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]
Notes
^Concedentibus filiis eius Manasse, Fulcone, Widone, Hugone, quoted by Johannes Heller, ed., Historia comitum Ghisnensium et Ardensium dominorum,
MGHSS 24:
574[permanent dead link], n. 1.
^Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), 93, 206, lists him among those who "certainly, or nearly" certainly took part in the First Crusade.
^Versus de viris illustribus dioecesis Tarvanensis in sacre fuere expeditione, in
E. Martène and
U. Durand, edd., Veterum scriptorum ... amplissima collectio5 (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."
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).