|
companions to end her days in retirement and prayer.
Part of her gold she gave to the monasteries of the Holy City and as alms to the poor and pilgrims.
Then, on the advice of the Patriarch, she entered a congregation of Georgian nuns in Jerusalem. This foundation appears to have been ancient even at this time, as it was probably the same one founded by the Georgians in the fifth century. Shortly after entering the nunnery, at the request of the sisters and the Patriarch, the Queen became the head of the community.
When a scarcity of provisions occurred, she was in the unfortunate position of having distributed her treasures elsewhere. It was apparently expected that she, as head and a former queen, would have the finances to continue funding her community. Forced into stringent necessity, she was at last required to sell the Cross to the Holy Sepulchre, with the result that it was subsequently forwarded to Notre Dame.2
There was a postscript to the story. After the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, the then queen of Georgia, Thamar, offered a ransom of 200,000 gold pieces for the foundation.2
There were other prominent women as well who were associated with the nunneries of Outremer.
In 1158, there was a remarkable scene at the outer door of the Holy Sepulchre. Sybilla of Anjou - daughter of King Fulk, the sister of King Baldwin - and her husband Count Thierry of Flanders had come to inspect the famous basilica, which had been consecrated only ten years before. Moved by the sight of this supreme object of pilgrim veneration, Sybilla begged her husband Baldwin to allow her to become a nun in the attached convent of St Lazarus of Bethany, which was governed by a royal abbess, Joveta (Yvette). The nuns of the abbess were distinguished by a green cross worn on stark white robes.
Thierry was enraged. Desperate with passion, he forbade this severing of matrimonial bonds. Sybilla turned to the patriarch of Jerusalem, Amaury, and the king, begging them in the name of Christ to assist her. To move the stubborn love of the count and to gain the renunciation of his conjugal rights, they offered him a priceless holy relic: a drop of Christ's blood which had been passed down through the hands of the patriarchs for unknown centuries.
Tears of despair, rage and pity flowed from the count's eyes. His silence throughout was both savage and eloquent. But at last, as if in a trance, with an abrupt and trembling hand he seized the relic and murmured yes in a low voice.
One last time he clutched his wife, and then, bursting into tears, fled the basilica.
His wife was overjoyed, free at last - the price of her freedom a drop of blood.
The relic was taken back to Flanders by Thierry, to console his children for the loss of their mother. Later, he came to treasure above all his other possessions the relic for which he had exchanged his wife.3
There are numerous other accounts of noble women of Outremer who took a special interest in the lives and conditions of the cloister.
The great queen Melisende (d.1161) in the midst of tumultuous times and a life riven with real physical danger as an outcome of her part in politics, took the opportunity to endow the Church with many establishments. The most outstanding of these was the purchase in 1143 of the village of Bethany. Here the convent to which Sybilla was to retreat was built in honour of Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary, and the new establishment was supplied also with a fortified tower as well as the income of Jericho and its surrounding farms.4
Melisende's own sister Joveta was a formidable member of religious establishments. As a child, she had been captured by Moslems, and spent nearly a year in captivity. Her father Baldwin II personally ransomed her back with a cash payment in 1125, when she was five years old. 5
Joveta may have been effected by this experience: she took to, or was given to, the life of a nun, at first in the convent of St Anne at Jerusalem. It was almost certainly for this royal sister that Melisende established the foundation at Bethany. Joveta lived a long life of great eminence in her nunnery, dying some time not long before 1178. Amongst her great achievements was her supervision of the future Queen Sybilla (daughter of Amalric and Agnes of Courtenay) - a woman distinguished by her fortitude during the most trying days of the kingdom - and the nursing of Queen Melisende during her final days.
Yet another aristocrat to end her life in religious seclusion in Outremer was Margaret Queen of Hungary. Margaret was the sister of Philip of France. In her youth, she had married Henry the Younger, son of Henry II and Eleanor, and had thus been entitled to style herself Queen of England, in title if not in fact. Henry the Younger died before he could actually take the throne. After his death, Margaret was married to Bela of Hungary, who died in 1196. At his death, Margaret immediately took the Cross, ending her life as a nun in Acre.6
The life of women during the medieval period was fraught with danger and trial: it is all but impossible to escape the conclusion that for many of them, religious life provided a sanctuary from the desperately dangerous and uncomfortable life of the world.
1 Aziz, The Palestine of the Crusaders, pp.86-7.
2. Pernoud, p.105. The unnamed benefactor may have been the widow of Giorgi II, who was forced to abdicate due to his incompetence in resisting Turkish incursions. Giorgi gave up the throne in 1089 in favour of his son David II, known as the Builder. David ruled Georgia well into the twelfth century. His grandaughter Thamara became an outstanding monarch of the kingdom during the latter years of the century, virtually rescuing it from oblivion. D.M.Lang, The Georgians Thames and Hudson, London, 1966, p.111. S. Rusthveli, The Knight in the Tiger Skin, Progress Press, Moscow, 1977, p.6.
3. Aziz, p.244.
4. Runciman II, p.231.
|
|