Prince of Antioch (1153-1163) and later lord of Transjordan and Hebron (1177-1187).
A younger son of Herve II of Donzy, Reynald took the cross before 1153, when he participated in the successful siege of Muslim Ascalon (mod. Tel Ashqelon, Israel). Later that year he married Constance, widow of Prince Raymond of Antioch, and became ruler of the principality. In 1155, acting on behalf of the Byzantine emperor Manuel I, Reynald attacked the Armenian prince T‘oros, who had annexed Byzantine Cilicia. He recovered castles in the Amanus Mountains, but when Manuel failed to defray the costs of the campaign, gave them to the Knights Templar and joined with T‘oros in an attack on the Byzantine island of Cyprus. When Manuel campaigned in northern Syria in 1158-1159, he required Reynald to perform a public ritual penance and to do homage to him, but Manuel’s return to Constantinople meant that in practice Reynald’s autonomy was not materially affected by this act.
In 1160 or 1161 Reynald was captured by the forces of Nur al-Din and imprisoned at Aleppo for over fifteen years. During this time his wife died and his stepson Bohemund III attained his majority and became prince of Antioch (1163). After Nur al-Din’s death (1174), the regents for his son, seeking a Frankish alliance against Saladin, released Reynald along with Joscelin III of Edessa. Reynald, now a landless man (although retaining the courtesy title of prince), went to Jerusalem, where Joscelin’s nephew, Baldwin IV, was king. Sent by Baldwin to Constantinople to renew a treaty against Egypt, Reynald was well received because he had become part of Manuel’s extended kin group through the emperor’s marriage to Reynald’s stepdaughter, Mary of Antioch (1161). Manuel renewed the treaty with Jerusalem and almost certainly paid Reynald’s ransom of 120,000 dinars.
Because of the success of this mission, Baldwin IV subsequently placed great confidence in Reynald; he arranged his marriage to Stephanie of Milly, widowed heiress of Transjordan (1176), and invested him with the lordship of Hebron, thus placing him in command of the southeastern defenses of the kingdom. Baldwin appointed Reynald his executive regent for a brief time while he was seriously ill in the summer of 1177, and Reynald was in command of the
Frankish host at the battle on Mont Gisard when Saladin’s invading army was decisively defeated on 25 November 1177. In 1180 Baldwin IV betrothed his younger sister, Isabella, to Reynald’s stepson, Humphrey IV of Toron, and appointed Reynald as her guardian.
In 1180 Saladin made a two-year truce with Baldwin IV, but Reynald broke it by attacking caravans on the desert route from Damascus to Mecca. This was not an act of brigandage, but a successful attempt to prevent Saladin’s forces from seizing Aleppo by diverting their attention to Transjordan. In 1182 Saladin launched a major attack on the Zangids in Iraq, who allied with the Franks of Jerusalem. In the winter of 1182-1183, Reynald launched a small war fleet in the Red Sea with the objective of capturing Aila and cutting Saladin’s lines of communication between Egypt and Damascus. Part of the fleet attacked Arab merchant shipping, probably as a means of recouping the costs of the expedition. This initiative failed because of the speed with which al-‘Adil, governor of Egypt, transferred a fleet from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Reynald’s forces were destroyed, though he evaded capture. Thereafter Saladin viewed Reynald as his most dangerous opponent. He built fortresses at Qal‘at Guindi in the Sinai in 1182 and at Ajlun in 1184-1185 to restrict Reynald’s movements, and twice unsuccessfully besieged Reynald’s chief fortress of Kerak (1183, 1184).
During the succession crisis of 1186, Reynald supported Baldwin IV’s elder sister, Sibyl, and her husband Guy of Lusignan (against his personal interests, since the alternative candidates were the princess Isabella and her husband, Reynald’s stepson Humphrey). Saladin’s official reason for invading the kingdom in 1187 was that Reynald had attacked one of his caravans during a truce, but that was merely the pretext for a war that had become inevitable. Reynald fought bravely at the battle of Hattin but was taken prisoner and had the doubtful distinction of being executed personally by Sal-adin, having first been offered and refused a reprieve if he would renounce the Christian faith.
-Bernard Hamilton
Bibliography
Cahen, Claude, La Syrie du Nord a I’epoque des croisades et la principaute franque d’Antioche (Paris: Geuthner, 1940).
Hamilton, Bernard, “The Elephant of Christ: Reynald of Chatillon,” in Studies in Church History 15 (1978), 97-108.
-, The Leper King and His Heirs. Baldwin IV and the
Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Hillenbrand, Carole, “The Imprisonment of Reynald of Chatillon,” in Texts, Documents and Artefacts: Islamic Studies in Honour of D. S. Richards, ed. Chase F. Robinson (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 79-101.
Mayer, Hans Eberhard, Die Kreuzfahrerherrschaft Montreal (Sohak): Jordanien im 12. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990).
Richard, Jean, “Aux origines d’un grand lignage: Des Pahadii a Renaud de Chatillon,” in Media in Francia: Recueil de melanges offert a Karl Ferdinand Werner (Paris: Herault, 1989), pp. 409-418.
Schlumberger, Gustav, Renaud de Chatillon, Prince
D’Antioche, Seigneur de la terre d’Outre-Jourdain, 3d ed. (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1923).
World History
