refortify Mount Tabor, the supposed site of Christ’s transfiguration,
‘only seven leagues from Acre’.^82 This would become the immediate
casus bellifor the Fifth Crusade, which was declared by the pope in April
1213, but it was not just a rhetorical threat.^83
The relative failure of the 1210–11 Crusade may well have encouraged
the growth of hostility towards the new king. John aimed to send out a
message of‘business as usual’in his government: much the same people
remained close to the crown as had been the case during previous years.
Indeed, John later bound some of them quite closely to him through
marriage. The great Jerusalemite lord, Balian of Sidon, wedded the
king’s niece, Margaret of Reynel, during the Fifth Crusade.^84 However,
John did fall out with Walter of Caesarea, and, much more significantly,
with the powerful Ibelin family. It is arguable that the former regent of
the kingdom of Jerusalem, John of Ibelin, had wanted to continue to be
the‘power behind the throne’during the reign of the newcomer king, but
this position was unexpectedlyfilled by the ex-regent of Cyprus, Walter
of Montbéliard. Nevertheless, an opportunity to get rid of King John
arose in late 1212, when his wife, Queen Maria, died soon after child-
birth, leaving behind an infant daughter, Isabella II (sometimes wrongly
called‘Yolanda’).^85 During this, the‘crisis of 1212– 13 ’, John contrived
to keep his crown and effective rule over the kingdom. A question had
emerged, however, that was loaded with significance for the future:
would he continue to retain them when his daughter,‘the rightful heiress
to the kingdom’, came of age and got married?^86 The Church may well
have been crucial to John’s success in surmounting the immediate peril.
John was close to the papal legate and future saint, Albert of Vercelli,
patriarch of Jerusalem. The keyfigure in the Church, though, in so far
as John was concerned, was surely his fellow Champenois, Ralph of
Merencourt, the chancellor and bishop of Sidon. Ralph procured explicit
papal support for the king during the crisis of 1212–13 and succeeded as
patriarch when Albert was murdered during the next year. For their part,
the Ibelins withdrew from the Jerusalemite royal court for the rest of
John’s reign, building up Beirut, instead, into a sort of semi-independent
lordship. It can be argued that, in some ways, this marks the start of the
fragmentation of the kingdom of Jerusalem into its component elements.
Nevertheless, John’s ability to keep the Ibelins out of Jerusalemite high
(^82) ‘Colbert-Fontainebleau’, 316. (^83) For the crusade, see Perry,John,52–8.
(^84) ‘Colbert-Fontainebleau’, 332.
(^85) See my article,‘Isabella or Yolanda? The Name of the Queen of Jerusalem and Spouse of
86 the Emperor Frederick II’,inMedieval Prosopography30 (2015), 73–86.
See‘Colbert-Fontainebleau’, 356.
John of Brienne and the Call of Jerusalem 51