Gottfried V. (Joinville)

Gottfried V of Joinville (French Geoffroy V de Joinville ; * before 1173; † 1203/1204 at Krak des Chevaliers in Syria ) was Lord of Joinville , Seneschal of the County of Champagne and participant in the Third and Fourth Crusades .

Life

Gottfried V was the eldest child of Gottfried IV of Joinville and his wife Héluis de Dampierre (also called Helvide de Dampierre ). Together with his father he took part in the entourage of Count Henry II of Champagne in the third crusade to support the crusader army in the siege of Acre .

After Gottfried IV died in the Holy Land in August 1190 , Gottfried V left the crusade to bring his father's body back home and to take up his inheritance. As the new lord of Joinville, he confirmed his father's orders, with which he had ceded important properties to the Abbey of Montier-en-Der . Gottfried himself also made generous donations to many ecclesiastical institutions in Champagne in order to settle a conflict between his family and the intellectual class that had existed for generations, because many of his ancestors had illegally appropriated church property through raids and extortion.

As the Seneschal of Champagne, Gottfried was always loyal to his liege lord , and thus got into the conflict between the French King Philip II of August and the English King Richard the Lionheart over English possessions in France. Henry II of Champagne took Richard's side in this dispute, and Gottfried V did the same. After Heinrich II died in 1197, his younger brother Theobald III followed him . as Count of Champagne, but initially ruled under the tutelage of his mother Marie de Champagne . During her reign, however, she decided on the side of the French king. The associated policy was continued by her son after the death of his mother in 1198, so that Gottfried V, as a loyal follower of his new liege lord, was back on Philip II's side from that time on.

On the occasion of a by Theobald III. 1199 organized tournament in Écry-sur-Aisne , on which the itinerant preacher Fulko von Neuilly gave a rousing speech to the one year earlier by Pope Innocent III. When the Fourth Crusade was proclaimed, Gottfried V decided to go to the Holy Land one more time as a crusader together with his brother Robert. When he set out there, he left the administration of his property in France to his two younger brothers Simon and Guillaume ; the latter was to become Archbishop of Reims in 1219. In contrast to most of the crusader army that set out for Constantinople , Gottfried traveled to Syria, where he died in the fighting for the Krak des Chevaliers in late 1203 or early 1204 and was buried in the chapel of this mighty fortress.

Gottfried was not married and did not leave any descendants. In the Seigneurie Joinville, therefore, his brother Simon succeeded him as ruler.

The coat of arms of Gottfried V.

Joinville coat of arms

Gottfried's father adopted the coat of arms of the Lords of Broyes as his own, as he assumed that the de Joinville and de Broyes families had common ancestors.

Gottfried V added a red lion on a silver background to this coat of arms in the upper part, this emblem was the coat of arms of the county of Poitou , which the English king wielded. According to an epitaph written by Jean de Joinville in Clairvaux Monastery , Richard the Lionheart gave his multiple supporters the approval to add Richard's coat of arms to his own in recognition of his achievements and heroics.

The community of Joinville still carries this coat of arms created by Gottfried V.

In all likelihood, Jean de Joinville visited his uncle's grave in Krak des Chevaliers in the summer of 1253. In any case, the shield of Gottfried V, which he had carried on his crusade, had been deposited in the collegiate church of Saint-Laurent in Joinville since the Middle Ages. The shield was stolen in 1544 by the German mercenaries Emperor Charles V when they sacked Joinville.

literature

• Henri-François Delaborde: Jean de Joinville et les seigneurs de Joinville. Librairie Picard et fils, Paris 1894, pp. 37-46 ( online ).
• Jaroslav Folda: Crusader art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the fall of Acre, 1187–1291. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 2005, ISBN 0-521-83583-6 .
• Jules Simonnet: Essai sur l'histoire de la généalogie des sires de Joinville (1008-1386) accompagné de chartes. F. Dangien, Langres 1875, pp. 79-89 ( online ).

predecessor	Office	successor
Gottfried IV.	Lord of Joinville 1190–1204	Simon