Baldwin IV (Jerusalem)

Left: Baldwin IV injured himself playing with his friends. Right: Wilhelm von Tire discovers the first signs of leprosy on his protégé. Miniature from a French edition of the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum by William of Tire, 13th century. (London, British Library)

Baldwin IV the leper (French: Baudouin le Lépreux ; * 1161 ; † March 16, 1185 in Jerusalem ) was King of Jerusalem from 1174 to 1185. During his lifetime, he had his nephew Baldwin V crowned his successor as co-king .

Life

Baldwin came from the noble family of Château-Landon . He was the son of Amalrich I , king of Jerusalem, and his first wife Agnes of Edessa . Baldwin was raised by one of the most important historians of the Middle Ages, Archbishop William of Tire , and ascended the throne at the age of 13. Since he was not old enough to rule independently, Raimund III. from Tripoli entrusted with the reign. Obviously Baldwin had suffered from leprosy from early childhood , which disfigured his appearance and made him increasingly immobile over the years. This made riding impossible, and he was forced to use litters to move him.

The greatest enemy of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was Saladin , who had gained control of Egypt in 1171 and Damascus in 1174 . An invasion of the kingdom by Saladin from Egypt in 1177 was repulsed by the young, leprous king, despite being clearly numerically inferior, at the Battle of Montgisard . Baldwin thus inflicted the worst defeat Saladin had ever suffered. In 1179 Saladin Balduin inflicted a defeat with the destruction of the still unfinished new Templar castle Chastellet on the upper Jordan in the Battle of Jakobsfurt , but Saladin's military focus was initially on the fight against the Zengids , from whom he conquered Aleppo in 1183 and finally Mosul in 1186 .

For the stability of the kingdom, due to the serious illness of the king, from whom no direct inheritance was to be expected, the succession was a priority. The next rightful heir to the kingdom was Baldwin's sister Sibylle , and therefore their marriage was of paramount importance. Probably at the suggestion of King Louis VII of France , Raymond III arranged. 1176 for her marriage to William of Montferrat , from whom she had a son, and later Baldwin V . When Wilhelm died in 1177, the brief reign was entrusted to Rainald von Chatillon , who had been lord of Oultrejordain (with the fortresses of Kerak and Montreal east of the Dead Sea ) and thus one of the empire's most powerful vassals from 1176 onwards. In the same year a cousin of Baldwin, Count Philip of Flanders , visited Jerusalem and was asked to stay in the country and take over the unrestricted regency. However, he refused and returned to Flanders. Baldwin IV then took over the business of government himself in 1177. Sibylle married Guido von Lusignan in 1180 .

With regard to dealing with Saladin, a conflict developed in the kingdom between two groups, the “court party” and a “baronial party”. The baronial party on the one hand consisted predominantly of the established barons of the kingdom , led by Raimund III. from Tripoli, who were interested in the preservation of their property and were in favor of a more cautious, defensive policy. For the court party, on the other hand, the idea of the crusade was in the foreground and they advocated offensive action against the Muslims. The court party consisted mainly of members of the court, the knightly orders of the Templars and Hospitallers as well as nobles who had only recently come to the kingdom (the court party included: Guido von Lusignan, his wife Sibylle von Jerusalem, the queen mother Agnes von Edessa, her brother Joscelin and Rainald von Chatillon).

In 1182 Saladin again marched with an invading army, this time coming from Damascus, against the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Baldwin advanced against him with an army against which Saladin did not risk an open battle, but instead retreated to Damascus after minor skirmishes near Belvoir Castle . Balduin's illness increasingly robbed him of vision and the ability to walk, so that shortly afterwards he left the reign to his brother-in-law Guido von Lusignan. Guido tolerated that Rainald von Chatillon from Oultrejordain repeatedly attacked Muslim caravans between Egypt and Damascus and even attacked pilgrim ships from the port of Aqaba to Mecca , thus provoking Saladin to attack. When Saladin Rainald finally besieged Kerak , Baldwin withdrew Guido from his reign and moved to Kerak with a relief army. Although Raimund III. from Tripoli the army, but the seriously ill king insisted on going himself in a sedan chair. Shortly before he set out on November 20, 1183, he had his then six-year-old nephew Baldwin V crowned co-king and appointed Raymond III. from Tripoli to the regent. When the army reached Kerak, Saladin withdrew.

In 1184 an embassy was sent to Europe under the Jerusalem Patriarch Heraclius to seek support from the local monarchs in solving the burning succession crisis and in the fight against Saladin. He met with Pope Lucius III. , Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa as well as the kings Philip II of France and Henry II of England , but achieved no concrete results.

Baldwin IV died in March 1185 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

reception

In the monumental film Kingdom of Heaven , Baldwin IV is portrayed by Edward Norton . Norton always wears a silver mask in this film, which is only removed from him in the death scene. Here he is portrayed as a ruler marked by his illness, but a balancing and far-sighted ruler. The extent of his illness (otherwise graciously veiled by the mask) largely coincides with the description of his contemporary Ernoul , who wrote that at the end of his life Baldwin “had no finger on his hand, nor eyes (light), nor nose."

literature

• Bernard Hamilton: The Leper King and his Heirs. Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000.
• Marshall W. Baldwin: XIX: The Decline and Fall of Jerusalem, 1174-1189. In: Kenneth M. Setton (Ed.): A history of the crusades. Volume 1: The first hundred years. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1969, pp. 590-621 ( PDF, 13 MB ).
• Sylvia Schein: Baldwin IV . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 1, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-7608-8901-8 , Sp. 1367 f.

Web links

• Baudouin of Jerusalem at fmg.ac (English)

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ Hans Eberhard Mayer : History of the Crusades . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1989, 3-17-010760-7, p. 116.
2. ↑ LexMA calls the disease “leprosy” only unspecifically.
3. ^ Pernoud Regine: Women at the time of the Crusades. Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1995, p. 118.
4. ↑ Marcus Stiglegger: Kingdom of Heaven. In: Fabienne Liptay, Matthias Bauer (Hrsg.): Filmgenres. History and costume film (= RUB . No. 19064). Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-019064-7 , pp. 404-407, here 406.
5. ↑ "Or vous dirai dou roi mesiel qui aproça de se fin, et fu si malades qu'il ne li demoura dois en main, ne oel, ne nés." In: Chronique d'Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. by Jacques Marie Joseph Louis de Mas Latrie, Paris 1871, p. 115.

predecessor	Office	successor
Amalrich I.	King of Jerusalem 1174–1185	Balduin V (fellow-king from 1183)