Part 105

Guy de Lusignan, the poor creature whom Sybille, daughter of King Amaury, married and made king of Jerusalem, lost his kingdom fairly enough on the battle-field of Tiberias. To win his freedom from Saladin, moreover, he renounced his claims by a solemn oath and pledged himself to quit the soil of Palestine forever. But oaths were of small account with the Christian Crusaders, and with the priests who kept their consciences. Guy got easy absolution for the trifling perjury, and was a king once more,—waiting for the Crusaders to recover his kingdom. But when, in 1190, his queen Sybille and her two children died, King Guy's royal title wore a faded look to most people and was wholly denied by many. Presently, Conrad of Montferrat, who held possession of Tyre—the best part of what remained in the actual kingdom of Jerusalem—married Sybille's sister, Isabella, and claimed the kingship in her name. King Richard of England supported Guy, and King Philip Augustus of France, in sheer contrariness, took his side with Conrad. After long quarreling it was decided that Guy should wear the crown while he lived, and that it should pass when he died to Conrad and Conrad's children. It was Richard's wilfulness that forced this settlement; but, after all, on quitting Palestine, in 1192, the English king did not dare to leave affairs behind him in such worthless hands. He bought, therefore, the abdication of Guy de Lusignan, by making him king of Cyprus, and he gave the crown of Jerusalem to the strong and capable Conrad. But Conrad was murdered in a little time by emissaries of the Old Man of the Mountain (see ASSASSINS), who accused Richard of the instigation of the deed, and Count Henry of Champagne, Richard's nephew, accepted his widow and his crown. Henry enjoyed his titular royalty and his little hand-breadth of dominion on the Syrian coast for four years, only. Then he was killed, while defending Jaffa, and his oft-widowed widow, Isabella, brought the Lusignans back into Palestinian history again by marrying, for her fourth husband, Amaury de Lusignan, who had succeeded his brother Guy, now deceased, as king of Cyprus. Amaury possessed the two crowns, of Cyprus and Jerusalem, until his death, when the latter devolved on the daughter of Isabella, by her second husband, Conrad. The young queen accepted a husband recommended by the king of France, and approved by her barons, thus bringing a worthy king to the worthless throne. This was John de Brienne, a good French knight, who came to Palestine (A. D. 1210) with a little following of three hundred knights and strove valiantly to reconquer a kingdom for his royally entitled bride. But he strove in vain, and fragment after fragment of his crumbling remnant of dominion fell away until he held almost nothing except Acre. In 1217 the king of Hungary, the duke of Austria and a large army of crusaders came, professedly, to his help, but gave him none. The king of Hungary got possession of the head of St. Peter, the right hand of St. Thomas and one of the wine vessels of the marriage feast at Cana, and hastened home with his precious relics. The other crusaders went away to attack Egypt and brought their enterprise to a miserable end. Then King John de Brienne married his daughter Yolante, or Iolanta, to the German emperor, or King of the Romans, Frederick II., and surrendered to that prince his rights and claims to the kingship of Jerusalem. Frederick, at war with the Pope, and under the ban of the Church, went to Palestine, with 600 knights, and contrived by clever diplomacy and skilful pressure to secure a treaty with the sultan of Egypt (A. D. 1229), which placed Jerusalem, under some conditions, in his hands, and added other territory to the kingdom which he claimed by right of his wife. He entered Jerusalem and there set the crown on his own head; for the patriarch, the priests, and the monk-knights, of the Hospital and the Temple, shunned him and refused recognition to his work. But Frederick was the only "King of Jerusalem" after Guy de Lusignan, who wore a crown in the Holy City, and exercised in reality the sovereignty to which he pretended. Frederick returned to Italy in 1229 and his kingdom in the East was soon as shadowy and unreal as that of his predecessors had been.

_W. Besant and E. H. Palmer, Jerusalem, chapters 15 and 18._

ALSO IN: _J. F. Michaud, History of the Crusades, books 8-12._

See, also, CRUSADES: 1188-1192, and 1216-1229; and CYPRUS: A. D. 1192-1489.

JERUSALEM: A. D. 1242. Sack and massacre by the Carismians.

After the overthrow of the Khuarezmian (Korasmian or Carismian) empire by the Mongols, its last prince, Gelaleddin, or Jalalu-d-Din, implacably pursued by those savage conquerors, fought them valiantly until he perished, at last, in Kurdistan. His army, made up of many mercenary bands, Turkish and other, then scattered, and two, at least, among its wandering divisions played important parts in subsequent history. Out of one of those Khuarezmian squadrons rose the powerful nation of the Ottoman Turks. The other invaded Syria. "The Mussulman powers of Syria several times united in a league against the Carismians, and drove them back to the other side of the Euphrates. But the spirit of rivalry which at all times divided the princes of the family of Saladin, soon recalled an enemy always redoubtable notwithstanding defeats. At the period of which we are speaking, the princes of Damascus, Carac, and Emessa had just formed an alliance with the Christians of Palestine; they not only restored Jerusalem, Tiberias, and the principality of Galilee to them, but they promised to join them in the conquest of Egypt, a conquest for which the whole of Syria was making preparations. The sultan of Cairo, to avenge himself upon the Christians who had broken the treaties concluded with him, to punish their new allies, and protect himself from their invasion, determined to apply for succour to the hordes of Carismia; and sent deputies to the leaders of these barbarians, promising to abandon Palestine to them, if they subdued it. This proposition was accepted with joy, and 20,000 horsemen, animated by a thirst for booty and slaughter, hastened from the further parts of Mesopotamia, disposed to be subservient to the vengeance or anger of the Egyptian monarch. On their march they ravaged the territory of Tripoli and the principality of Galilee, and the flames which everywhere accompanied their steps announced their arrival to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Fortifications scarcely commenced, and the small number of warriors in the holy city, left not the least hope of being able to repel the unexpected attacks of such a formidable enemy. {1886} The whole population of Jerusalem resolved to fly, under the guidance of the knights of the Hospital and the Temple. There only remained in the city the sick and a few inhabitants who could not make their minds up to abandon their homes and their infirm kindred. The Carismians soon arrived, and having destroyed a few intrenchments that had been made in their route, they entered Jerusalem sword in hand, massacred all they met, and … had recourse to a most odious stratagem to lure back the inhabitants who had taken flight. They raised the standards of the cross upon every tower, and set all the bells ringing." The retreating Christians were deceived. They persuaded themselves that a miracle had been wrought; "that God had taken pity on his people, and would not permit the city of Christ to be defiled by the presence of a sacrilegious horde. Seven thousand fugitives, deceived by this hope, returned to Jerusalem and gave themselves up to the fury of the Carismians, who put them all to the sword. Torrents of blood flowed through the streets and along the roads. A troop of nuns, children, and aged people, who had sought refuge in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, were massacred at the foot of the altars. The Carismians finding nothing among the living to satisfy their fury, burst open the sepulchres, and gave the coffins and remains of the dead up to the flames; the tomb of Christ, that of Godfrey of Bouillon, the sacred relics of the martyrs and heroes of the faith,—nothing was respected, and Jerusalem then witnessed within its walls such cruelties and profanations as had never taken place in the most barbarous wars, or in days marked by the anger of God." Subsequently the Christians of Palestine rallied, united their forces with those of the Moslem princes of Damascus and Emessa, and gave battle to the Carismians on the plains of Gaza; but they suffered a terrible defeat, leaving 30,000 dead on the field. Nearly all Palestine was then at the mercy of the savages, and Damascus was speedily subjugated. But the sultan of Cairo, beginning to fear the allies he had employed, turned his arms sharply against them, defeated them in two successive battles, and history tells nothing more of the career of these last adventurers of the Carismian or Khuarezmian name.

_J. F. Michaud, History of the Crusades, book 13._

ALSO IN: _C. G. Addison, The Knights Templars, chapter 6._

JERUSALEM: A. D. 1291. The end of the Christian kingdom. The surviving title of "King of Jerusalem."

"Since the death of the Emperor Frederic II. [A. D. 1250], the baseless throne of Jerusalem had found a claimant in Hugh de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, who, as lineally descended from Alice, daughter of Queen Isabella, was, in fact, the next heir, after failure of issue by the marriage of Frederic and Iolanta de Brienne. His claims were opposed by the partisans of Charles of Anjou, King of the Sicilies,—that wholesale speculator in diadems. … He rested his claim upon the double pretensions of a papal title to all the forfeited dignities of the imperial house of Hohenstauffen, and of a bargain with Mary of Antioch; whose rights, although she was descended only from a younger sister of Alice, he had eagerly purchased. But the prior title of the house of Cyprus was more generally recognised in Palestine; the coronation of Hugh had been celebrated at Tyre; and the last idle pageant of regal state in Palestine was exhibited by the race of Lusignan. At length the final storm of Mussulman war broke upon the phantom king and his subjects. It was twice provoked by the aggressions of the Latins themselves, in plundering the peaceable Moslem traders, who resorted, on the faith of treaties, to the Christian marts on the Syrian coast. After a vain attempt to obtain redress for the first of these violations of international law, Keladun, the reigning sultan of Egypt and Syria, revenged the infraction of the existing ten years' truce by a renewal of hostilities with overwhelming force; yearly repeated his ravages of the Christian territory; and at length, tearing the city and county of Tripoli—the last surviving great fief of the Latin kingdom—from its dilapidated crown, dictated the terms of peace to its powerless sovereign (A. D. 1289)." Two years later, a repetition of lawless outrages on Moslem merchants at Acre provoked a last wrathful and implacable invasion. "At the head of an immense army of 200,000 men, the Mameluke prince entered Palestine, swept the weaker Christian garrisons before him, and encamped under the towers of Acre (A. D. 1291). That city, which, since the fall of Jerusalem, had been for a century the capital of the Latin kingdom, was now become the last refuge of the Christian population of Palestine. Its defences were strong, its inhabitants numerous; but any state of society more vicious, disorderly, and helpless than its condition, can scarcely be imagined. Within its walls were crowded a promiscuous multitude, of every European nation, all equally disclaiming obedience to a general government, and enjoying impunity for every crime under the nominal jurisdiction of independent tribunals. Of these there were no less than seventeen; in which the papal legate, the king of Jerusalem, the despoiled great feudatories of his realm, the three military orders, the colonies of the maritime Italian republics, and the representatives of the princes of the West, all arrogated sovereign rights, and all abused them by the venal protection of offenders. … All the wretched inhabitants who could find such opportunities of escape, thronged on board the numerous vessels in the harbour, which set sail for Europe; and the last defence of Acre was abandoned to about 12,000 men, for the most part the soldiery of the three military orders. From that gallant chivalry, the Moslems encountered a resistance worthy of its ancient renown and of the extremity of the cause for which its triple fraternity had sworn to die. But the whole force of the Mameluke empire, in its yet youthful vigour, had been collected for their destruction." After a fierce siege of thirty-three days, one of the principal defensive works, described in contemporary accounts as "the Cursed Tower," was shattered, and the besiegers entered the city. The cowardly Lusignan had escaped by a stolen flight the night before. The Teutonic Knights, the Templars and the Hospitallers stood their ground with hopeless valor. Of the latter only seven escaped. "Bursting through the city, the savage victors pursued to the strand the unarmed and fleeing population, who had wildly sought a means of escape, which was denied not less by the fury of the elements than by the want of sufficient shipping. {1887} By the relentless cruelty of their pursuers, the sands and the waves were dyed with the blood of the fugitives; all who survived the first horrid massacre were doomed to a hopeless slavery; and the last catastrophe of the Crusades cost life or liberty to 60,000 Christians. … The Christian population of the few maritime towns which had yet been retained fled to Cyprus, or submitted their necks, without a struggle, to the Moslem yoke; and, after a bloody contest of two hundred years, the possession of the Holy Land was finally abandoned to the enemies of the Cross. The fall of Acre closes the annals of the Crusades."

_Colonel G. Procter, History of the Crusades, chapter 5, section 5._

_J. F. Michaud, History of the Crusades, book 15 (volume 3)._

Actual royalty in the legitimate line of the Lusignan family ends with a queen Charlotte, who was driven from Cyprus in 1464 by her bastard brother James. She made over to the house of Savoy (one of the members of which she had married) her rights and the three crowns she wore,—the crown of Armenia having been added to those of Jerusalem and Cyprus in the family. "The Dukes of Savoy called themselves Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem from the date of Queen Charlotte's settlement; the Kings of Naples had called themselves Kings of Jerusalem since the transfer of the rights of Mary of Antioch [see above], in 1277, to Charles of Anjou; and the title has run on to the present day in the houses of Spain and Austria, the Dukes of Lorraine, and the successive dynasties of Naples. … The Kings of Sardinia continued to strike money as Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, until they became Kings of Italy. There is no recognized King of Cyprus now; but there are two or three Kings of Jerusalem; and the Cypriot title is claimed, I believe, by some obscure branch of the house of Lusignan, under the will of King James II."

_W. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Medieval and Modern History, lecture 8._

ALSO IN: _C. G. Addison, The Knights Templars, chapter 6._

JERUSALEM: A. D. 1299. The Templars once more in the city.

See CRUSADES: A. D. 1299.

JERUSALEM: A. D. 1516. Embraced in the Ottoman conquests of Sultan Selim.

See TURKS: A. D. 1481-1520.

JERUSALEM: A. D. 1831. Taken by Mehemed Ali, Pasha of Egypt.

See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.

JERUSALEM: End----------

JERUSALEM TALMUD, The.

See TALMUD.

JESUATES, The.

"The Jesuates, so called from their custom of incessantly crying through the streets, 'Praised be Jesus Christ,' were founded by John Colombino, … a native of Siena. … The congregation was suppressed … by Clement IX., because some of the houses of the wealthy 'Padri dell' acqua vite,' as they were called, engaged in the business of distilling liquors and practising pharmacy (1668)."

_J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, volume 3, page 149._

JESUITS: Start--------

JESUITS: A. D. 1540-1556. Founding of the Society of Jesus. System of its organization. Its principles and aims.