JEANNE DE CONSTANTINOPLE
(ca. 1200–1244). Countess of Flanders and Hainaut. The older daughter and successor of
Baudouin IX of Flanders and emperor of Constantinople, Jeanne became countess when
her father died on crusade in 1205/06. Philip II Augustus of France used her long
minority to remove much of the threat that he had perceived from Flemish power. The
regency lasted until Jeanne was married at Paris in 1212 to Ferrand of Portugal.
Allegedly to counteract English influence in Flanders, the crown prince Louis occupied
Aire and Saint-Omer before Jeanne and Ferrand were permitted to assume their
inheritance. Ferrand quickly allied with the pro-English party in Flanders but was
captured by the French at Bouvines (July 27, 1214) and kept in prison until 1227. Jeanne
was forced to accept the control of a group of Francophile Flemish nobles. There was
some easing of tensions in the 1220s; but to gain the release of Ferrand, to whom she
seems genuinely to have been attached, Jeanne had to agree to the Treaty of Melun
(1226), which provided an enormous indemnity and subordinated the counts of Flanders
to the French crown. Ferrand fought the nobles who had caused his wife trouble during
his captivity and forced the count of Holland to do homage to Flanders for Zeeland west
of the Scheldt. He died in 1233, and his infant daughter did not live to maturity. In 1237,
Jeanne married Thomas of Savoy. She died on December 5, 1244, and was succeeded in
Hainaut and Flanders by her sister Marguerite.
David M.Nicholas
[See also: FERRAND OF PORTUGAL; GHENT]
de Hemptinne, Th. “Vlaanderen en Henegouwen onder de erfgenamen van de Boudewijns, 1070–
1244.” In Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden. 2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 372–98.
Luykx, Theo. Johanna van Constantinopel, gravin van Vlaanderen en Henegouwen. Antwerp:
Staandard-Boekhandel, 1946.
JEANNE OF BURGUNDY
. Two women named Jeanne of Burgundy, both born in the 1290s, reigned as queens of
France in the first half of the 14th century. The older Jeanne was the daughter of Mahaut
of Artois, a second cousin of Philip IV, and of Otto IV, count of Burgundy. In 1306, she
married the king’s second son, who ascended the throne ten years later as Philip V. Two
of their children, both daughters, lived to adulthood. The older, another Jeanne, married
Eudes IV, duke of Burgundy, and the younger, Marguerite, married Louis I of Flanders.
Mahaut’s title to the county of Artois was hotly contested, and Jeanne’s husband,
daughters, and sons-in-law became involved in this dispute, which split the French royal
family. Queen Jeanne died in 1330 at about the age of forty, the year after she had
succeeded her mother as countess of Artois.
Jeanne’s rival in Artois, her cousin Robert, was a close friend of Charles IV (r. 1322–
28) and Philip VI (r. 1328–50), but Philip finally broke with Robert after Jeanne’s death,
The Encyclopedia 937