User:Dweller/Crusades

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Borsoka? Norfolkbigfish (talk) 14:55, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Text

From the Conflict with Egypt including the Fifth and Sixth Crusades section

Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II had frequently postponed fulfilling his crusading committments before he acquired the kingdom of Jerusalem through marriage in 1225. In 1227 he embarked on crusade, but was forced to abandon it due to illness. This prompted his excommunication by Pope Gregory IX. Despite this Frederick launched a campaign of forceful negotiation that won the Franks most of Jerusalem, a strip of territory linking the city to Acre and an alliance with Al-Kamil, Sultan of Egypt. When the Pope attacked Frederick's Italian possessions he returned to defend them.

The kingdom could no longer rely on Frederick's resources and was left dependent on Ayyubid division, the military orders and western aid for survival. The popes' conflict with Frederick left the responsibility for crusading to secular, rather than papal, leadership. The Barons' Crusade was led by King Theobald I of Navarre and when he returned home, by the king of England's brother, Richard of Cornwall. The Franks followed Frederick's tactics of forceful diplomacy and playing rival factions off against each other when Sultan Al-Kamil died and his family fell into disputes over the succession in Egypt and Syria.

For the Monarchy section

Map of the feudatories of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187

During the period of near constant warfare in the early decades of the 12th century, the king of Jerusalem's foremost role was leader of the feudal host. They very rarely awarded land or lordships, and those awarded that became vacant, due to the high mortality rate in the conflict, reverted to the crown. Instead their followers' loyalty was rewarded with city incomes. As a result the royal domain of the first five rulers —including much of Judea, Samaria, the coast from Jaffa to Ascalon, the ports of Acre and Tyre as well as various scattered castles and other territories—was larger that the combined holdings of the nobility. This meant that the rulers of Jerusalem had greater internal power than comparative western monarch's but did not have the necessary administrative machinary to govern a large realm.

The situation evolved in the second quarter of the century with the establishment of baronial dynasties. Magnates—such as Raynald of Châtillon, lord of Oultrejordain, and Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, Prince of Galilee—often acted as autonomous rulers. Royal powers were abrogated and effectively governance was undertaken locally within the feudatories. What central control remained was exercised at the Haute Cour—High Court in English. Only the 13th century Jurists of Jerusalem used this term, Curia Regis was more common in Europe. These were meetings between the king and his tenants in chief. Over time the duty of the vassal to give council developed into a privilege and ultimately the legitimacy of the monarch depended on the agreement of the court. The barons have been poorly regarded by both comteporary and modern commentaters: James of Vitry was disgusted by their superficial rhetoric; historian Jonathan Riley-Smith wrote of their pedantry and the use of spurious legal justification for political action.

In practice, the High Court consisted of the great barons and the king’s direct vassals. In law a quorum was the king and three tenants in chief. The 1162 Assise sur la ligece theoretically expanded of membership to all 600+ fief-holders making them all peers. All those who paid homage directly to the king were now members of the Haute Cour of Jerusalem. They were joined by the heads of the military orders before the end of the 12th century and the Italian communes in the 13th century. Before the defeat at Hattin in 1187 the laws developed by the court were documented as Assises in Letters of the Holy Sepulchre. The entire body of written law was lost in the subsequent fall of Jerusalem. From this point the legal system was largely based on the custom and memory of the lost legislation. The renowned jurist Philip of Novara lamented We know [the laws] rather poorly, for they are known by hearsay and usage...and we think an assize is something we have seen as an assize...in the kingdom of Jerusalem [the barons] made much better use of the laws and acted on them more surely before the land was lost. Thus a myth was created of an idyllic early 12th century legal system. The barons used this to reinterpret the Assise sur la ligece which Almalric I intended to strengthen the crown to instead constrain the monarch, particularly with regards to the right of the monarch to remove feudal fiefs without trial. The concomitant loss of the vast majority of rural fiefs led to the barons becoming a urban mercantile class where knowledge of the law was an useful, valuable, well-regarded skill and a career path to higher status.

The leaders of the Third Crusade disregarded the monarchy of Jerusalem; disposing of conquests as if there was no local power to consider and rapidly giving the throne to Conrad of Montferrat in 1190 and then Henry II, Count of Champagne in 1192. Emperor Frederick II married Queen Isabella in 1225 and iimediately claimed the throne of Jerusalem from her father, the King Regent—John of Brienne. In 1228 Isabella II died after giving birth to a son, Conrad, who through his mother was now legally king of Jerusalem and Frederick's heir. From 1229 when Frederick II left the Holy Land to defend his Italian and German lands, monarchs were absent—Conrad from 1225 until 1254, his son Conradin until his execution by Charles of Anjou in 1268. Government in Jerusalem had developed in the opposite direction to monarchies in the west. St Louis, Emperor Frederick and Kind Edward I were powerful, with centralised bureaucracies. Jerusalem had a royalty with title but without power. Magnates such as the Ibelins attempted to seize the regency, fighting for control with an Italian army—led by Frederick's viceroy Richard Filangieri—in the War of the Lombards. Tyre, the Hospitallers, the Teutonic Knights and Pisa supported Filangieri. In opposition were the Ibelins, Acre, the Templars and Genoa. The rebels established a surragate commune, or parliament, for twelve years in Acre. They prevailed in 1242 with the capture of Tyre and a succession of Ibelin and Cypriot regents followed. Historian Joshua Prawer considered that centralised government collapsed noting the nobility, military orders and Italian communes took the lead. Three Cypriot Lusignan kings succeeded without the financial or military resources to recover the lost territory. The title of king was even sold to Charles of Anjou but even though he gained power for a short while, he never visited the kingdom. The king of Cyprus fought at Acre until all hope was lost and he returned to his island realm.

Comment by Borsoka

A text should reach a level to be edited or commented. The above text does not reach that level. Sorry, I commented the lengthy article which contained original research, original synthesis, close paraphrasing and PoV-pushing for more than two months. Borsoka (talk) 04:32, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Will add these comments into the user talk page so discussion can continue. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 08:53, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

As there was no further comment I have updated the article accordingly. In that way we can see if other editors have comments to make. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 09:54, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Bibliography

• Asbridge, Thomas (2012). The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-84983-688-3.
• Jotischky, Andrew (2004). Crusading and the Crusader States. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-582-41851-6.
• Prawer, Joshua (2001) [1972]. The Crusaders' Kingdom. Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-84212-224-2.
• Tyerman, Christopher (2019). The World of the Crusades. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-21739-1.