The Crusader States

by Malcolm Barber

  At the same time the Hospitaller presence was intended to keep the local population in check. In 1137, Raymond had blamed the death of his father on the treachery of Syrians living on Mount Lebanon and had exacted savage retribution on them and their families.105 Mountainous regions on the borders of the Christian and Muslim lands were not easy to control and local chiefs often managed to gain a considerable degree of independence.106 Indeed, the cave-fortress of David the Syrian may well have been the stronghold where those who had betrayed Pons had been based.107

  Fulk had been deterred from intervening in Antioch, the affairs of which had taken up so much of the first five years of his reign, first by Melisende when Alice had once more seized power in late 1135 or early in 1136, and then by the arrival of Raymond of Poitiers, designated husband of Constance, Alice's daughter, very soon after in the spring of 1136.108 With the defeat at Montferrand, his practical ability to act there was in any case seriously undermined and this helps to explain his apparent break with the policies of his predecessor, who had devoted so much of his time to the defence of the principality.

  The situation in Antioch was complicated by the death of Bernard of Valence, the first Latin patriarch and the last direct link with the veterans of the First Crusade, in the autumn of 1135. In the absence of a resident lay ruler it appeared that the clergy of Antioch could make their own choice of a successor unimpeded, but while they were deliberating, Ralph, archbishop of Mamistra, was, according to William of Tyre, swept to power by popular acclaim, ‘without the knowledge of his brethren and fellow bishops’.109 However, Ralph came from a military background in Domfront in southern Normandy and he was probably supported by some of his fellow Normans among the Antiochene nobility. Evidence that his elevation was not entirely spontaneous can be seen from the fact that he was the only one of the leading prelates not present at the council called to consider the matter and that he moved swiftly to secure his position, imprisoning ecclesiastical opponents and, in contrast to his predecessor, assuming the pallium without reference to Rome. As the Church was locked in the schism between Innocent II and Anacletus II, there was little the papacy could do about this. His elevation may have been the work of Rainald Mazoir, who was attempting to counter the faction that supported Princess Alice.110

  As William of Tyre says, Raymond of Poitiers was ‘of noble blood and ancient lineage’ but, unlike Fulk, he had not been able to bring any military help with him, having been obliged to travel through Italy disguised as a pilgrim in order to avoid Roger II of Sicily. As William presents it, this situation was manipulated by ‘the crafty patriarch of Antioch, a man well versed in wiles’, who persuaded Alice that Raymond had come to marry her, while inducing Raymond himself to swear an oath of fealty to him in return for organising his marriage to Constance, at this time a child of eight. In addition, if Henry, Raymond's brother, came to Antioch, the patriarch would arrange for him to marry Alice, who would bring with her dower lands of Latakia and Jabala. When Alice realised she had been tricked, she retreated to these lands, but ever after ‘pursued the prince with relentless hatred’.111

  William of Tyre does not tell this as a continuous story, and his childhood memories (which included actually meeting Ralph of Domfront) were of limited value when describing such a complex political scene. Most of his information seems to have come from those who could cast their minds back forty years or so and, understandably, historians have found these events difficult to interpret.112 Alice must have known that Raymond had come to marry Constance, but it may be that the speed with which it was done caught her off-guard.113 She must, too, have realised that she could not prevail over Raymond and the patriarch together, and have accepted the possibility that she might still command some influence through marriage to Henry. Once Raymond had appeared in Antioch, she knew she had little hope of retaining control of the government.

  Ralph had therefore manoeuvred his way to power in Antioch, but his position was distinctly precarious. According to John Kinnamos, who, as secretary to the Byzantine emperor, Manuel Comnenus, grandson of Alexius I, wrote an account of these years based on his own observations and those of other witnesses, after Bohemond II's death in 1130, ‘the principal personages’ in Antioch wrote to Emperor John Comnenus asking for a marriage between Constance and Manuel, John's youngest son, promising that ‘immediately after the marriage between Constance and Manuel the Antiochenes’ realm would be in his power’. This might have been attractive to John since the Byzantines had never accepted the legitimacy of Latin rule in Antioch, nor the removal of the Greek patriarch, and such a marriage would have restored Byzantine power at relatively little cost. However, Kinnamos says that the offer was almost immediately withdrawn when the Antiochenes decided instead to ally with Leon, the Roupenid prince of Cilicia, whose desire to re-establish Armenian rule in Cilicia inevitably made him an enemy of the Byzantines.114

  John Comnenus had succeeded his father in August 1118, despite the efforts of his sister, Anna, to prevent him, but he did not intervene directly in Antioch until the summer of 1137. The early years of the reign were dominated by conflicts in the Balkans where, in 1122, he had defeated both the Patzinaks and the Serbs, and by uneasy relations with Hungary, which led to war between 1128 and 1130. He knew, too, that Antioch offered no direct threat, whereas the Normans in Sicily had a long record of attacks on Byzantine lands and needed particularly careful attention, especially after Roger II's coronation as king of Sicily in 1130. John's alliance with the German rulers, first Lothar III and then, on his death in 1137, Conrad III, was designed to counteract potential Sicilian ambitions.

  The manifold problems of the Byzantine empire had given the Latin principality of Antioch a long respite, but in the summer of 1137 the emperor appeared in Cilicia with what William of Tyre describes as ‘a countless number of cavalry and a vast array of chariots and four-wheeled carts’. William evidently reflects the fear of contemporaries that John intended direct conquest; he had already defeated the Danishmend Turks in 1135 and only Leon of Armenia stood between him and Antioch. He quickly took Tarsus, Adana, Mamistra and Anarzarba, and in mid-August laid siege to Antioch itself, obliging Raymond to hurry back from Montferrand, where he had helped to rescue Fulk from Zengi.115 John, says William of Tyre, was intending to force the Latins to fulfil the terms of their oaths to Alexius, which obliged them to hand over the fortresses which they had captured when the emperor appeared with his army. William agrees that this had been the case, but alleges that since Alexius ‘had dealt fraudulently with them and had been the first to break his own pledges’, they were no longer bound by their agreement. John's invasion of Cilicia, held by the Latins for forty years, was therefore ‘contrary to all justice and right’.116 Even so, the emperor effectively removed Cilicia from the control of the princes of Antioch and it was never regained.

  The Byzantines could not be expected to see the situation in the same light; even William of Tyre acknowledges John's anger when he learned that Constance had been married to Raymond of Poitiers without reference to him. In fact, in the face of overwhelming force there was little that Raymond could do but submit, although William of Tyre presents this as an agreement worked out by arbitration. Raymond was obliged to swear ‘allegiance and fealty’ to the emperor and to allow him free access to the city of Antioch and its citadel. If John were able to take the cities of Aleppo, Shaizar, Hama and Homs, these would be granted to Raymond as hereditary possessions. Once this had been agreed, the imperial standard was raised above the citadel of Antioch and John himself retired to spend the winter on the coast at Tarsus.117

  In the spring the emperor made a serious assault on Shaizar. William describes his energetic attempts to capture it and his success in gaining the lower town. However, he received little help from Raymond of Poitiers and Joscelin of Edessa, who are condemned by William for wasting time playing dice. As he could not take the citadel John therefore decided to abandon the siege and to accept the citizens’ offer of a large sum
of money, together with a very fine cross made of reddish marble, lost at the battle of Manzikert sixty-seven years before.118 Prince Raymond now apparently regretted his conduct, but the emperor could not be persuaded to change his mind, and he returned to Antioch. Here he demanded control of the citadel on the grounds that he could not prepare for the campaign against Aleppo, as promised in his agreement with Raymond, in any of the lesser cities of Cilicia.119 Despite his personal admiration for John, William's view is that this would have been a disaster, for ceding Antioch to ‘the effeminate Greeks’ would be tantamount to throwing away the principality that had cost the Latins so much blood and toil.120

  William sees Joscelin of Edessa as the arch-intriguer in these circumstances, anxious to undermine Raymond (whom he resented) in the eyes of the emperor, while at the same time stirring up the population into a series of violent attacks upon the Greeks in the city. In the end the emperor decided to leave, perhaps believing that at this time it was not feasible to hold either Antioch or Shaizar. Nevertheless, he promised to return with a strong army in order to carry out the terms of the agreement with Raymond.121 John Kinnamos does not offer the same degree of detail in his account, admitting that he was not an eyewitness, but he does present the campaign as a triumph: ‘Yet with fortune looking on favourably, so much had I think been achieved in two years.’122

  Kinnamos seems to be suggesting that this was a first step and, indeed, in 1142, the emperor again set out with a formidable army. All four of his sons accompanied him, but the two eldest died during the expedition, while the third, Isaac, who was himself unwell, was sent back to Constantinople to accompany the bodies. Only the fourth, Manuel, continued with him, and Kinnamos says the emperor ‘intended that Cilicia and Antioch along with Attaleia and Cyprus should be granted to Manuel for his portion’.123 If this really was the emperor's plan, then it seems that he wanted more than just acknowledgement of his overlordship, for this would mean that Antioch would be under direct Byzantine control, including the reinstatement of the Greek patriarch. Although William of Tyre asserts that Raymond and the people kept asking for Byzantine help against Zengi, Kinnamos sees the new expedition as action against a ruler whom he believed had rebelled. The emperor's sudden and quite unexpected appearance at Turbessel in September 1142, which caught Joscelin completely off-guard and obliged him to hand over one of his daughters as a hostage, seems to confirm the interpretation offered by Kinnamos.124

  Having neutralised Joscelin, the emperor moved his army to the castle of Baghras (Gaston) on the southern approaches to the Syrian Gates (Belen Pass) in the Amanus mountains north of Antioch, and demanded that Prince Raymond cede the citadel and the city. William of Tyre accepts that this was quite justified in the light of previous agreements, but repeats his view that if they had surrendered Antioch to ‘the indolence of the Greeks’, it would have fallen into the hands of the Muslims again. A delegation of leading nobles was sent to the Byzantines ‘on behalf of the blessed Peter and the patriarch and all the citizens’, to inform the emperor that Raymond had no legal right to hand over his wife's dowry. This obvious piece of dissembling predictably provoked John to anger, but it served to delay him long enough for him to seek winter quarters on the Cilician coast as he had done in 1137–8.125

  At the same time he turned his attention to the kingdom of Jerusalem, announcing to King Fulk that he wished to come to the city ‘for prayer and devotion’ and that he would bring military aid. The ambivalence of the relationship between the Greeks and Latins appears very obvious in this request; at the time of John's attack on Antioch in 1137, William of Tyre commented that, even though ‘both sides professed the same faith, they fought with one another as with enemies’.126 Fulk had no wish to see such a huge army enter his territories, yet it was difficult to refuse a fellow Christian ruler access to the holy places. A high-level delegation was dispatched to explain that the kingdom could not sustain such numbers without risking famine, but that the emperor was welcome to come with a smaller entourage of 10,000 men. As Fulk must have hoped, the Byzantines appear to have regarded this as inadequate for a ruler of John's standing and the plan was abandoned.

  Even so, William must be reflecting the worries of contemporaries in saying that John ‘in his heart’ planned ‘great deeds’ in Syria the following summer. Latin suspicions about the nature of these ambitions are to an extent confirmed by Niketas Choniates, who rose to high office under the emperors of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. He presents the emperor as having ‘a burning desire to unite Antioch to Constantinople and then to visit the holy lands trodden by God and adorn the life-giving tomb of the Lord with precious gifts, and, in addition, to clear away the barbarians round about’.127 However, whatever his long-term goals, the emperor was unable to fulfil them, for, in April 1143, he was accidentally poisoned by the tip of an arrow while hunting and, although he survived a few days, his doctors were unable to prevent his death. He chose his youngest son, Manuel, as his successor.128

  Raymond of Poitiers had survived seven years as prince of Antioch, but it had been a traumatic time. While the Byzantine presence had deterred Zengi from throwing his full weight against him, nevertheless John Comnenus had evidently meant both to displace him and to reinstall the Greek patriarch. Raymond's problems were therefore exacerbated throughout by the behaviour of Ralph of Domfront, the patriarch, who had his own ambitions.129 Ralph had not been canonically elected, nor had he sought papal confirmation, acting instead as the ruler of an autonomous patriarchate which, like Rome, had the authority of Petrine foundation. Raymond, for his part, had resented the need to swear fealty in return for a marriage he had been freely offered. Inevitably this meant a struggle for power not dissimilar to that between Daibert and Baldwin I in Jerusalem, but perhaps postponed for a generation by the longevity of Bernard of Valence. The mutual hostility of the prince and the patriarch was obvious even to Ibn al-Qalanisi, who knew that, in the winter of 1137–8, Raymond had actually imprisoned the patriarch, apparently to stop him upsetting the agreement he had reached with John Comnenus.130

  In the autumn of 1137, the threat of an imperial takeover induced Ralph to appeal to Pope Innocent II. The ending of the papal schism with the death of Anacletus II in January 1138 enabled Innocent to take a more active role and, in the course of the year, both Ralph and his clerical opponents in Antioch travelled to Rome to make their cases.131 The pope, at first reluctant to give Ralph an audience, knew he needed a strong supporter in the Antiochene Church if a Greek patriarch were to be avoided and this must have persuaded him to recognise Ralph. Innocent then sent a legate to the East to investigate matters on the ground.

  A synod was convened in December 1140 under a new papal legate, Alberic, cardinal-bishop of Ostia, attended by the prelates of Outremer, including William, patriarch of Jerusalem.132 William of Tyre's description of this can be supplemented by that of an eyewitness at the council, whose account shows that the implications of the proceedings went beyond the personal conduct of Ralph of Domfront. Ralph himself appeared on the first day, bringing with him his suffragans and chapter and, in a direct challenge to the authority of the legate, made a show of displaying his patriarchal cross. This witness – evidently antipathetic to Ralph – presents a series of exchanges between the legate and the patriarch in which Ralph chose to represent the legate as insulting the bestowal of his insignia. Proclaiming that he would appeal to Rome, he then walked out, installing himself in his palace, surrounded by his household and knights.133

  Ralph made no further appearance at the synod and on the third day was deposed and degraded from the clerical order. The tensions at the council were therefore exacerbated by the patriarch's attempt to widen the issue under debate beyond that of his personal conduct into one of principle, that is, the unresolved status of the patriarchate within the Church as a whole. It is impossible to tell how seriously Ralph took this: the potential for conflict had existed ever since a Latin patriarch had been installed in Antioch
and Antiochene claims had been strongly defended by Ralph's predecessor, Bernard of Valence. If, however, Ralph had been using this simply as a diversionary tactic, it failed, since Count Raymond could now imprison him without violating clerical immunity, and he was not free to travel to the West until around 1144. William of Tyre says that another appeal to the pope was successful but, again like Daibert, Ralph died before he was able to return to Syria.134

  King Fulk, like John Comnenus, died in a hunting accident, on 10 November 1143, although in his case it was the result of a blow to the head from his saddle after he had pitched off his horse.135 Throughout the period of imperial intervention there is no sign of the presence of Fulk, who, in the second half of his reign, appears to have concentrated on the affairs of his kingdom. This was partly a matter of circumstance, but it seems too to have been a conscious decision that contrasts with the policies of Baldwin II and, indeed, with his own approach in the first five years of the reign. Baldwin II's preoccupation with Antioch had provoked serious opposition, while Fulk himself had been the first ruler to face an outright revolt, so this attitude is understandable; nevertheless, it had serious implications for the future.136 As William of Tyre says, quoting Horace, ‘When your neighbor's house is burning, your own property is in danger too.’137

  CHAPTER 8

  The Zengid Threat