Arnulfo de Areschot - Estação Martim Moniz, Lisboa

Arnout IV (Arnold of Aerschot) (1100-after 1152), Count of Aarschot, son of

Arnout III, Count of Aarschot Arnout III (1080-after 1136), Count of Aarschot, son of Arnout II, Count of Aarschot, and his wife whose name remains unknown. Arnout is sometimes confused with his father, especially in regard to the blood shedding at Aachen in 1115. Arnout sup ...

, and Beatrix of Looz, daughter of

Arnold I, Count of Looz Arnold I (b. about 1045 - d. about 1125), Count of Loon (Looz) from about 1079, son of Emmo, Count of Loon, and Suanhildis, daughter of Dirk III, Count of Holland, and his wife Othelandis. He was an ally of Henry of Verdun and Otbert, both bis ...

. Arnout, like his grandfather, was the commander of a fleet that delivered Crusaders to fight in the war against the Muslim intruders. He was one of the many captains leading an armada that left Dartmouth in May 1147 to free Lisbon from the Moors in what is known as the

siege of Lisbon The siege of Lisbon, from 1 July to 25 October 1147, was the military action that brought the city of Lisbon under definitive Portuguese control and expelled its Moorish overlords. The siege of Lisbon was one of the few Christian victories of ...

. Phillips describes Arnulf as a count and the leader of the Rhinelanders in this mission. He is also identified as a nephew of Godfrey of Bouillon with distant ties to the ruling house of Jerusalem. The claim of a familial relationship with Godfrey is dubious. The battle for Lisbon was one of the few successes of the

Second Crusade The Second Crusade (1145–1149) was the second major crusade launched from Europe. The Second Crusade was started in response to the fall of the County of Edessa in 1144 to the forces of Zengi. The county had been founded during the First Crusa ...

and is viewed as one of the pivotal battles in the

Reconquista The ' (Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid ...

. The attacking fleet included as many as 200 ships, and the corresponding rout of the Moors has been described by Runiciman as a “glorious massacre of the infidel.” Many of the Crusaders continued on to the Holy Land. Arnout was married, although his wife’s name is not known. They had one son, Godfried III, who succeeded him as Count of Aarschot, the last of this comital title until the creation of the Lords and Dukes of Aarschot in the 13th century.

Sources

Runciman, Steven, ''A History of the Crusades, Volume Two: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100-1187'', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1952
Medieval Lands Project, Graven van Aarschot
Setton, Kenneth (editor), ''A History of the Crusades, Volume I''. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1958 Hasselt, A. H. C. van, ''Les Belges aux Croisade'', Jamar, 1846 (available o
Google Books
Phillips, Jonathan, ''The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom''. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2007 (available o

Christians of the Second Crusade {{Belgium-bio-stub