to the highest rank of secular life; perhaps she felt some trepidation—even as a joint ruler she was doing something almost unprecedented in living memory. The only comparable case had been that of Queen Urraca of Castile and León (1109–26) and she had used a male companion to help govern without a husband.
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Whether Melisende knew much about Urraca’s experiences is unclear. At the very least she could rely on a core group of her father’s nobles with whom she had grown up and who were likely to be loyal to Baldwin’s memory.

The king and queen stepped out from the Holy Sepulchre into the sharp light of day to receive the cheers of the crowds outside. They retraced their steps back to the Templum Domini (today the al-Aqsa Mosque) where they laid their crowns on the altar to commemorate the presentation of Jesus to Simeon in the temple. This was the last solemn act of the day. Now the nobility of Jerusalem served a splendid celebratory banquet—singing, storytelling, and dancing rounded off one of the landmark events in the history of Jerusalem: the inauguration of a new and experimental phase for the royal dynasty.

Within three years the royal marriage was in serious trouble and the kingdom of Jerusalem on the verge of its gravest political crisis to date. Two of
the most influential men in the land, Count Hugh of Jaffa and Roman of Le Puy, lord of Transjordan, conspired to challenge King Fulk. Their motivation was a combination of the personal and the political, and represented the entwined interests of Queen Melisende and the native nobility.
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Hugh was in the prime of life: about twenty-eight years old, he was tall, handsome, and a distinguished warrior. William of Tyre eulogized: “In him the gifts of nature seemed to have met in lavish abundance; without question, in respect to physical beauty and nobility of birth, as well as experience in the art of war, he had no equal in the kingdom.”
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The count was the son of Hugh II of Le Puiset who had set out on crusade in 1106–7. En route to the Levant his wife had given birth to a son in Apulia. The boy had remained at the Sicilian court until he came of age when he traveled to the Holy Land and sought his inheritance from King Baldwin II around 1120. He was related to the royal house of Jerusalem through his father, and his family ties and career made him a natural associate of Melisende. Soon after 1123 he married Emma of Jaffa, the widow of Eustace Grenier (in his day the most powerful landowner in the kingdom and a royal constable). Emma must have been rather older than Hugh because she already had two sons, Eustace, lord of Sidon, and Walter, lord of Caesarea, both of whom were adults and important nobles in their own right.

During the early 1130s tensions began to simmer between the king and Count Hugh. The count grew arrogant: he refused to obey royal commands and started to drift toward open defiance of his monarch. Hugh was an immensely influential noble in his own right and the county of Jaffa was probably the wealthiest lordship in the kingdom of Jerusalem. Charters indicate that he enjoyed the full trappings of a royal household, including a chancellor and treasurer. His position was unique in the kingdom: no one else possessed the title of count; in fact, the only other men in the entire Levant with such a rank were the count of Tripoli and the count of Edessa.

As the friction between the two men became increasingly overt Hugh began to formulate a strategy. Almost nine centuries later, the details of his conspiracy are elusive, but we are fortunate to have a charter from the principality of Antioch that yields dramatic evidence. A document dated July 1134 places Hugh in the court of Melisende’s sister, Alice of Antioch.
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The princess had already shown herself to be the most independently minded and rebellious individual in the Latin East by staging two uprisings against the king of Jerusalem. This being so, it is unlikely to have been a coincidence
that the count traveled over 280 miles north to see her. He must have gone to sound her out and alert her to the likelihood of open confrontation. As the champion of Melisende’s cause it is logical that he would want to enlist the help of the queen’s sister.

As the political momentum behind Hugh and Melisende increased, another, more personal, aspect to the situation became apparent. Fulk began to suspect the count of being more than simply friendly toward the queen. Perhaps he felt insecure—he was an older, placid man who may have been threatened by the obvious familiarity between Melisende and her dashing contemporary. Some whispered—tantalizingly—that there was proof of a more intimate relationship, yet none of our sources offers details. In such circumstances it is hard to make a genuine assessment of the truth. Sexual innuendo was, and remains, one of the oldest and easiest ways to disparage an opponent’s name, and if the gossip came from the royal camp it could have had a far wider impact. Such rumors obviously impugned the good name of the queen herself and if an open allegation of adultery were proven the legal process would be barbaric. The queen could undergo an ordeal by fire and if found guilty, according to laws laid down in the 1120 Concordat of Nablus, she would be punished by rhinotomy, the slitting or cutting off of her nose; Hugh would be castrated. Melisende might then share the fate of the lady of Banyas, a woman found guilty of adultery, although in this instance at the hands of her Muslim captors, and be sent to a convent. No medieval queen had been treated in such a way, but in the poisonous atmosphere of 1134 such an outcome was a theoretical possibility.