GODFREY, Count of Bouillon (Bouillon), Duke of Lower Lorraine. - Son of Eustace II count of Boulogne and of Ida, sister of Godfrey III, duke of Lower Lorraine. On 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 in the following of Henry IV against Rudolf of Swabia and then in Italy in the struggles against Gregory VII and the countess Matilda.
When and why he made a vow to take part in the Crusade is not known. It is a legend 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 rallying point of the Crusaders, by the land route, following the Danube and crossing the Balkans. He encountered serious difficulties in entering Hungary, where the plundering of Peter the Hermit's columns had irritated the populations. G. had to give hostages. At Constantinople too the Crusaders aroused ill feeling because of the refusal of the leaders to comply with the requests of the emperor Alexius Comnenus to bind themselves by oath to fidelity and to the restitution of the territories taken from the Turks. The dispute degenerated into an armed conflict, about whose extent and duration the sources are contradictory; G. ended by submitting to the Byzantine impositions.
G. 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 with respect to the other French crusading princes. Only in the summer of 1098, after his brother Baldwin had become count of Edessa, in the conflict between Bohemond of Altavilla and Raymond of Toulouse, the duke of Lorraine acquired greater influence and joined the group of princes who were to judge the dispute. The count of St-Gilles also proposed to him that he be hired for money: G. refused. In the dissolution of the crusading forces, G. remained with the count of Flanders and together they set out from Antioch on 1 Nov. 1098 with the intention of besieging Gibelet. Then they hurried to Irka to aid the count of St-Gilles. Once Raymond's prestige had definitively fallen over the question of the Holy Lance, and with Bohemond far away, the duke of Lorraine now moved to the forefront. He hired Tancred and directed the march on Jerusalem. In the capture of the Holy City, on 15 July 1099, G. took part energetically, attacking at the Jaffa gate. After the conquest, against Raymond of St-Gilles, who was opposed by the princes, G. was supported by the duke of Normandy and the count of Flanders in the question of the government. G. consented 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 G. become the dominant figure of the crusading movement and the representative of European Christendom. Following the duke of Lorraine in his activity as a crusader, one can discern in him a certain calm and judicious level-headedness, a certain fidelity to the program of the expedition that distinguish him from almost all the other princes greedy for acquisitions. Modern criticism has wrongly labeled him mediocre; later tradition, identifying the Crusade itself with him, perhaps felt him more than criticism has. He was aware of the whole weight of his office; certainly he had no ambition to create a kingdom for himself and he felt the importance of the commitments undertaken toward the Byzantine emperor. He was forced to accept the government because it was necessary to eliminate the restless and perhaps scarcely capable count of Provence.
Immediately after the occupation of Jerusalem, G. 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 apostolic legate Daimbert of Lanfranchi, archbishop of Pisa, cast doubt on G.'s position. Daimbert forced G. to eliminate Arnulf of Rohes, who had had himself elected patriarch, and installed himself as patriarch of Jerusalem. A decided partisan of Gregorian theocratic ideas, he forced G. and Bohemond to recognize themselves as his vassals and to receive investiture from him: then, with the claim of wanting the patriarchate to recover all the rights and possessions of the period before the Turkish occupation, he asked G. for the cession of the Holy City itself and of the city of Jaffa. G. sought to satisfy Daimbert in part, but in the face of the patriarch's threats he had to yield: on Holy Saturday of 1100 (1 Apr.) G. recognized the patriarchate's possession of Jerusalem and its territory, reserving the enjoyment of it to himself until he should have occupied another city. G. renewed the same concession when he fell ill shortly afterward. He died on 18 July 1100 and was buried in the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.
