Plaisance of Antioch

Plaisance of Antioch (* 1235 / 36 , † 22 or 27. September 1261 ) was a Queen of Cyprus and regent of the kingdom of Cyprus and the Kingdom of Jerusalem .

Plaisance was a daughter of Prince Bohemond V of Antioch and Lucienne di Segni. In September 1250 she was married to King Henry I of Cyprus , who died in 1253. He left the kingdom to their son Hugo II , for whom Plaisance took over the reign of Cyprus. At the same time she inherited the rule over Jerusalem from her husband. After Easter 1254, the Bailli of Jerusalem, John of Ibelin-Arsuf , arranged the marriage of his son Balian with Plaisance, which was, however, on August 28, 1255 by Pope Alexander IV.was declared illegitimate due to close relatives, whereupon the couple separated again. Plaisance was now looking for a new husband with his own hands and asked King Henry III in 1256 . from England to marry his son Edmund Crouchback . However, this marriage project failed due to the resistance of the barons of Jerusalem, because Edmund Crouchback was given the Kingdom of Sicily by the Pope last year , whose rightful king was Konradin von Hohenstaufen . Since he was also the nominal king of Jerusalem, Edmund Crouchback was consequently considered by the barons to be unacceptable as the husband of their regent.

Since Plaisance stayed primarily in Cyprus, despite her position, she had no share in the government on the mainland, where the 1256 war of Saint-Sabas broke out, which developed into a civil war between the barons of the kingdom and the knightly orders. In February 1258 Plaisance was by her brother, Bohemond VI. of Antioch , led into the devastated Acre, where she summoned the barons and the orders of knights to the Haute Cour. The assembly finally agreed to end the armed struggle among themselves. Furthermore, the regent succeeded here in persuading the barons to recognize their underage son, Hugo II of Cyprus, as the rightful heir of Jerusalem to King Konradin. With the support of Count Johann von Jaffa , the Templars and the Teutonic Knights , she even tried to obtain an early deposition of Konradin as king in favor of her own son. The order of the Hospitallers , Philip of Montfort and various lawyers declared against it, why the kingship of Konradin was maintained.

Plaisance confirmed Johann von Arsuf in the office of Bailli . But after he died towards the end of 1258, she put Geoffroy de Sergines in the office of her deputy on May 1, 1259 .

At the time, Plaisance apparently became - against the will of the new Patriarch Jacques Pantaleon - the mistress of Count John of Jaffa .

Plaisance died in 1261; as regent of Cyprus her cousin and nephew of her husband, Hugo of Antioch , succeeded. In the succession in the reign of Jerusalem a conflict broke out within their relatives, which is why the Bailli Geoffroy de Sergines initially took over this office.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Estoire de Eracles XXXIV, 2 in: RHC Hoc, 2, p. 441
2. ^ Registres d'Alexandre IV , No. 741
3. ↑ Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III , 9 (London, 1931)

Web links

• Plaisance of Antioch at fmg.ac (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
---	Regent of Cyprus 1253–1261	Hugo of Antioch
Henry of Cyprus	Regent of Jerusalem 1253–1261	Geoffroy de Sergines