Leaving the chansons de geste, Guinemer reappears in the history of the Crusades.  Count Baudouin of Flanders and his knights, while making war in the Holy Land (1097), see a vessel approaching, more than three miles from the city of Tarsus.  They wait on the shore, and the vessel casts anchor.  “Whence do you come?” is always the first question asked in like circumstances.  “From Flanders, from Holland, and from Friesland.”  They were repentant pirates, who after having combed the seas had come to do penance by a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  The Christian warriors joyously welcome these sailors whose help will be useful to them.  Their chief is a Guinemer, not from Saint-Omer but Boulogne.  He recognizes in Count Baudouin his liege lord, leaves his ship and decides to remain with the crusaders. “Moult estait riche de ce mauvais gaeng.” The whilom pirate contributes his ill-gotten gains to the crusade.[35]

[Footnote 35:  Receuil des Historiens des Croisades, Western Historians, Volume I, Book III and XXIII, p. 145:  Comment Guinemerz et il Galiot s’accompaignierent avec Baudouin.]

In another chapter of the Histoire des Croisades, this Guinemer besieged Lalische, which “is a most noble and ancient city situated on the border of the sea; it was the only city in Syria over which the Emperor of Constantinople was ruler.”  Lalische or Laodicea in Syria, Laodicea ad mare—­now called Latakia—­was an ancient Roman colony under Septimus Severus, and was founded on the ruins of the ancient Ramitha by Seleucus Nicator, who called it Laodicea in honor of his mother Laodice.  Guinemer, who expected to take the city by force, was in his turn assaulted and taken prisoner by the garrison.  Baudouin, with threats, demanded him back and rescued him; but esteeming him a better seaman than a combatant on the land, he invited him to return to his ship, take command of his fleet, and navigate within sight of the coast, which the former pirate “very willingly did.”

A catalogue of the Deeds of Henri I, King of France (1031-1060)[36] mentions in this same period a Guinemer, Lord of Lillers, who had solicited the approval of the king for the construction of a church in his chateau, to be dedicated to Notre-Dame and Saint-Omer.  The royal approval was given in 1043, completing the authorization of Baudouin, Count of Flanders, and of Dreu, Bishop of Therouanne at the request of Pope Gregory VI, to whom the builder had gone in person to ask consent for his enterprise.  Was this Guinemer, like the pirate of Jerusalem, doing penance for some wrong?  Thus we find two Guinemers in the eleventh century, one in Palestine, the other in Italy.  About this same period the family probably left Flanders to settle in Brittany, where they remained until the Revolution.  The corsair of Boulogne became a ship-builder at Saint-Malo, having his own reasons for changing parishes.  The Flemish tradition then gives place to that of Brittany, which is authenticated