Joveta of Jerusalem
Overview
Biography
(See also Genealogical Table(s): 7.)
Joveta (1) was the youngest of the four daughters of Baldwin and the Armenian princess, Morphia of Melitene. She was born after her father became king in 1118. At age four, in 1124, she was offered as one of the hostages to ensure the full payment of a ransom for her father who had been captured by Balak and the Ortoqids near Edessa in 1123. She was held first by the emir of Shaizar, then handed over to il-Bursuqi until he was defeated by Baldwin who took enough booty to ransom his daughter and her fellow hostages in 1125. She became a nun at St. Anne in Jerusalem, and in 1143, entered the convent of St. Lazarus at Bethany which her sister, Queen Melisende, had founded. She was elected abbess a few months later (1144) after the death of the first (elderly) abbess. The convent held the whole town of Jericho. In the words of Steven Runciman, “in her dual role as princess of the blood royal and abbess of Palestine’s richest convent [Joveta] occupied a distinguished and venerable position for the rest of her long life” (History of the Crusades, 2.232, the source of the information in this paragraph). Joveta guided the education of her grand-niece, Sibylla, later queen of Jerusalem. She was dead by 1178.
Joveta’s three older sisters were Melisende, who became queen of Jerusalem in 1131, Alice, princess of Antioch by marriage to Bohemond II, and Hodierna, countess of Tripoli as wife of Raymond II. Ioveta and her sisters were apparently close. When Melisende lay dying in 1161, Ioveta and Hodierna were at her side. The date of Joveta’s death is unknown, but must have occurred before 1178, when another abbess appears in the cartulary of the Convent of St. Lazarus.(2)