Stephen of Blois (1045-1102)

    Stephen of Blois (1045-1102) or Stephen Henry, the eldest son  of Count Thibaut of Champagne by  his  first  wife,  was  born between  1045  and  1048.  Sometime between 1080 and 1084 he married Adela, a daughter of William the  Conqueror,  who  was  herself born between  1067 and  1069. Why Stephen did not marry until so late in life is unknown but at the time of their marriage he must already have been in his mid to late thirties while Adela was probably still in her mid teens.? On the one hand,  it is  important to  appreciate that Adela had  been born after William had become King of England in 1066 and that she  was  thus  a king's  daughter,  a porphyrogenita,  not just the daughter of someone  who  later became a  king.  The difference was important. Adela was named for her maternal grandmother, Adela  of France,  daughter  of Robert  II  the  Pious  (996-1031), thus  emphasising  her royal  descent on  both  sides.  For Stephen the marriage was extremely advantageous both for him personally and for his house of Champagne, Blois, Chartres in its internecine struggles with the Capetian royal house and the Counts of Anjou. Their children might hope to wear a crown, as indeed their second son, Stephen, eventually would. On the other hand, although Adela was  the  daughter  of a  king,  her  lineage  could  not  compare  in antiquity to that of Stephen. He could trace his back to Herbert II of Vermandois,  who  had  married  Adela,  a  daughter  of King Robert  I  of France,  and  who  was  himself  directly  descended from  Charlemagne,  even  if by  an  illegitimate  line.  Moreover, Stephen's  house  of Champagne  was  the  most  powerful  noble family  in  Northern France. William the Bastard would not have been unhappy with this marriage.

    Stephen succeeded to his father's counties of Chartres, Blois, Meaux, and Chateaudun in 1089 and as such he became one of the most important barons of the Kingdom of France. According to  Guibert  of Nogent,  he  had  extensive  lands  and  was  very powerful.

    Very little is known about his life before the Crusade, but he appears  to have been a  conventionally pious  man,  like most of the other leaders of the Crusade. Despite some dispute with bishop Ivo  of Chartres,  he  was  apparently  generous  to  the  Church; however,  this  was only normal for a man of his status.  (In  fact the reputations of various Crusader leaders for piety or lack of it in modern scholarship are quite misleading. Godfrey of Bouillon's reputation for  piety  was  a  creation of his  own legend.  Because he became the first ruler of the new Crusader state in Jerusalem, ipso facto a deep religiosity became attributed to him. But in fact the sources  which  we have for him before the Crusade show a man who was frequently in conflict with the Church, even fighting with Emperor Henry IV against Papal forces in Italy. Bohemond of Taranto, on the other hand, has acquired a reputation for lack of any religiosity, largely because he stayed in Antioch after its capture and became its first Prince rather than marching on with the other armies to Jerusalem. But the sources for his life before the  Crusade  show  a  man  who  was  unusually  generous  to  the Church, had close relations with Pope Urban II, and even attended several Church Reform Councils.)

     Stephen and his two fellow leaders marched south across the Alps  into  Italy, where  they  met the  Pope at  Lucca and had  an interview with him and received his blessing. They then went to Rome, where they prostrated themselves and prayed in the Basilica of St. Peter. Then, because it was already late in the year, Stephen and  Robert  of Normandy  wintered  with  Norman  friends  in Calabria.32  They  crossed  from  Brindisi  to  Durazzo  in  Albania at  Easter 1097,  and  then  followed  the  ancient  Via  Egnatia  to Constantinople.

References:

Pryor (J. H.):

"Stephen of Blois: Sensitive New-Age Crusader or Victim of History?", Arts: journal of the Sydney University Arts Association, (20) 1998, PP. 26-74.

Logistics of Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, Ashgate, 2006.

Murray (A. V.), The Crusades: an encyclopedia, CA : ABC-CLIO, 2006.


Asbridge (T.), The First Crusade: A New History,  Oxford University Press, 2004.