Ana C. Núñez: Searching for Medieval Queens

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I am grateful to The Europe Center for giving me the resources I needed to pursue dissertation research in Italy. The support I received enabled two weeks of archival and art historical research in the northern Italian city of Casale Monferrato, and the southern city of Andria. 

After the crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, they established four kingdoms in the Near East. The most famous of these new kingdoms was the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the history of the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Jerusalem is unique for having been ruled by five reigning queens. Between the years 1131 and 1228, Queen Melisende (r.1131-53), Queen Sybil (r.1186-90), Queen Isabella I (r.1198-1205), Queen Maria (r.1205-12), and Queen Isabella II (r.1212-28) ruled the Kingdom of Jerusalem by blood right. My dissertation, “Reigning Women: The Queens Regnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1131-1228,” examines these five women, their lives and their reigns. 

What royal identities did the regnant queens of Jerusalem fashion for themselves? Did they receive any instruction or guidance in the business of medieval queenship? Through the practices of patronage and gift-giving, were the reigning queens of Jerusalem participants in physical, political, and ideological networks? How were the lives and reigns of these royal women memorialized through their medieval burials? Finally, did the queens evince any sense of a shared consciousness as the reigning queens of Jerusalem? These are the primary questions that my dissertation examines through an investigation of medieval charters, chronicles, manuscript illuminations, seals, and tombs. 

The generous support of The Europe Center allowed me to carry out important research on two of the reigning queens: Queen Sybil and Queen Isabella II. Sometime between 1177 and 1190, Queen Sybil sent a relic of the True Cross to the monastery of Santa Maria di Crea in the diocese of Casale Monferrato in northern Italy. This precious holy gift—as I argue in my dissertation—was sent to commemorate the recent death of her first husband, William “Longsword” the junior marquis of Montferrat, as well as to remind the powerful marquis of Montferrat of their familial connections to Jerusalem, which at this time was in an increasingly dire military situation. Sybil’s gift unfortunately no longer exists in physical form. Instead, I discovered the object in an eighteenth-century Italian chronicle, which provides a short description and a detailed sketch. 

Funding from The Europe Center enabled me to travel to Casale Monferrato, where I spent time in the diocesan archive of Casale Monferrato, looking at liturgical manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries. When a medieval religious community received a holy relic, the object was typically incorporated into the local liturgy, which is preserved in liturgical manuscripts. I wanted to know if Sybil’s holy gift to the local monastery might have been remembered in the late medieval liturgy practiced by the cathedral church of Casale Monferrato. For example, did the liturgical manuscripts record references to a True Cross relic connected to a queen of Jerusalem? Unfortunately, my research did not uncover any such evidence, though the liturgical manuscripts did contain the customary prayers in honor of the True Cross. But, my time in Casale Monferrato also allowed me to visit the sanctuary of Santa Maria di Crea—where Sybil’s gift was once kept—as well as the Cathedral of Casale Monferrato—where the relic was transferred for safekeeping in the early nineteenth century. Visiting these two churches enabled me to better understand how Sybil’s gift and her memory might have been commemorated by the monks and the local community in these specific church spaces. 

In 1225, Queen Isabella II traveled to Italy to marry the German Emperor and King of Sicily, Frederick II. This journey was a singular undertaking among the five reigning queens of Jerusalem: Isabella II’s predecessors had never left the Near East. A few years after her arrival, in 1228, Isabella gave birth to her son, Conrad, the future German Emperor and King of Sicily. Isabella II died in the afterbirth at the age of about sixteen. She was buried at the cathedral of Andria in the region of Apulia. Isabella II’s burial is the only surviving burial of the five reigning queens of Jerusalem. 

Funding from The Europe Center also made it possible for me to travel to Andria where I could see, study, and photograph Isabella’s tomb. Travel to Andria was essential as there exists very little scholarship on Queen Isabella II, and I could find no photographs of Isabella’s burial. While in Andria, I was able to visit the twelfth-century (though heavily restored) cathedral of Andria and its crypt—an earlier structure that contains the tomb of Isabella II. While the medieval burial monument no longer survives, I was able to see that the tomb of Queen Isabella II does indeed remain. During my time in Andria, I was also able to explore the cathedral itself—which still preserves medieval inscriptions on the stone slabs in the nave—and was also able to consult unique reference works in the Biblioteca Comunale Giuseppe Ceci. 

The research I carried out during my time in Italy was an essential part of my ongoing investigation for my dissertation, “Reigning Women: The Queens Regnant of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1131-1228.” Research undertaken in Casale Monferrato will directly contribute to my chapter examining the queens’ patronage, gift-giving, and personal geographies. Similarly, the research carried out in Andria will supply the majority of the evidence for my chapter on the queens’ burials and remembrance. My many thanks to The Europe Center for making such research possible.