Ancestral Trails 2016 » Amalric of JERUSALEM (1136-1174)

Personal data Amalric of JERUSALEM 

• He was born in the year 1136 in Jerusalem, Israel.
• Title: King of Jerusalem
• (Ancestry) : House of Anjou.
• (Alternative Name) : Amalric d'Anjou.
• He died on July 11, 1174 in Jerusalem, Israel, he was 38 years old.
• A child of FULK d'ANJOU and Melisende de RETHEL

Household of Amalric of JERUSALEM

(1) He is married to Maria KOMNENE.

They got married on August 29, 1167 at Jerusalem, Israel, he was 31 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Isabella d'ANJOU  1172-1205 

(2) He had a relationship with Agnes de COURTENAY.

Child(ren):

1. Sibylla of JERUSALEM  1160-1190 
2. Baldwin IV of JERUSALEM  1161-????

Notes about Amalric of JERUSALEM

Amalric (Latin Amalricus, French Amaury; 1136 - 11 July 1174) was King of Jerusalem from 1163, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon before his accession. He was the second son of Melisende of Jerusalem and Fulk of Jerusalem, and succeeded his older brother Baldwin III. During his reign, Jerusalem became more closely allied with the Byzantine Empire, and the two states launched an unsuccessful invasion of Egypt. Meanwhile, the Muslim territories surrounding Jerusalem began to be united under Nur ad-Din and later Saladin. He was the father of three future rulers of Jerusalem, Sibylla, Baldwin IV, and Isabella I.

Older scholarship mistook the two names Amalric and Aimery as variant spellings of the same name, so these historians erroneously added numbers, making Amalric to be Amalric I (1163-74) and King Aimery (1197-1205) to be "Amalric II". Now scholars recognize that the two names were not the same and no longer add the number for either king. Confusion between the two names was common even among contemporaries.

Amalric was born in 1136 to King Fulk, the former count of Anjou who had married the heiress of the kingdom, Melisende, daughter of King Baldwin II. After the death of Fulk in a hunting accident in 1143, the throne passed jointly to Melisende and Amalric's older brother Baldwin III, who was still only 13 years old. Melisende did not step down when Baldwin came of age two years later, and by 1150 the two were becoming increasingly hostile towards each other. In 1152 Baldwin had himself crowned sole king, and civil war broke out, with Melisende retaining Jerusalem while Baldwin held territory further north. Amalric, who had been given the County of Jaffa as an apanage when he reached the age of majority in 1151, remained loyal to Melisende in Jerusalem, and when Baldwin invaded the south, Amalric was besieged in the Tower of David with his mother. Melisende was defeated in this struggle and Baldwin ruled alone thereafter. In 1153 Baldwin captured the Egyptian fortress of Ascalon, which was then added to Amalric's fief of Jaffa (see Battle of Ascalon).

Amalric married Agnes of Courtenay in 1157. Agnes, daughter of Joscelin II of Edessa, had lived in Jerusalem since the western regions of the former crusader County of Edessa were lost in 1150. Patriarch Fulcher objected to the marriage on grounds of consanguinity, as the two shared a great-great-grandfather, Guy I of Montlhéry, and it seems that they waited until Fulcher's death to marry. Agnes bore Amalric three children: Sibylla, the future Baldwin IV (both of whom would come to rule the kingdom in their own right), and Alix, who died in childhood.

Baldwin III died on 10 February 1163 and the kingdom passed to Amalric, although there was some opposition among the nobility to Agnes; they were willing to accept the marriage in 1157 when Baldwin III was still capable of siring an heir, but now the Haute Cour refused to endorse Amalric as king unless his marriage to Agnes was annulled. The hostility to Agnes, it must be admitted, may be exaggerated by the chronicler William of Tyre, whom she prevented from becoming Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem decades later, as well as from William's continuators like Ernoul, who hints at a slight on her moral character: "car telle n'est que roine doie iestre di si haute cite comme de Jherusalem" ("there should not be such a queen for so holy a city as Jerusalem"). Nevertheless, consanguinity was enough for the opposition. Amalric agreed and ascended the throne without a wife, although Agnes continued to hold the title Countess of Jaffa and Ascalon and received a pension from that fief's income. Agnes soon thereafter married Hugh of Ibelin, to whom she had been engaged before her marriage with Amalric. The church ruled that Amalric and Agnes' children were legitimate and preserved their place in the order of succession. Through her children Agnes would exert much influence in Jerusalem for almost 20 years.
SOURCE: Wikipedia

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Timeline Amalric of JERUSALEM

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