Fulk of Guînes explained

Fulk of Guînes (died bef. 1125) was the first Lord of Beirut (1110–c.1117) following its conquest in the wake of the First Crusade. He was from Guînes in the Boulonnais, the second son of Count Baldwin I of Guînes and distantly related to the counts of Boulogne.

Fulk and his brothers Guy, Hugh and Manasses Robert all gave their consent to a privilege their father granted to his monastic foundation of Saint-Médard at Andres in 1084.^[1] Fulk and Hugh, then an archdeacon, witnessed a diploma of Manasses, then count, for the same monastery in 1097.^[2] In 1117, Fulk and Guy subscribed the privilege in which Manasses founded a monastery dedicated to Saint Leonard in the suburbs of Guînes.

Fulk probably accompanied Counts Eustace III of Boulogne and Robert II of Flanders on the First Crusade in 1096, along with his three brothers and father.^[3] He received the lordship of Beirut after his relative, King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, conquered it, as related in the anonymous short poem, "Verse on the Illustrious Men of the Diocese of Thérouanne who went on the Holy Expedition":

Fulcho Gisnensis urbem tenuit Baruth, in qua Antistes sedit Balduinus Boloniensis

Fulk of Guînes held the city of Beirut, which Baldwin of Boulogne, standing before it, besieged.^[4]

Fulk was dead by 1125, when Walter I Brisebarre was Lord of Beirut. According to Lambert of Ardres he was buried in Palestine: "Fulk, count before Beirut in the promised land [was] there finally buried" (Fulconem in terra promissionis comitem apud Baruth, ibique demum sepultum).^[5]

Further reading

• Hans Eberhard Mayer, "The Wheel of Fortune: Seignorial Vicissitudes under Kings Fulk and Baldwin III of Jerusalem," Speculum 65, 4 (1990), pp. 860–77.
• Charles Moeller, "Les Flamands du Ternois au royaume latin de Jérusalem," Mélanges Paul Frédéricq (Brussels, 1904).
• Alan V. Murray, "The Origins of the Frankish Nobility of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100–1118," Mediterranean Historical Review 4, 2 (1989), pp. 281–300.
• Alan V. Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History, 1099–1125. Prosopographica et Genealogica, 2000, pp. 197–98.
• Léon Vanderkindere, La formation territoriale des principautés belges au moyen âge, 2nd ed. I (Brussels, 1902).

Notes and References

1. Concedentibus filiis eius Manasse, Fulcone, Widone, Hugone, quoted by Johannes Heller, ed., Historia comitum Ghisnensium et Ardensium dominorum, MGH SS 24:574, n. 1.
2. This charter is quoted in the Chronica Ardensis of Abbot William in MGH SS 24:698–699.
3. [Jonathan Riley-Smith]
4. Versus de viris illustribus dioecesis Tarvanensis in sacre fuere expeditione, in E. Martène and U. Durand, edd., Veterum scriptorum ... amplissima collectio 5 (Paris, 1729), 540. John France, Medieval Warfare, 1000–1300 (Ashgate, 2006), 424, describes this poem as "a short but valuable source dealing only with crusaders from the Flemish diocese of Thérouanne."
5. Historia comitum Ghisnensium et Ardensium dominorum, MGH SS 24:574.