King of Jerusalem 1210-1212 ruled from Acre since Saracens had Jerusalem. [Burke's Peerage]

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John, byname JOHN OF BRIENNE, French JEAN DE BRIENNE (b. c. 1148--d. March 1237, Constantinople), count of Brienne who became titular king of Jerusalem (1210-29) and Latin emperor of Constantinople (1231-37).

A penniless younger son of the French count Erard II of Brienne and Agnes of Montbéliard, John passed most of his life as a minor noble until befriended by King Philip II Augustus of France, who arranged for him to marry Mary (Marie) of Montferrat, queen of the crusader state of Jerusalem, in 1210. John reached the Palestinian town of Acre on Sept. 13, 1210, married Mary the following day, and was crowned at Tyre on October 3. Mary died in 1212, and John was named regent for their infant daughter, Yolande de Brienne, who inherited the crown as Isabella II. In 1214 John married Princess Stephanie of Armenia, daughter of the Armenian king Leo II, and later had a son by her.

As regent, John arranged a five-year truce with al-Malik al-'Adil, sultan of Egypt and Syria, in July 1212, and during the truce he persuaded Pope Innocent III to launch the Fifth Crusade in support of his daughter's kingdom. In 1218 he joined the crusading force from the West in an expedition against the Egyptian port of Damietta. After quarrelling with the crusade leader, the cardinal legate Pelagius, John left Egypt in February 1220, returning in July 1221 to witness the humiliating defeat of the crusaders and the abandonment of the siege of Damietta.

Stephanie died in 1219; John then married Berengaria, daughter of Ferdinand III of Castile, and in 1225 gave his daughter Isabella in marriage to the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II, trying to retain his rights as regent of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Immediately following the marriage, however, Frederick began to contest these rights.

In 1228 John was invited to Constantinople to be regent and co-emperor with the young Baldwin II and arranged a match between Baldwin and his four-year-old daughter by Berengaria. Crowned in 1231, John helped fend off attacks by the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen II and the Nicaean emperor John III Vatatzes, but shortly before his death he was forced to appeal to the West for help. [Encyclopaedia Britannica CD '97]

• Married: 15 SEP 1210 in Acre, Palestine ^{1 3}

1. Isabella Yolande de BRIENNE , Queen Jerusalem b: ABT 1211 in Acre, Palestine

• Married: 1214 ^{1 3}

• Married: 1223 in Burgos, Spain ^{4 3 1}

1. Alphonse d'Acre de BRIENNE , Count d'Eu b: ABT 1223 in Brienne-le-Chateau, Aube, Champagne, France
2. Jean de BRIENNE , Grand Butler In France b: ABT 1225 in Acre, Palestine
3. Louis of Acre de BRIENNE , Vicomte Beaumont b: 1227 in Acre, Palestine

1. Title: Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, 106th Edition, Charles Mosley Editor-in-Chief, 1999
   Page: 227
2. Title: Complete Peerage of England Scotland Ireland Great Britain and the United Kingdom, by G. E Cokayne, Sutton Publishing Ltd, 2000
   Page: II:59 note (b)
3. Title: Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists, 7th Edition, by Frederick Lewis Weis, additions by Walter Lee Shippard Jr., 1999
   Page: 114-28
4. Title: Encyclopedia Britannica, Treatise on
   Page: John (Jean)