Maria Komnene, Queen of Jerusalem

Maria Komnene
Queen consort of Jerusalem
Tenure	29 August 1167 – 1174
Born	c. 1154
Died	1208/1217 (aged 53–63)
Spouse	Amalric I of Jerusalem Balian of Ibelin
Issue	Isabella I of Jerusalem Helvis of Ibelin John of Ibelin, the Old Lord of Beirut Margaret of Tiberias Philip of Ibelin
House	Comnenid dynasty
Father	John Doukas Komnenos
Mother	Maria Taronitissa

Maria Komnene or Comnena (Greek: Μαρία Κομνηνή, Maria Komnēnē) (c. 1154 – 1208/1217) was the second wife of King Amalric I of Jerusalem and mother of Queen Isabella of Jerusalem.

She was the daughter of John Doukas Komnenos, sometime Byzantine dux in Cyprus, and Maria Taronitissa, a descendant of the ancient Armenian kings. Her sister Theodora married Prince Bohemund III of Antioch, and her brother Alexios was briefly, in 1185, a pretender to the throne of the Byzantine Empire.

Life

Marriage of Maria Komnene and Amalric I.

After the annulment of his first marriage to Agnes of Courtenay, Amalric was anxious to forge an alliance with Byzantium and emperor Manuel I Komnenos, so in 1164/65 he sent ambassadors to Constantinople to ask the hand of an imperial princess but received no answer until August 1167, when they landed at Tyre with Maria Komnene, who was the emperor's grandniece and had had bestowed upon her a rich dowry.^[1]

The marriage of Amalric and Maria was celebrated with much fanfare at Tyre, on 29 August 1167. They had two children:

• A daughter, born in 1171 and died shortly after.^[2]
• Isabella I of Jerusalem, born in 1172.

On his deathbed, in 1174, Amalric left Nablus to Maria, who became Dowager Queen upon his death.^[1]

In 1177, Maria married secondly with Balian of Ibelin, who commanded the defense of Jerusalem against Saladin in 1187. She bore him at least four children:

• Helvis of Ibelin, who married (1) Reginald of Sidon (widower of Agnes of Courtenay), and (2) Guy of Montfort
• John of Ibelin, Lord of Beirut and constable of Jerusalem, who married Helvis of Nephin, then Melisende of Arsur
• Margaret, who married (1) Hugh of Tiberias (stepson of Raymond III of Tripoli), and (2) Walter III of Caesarea
• Philip of Ibelin, bailli (regent) of Cyprus, who married Alice of Montbéliard.

Maria and Balian supported Conrad of Montferrat (uncle of the late King Baldwin V) in his struggle for the crown against Guy of Lusignan. They arranged for Maria's daughter by Amalric, Isabella, to have her first marriage annulled so that she could marry Conrad, giving him a stronger claim to the throne. In this, Maria and Balian gained the enmity of Richard I of England and his chroniclers. The anonymous author of the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi wrote of them:

Steeped in Greek filth from the cradle, she had a husband whose morals matched her own: he was cruel, she was godless; he was fickle, she was pliable; he was faithless, she was fraudulent.

As the grandmother of Alice of Champagne (Isabella's daughter by her third husband, Henry II of Champagne), Maria conducted the marriage negotiations with Cyprus in 1208 – Alice was to marry Hugh I of Cyprus. Blanche of Navarre, Regent and Countess of Champagne, widow of Alice's paternal uncle, provided the dowry for Alice. This is the last time Maria is mentioned, and she was certainly dead by 1217.

Notes

1. Steven Runciman: A History of the Crusades (1978), Vol. 2, pp. 370 and 377.
2. Steven Runciman: A History of the Crusades (1978), Vol. 2, pp. 404 and 443 footnote 2, the latter specifying that this was the elder daughter.

Bibliography

• Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, edited by M. L. de Mas Latrie. La Société de l'Histoire de France, 1871.
• La Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184-1192), edited by Margaret Ruth Morgan. L'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1982.
• Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, translated by Marianne Ailes. Boydell Press, 2003.
• Chronicle of the Third Crusade, a Translation of Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, translated by Helen J. Nicholson. Ashgate, 1997.
• Peter W. Edbury, The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation. Ashgate, 1996.
• Edbury, Peter W. John of Ibelin and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1997
• Payne, Robert. The Dream and the Tomb, 1984
• Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vols. II-III. Cambridge University Press, 1952-55.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Maria Komnene, Queen of Jerusalem

Alexios I Komnenos, Roman Emperor               John II Komnenos, Roman Emperor                       Irene Doukaina               Andronikos Komnenos                             Ladislaus I Arpad, king of Hungary               Irene Arpad of Hungary                       Adelaide of Rheinfelden               John Komnenos                                   Eirene Aineiadissa                             Maria Komnene                                         Michael Taronites               ... Taronites                       John Taronitis                             Maria Taronitissa