Count of Champagne (1201-1253) and king of Navarre (1234-1253), leader of the Crusade of 1239-1241, and author of several French crusade songs.
Thibaud was born posthumously, the son of Thibaud III, count of Champagne, and Blanche, daughter of Sancho VI, king of Navarre. From his father, Thibaud IV inherited Champagne, a large and prosperous northern French county known for its fairs and courtly culture. From his mother he inherited a claim to the throne of the Iberian kingdom of Navarre, which he made good in 1234. It was in that year that Pope Gregory IX preached a crusade to the Holy Land. The counts of Champagne had a long tradition of responding to such appeals. Thibaud’s father was preparing to depart on the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) when he died in 1201. Thibaud’s grandfather (Henry I) went on crusade to the Holy Land three times, and between 1192 and 1197 ruled the kingdom of Jerusalem. Thibaud himself had participated in the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), where at the siege of Avignon in 1226 he was rumored to have poisoned King Louis VIII of France.
Whether out of allegiance to this dynastic imperative, or the need, on the eve of yet another rebellion against the French Crown, to acquire the papal protection afforded by crusader status, Thibaud took the cross in the fall of 1235. He spent four times as long preparing for the crusade as he did fighting it. The pope delayed the expedition by trying to convince Thibaud and others to fulfill their vows in Frankish Greece. Nevertheless, Thibaud set off for the Holy Land in the spring of 1239, after overseeing a mass execution of alleged heretics in Champagne.
At a council of war held in Acre (mod. ‘Akko, Israel) in November 1239, the leading figures of the crusade elected Thibaud commander and swore to obey him for the duration of the campaign. Some of these crusaders were his social and political equals, despite not wearing crowns; some had been at war with him through much of the 1230s. Thibaud proved incapable of imposing discipline upon the army. Marching south to fortify Ascalon (mod. Tel Ashqelon, Israel), the crusade split in two when Amalric of Montfort and Henry of Bar, ignoring Thibaud’s command to remain with the host, went off to raid around Gaza. The raiders promptly fell into an Egyptian ambush, which killed or captured most of them. In the wake of this military catastrophe, Thibaud turned to diplomacy.
In treaties with al-Salih Isma‘il, the ruler of Damascus, and al-Nasir Dawud, the prince of Kerak, Thibaud won substantial territorial concessions for the kingdom of Jerusalem: the hinterland of Sidon (mod. Sai'da, Lebanon), several northern fortresses, and in eastern Galilee, the restoration of the kingdom’s former border at the river Jordan. When Thibaud sailed home in September 1240, the kingdom of Jerusalem encompassed more territory than at any time since 1187. Yet he departed under a cloud of suspicion just the same, resented by some for his military failings and by others for his willingness to engage in diplomacy with Muslim powers.
Thibaud is best known today as the most accomplished lyric poet of thirteenth-century France. Among his surviving works are three crusade songs (Fr. chansons de croisade) that praise those valiant knights who, for the sake of honor in this world and paradise in the next, go forth to restore Christ’s patrimony in the Holy Land.
-Michael Lower
Bibliography
Jackson, Peter, “The Crusades of 1239-41 and their
Aftermath,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 50 (1987), 32-62.
Jordan, William Chester, “The Representation of the Crusades in the Songs Attributed to Thibaud, Count Palatine of Champagne,” Journal of Medieval History 25 (1999),
27-34.
Lower, Michael, “The Burning at Mont-Aime: Thibaut IV of Champagne’s Preparations for the Barons’ Crusade,” Journal of Medieval History 29 (2003), 95-108.
-, The Barons’ Crusade: A Call to Arms and Its
Consequences (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
World History
