The crusade movement needed women: their money, their prayer support, their active participation, and their inspiration...
This book surveys women's involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when the last crusader state, Cyprus, was captured by the Ottoman Turks. It considers women's actions not only on crusade battlefields but also in recruiting crusaders, supporting crusades through patronage, propaganda, and prayer, and as both defenders and aggressors. It argues that medieval women were deeply involved in the crusades but the roles that they could play and how their contemporaries recorded their deeds were dictated by social convention and cultural expectations. Although its main focus is the women of Latin Christendom, it also looks at the impact of the crusades and crusaders on the Jews of western Europe and the Muslims of the Middle East, and compares relations between Latin Christians and Muslims with relations between Muslims and other
Christian groups.
Author(s): Helen J. Nicholson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 303
City: Oxford
Cover
WOMEN AND THE CRUSADES
Copyright
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contents
A Note on Names
Maps
1: Locating Women in the Crusades: Definitions and Evidence
Women’s roles in crusading
Definitions of crusading
What was a crusade?
Crusade or pilgrimage?
Some problems with evidence
Motivation
2: Initializing Crusades
Beginnings
The Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula and beyond
The Crusader States and the eastern Mediterranean
Family connections
Recruiting for crusades
3: Crusade Campaigns
Women’s roles in crusades: plans and practice
Accompanying husbands
Caring for the sick
Diplomacy and intelligence
Women acting alone
Making a living
Military action
Victims and prisoners of crusades
4: The Home Front: Supporting the Crusade
The costs of crusading for those left behind
Administering estates
After the crusade
Financing crusaders
Spiritual support: prayer, holy women, and saints
5: After the Crusade: Memory and Imagination
Memorials and foundations
Liturgy and ritual
Written record
Cultural patronage
Summing Up
Chronology of the Crusades
List of Popes
Family Trees
Abbreviations used
Endnotes
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Summing Up
Bibliography
Primary sources
Secondary works
Index
