Conrad of Montferrat - Early Life

Early Life

Conrad was the second son of Marquis William V of Montferrat, "the Elder", and his wife Judith of Babenberg. He was a first cousin of Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor, Louis VII of France and Leopold V of Austria.

Conrad was born in Montferrat, which is now a region of Piedmont, in northwest Italy. The exact place and year are unknown. He is first mentioned in a charter in 1160, when serving at the court of his maternal uncle, Conrad, Bishop of Passau, later Archbishop of Salzburg. (He may have been named after him, or after his mother's half-brother, Conrad III of Germany.)

A handsome man, with great personal courage and intelligence, he was described in the Brevis Historia Occupationis et Amissionis Terræ Sanctæ ("A Short History of the Occupation and Loss of the Holy Land"):

Conrad was vigorous in arms, extremely clever both in natural mental ability and by learning, amiable in character and deed, endowed with all the human virtues, supreme in every council, the fair hope of his own side and a blazing lightning-bolt to the foe, capable of pretence and dissimulation in politics, educated in every language, in respect of which he was regarded by the less articulate to be extremely fluent. In one thing alone was he regarded as blameworthy: that he had seduced another's wife away from her living husband, and made her separate from him, and married her himself.

(The last sentence alludes to his third marriage to Isabella of Jerusalem in 1190, for which see below.)

He was active in diplomacy from his twenties, and became an effective military commander, campaigning alongside other members of his family in the struggles with the Lombard League. He first married an unidentified lady, possibly a daughter of Count Meinhard I of Görz (It: Gorizia), before 1179, but she was dead by the end of 1186, without leaving any surviving issue.