(ca. 1061-1100). Duke of Lower Lorraine, leader of the First Crusade, and first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, Godefroi was the second son of Count Eustache II of Boulogne and of Ide, daughter of Duke Godefroi II of Lower Lorraine. In 1076, the emperor Henry IV refused him the succession to his grandfather’s duchy, but Godefroi finally acceded in 1089.
He participated in the First Crusade in 1096 along with his brothers Eustache III of Boulogne and Baudouin, choosing the land route via Hungary. On arriving at Constantinople, he at first refused the requested oath to the emperor Alexios I Comnenos but consented finally after an attack on the suburbs of the city when the emperor cut off provisions for his forces. Though he did not figure as prominently as the other crusading leaders prior to their arrival at Jerusalem, his forces were the first to break in, and he became the compromise candidate for ruler of the Holy City. Refusing the title king, he became the Advocate of the Holy Sepulcher and secured the Latin position in Palestine by defeating an invading relief army from Fatimid Egypt at Ascalon.
Godefroi’s rule was brief and made difficult by the ambitions of the other crusading leaders. He also had to deal with the pretensions to rule of Daimbert of Pisa, the first Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. On his death (July 18, 1100), he was succeeded by his younger brother, Baudouin, who had founded the first of the Crusading States at Edessa and who took the title king of Jerusalem.
Godefroi’s life almost immediately became the stuff of legends. He was one of the three medieval members, with Charlemagne and Arthur, of the Nine Worthies and is the principal hero of the Crusade epics, including the 35,000-line Chevalier au cygne et Godefroid de Bouillon (1356), the final reworking of the cycle.
R. Thomas McDonald
[See also: CRUSADE CYCLE; CRUSADES: LORRAINE]
Andressohn, John Carl. The Ancestry and Life of Godfrey of Bouillon. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1947.
World History
