RAYMOND IV

born 1041 or 1042, Toulouse, County of Toulouse died Feb. 28, 1105, near Tripoli byname Raymond of Saint-Gilles, French Raimond de Saint-Gilles count of Toulouse (10931105) and marquis of Provence (10661105), who was the first, and one of the most effective, of the western European rulers who joined the First Crusade. He is reckoned as Raymond I of Tripoli, which he conquered and ruled from 1102 to 1105. In the early years of his countship, Raymond was a pious lay leader of the papacy's reform movement. Before preaching the First Crusade (1095), Pope Urban II probably secured assurance of Raymond's participation. Although he disliked the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus, Raymond became the most faithful partisan of the Emperor's territorial interest in the crusade, sometimes to his own disadvantage. Alone among leaders of the crusade, he conquered no Middle Eastern principality for himself. (He is, however, considered the founder of the Latin countship of Tripoli, established by his heirs.) After helping to capture Antioch from the Turks (June 3, 1098), Raymond unsuccessfully tried to induce Bohemond I, Frankish crusader prince of the city, to restore it to Alexius. He then organized a march on Jerusalem and took part in its capture (July 15, 1099). Apparently he refused the crusaders' crown of Jerusalem, which was then given to Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine. Although he quarrelled with Godfrey, together they repulsed an attack on Jerusalem by the Egyptian Fatimids. From 1100, Raymond, on behalf of Alexius, blocked the southward expansion of Bohemond's principality of Antioch. He built near Tripoli the castle of Mons Peregrinus (Mont-Plerin), in which he died. Additional reading John Hugh Hill and Laurita Lyttleton Hill, Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse (1962, reprinted 1980).