Roman Catholic Diocese of Bethlehem in the Holy Land Orthodox) were ejected and replaced by Catholic clergy. On his birthday in 1100, Baldwin was crowned King of Jerusalem in Bethlehem — that same year, at Baldwin's request, Pope Paschal II established Bethlehem (never before an episcopal see) as a Catholic bishopric, a suffragan of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. In 1187 the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin (of Egypt, Syria and more in the Levant) reconquered Bethlehem and the Catholic clergy was forced to let the Greek Orthodox clergy return. Saladin himself in 1192 allowed two Catholic priests and two deacons to return to the diocese, though Bethlehem's economy still suffered
Philip I, Count of Flanders brother-in-law, intervened in 1184 on behalf of his son-in-law, King Philip, in support of his daughter's interests. The dispute between Count Philip and Baldwin was encouraged by King Philip, who went so far as to name Baldwin his representative in negotiations with the Count. Count Philip's wife, Elisabeth, died in 1183, prompting King Philip II to seize the province of Vermandois on behalf of Elisabeth's sister, Eleonore. Philip then remarried, to Matilda, daughter of Afonso I, the first King of Portugal. Philip gave Matilda a dower that included a number of major Flemish towns, in an apparent slight to Baldwin