Baldwin I of Jerusalem - King of Jerusalem

King of Jerusalem

After Godfrey's death in July 1100 he was invited to Jerusalem by the supporters of a secular monarchy, led by his kinsman Warner of Grez. He granted Edessa to a cousin, Baldwin of Bourcq, and on the way to Jerusalem he was ambushed by Duqaq of Damascus near Beirut. Duqaq’s troops were defeated and there was no further trouble on the way to Jerusalem, where he arrived at the beginning of November.

In Jerusalem Baldwin was opposed by his old enemy Tancred, as well as the new patriarch, Dagobert of Pisa, who would have preferred to set up a theocratic state while Godfrey was still alive. As soon as he arrived Baldwin set out on an expedition against the Egyptian territory to the south and did not return until the end of December. On 25 December 1100 he was crowned the first king of Jerusalem by the patriarch himself, who had in the meantime given up his opposition to Baldwin, although he refused to crown Baldwin in Jerusalem. The coronation took place instead in Bethlehem.

The struggle between church and state continued into the spring of 1101, when Baldwin had Dagobert suspended by a papal legate, while later in the year the two disagreed on the question of the contribution to be made by the patriarch towards the defence of the Holy Land. The struggle ended in the deposition of Dagobert in 1102.

Read more about this topic:  Baldwin I Of Jerusalem

Famous quotes containing the words king of, king and/or jerusalem:

    Time’s the king of men;
    He’s both their parent and he is their grave,
    And gives them what he will, not what they crave.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromwell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    And was Jerusalem builded here,
    Among these dark Satanic Mills?
    William Blake (1757–1827)