Gibelin of Arles (d. 1112)

Latin patriarch of Jerusalem (1109-1112). Born in France around 1050, Gibelin was appointed archbishop of Arles in 1080 by Pope Gregory VII in place of the imperialist Archbishop Aichard (d. 1090), but he did not secure full control of the province until about 1094.

Pope Paschal II employed Gibelin as a legate to the Iberian kingdoms in 1100-1101 and in 1108 appointed him as legate to the kingdom of Jerusalem. Gibelin presided at a council there in 1108 at which the incumbent patriarch, Evremar of Chocques, was deposed and appointed to the vacant archbishopric of Caesarea (mod. Har Qesari, Israel).

Gibelin himself was elected as new patriarch in the autumn of 1109; he retained his legatine powers and reorganized the Latin Church in Palestine. He transferred the bishopric of Ascalon (mod. Tel Ashqelon, Israel) to Bethlehem and defined the respective powers of the abbots of Mount Tabor and the bishops of Nazareth in Galilee. He also advised Paschal II to rule that the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem should be coextensive with the boundaries of the kingdom. This decision was of crucial importance because King Baldwin I of Jerusalem was making extensive territorial conquests at this time, and despite complaints by the Latin patriarchs of Antioch, it was never reversed in practice. Gibelin died on 6 April 1112. His deathbed wish, that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre should be served by canons regular, was implemented in 1114.

-Bernard Hamilton

Bibliography

Fedalto, Giorgio, La Chiesa latina in Oriente, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Verona: Mazzina, 1981).

Hamilton, Bernard, The Latin Church in the Crusader States.

The Secular Church (London: Variorum, 1980).

Kirstein, Klaus-Peter, Die lateinischen Patriarchen von Jerusalem: Von der Eroberung der Heiligen Stadt durch die Kreuzfahrer 1099 bis zum Ende der Kreuzfahrerstaaten 1291 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002).