Ralph | |
---|---|
Died | 1174 |
Nationality | English |
Occupation(s) | Administrator and bishop of Bethlehem |
Ralph (died 1174) was an Englishman who was the bishop of Bethlehem and chancellor of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem.
Ralph is expressly stated by William of Tyre to have been an Englishman. But nothing is known of him before 20 February 1146, when he first appears in a charter as chancellor of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem under Baldwin III (Röhricht, Regesta, pp. 61, 62). Ralph was in high favour with the young king, his mother Melisend, and the court party. On 25 January 1147 the see of Tyre became vacant by the election of Archbishop Fulcher to the patriarchate of Jerusalem, and through the king's influence Ralph obtained the archbishopric, which he held at least till 22 June 1150. Some of the bishops, however, appealed against the election to the pope, and, though Ralph held possession for two years, Eugenius eventually decided against him (William of Tyre, xvi. 17). In 1153 or 1154, when Reginald of Chatillon had imprisoned the patriarch of Antioch, Ralph was dispatched by King Baldwin to expostulate with him. Early in 1156 Ralph was elected Bishop of Bethlehem, according to William of Tyre, through the favour of his fellow-countryman, Adrian IV; his election took place before 7 June 1156, and his consecration between that date and 2 November of the same year (ib., 82–3). As was usual in the kingdom of Jerusalem, Ralph retained the chancellorship after his promotion to a bishopric, and his name occurs frequently in official documents down to his death. In 1158 he joined with other bishops in protesting against the election of Amalric as patriarch of Jerusalem. In 1167 he accompanied King Amalric in his Egyptian campaign, and was severely wounded and lost all his baggage in the battle in the desert. About the end of 1168 Guy, count of Nevers, bestowed on Ralph the church and revenues of Clamecy, near Nevers in France, and Ralph accompanied the count on his return thither between October 1168 and January 1170. In February or March of the latter year Ralph was at Pontoise, endeavouring to reconcile Henry II and Thomas Becket (Fitzstephen, Life of Becket, Rolls Ser. iii. 97–8). Ralph took advantage of his visit to help Amalric's ambassador, Frederick of Tyre, in seeking aid for the kingdom of Jerusalem from Henry II and Louis. He also took part in the movement which forced the grandmaster of the temple to resign in 1169. Before the end of 1170 Ralph returned to the Holy Land, and was present with Amalric at the relief of Darum; in 1171, when the king was absent in the north, he accompanied Henfrid the constable to the relief of Kerak, and bore the holy cross. He died in the spring of 1174, the same year as King Amalric, and was buried in the chapter-house at Bethlehem. The last document in which his name occurs is dated 18 April 1174 (ib., p. 136). An inscription at Bethlehem records that the mosaics in the Church of the Nativity were executed during his episcopate in 1169. William of Tyre, when relating Ralph's intrusion to the archbishopric of Tyre, speaks of him as a handsome and learned but over-worldly man; when recording his death, William calls him ‘venerabilis dominus Radulphus felicis memoriæ … vir liberalis et benignus admodum.’
Amalric or Amaury I was King of Jerusalem from 1163, and Count of Jaffa and Ascalon before his accession. He was the second son of Melisende and Fulk of Jerusalem, and succeeded his older brother Baldwin III. During his reign, Jerusalem became more closely allied with the Byzantine Empire, and the two states launched an unsuccessful invasion of Egypt. He was the father of three future rulers of Jerusalem, Sibylla, Baldwin IV, and Isabella I.
William of Tyre was a medieval prelate and chronicler. As archbishop of Tyre, he is sometimes known as William II to distinguish him from his predecessor, William I, the Englishman, a former prior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, who was Archbishop of Tyre from 1127 to 1135. He grew up in Jerusalem at the height of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established in 1099 after the First Crusade, and he spent twenty years studying the liberal arts and canon law in the universities of Europe.
Raymond III was count of Tripoli from 1152 to 1187. He was a minor when Nizari Assassins murdered his father, Raymond II of Tripoli. Baldwin III of Jerusalem, who was staying in Tripoli, made Raymond's mother, Hodierna of Jerusalem, regent. Raymond spent the following years at the royal court in Jerusalem. He reached the age of majority in 1155, after which he participated in a series of military campaigns against Nur ad-Din, the Zengid ruler of Damascus. In 1161 he hired pirates to pillage the Byzantine coastline and islands to take vengeance on Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos, who had refused to marry his sister Melisende. He was captured in the Battle of Harim by Nur ad-Din's troops on 10 August 1164, and imprisoned in Aleppo for almost ten years. During his captivity, Amalric I of Jerusalem administered the county of Tripoli on his behalf.
Sibylla was the queen of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1190. She reigned alongside her husband Guy of Lusignan, to whom she was unwaveringly attached despite his unpopularity among the barons of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Theoderic, commonly known as Thierry of Alsace, was the fifteenth count of Flanders from 1128 to 1168. With a record of four campaigns in the Levant and Africa, he had a rare and distinguished record of commitment to crusading.
The Kingdom of Jerusalem, one of the Crusader states that was created in 1099, was divided into a number of smaller seigneuries. According to the 13th-century jurist John of Ibelin, the four highest crown vassals in the kingdom proper were the count of Jaffa and Ascalon, the prince of Galilee, the lord of Sidon, and the lord of Oultrejordain.
Heraclius or Eraclius, was archbishop of Caesarea and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
There were six major officers of the kingdom of Jerusalem: the constable, the marshal, the seneschal, the chamberlain, the butler and the chancellor. At certain times there were also bailiffs, viscounts and castellans.
Agnes of Courtenay was a Frankish noblewoman who held considerable influence in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the reign of her son, King Baldwin IV. Though she was never queen, she has been described as the most powerful woman in the kingdom's history after Queen Melisende.
Baldwin of Ibelin, also known as Baldwin II of Ramla, was an important noble of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century and was lord of Ramla from 1169-1186. He was the second son of Barisan of Ibelin, and was the younger brother of Hugh of Ibelin and older brother of Balian of Ibelin. He first appears in the historical record as a witness to charters in 1148.
Balian of Ibelin, also known as Barisan the Younger, was a crusader noble of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 12th century. He was lord of Ibelin from 1170 to 1193. As the leader of the defense of the city during the siege of Jerusalem in 1187, he surrendered Jerusalem to Saladin on 2 October 1187.
Miles of Plancy, also known as Milon or Milo, was a noble in the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem who served under King Almaric I, who was Seneschal of Jeruslaem and ruled as Lord of Oultrejordain from 1173 until his death in 1174.
Reginald Fitz Jocelin was a medieval Bishop of Bath and an Archbishop of Canterbury-elect in England. A member of an Anglo-Norman noble family, he was the son of a bishop, and was educated in Italy. He was a household clerk for Thomas Becket, but by 1167 he was serving King Henry II of England. He was also a favourite of King Louis VII of France, who had him appointed abbot of the Abbey of Corbeil. After Reginald angered Becket while attempting to help negotiate a settlement between Becket and the king, Becket called him "that offspring of fornication, that enemy to the peace of the Church, that traitor." When he was elected as a bishop, the election was challenged by King Henry's eldest son, Henry the Young King, and Reginald was forced to go to Rome to be confirmed by Pope Alexander III. He attended the Third Lateran Council in 1179, and spent much of his time administering his diocese. He was elected Archbishop of Canterbury in 1191, but died before he could be installed.
Frederick de la Roche was the sixth Latin archbishop of Tyre (1164–1174), chancellor of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and the chief diplomat of King Amalric. He was a Lorrainer, from the town of La Roche, of noble stock.
Gilbert of Assailly was the fifth Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, serving from 1162 or 1163 to 1170, when he was deposed. As Grand Master, he succeeded Auger de Balben. Nevertheless, most sources list him as the fifth, rather than fourth, Grand Master and this biography continues that tradition, with the exception being Delaville Le Roulx' work. He was succeeded by Gastone de Murols. Gilbert encouraged Amalric of Jerusalem in his unsuccessful invasion of Egypt, leaving the Order in debt and causing the reexamination of its military role.
A series of Crusader invasions of Egypt were undertaken by the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1163 to 1169 to strengthen its position in the Levant by taking advantage of the weakness of the Fatimid Caliphate.
Fulkof Angoulême was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem from 1146 to his death in 1157.
Aimery or Aymery of Limoges, also Aimericus in Latin, Aimerikos in Greek and Hemri in Armenian, was a Roman Catholic ecclesiarch in Frankish Outremer and the fourth Latin Patriarch of Antioch from c. 1140 until his death. Throughout his lengthy episcopate he was the most powerful figure in the Principality of Antioch after the princes, and often entered into conflict with them. He was also one of the most notable intellectuals to rise in the Latin East.
The timeline of the Kingdom of Jerusalem presents important events in the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem—a Crusader state in modern day Israel and Jordan—in chronological order. The kingdom was established after the First Crusade in 1099. Its first ruler Godfrey of Bouillon did not take the title of king and swore fealty to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Daimbert. Godfrey's brother and successor Baldwin I was crowned the first king of Jerusalem without doing homage to the patriarch in 1100. By 1153, Baldwin I and his successors captured all towns on the Palestinian coast with the support of Pisan, Genoese and Venetian fleets and also took control of the caravan routes between Egypt and Syria. The kings regularly administered other crusader states—the Counties of Edessa and Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch—on behalf of their absent or underage rulers.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tyre was an archbishopric in the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Laughton, John Knox (1896). "Ralph (d.1174)". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 47. London: Smith, Elder & Co.