The Crown of Jerusalem

Abstract

For anyone with a taste for resounding names and titles there is no better reading than an old number of the Almanach de Gotha. In the days when kings were really kings and emperors were emperors every self-respecting monarch had a string of titles after his name. The list of kingdoms, duchies and counties claimed, for instance, by the Emperor of Austria reads like an epic poem. But there are confusing elements about that great work. Many of the titles overlap. There was a particular tendency amongst European potentates to call themselves Kings of Jerusalem. To the last the Emperors of Austria and the I(ings of Spain were Kings ofJerusalem. If we go further back we find many other claimants. At various times the Kings of France, of Naples and even of England have put in a claim for it. The Duke of Savoy had a rather good claim, though he usually contented himself with the more modest title of King of Cyprus, which his heir, the ex-King of Italy, bears to this day. There are other claimants among various houses of the European nobility. Indeed, the throne of Jerusalem has so many candidates queuing up to sit on it that it is as well that it does not exist. I want this afternoon to trace briefly the history of this curious kingship. I must ask you to bear with me through a certain tangle of legal, constitutional and genealogical details, in an attempt to illustrate not only the changing mediaeval conceptions of monarchy but also the peculiar position that the Holy City held in the mediaeval mind. I trust that no one has come here in the hope of hearing about the actual regalia of Jerusalem. We know practically nothing about that. There was certainly an orb with a cross on it and a sceptre tipped with a cross. The crown itself: as worn by the first two mediaeval kings, seems, from pictures on their seals, to have been an open circlet with four points rising from it; but we do not even know whether it was of gold or some other metal. Later a cap of state seems to have been added, held in place by two cross-bands. This crown was kept in the Treasury of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in a casket with three locks. One key was kept by the Patriarch ofJerusalem, one by the Grand Master of the Order of the Hospital and one by the Grand Master of the Order of the Temple. This crown was presumably lost when