Theodora Komnene, Queen of Jerusalem
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| Theodora Komnene | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Queen consort of Jerusalem | |
| Tenure | 1158–10 February 1162 |
| Born | c. 1145 |
| Died | Before 1182 |
| Spouse | |
| Issue | Alexios Komnenos Eirene Komnene |
| House | Komnenos |
| Father | Isaac Komnenos |
| Mother | Eirene Synadene |
Theodora Komnene (Ancient Greek: Θεοδώρα Κομνηνή; born c. 1145) was a member of the Byzantine imperial Komnenos family who became queen consort of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
In 1158, Emperor Manuel I Komnenos arranged for Theodora, his 12-year-old niece, to marry King Baldwin III of Jerusalem as part of an alliance of the two Christian states requested by Baldwin's advisors. Although they were happy together, Theodora wielded no power as Baldwin's wife, and was widowed in 1162. She retired to Acre, the city she was to hold for life as dower.
In 1168, Theodora started a relationship with her kinsman Andronikos Komnenos and soon eloped with him, infuriating Manuel. They wandered through the Muslim-ruled Levant and had two children together, Alexios and Eirene. After some time spent in Georgia, they moved to Anatolia, where Theodora and her children were captured and brought to Manuel. Andronikos and Manuel reconciled, and Theodora spent the rest of her life with Andronikos in Paphlagonia. She presumably died before 1182, when he became emperor.
Theodora was a member of the Komnenos dynasty of the Byzantine Empire. Her father, the sebastokrator Isaac, was the eldest surviving son of Emperor John II Komnenos. Her mother, Eirene Synadene, was Isaac's second wife.[1] Upon John's death in 1143, Theodora's uncle Manuel I Komnenos seized the imperial throne.[2]
In 1157, envoys from the Kingdom of Jerusalem arrived in Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, to request a marital alliance with Manuel.[3] The kingdom was a crusader state, carved out by the Catholic Franks from the Muslim states in the Levant.[4] It was in dire need of money and military assistance against the Muslim ruler Nur al-Din Zengi, and so when its high court debated the marriage of their young king, Baldwin III, a decision was reached to seek a Byzantine bride.[3]
The negotiations over Baldwin's Byzantine marriage were prolonged by the Norman threat to the empire's western territories.[3] The 12-year-old Theodora was finally selected as bride.[5] She left Constantinople in the late summer of 1158.[3] The Franks were fully satisfied:[3] Theodora set out with a "colossal dowry of 100,000 hyperpyra,[3][6] with a wardrobe worth a further 14,000, and another 10,000 for the costs of the royal wedding.[3] Theodora's exceptional beauty was, according to historian Bernard Hamilton, an "uncovenanted bonus".[5] The conditions imposed by the emperor were that Baldwin should grant Acre, the greatest city of the kingdom, to Theodora as her dower and that Baldwin should work to secure Byzantine overlordship of the Principality of Antioch.[7]
Queen consort
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Theodora landed at Tyre, the kingdom's port city, in September 1158. She was promptly taken to Jerusalem and crowned and anointed by Aimery of Limoges, the exiled Latin patriarch of Antioch, because the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Amalric of Nesle, had not yet been consecrated.[8][7] Contrary to the Western practice,[9] Theodora was first crowned and anointed and then married;[7] her marriage to Baldwin was celebrated, also by the Antiochene patriarch, a few days after her coronation.[8] Hamilton surmises that Theodora and Baldwin were happy together: the king, whose earlier lechery scandalized his subjects, became "a reformed character" after the marriage.[7]
Despite being the crucial figure in the Franko-Byzantine alliance, Theodora did not publicly exercise any power as the queen of Jerusalem.[7] Hamilton suggests that both Baldwin and his younger brother, Amalric, were mindful of the power once wielded by their mother, Queen Melisende,[7] whom Baldwin had deposed in 1152.[10] Baldwin associated Theodora in only two acts: one involving Acre, her dower-fief, and the other concerning a major land exchange with his vassal Philip of Milly, the importance of which required that it be witnessed by the entire royal family.[7] The young queen did, however, have complete freedom in managing her own land[11] and she possessed her own seal.[12] Historian Deborah Gerish considers it "highly likely" that Theodora's Greek ethnicity and Eastern Orthodoxy were to her disadvantage; although Hans Eberhard Mayer has suggested that she may have converted to Roman Catholicism.[9]
