Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Portrait from life by Charlotte von Stein (c. 1780).
Count of Boulogne and of Ida, sister of Godfrey III, Duke of Lower Lorraine. At the death of his uncle in 1076 he received the county of Verdun and the march of Antwerp; in 1089, the duchy. As an imperial vassal he had fought alongside Henry IV against Rudolf of Swabia and later in Italy in the struggles against Gregory VII and Countess Matilda.
When and why he took a vow to participate in the Crusade is not known. It is legendary that he had already been a pilgrim in the Holy Land before the First Crusade. He set out for the East in the summer of 1096 with his brothers Eustace, Baldwin and other relatives. He intended to reach Constantinople, the rendezvous of the Crusaders, by land, following the Danube and crossing the Balkans. He encountered serious difficulties in entering Hungary, where the pillaging of the columns of Peter the Hermit had irritated the populations. Godfrey had to give hostages. Even at Constantinople the Crusaders showed ill humour at the refusal of the leaders to accede to the requests of Emperor Alexios Komnenos to swear an oath of fealty and to restore any territories taken from the Turks. The dispute degenerated into armed conflict, on the extent and duration of which the sources are contradictory: Godfrey ended by submitting to Byzantine demands.
Godfrey crossed into Asia in May 1097 and took part in the siege of Nicaea and then in that of Antioch, but in a position of inferiority compared to the other French Crusader princes. Only in the summer of 1098, after his brother Baldwin had become Count of Edessa, did the Duke of Lorraine gain greater influence in the conflict between Bohemond of Hauteville and Raymond of Toulouse, and he joined the group of princes who were to adjudicate the dispute. The Count of St Gilles even offered to hire him for money: Godfrey refused. In the dissolution of the Crusader forces, Godfrey remained with the Count of Flanders and together they left Antioch on 1 August 1098 with the intention of besieging Gibelet. They then hastened to Irka to aid the Count of St Gilles. With the definitive loss of prestige of Raymond over the question of the Holy Lance and Bohemond being absent, the Duke of Lorraine now came to the fore. He hired Tancred and directed the march on Jerusalem. At the capture of the Holy City on 15 July 1099, Godfrey took an active part, attacking at the Jaffa Gate. After the conquest, in the matter of government, in opposition to Raymond of St Gilles who was opposed by the princes, Godfrey was supported by the Duke of Normandy and the Count of Flanders. Godfrey agreed to remain in the Holy Land and to assume the government of Jerusalem, but not with the title of king, only that of “Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre.” Only from this moment did Godfrey become the dominant figure of the Crusader movement and the representative of European Christendom. In following the Duke of Lorraine in his Crusader activity one may discern in him a certain calm and measured prudence, a certain fidelity to the programme of the expedition that distinguished him from almost all the other princes who were eager to acquire lands. Modern criticism has wrongly labelled him as mediocre; later tradition, immediately identifying him with the Crusade itself, perhaps felt him more deeply than criticism. He was aware of the weight of the office; certainly he had no ambition to create a kingdom for himself and felt the importance of the commitments he had assumed towards the Byzantine Emperor. He was forced to accept the government because it was necessary to remove the restless and perhaps incapable Count of Provence.
Immediately after the occupation of Jerusalem, Godfrey had to parry an attack by the Egyptians: the victorious battle of Ascalon secured possession of the Holy City and consecrated the prestige of the “Advocate of the Holy Sepulchre” (12 Aug. 1099). But a few months later, the appearance of the papal legate Daimbert of Pisa, Archbishop of Pisa, called Godfrey’s position into question. Daimbert forced Godfrey to remove Arnulf of Rohes who had been elected patriarch and installed himself as Patriarch of Jerusalem. A determined partisan of Gregorian theocratic ideas, he forced Godfrey and Bohemond to recognise themselves as his vassals and to receive investiture from him:
29. — ENCYCLOPEDIA CATHOLICA. — VI.
Gundar, quorum corda 1467. 8. 1560. piti defunctorum, ut feris filiis fuit mandarum, ferofolymis fepdita funt: nam parare tria praedica Sepedam ha fuit Monte Calarri alud non inventur, vide Chronism Hollandis divifent 29. 5. 4. 8. divif. 22. 23. Eura Sacellum Adar 6 non longe, in parte aquilonari justa murum corporis Fedeffit e reione Pitera Unx tioni Domini (62) funt 4 alio fepulchra ordinata dipfissa Gracorum edio, ut fupra dixi fracta 6 demolita; cum illud, quod Maufolpe Re furcctionis Chrifli vicinius, cartesip pulchrius fuf, adhuc quodam modo reperitatur interpum, idem hic volui delimitare: