Bernard of Valence

Bernard of Valence (Fr. Bernard; * in Valence, Provence, † 1135 ) was a Provençal cleric who rose in the wake of the First Crusade in 1099 to the Bishop of Artah and 1100 the first Latin Patriarch of Antioch.

He came from Valence in Provence. He took part as a chaplain in the wake of the papal legate Adhemar of Le Puy on the First Crusade. After Adhemar had died in 1098 after the successful siege of Antioch, he joined the entourage of the southern Italian Norman prince Bohemund of Taranto, who established themselves in and around Antioch an independent principality. Bohemond broke so the earlier statements made to the Byzantine emperor Alexios II fealty, after all the conquests of the Crusaders should be placed under its sovereignty. While the main army of the crusade moved on to Jerusalem in January 1099, he stayed with Bohemond at Antioch. Bohemond put him in 1099 in the newly conquered city Artah as a bishop. As Bohemond towards the end of 1099 into the already conquered by the Crusaders Jerusalem pilgrimage to fulfill his crusader vow, Bernard accompanied him to receive episcopal ordination in Jerusalem.

The head of the Christian church in the region of Antioch, the Byzantine Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, John VII Oxites, had left the Crusaders after the conquest of Antioch in office. This attitude changed when the Byzantine emperor in the summer of 1100, the Principality of Antioch attack in order to enforce its sovereign rights, and large parts of Cilicia reconquered. As the Patriarch had openly sympathized with Byzantium and in his sermons encouraged the Greek-Byzantine inhabitants of the City of Hope for a waiver by the Emperor, Bohemond had him refer, whereupon Joahnnes fled into exile in Constantinople Opel the city. In its place, he sat in the September 1099 Bernhard as the new Patriarch of Antioch.

During his episcopate, Bernhard actively involved in the fight against the Muslims, so he took with its own quota in 1104 at the Battle of Harran. Also in 1119 he was in the army Rogers of Salerno, but remained in Artah while Rogers army was almost completely wiped out in the devastating Battle of Ager Sanguinis. Then Bernard organized the defense of the now unprotected Antioch to relief under Baldwin II of Jerusalem and arrived Pons of Tripoli.

When Bernhard died in 1135, the Norman clergy Ralf of Domfront was elected his successor as Patriarch of Antioch.