Guigues IV or Guy IV (died 10 August. or 29 October. 1241) was the count of Forez,

Auxerre Auxerre ( , , Burgundian language (Oïl), Burgundian: ''Auchoirre'') is the capital (Prefectures in France, prefecture) of the Yonne Departments of France, department and the fourth-largest city in the Burgundy historical region southeast of Par ...

and Tonnerre from 1203 and the

count of Nevers The counts of Nevers were the rulers of the County of Nevers, in France, The territory became a duchy in the peerage of France in 1539 under the dukes of Nevers. History The history of the County of Nevers is closely connected to the Duchy of Bu ...

from 1226. He was still a child when his father, Guigues III, died on the

Fourth Crusade The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was a Latin Christian armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III. The stated intent of the expedition was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, by first defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid S ...

and he inherited Forez. His mother was Alix and his uncle,

Renaud Renaud Pierre Manuel Séchan (; born 11 May 1952 in Paris), known as Renaud, is a French singer-songwriter. With twenty-six albums to his credit, selling nearly twenty million copies, he is one of France's most popular singers. Several of h ...

archbishop of Lyon The Archdiocese of Lyon (; ), formerly the Archdiocese of Lyon–Vienne–Embrun, is a Latin Church metropolis (religious jurisdiction), metropolitan archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France. The archbishops of Lyon are also called Primate o ...

, acted as regent until he came of age in 1218. Guigues's first wife was Mahaut, daughter of Guy II of Dampierre. In 1223, Guigues granted a communal charter to the town of Montbrison. On 16 April 1224, he returned the places of Saint-Rambert, Bonson,

Chambles Chambles () is a commune in the Loire department in central France. The commune has an area of 18.90 km2 and its altitude ranges from 360 to 741 meters. As of 2019, there were 522 dwellings in Chambles, of which 420 main residences. ...

, Saint-Cyprien and Saint-Just to the monastery of

Île Barbe The Île Barbe is an island situated in the middle of the Saône, in the 9th arrondissement of Lyon, part of the quartier Saint-Rambert-l'Île-Barbe (a former-commune annexed in 1963). Its name comes from the Latin ''insula barbara'', "Barbari ...

, declaring that they were

allod Allod, deriving from Frankish language, Frankish ''alōd'' meaning "full ownership" (from ''al'' "full, whole" and ''ōd'' "property, possession"; Medieval Latin ''allod'' or ''allodium''), also known as allodial land or proprietary property, was ...

s held freely and that he and his predecessors had unjustly possessed them. In 1224, Guigues also founded a

collegiate church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons, a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, headed by a dignitary bearing ...

of thirteen canons at Montbrison, dedicating it to the Virgin Mary. The foundation of Notre-Dame-d'Espérance was confirmed by Archbishop Renaud in October 1224. The charter of foundation mandated that the canons be in residence for at least six months of the year. In 1226, Guigues married Matilda, daughter of

Peter II of Courtenay Peter II of Courtenay (; died 1219), was emperor of the Latin Empire of Constantinople from 1216 to 1217. Biography Peter II was a son of Peter I of Courtenay (died 1183), a younger son of Louis VI of France and his second wife, Adelaide of Mau ...

, countess of Nevers and widow of Hervé IV of Donzy. With the death of her son-in-law, Guy of Châtillon, at the siege of Avignon that same year, Guigues became count of Nevers. In 1235, Guigues joined the

Barons' Crusade The Barons' Crusade (1239–1241), also called the Crusade of 1239, was a crusade to the Holy Land that, in territorial terms, was the most successful crusade since the First Crusade. Called by Pope Gregory IX, the Barons' Crusade broadly embodie ...

. He came from an illustrious crusading family. His father had gone on the

and his ancestor Count William III had joined the

First Crusade The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the Middle Ages. The objective was the recovery of the Holy Land from Muslim conquest ...

. Likewise, his wife's family had crusaders in every generation going back to the

Crusade of 1101 The Crusade of 1101, also known as the Crusade of the Faint-Hearted, was launched in the aftermath of the First Crusade with calls for reinforcements from the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem and to rescue the famous Bohemond of Taranto fr ...

. Guigues IV's primary motivation for crusading was to remove the sentence of

excommunication Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular those of being in Koinonia, communion with other members o ...

that had been placed him for the alleged spoliation of monasteries and sheltering heretics.. Likewise, by taking the crusader vow Guigues received relief from interest payments on his large debts and extensions on repayment of principal. When the Barons' Crusade finally set out in 1239, Guigues left his counties under the government of Matilda in his absence. He and his retinue—at least a chaplain, William of Vichy; two squires; and a physician—were part of the army of King

Theobald I of Navarre Theobald I (, ; 30 May 1201 – 8 July 1253), also called the Troubadour and the Posthumous, was Count of Champagne (as Theobald IV) from birth and King of Navarre from 1234. He initiated the Barons' Crusade, was famous as a trouvère, and was the ...

. Theobald's county of Bar-sur-Seine bordered Guigues's county of Nevers and in the 1220s the two had a brief boundary dispute. Theobald left the Holy Land to return home in September 1240, Guigues and Duke Hugh IV of Burgundy stayed behind to construct a fortress at

Ascalon Ascalon or Ashkelon was an ancient Near East port city on the Mediterranean coast of the southern Levant of high historical and archaeological significance. Its remains are located in the archaeological site of Tel Ashkelon, within the city limi ...

. The poet Eustache le Peintre de Reims wrote a short song in

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

, ''Amours, coment porroie chancon faire'', about Guigues's participation in the Crusade. While in the Holy Land, Guigues received a relic of the True Cross from the Master of the Temple, Armand de Périgord. He died at Castellaneta in Italy while returning from his crusade. His body was brought back to Forez and lies in the church he had founded at Montbrison.. In his will, Guigues names his two children: his successor, Guigues V, and his younger son,

. He expressed the wish that Renaud would enter the church. He left the relic of the cross to his eldest son. He named as his executors Jean de Bernin, the archbishop of Vienne; Beatrice, the countess of Albon; the abbot of Bénissons-Dieu; and the dean of Montbrison.

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