Briennes since the 1120s at the latest.^3 Until comparatively recently, it
was often claimed that this brood of Brienne children was born quite
remarkably early–that is, in the 1140s or so. Indeed, it became standard
to accept that Erard’s youngest son, John, the future king of Jerusalem
and Latin emperor of Constantinople, was born in about 1148. This
chronology is still found here and there, on occasion, and it greatly
distorts our picture of the entire generation. On closer examination,
though, it is clearly wrong, not least because it gives rise to a large
number of historical absurdities. (To take the most egregious: the idea
that John was over sixty before his career really took off; that he was a sort
of‘heroic OAP’who led cavalry charges and fought hand-to-hand in his
late eighties; and that, even more remarkably, no contemporary sawfitto
comment, at length, on any of this.) A more accurate perspective really
began with a seminal article written by J. M. Buckley in the 1950s.
Although some parts of his work now need revision, Buckley used the
Brienne charters to establish that Erard II and Agnes of Montbéliard,
Walter III and John’s parents, married in around 1166. It is only then
that Agnes starts to appear in Erard’s charters, consenting, from time to
time, to decisions that he has made. Thisfixes an approximate earliest
date for any children born of the marriage.^4
Along with his brothers William and Andrew (but, tellingly, not John),
Walter started to approve charters issued by his father from 1177.^5 At this
stage, according to our calculations, he was around ten years old, and
William and Andrew must have been even younger. After the latter’s
early death, Walter and William carried on assenting to Erard’s charters,
quite frequently, all the way down to 1189.^6 Occasionally, these docu-
ments reveal a little bit more about the brothers. We know, for instance,
that Walter had a tutor (‘pedagogus’), called Giles, who isfirst men-
tioned in 1177 and was still there in 1184.^7 All this stands in stark
contrast with Walter’s youngest brother, John, who is never mentioned
at all. There are a variety of possible explanations for this. Most of them
turn on the use of a highly suspect source: namely, arécitascribed to the
later thirteenth-century‘Minstrel of Reims’, which purports to describe
John’s early life. Therécitclaims that John was intended for the Church at
(^3) See the full text of‘Catalogue’, no. 35, which can be found inThe Cartulary of Montier-en-
Der, no. 141;‘Colbert-Fontainebleau’, 332; and Perry,John, 22, 26.
(^4) See J. M. Buckley,‘The Problematical Octogenarianism of John of Brienne’,Speculum 32
(1957), 315–22; revised in Perry,John,25–6.
(^5) ‘Catalogue’, no. 76.
(^6) Ibid., nos. 81, 85, 91–3, 95, 99. See also the following unpublished charter in the BnF:
7 MS Français 20690, fol. 182, repeated in Duchesne 76, fol. 72.
‘Catalogue’, nos. 76, 85.
34 Breakthrough and High Point (c. 1191–1237)