expense, and so the obvious solution was to sell it. Within a few years,
Baldwin II had approved the sale of Namur, and of all his possessions in
the Low Countries, to the count of Flanders, Guy of Dampierre.^64
The War of Namur soon became intertwined with another, and far
more memorable matter: the‘mortgage and redemption of an emperor’s
son’. The broad context for this is provided by the process in which the
Latin imperial couple came to focus on the Iberian peninsula–that is, on
Mary’s family and connections there. As early as 1246, at Valladolid,
Baldwin II had entered into an agreement with the Order of Santiago to
provide essential military aid for Constantinople. This scheme had failed
for the usual reason: namely, that the emperor was unable to stump up
the necessary cash.^65 Just over a decade later, Baldwin’sfinancial straits
reached such a pass that he was forced to pawn his and Mary’s son and
heir, Philip of Courtenay, as surety to his Venetian creditors.^66 Although
much of the sum was paid, as ever, by the French crown, the bulk of it
seems to have come from a quite different source: from Mary’s other
leading kinsman, King Alfonso X of Castile. Alfonso, of course, was not
just a Spanish power. From 1256 onwards, he was competing for the
German crown, and so this provided another reason for him to be deeply
concerned by what was happening in the imperial marquisate of Namur.
It can come as no surprise that, whilst Alfonso backed his kinswoman
Mary, Alfonso’s rival for the German throne–that is, the English prince,
Richard of Cornwall–endorsed the claims of Henry of Luxemburg.^67 All
this does much to explain why Mary ran off to the Iberian peninsula after
she had run out of options in the Low Countries. Furthermore, as part
and parcel of his imperial pretensions, Alfonso was looking to take up a
position as the leading protector of the Latin East. Hence, it would seem
that he paid for Philip’s release soon after the autumn of 1258, when
Mary came to visit him.^68 At around the same time, it was agreed that
Philip would marry into the Castilian royal family, and plans for this were
still being mooted as late as 1281.^69 An enjoyable version of all this can
be found in various Spanish chronicles, which distort the substance of the
affair so as to make it appear much more heroic. These sources claim that
(^64) Ibid., nos. 281–9.
(^65) Seeibid., nos. 226–8; and Chrissis,Crusading in Frankish Greece, 157–8.
(^66) See the detailed discussion in‘Régestes des empereurs latins de Constantinople’,
no. 261.
(^67) See Wolff,‘Mortgage and Redemption of an Emperor’s Son’, 63.
(^68) ‘Régestes des empereurs latins de Constantinople’, no. 261; see also J. F. Callaghan,The
69 Learned King: the Reign of Alfonso X of Castile(Philadelphia, 1993), 204–5.
‘Régestes des empereurs latins de Constantinople’, no. 271; and Wolff,‘Mortgage and
Redemption of an Emperor’s Son’,73–5.
88 In the Pages of Joinville (c. 1237–1267)