12mo, engraved title-page  + title-page + [xxxii] + 756pp. Bound in contemporary vellum. A beautiful copy of a very rare book.

The Lusignans were among the French nobles who made great careers in the Crusades. An ancestor of the later Lusignan dynasty in the Holy Land, Hugh of Lusignan, was killed in the east during the Crusade of 1101. Another Hugh arrived in the 1160s and was captured in a battle with Nur ad-Din. In the 1170s, the brothers Guy and Amalric arrived in Jerusalem, having been expelled by Richard Lionheart (at that point, acting Duke of Aquitaine) from his realm, which meant that they were not allowed to sojourn at their home near Poitiers. In the Holy Land, they allied themselves with Raynald of Chatillon, who led one of the factions currently dividing the kingdom. Raynald's faction was mostly composed of newcomers (also known as the "court party" due to their influence in the royal court), while the opposing faction of old established families was led by Raymond III of Tripoli. In 1179 Amalric became constable of Jerusalem, with the support of Agnes of Courtenay, mother of the then King (Amalric was supposedly having an affair with Agnes). The court party also made Guy regent of the kingdom in 1180. Guy became king himself in 1186 as consort of the new Queen, Sibylla of Jerusalem. Guy's term as king is generally seen as a disaster; he was defeated by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, and fled to Cyprus as Saladin reconquered almost the entire kingdom. On Cyprus, in 1191, he met Richard, now king of England and a leader of the Third Crusade. Richard supported Guy's claim to the kingdom of Jerusalem, though Sibylla had died in 1190, but in the aftermath of the crusade Conrad of Montferrat had the support of the majority of nobles. Instead, Richard sold Guy the island of Cyprus. Guy thereby became the first Latin lord of Cyprus. Amalric succeeded Guy in Cyprus, and also became King of Jerusalem in 1197. Amalric was responsible for establishing the Roman Catholic Church on Cyprus. The male line of the Lusignans in the Levant died out in 1267 with Hugh II of Cyprus, Amalric's great-grandson (the male line continued in France until 1307). At that point, Hugh of Antioch, whose maternal grandfather had been Hugh I of Cyprus, a male heir of the original Lusignan dynasty, took the name Lusignan, thus founding the second House of Lusignan, and managed to succeed his deceased cousin as King of Cyprus. These "new" Lusignans remained in control of Cyprus until 1489; in Jerusalem (or, more accurately, Acre), they ruled from 1268 until the fall of the city in 1291, after an interlude (1228-1268) during which the Hohenstaufen dynasty officially held the kingdom. Also after 1291 the Lusignans continued to claim the lost Jerusalem, and occasionally attempted to organize crusades to recapture territory on the mainland. In the 13th century the Lusignans also intermarried with the royal families of the Principality of Antioch and the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.

Price: CyP 550.00