Peter of Narbonne

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Peter von Narbonne († before 1130) was an Occitan cleric , crusader and archbishop of al-Bara and Apamea . He was the first Latin bishop the Crusaders installed in Outremer .

Peter came from Narbonne in Languedoc . From 1097 he took part in the First Crusade as a chaplain in the entourage of Count Raimund of Toulouse . Through the protection of the count, he took a leading role among the clerics of the crusade.

After the crusade army had conquered Antioch in the summer of 1098 after a long siege , Count Raimund embarked on a plunder campaign southwards along the Orontes in autumn to steal urgently needed food. So he first conquered Rugia and on September 25, 1098 the city of al-Bara. The inhabitants there who had not fled were killed or taken to Antioch as slaves. Raimund decided to take possession of the city, leave a small garrison there and found a Latin settlement. The local mosque was converted into a church and Peter was installed as bishop of al-Bara, the secular rule of al-Bara was transferred to the diocese and Peter was given secular administration to al-Bara. Unlike in later years, the appointment of a Latin Christian bishop by the Crusaders did not meet the resistance of the Byzantine Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch , as there was no Orthodox diocese in al-Bara before. Peter was even confirmed and ordained bishop in Antioch by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, John VII Oxites, in 1099. When Raimund had conquered Maarat an-Numan in December 1098 , he also placed the part of this city controlled by him under the administration of the Bishop of al-Bara.

At first, Raimund had intended to leave Peter behind in al-Bara, as a counterweight to his rival Bohemond of Taranto , who stayed in the conquered Antioch and established a principality there. When the crusade army finally set out to march on to Jerusalem in January 1099, he decided to take Peter with him, probably to motivate more knights to take part in the march and not to break away from him in order to take the land. During his absence, the knight Wilhelm von Cunhlat was in command of al-Bara. After conquering Jerusalem and successfully ending the crusade, Peter returned to his diocese in al-Bara.

In the following period, while Raimund and his heirs established their own territory in Outremer with the county of Tripoli , al-Bara came under the feudal sovereignty of Bohemond's principality Antioch; when exactly this happened is unclear.

In 1104, following the defeat of the Crusaders at the Battle of Harran , Peter and the garrison of al-Bara fled to the safe city fortress of Antioch, whereupon the Muslims under Radwan of Aleppo occupied al-Bara. On April 20, 1105, Radwan was decisively defeated by Tankred of Taranto in the Battle of Artah , whereupon al-Bara fell into the hands of the Christians again.

In 1110, in addition to his office in al-Bara, Peter was raised to the rank of Archbishop of Apamea . Tankred of Taranto had conquered this city in 1106. Apamea had already been an archbishopric under the Byzantines, which once included al-Bara. This time the claims of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch were ignored and the consecration and confirmation of Peter was carried out by the new Latin Patriarch of Antioch, Bernard of Valence . Apparently, Peter was also made archbishop of al-Bara, at least from now on he will be named archbishop of al-Bara, sometimes archbishop of Apamea. In the period that followed, Peter rose to become one of the most influential prelates in the Principality of Antioch.

In 1119 he took part in the battle of Ager Sanguinis as deputy patriarch , which ended in a crushing defeat for the crusaders and as a result al-Bara was again occupied by Ilghazi of Aleppo. It was not until the end of 1122 that the city was recaptured from Jerusalem under Baldwin II .

In April / May 1123 Ilghazi's son-in-law besieged Balak al-Bara, finally conquered the city and took Peter prisoner. But he was able to flee shortly afterwards and escaped to the nearby town of Kafr Tab , where he was able to hide himself until Balak broke off his campaign. The Christians did not succeed in retaking al-Bara until 1130, at which point Peter had already died.

literature

  • Thomas S. Asbridge: The creation of the principality of Antioch, 1098-1130. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, Woodbridge 2000, ISBN 0851156614 .
  • Krijna Nelly Ciggaar, David Michael Metcalf: East and West in the Medieval Eastern Mediterrean. Antioch from the Byzantine reconquest until the end of the Crusader principality. Peeters Publishers, Leuven 2006, ISBN 9042917350 .
  • Steven Runciman: History of the Crusades. CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3406399606 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Asbridge, p. 198.
  2. ^ Asbridge, p. 167.
  3. ^ Runciman, p. 245.
  4. ↑ Asbridge, p. 38 f.
  5. ↑ Ciggaar / Metcalf, p. 178.
  6. ↑ Ciggaar / Metcalf, p. 172.
  7. ^ Runciman, p. 245.
  8. ↑ a b Asbridge, pp. 197, 199.
  9. ^ Asbridge, p. 41.
  10. ^ Asbridge, p. 39.
  11. ^ Asbridge, p. 46.
  12. ↑ Asbridge, p. 55 f.
  13. ↑ Asbridge, pp. 57-59.
  14. ↑ Runciman, pp. 364-365.
  15. ↑ Genieve Bresc-Bautier: Le Cartulaire de chapitre de Saint-Sepulcher de Jérusalem. In: Documents relatifs à l'histoire de croisades 15. Paris 1984, pp. 197-199, no. 86.
  16. ^ Asbridge, p. 212.
  17. ^ Asbridge, p. 80.
  18. ↑ Asbridge, p. 83 f.
  19. ^ Asbridge, p. 84.
  20. ↑ Asbridge, p. 89 f.
personal data
SURNAME Peter of Narbonne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peter of Albara; Peter of Apamea
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Bishop of al-Bara, Archbishop of Apamea
DATE OF BIRTH 11th century
DATE OF DEATH before 1230