Baldwin I of Jerusalem, 1100-1118

Baldwin of Boulogne was born the youngest of three sons and marked out for a clerical career, yet in turn he became a First Crusader, first Latin count of Edessa and the founder of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, remarkably, he has never been the subject of a full-length biography. This study examines in detail the stages of Baldwin’s career, returning to the contemporary evidence to discover the qualities that enabled him not only to succeed his brother as ruler in 1100 but to maintain and expand the new kingdom of Jerusalem through the next eighteen years in the face of aggression from Muslim enemies and rivalry from fellow crusaders.

"Susan Edington has written a tremendously useful and welcome study of Baldwin and the history surrounding his tenure as Count of Edessa and subsequent accession to the royal title. Paying due attention both to the context of Baldwin's leadership and what the sources reveal about his character, Edgington presents new insights into the world of the First Crusade and its aftermath. The complex network of primary sources that describe the progress and memorialisation of the First Crusade and the creation of the Latin states of Outremer are dealt with deftly throughout."- Megan Cassidy-Welch, Sehepunkte"Edgington presents Baldwin I not as a good man, but rather a man who was good at being a king. Baldwin was the right man at the right time, and was exactly what the Kingdom of Jerusalem needed during its formative years. Similarly, this excellent biography, which brings together and expands upon many of the strands of the current research on Baldwin I, is exactly what scholars of the Latin East have needed."- Stephen Donnachie, University of Swansea

Susan B. Edgington is a teaching and research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. She has written extensively on many aspects of the crusades, but it is her close familiarity with the Latin sources for the period in question, 1095-1118, that uniquely qualifies her to write this biography. She is the editor and translator of Albert of Aachen’s Historia Ierosolimitana (Oxford, 2007); translator (with Thomas S. Asbridge) of Walter the Chancellor’s The Antiochene Wars (Aldershot, 1999); (with Carol Sweetenham) of The Chanson d’Antioche (Farnham, 2011); and (with Steven Biddlecombe) of Badric of Bourgueil’s History of the Jerusalemites (Woodbridge, forthcoming). Her critical comparison of the relationship of Bartolf of Nangis’ Gesta Francorum Iherusalem expugnantium with the chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres (Crusades 13, 2014) will lead to a new edition and translation of this important source.