Plaisance of Antioch

Plaisance of Antioch (late 1230s–1261) was a Cypriot queen dowager who ruled the kingdoms of Cyprus and Jerusalem as regent from 1253 and 1258, respectively, until her death. She was the third wife of King Henry I of Cyprus and the mother of his only child, King Hugh II.

Hugh II succeeded to the throne as a minor, and the widowed Queen Plaisance took up government in his name. She took Balian of Arsuf as her second husband in 1254, but separated from him in 1255. She attempted to marry herself and her son into the English royal family, but did not succeed. In 1258 she travelled to Acre with her son and was recognized as his bailli in his capacity as titular regent for his kinsman King Conradin. As such, she intervened in the war waged by the Venetians and their allies against the Genoese and their allies, supporting the former. She was sharply criticised by the Church for an adulterous affair and died soon after.

Early life

Plaisance was born, at the earliest, either in 1235Template:Sfn or mid-1239,Template:Sfn depending on the dating of the marriage of her parents, Bohemond V and Lucia of Segni.Template:Sfn Plaisance's father was the ruler of the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli; he preferred to reside in Tripoli.Template:Sfn The historian Hans E. Mayer follows Eracles in dating Bohemond V and Lucia's marriage to 1238 and concludes that Plaisance was younger than her brother, Bohemond VI.Template:Sfn

In September 1250, Plaisance became the third wife of the childless King Henry I of Cyprus.Template:Sfn Henry was the closest kin in the Latin East of King Conrad IV of Germany and thus also ruled Conrad's Kingdom of Jerusalem as regent.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Plaisance's father, Bohemond V, died in January 1252; her brother, Bohemond VI, succeeded him.Template:Sfn King Henry was obeseTemplate:Sfn and apparently expected to die childless; Queen Plaisance's pregnancy and the birth of their son, Hugh, in late 1152 or early 1153 may have prompted John of Ibelin's unusual appeal for papal recognition of his title to the lordship of Beirut, which Henry had given to him at the expense of any issue that might be born to Henry.Template:Sfn

Regency

Insular issues

Plaisance's husband, King Henry, died on 18 January 1253, leaving the throne to their son, Hugh II. The High Court promptly accepted Plaisance as the guardian of the infant king and regent of the Kingdom of Cyprus in his name.Template:Sfn The government of the mainland kingdom fell to its constable and incumbent bailli, John of Arsuf; then to the constable's cousin John, count of Jaffa; and then again to the constable.Template:Sfn

The archbishop of Nicosia, Hugh of Fagiano, who had gone into exile because of a quarrel with King Henry, returned after his death; he probably expected more freedom of action now that a woman led the government.Template:Sfn Yet he soon came into a conflict with Queen Plaisance too and with just about everyone else, from the clergy and the nobles to his own parishioners. He complained to Pope Alexander IV that the queen refused to defend him, and the pope reprimanded her for an alleged mistreatment of the archbishop.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

To bolster her rule, Plaisance decided to ally with the Ibelin family; in 1254 she married Balian, the eldest son of John of ArsufTemplate:Sfn and second cousin of her first husband, King Henry.Template:Sfn Plaisance was 14 or 19 at the most and Balian 16.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn By the middle of 1255, they had separated.Template:Sfn The queen appealed to Pope Alexander for an annulment, saying that she had separated from Balian before they received a papal dispensation for their marriage and alleging that Balian had seized her property and regency. Alexander then instructed the archbishop of Nicosia, Hugh of Fagiano, and the bishop of Famagusta, Stephen of Mezel, to investigate Plaisance's allegations and, if true, to see to it that Balian return government and property to Plaisance. Balian stated that he and Plaisance had taken an oath to marry if they obtained a dispensation and that they had already married by the time Innocent IV, Alexander's predecessor, granted the dispensation. Plaisance then asserted that she had only sworn to marry Balian if her brother, Bohemond, agreed to the marriage. Bohemond, in fact, actively opposed the match.Template:Sfn

Plaisance appears to have made contact with the English court in 1255, soon after her separation from Balian of Arsuf.Template:Sfn King Henry III of England intended to undertake a crusade to the Holy Land and Plaisance probably thought that he might become influential in the Latin East.Template:Sfn In 1256, her envoys brought a proposal that she marry Henry's son Edmund and that her son marry Henry's daughter Beatrice.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Nothing came out of this, probably because of the scheme to put Edmund on the Sicilian throne.Template:Sfn

Mainland affairs

A civil war was raging in the Kingdom of Jerusalem between two rival factions: the Templars, Venetians, and Pisans against the Hospitallers, Genoese, and Catalans.Template:Sfn The Ibelin-led government had sided with the Genoese, but when the tide turned against them in late 1257, the government had to change sides; in order to do this without losing face, they decided to again invite the next-in-line to the throne to take charge as regent. John of Jaffa and the master of the Temple, Thomas Berard, urged Bohemond VI of Antioch to bring Plaisance and her son to Acre, the kingdom's capital.Template:Sfn

Plaisance ruled the two kingdoms of the Latin East while her brother ruled the two northern mainland states.

Plaisance sailed with Hugh from Cyprus to Tripoli, where she met with Bohemond.Template:Sfn Mother and son arrived in Acre on 1 February 1258, escorted by her brother. At a session of the High Court, Bohemond urged that Hugh be acknowledged as King Conrad's heir and lord of the kingdom in the absence of the king and that Plaisance be recognized as Hugh's bailli. The Templars, the Teutonic Knights, most of the barons, and the Venetian and Pisan delegates swore fealty to Hugh, but the Hospitallers and their allies insisted that nothing could be decided in Conrad's absence.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Plaisance was elected bailli by a majority vote and her father-in-law, John of Arsuf, duly resigned the bailliage to her.Template:Sfn She was only distantly related to Conrad and received the regency on account of her relationship to her son.Template:Sfn

As soon as she took up the government of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Queen Plaisance and her brother launched a determined attack on the Genoese in Acre.Template:Sfn She ordered all crown vassals to abandon the Genoese, whom Bohemond tried to sarve out, and to support the Venetians. John of Arsuf and his son Balian, Plaisance's estranged husband, then reconciled with Plaisance and Bohemond. They agreed to the annulment of Plaisance and Balian's marriage and in return Plaisance appointed John as her bailli.Template:Sfn He was instructed to sternly deal with the rebels. Plaisance and her son withdrew with her brother to Tripoli, from where they returned to Cyprus.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Plaisance's regency was made effective by Bohemond's military assistance: he provided 800 men-at-arms to force the Genoese and their allies to cease fighting in Acre, though without success. The Venetians soon triumphed nevertheless.Template:Sfn

In 1258, Pope Alexander granted Plaisance's request and annulled her marriage with Balian of Arsuf.Template:Sfn His father, John, died soon after his reappointment to the bailliage and Plaisance returned to Acre on 1 May 1259 to install Geoffrey of Sergines, seneschal of Jerusalem, as her new bailli.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, James Pantaleon, supported Plaisance's regime on the mainland.Template:Sfn At some point Plaisance entered into a sexual relationship with John of Jaffa. He was a married man, and their affair may have become common knowledge by early 1261. Pantaleon, who became Pope Urban IV on 29 August, chastisised Plaisance for the relationship in a letter.Template:Efn Queen Plaisance died on 22 or 27 September 1261.Template:Efn The pope could not have been aware until at least late October, and the letter may not have been finished.Template:Sfn She was succeeded as regent by her cousin Hugh of Antioch.Template:Sfn

Historiography

Chronicles from the Republic of Venice, which she supported in their war against Genoa, describe Plaisance as a woman of character and high moral integrity.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Modern historians offer different interpretations of the queen and her agency. Peter W. Edbury presumes, although cautiously, that she was a pawn successively of her second husband, Balian; her brother, Bohemond; and her lover, John of Jaffa.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Simon D. Lloyd and Hans E. Mayer, on the other hand, attribute political decisions to Plaisance herself.Template:Sfn

References

Sources

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