Gaston IV of Bearn

Coat of arms of the Vice Counts of Béarn

Gaston IV of Béarn (* before 1074; † 1131 near Valencia ) was vice count of Béarn from 1090 to 1131 , later also lord of Barbastro and Saragossa . He was nicknamed the Crusaders ("le Croisé") because of his participation in the First Crusade .

Life

The year of his birth is unknown, but it must have been before 1074, as his parents' marriage was dissolved that year.

In 1085, Gaston married Talesa of Aragon , Vice Countess of Montaner, a granddaughter of King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon and cousin of King Alfonso I of Aragon . Gaston was also politically closely linked to the neighboring, then similarly large kingdom of Aragon.

Gaston succeeded his father Centulle V in 1090 as Vice Count of Béarn in what is now southern France. The only surviving document of his rule before the First Crusade is a church foundation from October 1094. His younger brother Centulle was count of the neighboring region of Bigorre .

Siege of Jerusalem

First crusade

Gaston took part in the army of Raymond IV of Toulouse in the First Crusade in 1095 . He was one of the poorer knights, but still had his own men with him.

At the siege of Antioch he led one of the divisions in the decisive battle against Kerboga . During the power struggle after the conquest of Antioch , Gaston left Raimund and joined Godfrey of Bouillon on his march to Jerusalem . Gaston and Tankred were sent ahead to conquer Bethlehem , and during the siege of Jerusalem Gaston was responsible for building Gottfried's siege tower . Using this siege tower, the city was stormed on July 15, 1099.

Gaston's experience from the Reconquista taught him that Muslims could live as Mudejars under Christian rule . He preferred negotiation and dialogue to senseless massacres. He and Tankred tried to protect some Muslims from Jerusalem in the al-Aqsa mosque , but they were killed as well as the others. In August, Gaston led part of the central line of the Crusader Army at the Battle of Askalon . After the victory, he returned home like most other crusaders.

Chapter of a column of Lescar Cathedral

No later than 1101 he was back in Béarn. He organized his rule and territories and built numerous buildings along the routes of the Camino de Santiago that ran through his territory, including the Cathedral of Lescar , churches in Oloron and Morlaàs , capital of his territory, and pilgrims' hospitals.

Reconquista

In 1113 he is mentioned as lord of Barbastro , a town in the north of today's Spanish Aragon. His most important collaboration with Alfonso I of Aragon was his participation in the conquest of the city of Saragossa as part of the Reconquista in 1118. Alfonso I appointed him Señor de Zaragoza (Eng. "Lord of Saragossa") and awarded the lands, which Gaston gave to Bearner vassals.

Gaston was a pious man who, on his return to Béarn, had many churches built on the Camino de Santiago to Santiago de Compostela to accommodate pilgrims. On April 6, 1128 he founded the Sauvelade monastery with his wife Talesa .

Gaston was involved in other campaigns, including the conquest of Tudela , Borja , Tarazona and Soria in 1119 and the Battle of Cutanda on June 18, 1120, in which a Christian army repulsed the Almoravid recapture efforts and took Calatayud and Daroca . In 1124 he was involved in a first advance towards Andalusia, in which Peña Cadiella was briefly taken. In 1125/26 he took part in the great campaign of Alfonso I to Andalusia , in the course of which, among other things, the battle of Lucena ended with a clear victory for the Christian army, which took rich booty back to the north. During further campaigns in the Valencia region , the background of which is insufficiently known, he was ambushed and killed. The Muslim historian Ibn Idhari describes his death:

“In that same year (the year 534 of the Hejra), Mohamad Yidar, ruler of Valencia, died. Yintan ben Ali ruled Valencia by the approval of God. He defeated the Christians and the head of their leader Gaston was brought to Granada by Yumada (May 24, 1131) in the second month. He was carried through the streets on the tip of a lance accompanied by drum rolls. That gave the emir of the Muslims, Ali ben Yusuf , who was in Marrakech, his smile back. "

- Ibn Idhari : Al-Bayan al-Mughrib . 1312.

His three-year-old son Centulle VI followed him as Vice Count of Béarn . after, regent was his wife Talesa. Gaston bequeathed his lands in Aragon to the Knights Templar . His descendants Gaston VI. and Gaston VII participated in the Albigensian Crusade and the Seventh Crusade, respectively.

Aftermath

Gaston von Béarn is one of the main characters in the opera Jérusalem by Giuseppe Verdi , which premiered in Paris in 1847 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See José María Lacarra: Alfonso el Batallador. DL Guara, Saragossa 1978, ISBN 84-85303-05-9 , p. 104 f.

literature

• Steven Runciman : The First Crusade and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (Orig .: The First Crusade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem , 1951). Beck Verlag, Munich 1957.
• Pierre Tucoo-Chala: La Vicomté de Béarn et le Problème de sa Souveraineté, des Origines à 1260 . edition Bière, Bordeaux 1961.
• Jeronimo Zurita : Anales del reyno de Aragon (16th century)

Web links

• Gastón de Bearn Biography of the Centro de Historia de Zaragoza (Spanish)
• Last will of Gaston IV (Latin) ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Vic-Montaner, un territoire de peuplement (French)

predecessor	Office	successor
Centulle V.	Vice Count of Béarn 1090–1131	Centulle VI.