Pons of Balazun
Open-knowledge reference entry
Pons of Balazun (died 1099) was an Occitan nobleman who participated in the First Crusade and in the creation of one of its earliest histories, the Book of the Franks Who Captured Jerusalem.
Pons was in the army of Count Raymond IV of Toulouse, and accompanied the count into the church of Saint Peter in Antioch at the discovery of the Holy Lance on the evening of 14 June 1098. He died at the siege of Arqa in 1099 before the capture of Jerusalem. According to Archbishop William II of Tyre, "before the walls of Arka ... Pons de Balazune, a nobleman of high rank and a friend of the count of Toulouse ... perished from the blow of a stone missile" alongside Anselm de Ribemont. He was sufficiently prominent in the count's following to be mentioned by several independent accounts of the crusade. He is mentioned in the Historia Hierosolymitana, the Historia de Hierosolymitano itinere, the Historia peregrinorum and the Historia de via Hierosolymitana.
The identification of Pons's toponymic has been a matter of debate. The Latin of the Book of the Franks gives his name as Pontius de Baladuno.
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