Philip of Milly

Grandmaster coat of arms of Philip of Milly

Philip of Milly , also known as Philip of Nablus (* around 1120 , † April 3, 1171 ), was Lord of Nablus , Lord of Oultrejordain and the seventh Grand Master of the Templar Order .

Life

Philip was the son of Guido von Milly (Guy de Milly), a knight from Picardy who had participated in the First Crusade , and his second wife, Stephanie of Flanders , the divorced widow of Baldwin (II) of Ramla . Stephanie had inheritance claims to the rule of Nablus through her brother Pagan . From his father's first marriage, Philipp had a French-born half-brother named Guido (called "le Franceis"), Philipp himself, like his younger brother Heinrich, was born in the Holy Land . He is mentioned for the first time in 1138 as Guido's son, when he was mentioned for the second time in 1144 he was already Lord of Nablus and married to Isabella.

Lord of Nablus

As Lord of Nablus , Philip was one of the most influential barons of the Kingdom of Jerusalem . In 1144, Queen Melisende sent him to lift the siege of Edessa , but he did not arrive until the city had already fallen. In 1148, Philip attended the meeting held in Acre after the Second Crusade reached the country - the meeting that made the unfortunate decision to attack Damascus .

Together with the powerful Ibelin family , into which his half-sister Helvis had married, Philipp was on Melisende's side in their conflict with their son Baldwin III. When the kingdom was divided in 1151, Melisende received the southern part of the kingdom, including Nablus. Despite this arrangement, Philipp Balduin seems to have been loyal; he took part in the king's conquest of Askalon in 1153 and in the liberation of Banyas in 1157 .

Lord of Oultrejordain

On July 31, 1161, when Melisende was on his deathbed, Philip exchanged with Baldwin III. the rule of Nablus against the rule of Oultrejourdain . This allowed Baldwin to take control of the southern part of the empire while his mother could not fight back, and at the same time brought a strong and loyal baron to the head of Oultrejordain. Baldwin died in 1163, he was followed by Amalrich I , a friend of Philip, who at the time had also been on Melisende's side.

Philip's life is largely in the dark. It is known that some time after he became lord of Oultrejordain, he made a pilgrimage to St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai .

Templar

The death of his wife Isabella evidently moved him to withdraw from the public eye and to join the Knights Templar on January 17, 1166 . The retreat was brief as he took part in Amalrich's invasion of Egypt in 1167. The Ibelin family recalls an event during the siege of Bilbeis , during which Philipp Hugo von Ibelin saved his life when his horse fell into a ditch and he broke his leg (the truth of this story is unknown).

The Knights Templar had rejected Amalrich's Egyptian campaign, and the king then blamed them for the failure. After the death of Grand Master Bertrand de Blanquefort in January 1169, Amalrich put pressure on them to elect Philip as his successor, which they did in August of that year. Amalrich hoped that Philip would give the Templars more support on his campaigns in Egypt. Not much is known about Philip's time as Grand Master, with the exception of defending Templar-held Gaza when Saladin , who had brought Egypt under his rule in 1169, attacked the city in 1170.

In 1171 he resigned as Grand Master for unknown reasons and accompanied Amalrich to Constantinople in order to restore relations with the Byzantine Empire after the failure of the Egyptian campaign . He died on April 3rd the year before they reached the city.

progeny

With his wife Isabella he had a son and two daughters:

• Rainer (* before 1140; † after 1178), castellan of Montreal ∞ Stephanie
• Helena († before November 1168), ∞ Walter III. Brisebarre († after 1179), Lord of Beirut
• Stephanie († around 1197) Mistress of Oultrejordain, ∞ I) 1163 Humfried III. von Toron († 1173), ∞ II) 1173 Miles von Plancy († 1174), ∞ III) 1176 Rainald von Chatillon († 1187).

swell

• William of Tire : Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum .

literature

• Malcolm Barber: The career of Philip of Nablus in the kingdom of Jerusalem. In: The Experience of Crusading. (Presented to Jonathan Riley-Smith to his Sixty-Fifth Birthday). Volume 2: Peter Edbury, Jonathan Phillips (Eds.): Defining the Crusader Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2003, ISBN 0-521-78151-5 , pp. 60-75.
• Malcolm Barber: The new knighthood. A history of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1995, ISBN 0-521-55872-7 .
• Kenneth M. Setton (Ed.): A History of the Crusades. Volume 1: Marshall W. Baldwin (Ed.): The First Hundred Years. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison WI et al. 2005, ISBN 0-299-04834-9 .

Web links

• Philippe de Milly at fmg.ac

predecessor	Office	successor
Guido from Milly	Lord of Nablus 1142–1161	Crown domain ( Baldwin III of Jerusalem )
Moritz of Montreal	Lord of Oultrejordain 1161–1168	Humfried III. by Toron
Bertrand de Blanquefort	Grand Master of the Knights Templar 1169–1171	Eudes de Saint-Amand