December 21, 1099

Daimbert of Pisa

Bohemond, Baldwin and Daimbert complete their pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Bohemond and Baldwin arrived at Jerusalem five months after its capture. Both had missed the siege and came as pilgrims.

Arriving at the solstice

Bohemond of Antioch and Baldwin of Boulogne, count of Edessa, entered Jerusalem on 21 December 1099 with Archbishop Daimbert of Pisa and a large pilgrimage party, having travelled south from northern Syria.

Both men had stayed behind to secure Antioch and Edessa while the main army took the city in July. Fulcher of Chartres, Baldwin's chaplain, travelled with them and wrote that the arrivals worshipped at the Holy Sepulchre and visited Jerusalem's other holy places.

Christmas at Bethlehem

On 24 December the party went to Bethlehem for the Christmas vigil, returning to Jerusalem on Christmas morning.

Godfrey of Bouillon received them as ruler of a polity barely five months old. Fulcher remembered that the smell of unburied bodies still hung around the city's walls.

A patriarch replaced before the year ended

During the closing days of December, Daimbert was chosen as Latin patriarch in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, displacing Arnulf of Chocques, whose July selection had been judged irregular.

The exact day and canonical stage are unsettled. Some modern chronologies place Daimbert's accession on 25 December; Fulcher's narrative and its editorial chronology put the selection between 26 and 31 December; one scholarly reconstruction dates his consecration to 25 December and another to soon after New Year 1100.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

The 21 December arrival is explicitly dated by the editor of Fulcher’s eyewitness account.
The statement that Daimbert was installed exactly four days later is less secure. Some modern chronologies place his accession on 25 December, while Fulcher’s narrative and its editorial chronology place the selection between 26 and 31 December.
Sources distinguish election, installation and consecration inconsistently. One scholarly reconstruction puts his consecration on 25 December; another says it occurred soon after New Year 1100.