BOHEMOND III

born 1145 died 1201 byname Bohemond The Child, or The Stammerer, French dialect Bohmond Le Bambe, or Le Baube prince of Antioch from 1163 to 1201. The son of Constance (daughter of Bohemond II) by her first husband, Raymond of Poitiers, he succeeded to the principality upon attaining his majority and then exiled his mother. In the following year (1164) he suffered defeat and was captured by the Muslims, and thereafter the principality of Antioch was never again a power in the Levant. Until about 1180 it was a Byzantine protectorate, and it was the influence of the emperor Manuel I Comnenus that secured Bohemond's early release from captivity. In 1180 he deserted his second wife, Irene, or Theodora Comnena, for a certain Sibyl, and he was in consequence excommunicated. By his first wife, the princess Orguilleuse, he had had two sons, Raymond and Bohemond (the future Bohemond IV). Raymond died in 1197, leaving a son, Raymond Ruben; and the problem that occupied the last years of Bohemond III was to determine whether his grandson, Raymond Ruben, or his younger son, Bohemond, should succeed him in Antioch. Leo II (the Great) of Armenia championed his grandnephew, Raymond Ruben. Bohemond the younger, however, prosecuted his claim with vigour and even evicted his father from Antioch about 1199; but he was ousted through the efforts of Leo (then king of Armenia by the grace of the emperor Henry VI), and Bohemond III died in possession of his principality (1201).