Fulk V of Anjou

Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem

Angers

1120, 1129

Younger son of the formidable Count Fulk IV le Réchin (“the rasper” or “the shark”), Fulk V was only a boy when, after Easter 1096, Pope Urban II came to his father’s capital of Angers to preach the First Crusade. After a dynastic struggle between Fulk's father and elder brother that resulted in his brother's murder, Fulk succeeded his father as count in 1109. A striking feature of his career as a territorial prince was his interest in crusading. In 1120, two years after comprehensively defeating the Norman forces of King Henry I of England at Alençon, and possibly with the encouragement of Pope Calixtus II, Fulk led a contingent of knights and lords from his lands to Jerusalem.

In 1128, having arranged the marriage of his son Geoffrey the Fair (who already stood to inherit Anjou, Touraine, and Maine) to Matilda, claimant to the duchy of Normandy and the crown of England, Fulk received the delegation from Jerusalem who offered him the hand of Melisende, daughter and heiress of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. Fulk accepted the offer and prepared to depart, taking the cross at Le Mans in May. Fulk himself stayed on the East to become co-ruler of Jerusalem with Melisende in 1131.

Berlay of Montreuil, Rainald, William the Huntsman, Baldwin of Vern d'Anjou, Fulk of Plessis-Macé, Geoffrey Fulcard of Loudun, Guy Tortus of Rochefort, R. Gabard, Hugh of Amboise

Paris, Archives nationales, carton L 1018, pièce 2, no 18.
WT, 633.

Blincoe, Mark, Angevin Society and the Early Crusades: 1095-1145 (PhD Thesis: University of Minnesota, 2008). Chartrou, Josèphe, L’Anjou de 1109 à 1151 (Foulque de Jérusalem et Geoffroi Plantagenet) (Paris, 1928). Dutton, Kathryn, “Crusading and Political Culture Under Geoffrey, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy, 1129-1151,” French History 29:4 (2015), 419-444. Mayer, Hans Eberhard, “The Succession of Baldwin II: English Impact on the East,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 39 (1985), 139-147. Phillips, Jonathan, Defenders of the Holy Land: Relations Between the Latin East and the West 1119-1187 (Oxford, 1996).