Bohemond II of Antioch

Who was Bohemond II of Antioch?

Bohemond II was the Prince of Taranto and Prince of Antioch from 1111. He was the son of the founder of the principalities, Bohemond I, and Constance, daughter of Philip I of France. Taranto was lost to Roger II of Sicily in 1128.

When his father Bohemond I died, absent from Antioch, Bohemond II was a child living in Apulia. His cousin Tancred took over the regency of Antioch until he died in 1112; it then passed to Roger of Salerno, with the understanding that he would relinquish it to Bohemond whenever the latter arrived. Roger, however, was killed at the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119, and the nobles of Antioch invited King Baldwin II of Jerusalem to govern the Principality.

In 1124, at the age of sixteen, he reached his majority. He spent the next two years attending to affairs of state in the Mezzogiorno. Finally, in October 1126, after his eighteenth birthday, he finally left Apulia for Antioch. According to William of Tyre, he reached an agreement beforehand with his cousin William II, Duke of Apulia, that whichever of them died first, would leave his lands in Italy to the other. This is flatly contradicted by Alexander of Telese, who states that Bohemond left his lands under the governance of the Pope, and by Romuald of Salerno, who states that the regency of Taranto went to a relative of Bohemond's, Alexander, Count of Conversano. To whomever the principality of Taranto was left or promised, as part of his agreement to come to Antioch, Bohemond also married Baldwin II's daughter Alice. According to Matthew of Edessa Baldwin supposedly also promised him the crown of Jerusalem, but Matthew might be confusing Alice with her elder sister Melisende of Jerusalem, who also married a westerner, Fulk V of Anjou, around the same time.