#Not counting the Albigensian

[vettir]

Sack of Jerusalem, 1st Crusade. For the literal lowest hanging fruit.

[city-of-ladies]

"Garsenda was born into nobility around CE 1200 in Provence, France. She was the daughter and granddaughter of two strong-willed women who shared her name. Her mother, Garsenda, Countess of Provence and Forcalquier, was a troubadour in her own right. Her father was Alfonso II, Count of Provence, second son of the King of Aragon (whose territories stretched across much of Northeastern Spain and southwest France), and Count of Barcelona and Provence. Garsenda’s marriage in 1220 to Guillem de Montcada, soon to be Viscount of Béarn, connected her to powerful families on both sides of the Pyrenees. In short, she was a powerful woman from a line of powerful women.

But as we well know, nobility doesn’t insulate people from all tragedy. At age nine, Garsenda lost her father, Alfonso, Count of Provence. Alfonso’s death prompted her mother to execute a legal agreement to protect both of her children’s inheritance from other Provençal nobles—including family members—who had designs on their titles. Within a few years, the Albigensian Wars raged throughout Occitania and Provence, and the family of three was forced to flee from Provence to Catalonia, in what is now Spain, for safety.

Tragedy struck Garsenda again in 1229, when her husband was killed in a campaign to conquer Majorca. Guillem’s death left Garsenda with the personal responsibility of caring for their two young children, Constança and Gastó. At the same time, Garsenda was thrust into a very public role when she was forced to contend with the crushing debts left by her husband and parents-in-law when they died. She also had to defend her title to lands on both sides of the Pyrenees mountains—stretching all the way from Aquitaine and Gascony in the west to Majorca in the east. Ambitious men were as eager for her to make good on her husband’s debts as they were to seize control of her lands. Against those odds, Garsenda rose to the occasion. There she was, a young widow with two toddlers who had to face down dozens and dozens of the kingdom’s most powerful men, who were demanding immediate repayment of her husband’s and debts. The wolves were at the gates.

She knew how to play the game. First, she petitioned the king. With support from King Jaime I of Aragon, Garsenda was able to temporarily suspend all financial claims in order to protect assets and titles belonging to her and her children. Lodged among the surviving parchments from the era of King Jaime, now held in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona, are more than 100 individual charters from around 1230-1258 that give us insight into the scope of Garsenda’s actions.

From Garsenda’s surviving charters we find that she assembled a team of advisers, drawn from among Cistercian monks at Santes Creus (a monastery that still stands in Catalonia). These monks became her financial advisers. They helped her assess her debts and apportion payments to her creditors until those debts were satisfied or forgiven. We find in the archives legal agreements that she executed throughout her life on her own behalf.In others, she worked through agents charged with carrying out her direct orders.This is significant. Her dealings over nearly forty years challenge the perception that medieval women lacked agency in their own legal affairs. If women were not allowed agency, nobody told Garsenda about it.

Her plans were so successful that within four years of her husband’s death, Garsenda’s finances had recovered enough for her to make a major donation to reinvigorate a struggling Barcelona convent, Santa Maria de Jonqueres. She would remain involved with that convent, as well as another local one, for the rest of her life. After dispensing with her debts in Catalonia, Garsenda turned to her other problems, namely, her son’s considerable claims to lordships and territories in France and Spain. In order to protect his interests, especially in and around Béarn, she relocated to its capital at Orthez (Ortés). It was there that she established a base of operations for political negotiations. She negotiated with nearly everyone of note: the kings of France, Navarre, Castile, and England, as well as bishops, leaders of religious communities, and local officials. She also ensured her own physical safety by reinforcing the castle there. Even as her son reached the age of majority and could rule in his own name, Garsenda never stepped away from center stage as “countess and viscountess of Béarn.”

[medievalcat]

Perhaps the most famous female Cathar was Esclarmonde de Foix. She was a member of one of the most important families in the Languedoc, and ruled Foix as regent when her husband died in 1204. Esclarmonde wielded great power during her lifetime. She witnessed documents alongside her brother, like the settlement in 1198 between the Cistercians of Boulbonne and the Count of Foix, so we know she had enough secular influence to sign charters. She was also responsible, along with Raymond de Pereille, for rebuilding the fortress at Montsegur to protect the remaining Cathars from the Albigensian Crusade. While she may not have lived long enough to see its fall during the siege, her actions offered shelter to families that had been driven many hundreds of miles into exile by decades of persecution. But it is her role in Cathar preaching that is most often cited.

She was made a perfect and ran a house for Cathars in Pamiers. In the same city, two years after the death of her husband, Esclarmonde attended a council where representatives of Catholics, Cathars and Waldensians presented their beliefs. It ran for a month and each spokesperson was given a full day to argue their position. To the disdain of the predominantly male council, Esclarmonde was invited to present on Cathar beliefs. She took the stage but was heckled by the Catholic representative, Brother Etienne de Miserichorde: 'Go, Madam, to spin your distaff. It is not appropriate for you to speak in a debate of this kind.' The misogynistic response has enflamed centuries of commentators who see in Esclarmonde a proto-feminist. Indeed, she has developed legendary status in the Pays Cathare, even though it is difficult to gather facts such as where and when she died. Her involvement in a council and her derogatory treatment by a member of the clergy highlights both the positions to which Cathar women could rise, and the destruction their reputations could suffer at the hands of the orthodox church.

[silvestromedia]

SAINTS OF THE DAY FOR MAY 29

Bl. Richard Thirkeld, 1349 A.D. English martyr, also listed as Thirkild. Born in Durham, England, he studied at Oxford and was said to be quite old when he left the isle to receive preparation for the priesthood at Reims and Douai, France. Ordained in 1579, he went back to England and served the Catholics in the area around Yorkshire until his execution for being a priest on May 29 at York.

St. William Arnaud, Roman Catholic Priest and Martyr. A member of the Dominicans, he held the post of inquisitor general in Southern France during the effort to extirpate the Albigensian heresy. He was martyred by the heretics with eleven companions and is counted among the Martyrs of Toulouse. Feast May 29

Martyrs of Toulouse, Roman Catholic Martyrs. Twelve martyrs put to death by Albigensian heretics near Toulouse, France, on the eve of the feast of the Ascension. Four diocesan priests, three Dominicans, two Benedictines, two Franciscans, and one layman died singing the Te Deum. Feastday May29

ST. URSULA LEDÓCHOWSKA, FOUNDRESS OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE URSULINE SISTERS OF THE AGONIZING HEART OF JESUS

ST. PAUL VI, POPE

THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

[spottinghistory]

Historic site of the week: The Château de Foix

The Château de Foix was known as a centre of the Cathars in southern France. Built on an older 7th-century fortification, the castle is known from 987.

In 1034, the castle became capital of the County of Foix and played a decisive role in medieval military history. During the two following centuries, the castle was home to Counts with shining personalities who became the soul of the Occitan resistance during the crusade against the Albigensians.

[xavierbautistagarcia]

La Cité, the fortress

The Citadel of Carcassonne (Ciutat de Carcassona in Occitan) is a medieval fortress located in the town of the same name in Occitania. The fortress is a symbol of the region and one of the most visited tourist attractions in France.

The history of the Citadel of Carcassonne dates back to the Gallo-Roman period, when the Romans established a military camp on the site to protect the region from invasion. The camp was subsequently abandoned and the site remained unused for several centuries.

In the 12th century, the fortress was built by the Viscounts of Carcassonne, powerful feudal lords of the region after the extinction of the county whose holders were the sovereigns of Barcelona, whose first counts originated from this fief. It was conceived as a bulwark against the invading French forces during the Albigensian Crusade, a military campaign launched by the Catholic Church against the Cathar heresy, which had settled in the region.

The fortress was built in two parts: the inner castle, known as the Château Comtal, and the outer ramparts surrounding the town. The castle was built first and was intended to be the residence of the viscounts. Later the outer ramparts were added to protect the town and the castle.

The fortress suffered several sieges. One of the most famous of these took place in 1209 during the Albigensian Crusade, when it was besieged for several months, after which it fell to the French.

The fortress was further reinforced in the 13th century, during the reign of the saintly King Louis IX of France. The king ordered the construction of several additional towers and fortifications to protect the town from attack.

However, after the incorporation of the semi-independent Occitan fiefs into the Kingdom of France, the fortress lost its military importance and was gradually abandoned. By the 19th century, it had fallen into disrepair and was in danger of being demolished.

In the 1850s, the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was commissioned to restore the fortress to its former splendour. Viollet-le-Duc supervised the restoration and added several new elements, such as the pointed roof of the towers, which were not part of the original design.

The restoration was completed in the early 20th century and it was opened to the public. Today, the Citadel of Carcassonne is one of the most visited tourist attractions in France, attracting millions of visitors each year. It has also been recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its historical and cultural importance.

[thepowerofthecrucifix]

The History of the Rosary 

The Rosary is a form of prayer that has been used by Catholics for centuries and remains a central part of their spiritual practice today. This devotion involves the repetitive recitation of prayers and meditation on the life of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. But how did the Rosary come to be and what has been its journey throughout history? In this blog post, we will delve into the history of the Rosary and explore its evolution over the years.

The origins of the Rosary can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when the use of prayer beads became popular among Christians. At the time, these beads were used as a tool to help with counting prayers, and as a way to keep one's mind focused on their devotions. It is believed that the Rosary as we know it today was first introduced by Saint Dominic in the early 13th century. The story goes that the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Dominic and gave him the Rosary as a way to combat the spread of the Albigensian heresy, a heretical Christian sect that was active in Europe at the time.

The Rosary quickly became a popular form of devotion among Catholics, and was further developed by Saint Dominic's order, the Dominicans. Over time, the number of prayers and meditation points grew, and the Rosary became a complex devotional tool that was used to contemplate the mysteries of the life of Jesus and Mary. The Rosary was also seen as a way to connect with the divine, as well as a form of intercession for the faithful.

During the Renaissance, the Rosary saw a resurgence in popularity as the Catholic Church encouraged its use as a way to counter the spread of Protestantism. The Church also made significant changes to the Rosary, adding new prayers and meditations, as well as creating new versions of the beads. The Rosary became an important part of Catholic spirituality, and was used by both the laity and the clergy.

However, the Rosary also faced challenges during this time. The Protestant Reformation saw the Rosary criticized as being too superstitious and lacking in scriptural support. Despite this, the Rosary remained a central part of Catholic life and was even encouraged by the Church as a way to promote devotion and counter the spread of Protestantism.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Rosary continued to evolve, introducing new versions and beads styles. The Rosary also became a central part of Catholic culture, with the Hail Mary being recited in homes, schools, and churches across the world. The Rosary was also used as a tool for social and political activism, with the Rosary Crusade being used to promote peace and protest against war and social injustices.

The Rosary has also played a significant role in modern Catholicism, with Pope John Paul II being a strong advocate of devotional prayer. In 2002, Pope John Paul II introduced the Luminous Mysteries, five new meditation points that focus on key events in the public life of Jesus. This move was seen as an attempt to renew interest in the Rosary and encourage its use among Catholics.

Today, the Rosary remains a central part of Catholic devotion and is used by millions of people around the world. The Rosary has also inspired countless works of art and literature, and continues to be a source of comfort and inspiration for many.

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[maniculum]

We did a ten-part episode on this one. I’m going to put my feelings on it under a spoiler cut in case you want to go in blind.

I would describe this as an absolutely batshit book with a disturbing christian-imperialist ethos in the background.

I know that lots of medieval texts can be described as “christian imperialist” or similar, but this one’s particularly… enthusiastic about it. I would sum up its approach to the matter as “you know what’s great? CRUSADES. and you don’t even have to just do them in the holy land, they’re appropriate everywhere.” (The author was probably present for the Albigensian Crusade, and may have been suffering from PTSD or something but he still was very pro-Crusade.)

However, the whole crusader thing is off in the background most of the time; it just sticks out so much when it comes to the fore that it’s hard to forget. When the book is not suggesting religious genocide, it’s just COMPLETELY INSANE. It's supposed to be a continuation of Chrétien de Troyes's "Perceval", but it diverges from the accepted canon even more than you'd expect from an Arthurian text.

I don't know if there's an official record for "most decapitated heads in a medieval romance", but Perlesvaus would have a real shot at the title if anyone ever tried to compose that leaderboard. Not "most decapitations", mind -- there are plenty of those, but a lot of the heads in this one are already detached by the time they show up in the narrative. There's a major character called the Damsel of the Cart, and that cart is full of heads. Nobody finds this odd. Someone else steals the heads, because they're apparently a valuable commodity. This is not the only mention of detached heads, just the most memorable.

The story is ostensibly set in the first century AD, but in reality is just set in Generic High Medieval Romance Land. The author regularly plays fast & loose with issues like time & space, and in a later chapter suggests that this is intentional because, and I'm not making this up, God likes to move stuff around to facilitate knightly adventures.

All medieval romance tropes are played to the hilt. Maidens and damsels are constantly wandering around the woods with quests. The Arthurian Dwarf character is everywhere, which is its own weirdness because it first strikes you as the authors being a bit mean to little people, but its folkloric roots are in faerie legends, so... you know what, that's its own post/article/book. It's considered so standard to stay with a hermit overnight while one is questing that in one chapter it's a plot point that the knights can find neither a hermit nor a castle and have to sleep outdoors. They specifically call this out as a very strange turn of events. The Beheading Game as later done in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" makes an appearance, but it is not executed well. Knights regularly go about in "disguise", which is achieved by swapping their shields, because that's the only way they recognize each other.

Conversely, the title character (Perlesvaus) is, at a couple points, described using terms like "a man with the courage of a lion and the navel of a virgin". This is also treated as a valid way to recognize someone. I think there's literally a scene where someone describes him in those terms, asks if anyone has seen him, and someone says yes.

Said title character is canonically "the best knight in the world" but also is basically completely unhinged and violent, even by the standards of "knight in a medieval romance". He has a quadruple-digit kill count by the end of the text -- a lot of that is from the time he single-handedly genocided an entire city, but he does also kill people in single combat pretty regularly. In the later chapters, he spends a period of time basically lost at sea because he boarded a ship and killed the entire crew before realizing the ship had cast off shortly after he boarded and he had no idea where it was now. Diversity win, though -- he's also almost-canonically asexual. Obviously that term isn't used, but it's made pretty clear, hence "almost-canonically". (There's a little bit of ambiguity because knights get really homoerotic in medieval romance, but I think that's just knights being knights.) That's probably not great representation, sorry ace gang.

At one point, Lancelot screws up a major plot moment because he starts hallucinating during Mass out of sheer religious fervor.

Multiple major characters die unceremoniously offstage.

There's a scene where the knights discover a hoard of dismembered body parts and find it funny.

A wise priest informs one of the main characters that everything that's happened in the story so far is actually a metaphor.

A damsel builds trapped reliquaries in order to kill three specific knights.

There are a surprising number of lions.

I highly recommend reading this book to anyone who enjoys medieval nonsense, because it's absolutely bugnuts at every turn.

Alternatively, as alluded to at the top of this post, if anyone wants a couple medievalists to read a summarized version to them (Zoe's very good at doing the voices) and discuss it in a humorous manner, here's Part One of Ten. You can probably figure out how to find the rest; people know how podcasts work, right?

Look what you people made me do.

[illustratus]

Amaury VI de Montfort (1192-1241), comte de Leicester en 1218, connétable de France en 1230

by Hendrik Scheffer

[hmslusitania]

Library: We see you're searching for the letters of Pope Innocent III. Did you want the Letters of Pope Innocent III to England and Wales between 1198-1215? Did you want a review of that book by 75 different people? Did you want the new edition of that book? Did you want the new edition of that book with a different preface? What about with a different introduction? What about a different edition? What about a list of all the papers and books that book has shown up in in reference? 

Me, crying: I DON'T WANT THAT BOOK AT ALL IN ANY FORM

Library: so you want Pope Innocent III’s letters to Ireland. I see. I see how it is. 

[sixth-light]

The Crusades: A Fandom Primer

Like many of you, I am very excited to see a whole lot of fic about everybody’s favourite new Crusades-era Muslim/Christian immortal warrior husbands! However, a preliminary reading indicates that fandom is a bit hazy on what actually happened during the Crusades. Or where. Or why. They’re a much-mythologised piece of history so this isn’t surprising, but at popular request – ok like five people that counts – I’m here with a fandom-oriented Crusades primer.

Please bear in mind that I’m not a historian and this primer is largely based on my notes and recollections from several undergraduate history courses I took in the mid ‘00s. I expect the field has moved on somewhat, and I welcome corrections from people with more up-to-date knowledge! There’s also this very good post by someone who is a lot less lazy about links than I am.

Where did they take place?

The Crusades, broadly, describe a series of invasions of the Eastern Mediterranean (modern Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Beirut, Jordan, Cyprus, and parts of Turkey and Greece) by (mostly) Western European armies, religiously justified by their belief that the city of Jerusalem should be part of ‘Christendom’, i.e. ruled by a Christian monarch. In the first expression of European settler colonialism, nobles from the area of modern France and Germany founded four Crusader Kingdoms (aka ‘Outremer’, ‘overseas’) – the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and County of Tripoli.

  After a first unexpected wave of success in the First Crusade (1096-1099), which surprised everybody including the participants by conquering Jerusalem, the Crusaders were gradually driven and the last part of Outremer was lost to European control with the fall of the city of Acre in 1291. Crusades after that still nominally aimed to take Jerusalem but rarely got very far, with the Fourth Crusade famously sacking the city of Byzantium, their nominal Christian allies, in 1204. During this whole period activity that can be considered part of the ‘Crusades’ took place around the Eastern Mediterranean.

The most important thing to remember is that modern national boundaries didn’t exist in the same way; Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and the UK were not unified nations. Most of the southern Iberian peninsula (modern Spain) was ‘al-Andalus’, Muslim kingdoms ruled by nobility originally from North Africa. Sicily had been an Emirate up until very recently, when it had been conquered by Normans (Vikings with a one-century stopover in France). Italy and Germany in particular were a series of city-states and small duchies; Genoa, if you’re curious about it for some reason, ;), was a maritime power with more or less a distinct language, Genoese Ligurian (their dialect had enough of a navy to qualify). England had recently become part of the Anglo-Norman Empire, which ruled most of England (but not Wales or Scotland) and also large parts of modern France, particularly Normandy.

The Muslim world was similarly fragmented in ways that don’t correspond to modern national boundaries - there were multiple taifa states in Iberia, the Almoravid Caliphate in Morocco, the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt, and (nominally) the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, one of the great cities of the era, although the Seljuq Turks were the major power in Anatolia (modern Turkey) and what we describe as the ‘Middle East’. 

The largest Christian unified power in the wider European/Mediterranean region was the Byzantine Empire, centered on the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), which quite fairly considered itself the direct continuation of the Roman Empire, the capital having been moved there by the Emperor Constantine in 323. In fact, the really big political and religious question of the time for Christians was who got to be considered the centre of Christendom (there was no real concept of ‘Europe’ at this point) – the Orthodox Church, the Byzantine Emperor, and the Patriarch of Constantinople in Constantinople, or the Holy Roman Emperor (er…dude in nominal charge of a lot of German and Italian principalities) and the Roman Catholic Church led by the Pope in Rome. The Orthodox Church in Constantinople and the Roman Catholic Church had agreed to disagree in 1054 in the Great Schism, so in 1096 this issue was still what you’d call fresh.

Onto this stage of East-West disagreement and the heritage of Rome crashed the Seljuq Turks, a Muslim group from Central Asia who swept through Anatolia (modern Turkey), Byzantium’s richest province, culminating in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 which wiped out Byzantium as an independent military force. The southern provinces had fallen under Muslim rule long ago, during the era of the first Umayyad Caliphate – including Jerusalem, famous as the birthplace of Christianity and a holy site for Judaism and Islam as well, but also a fairly uninteresting provincial town. Until...

Until…what?

Here’s why all the geography matters: It is generally accepted that the First Crusade kicked off largely because Alexios I Comnenus, the then-current Byzantine Emperor, requested aid from Western Europe against the Muslim Seljuq Turks. Byzantium often recruited mercenaries from Western Europe; the Normans (aka the Vikings), who had settled Normandy and southern Italy in the past century were frequent hires. Hence those runes in the Hagia Sophia.

Meanwhile in Western Europe, the Pope – Urban II – was having difficulty with the current Emperor, and was eager to heal the Schism and establish the primacy of the Roman church. He declared that an expedition to aid the Byzantines would have the blessing of the church, and that a new kind of pilgrimage – an armed pilgrimage – was religiously acceptable, if aimed against the enemies of Christendom.

Pilgrimages (travelling to holy sites, such as churches that held saints’ relics) were a major part of European Christianity at the time and many people went on pilgrimage in their lives, so this was a familiar concept. Western Europe was also somewhat overpopulated with knights – don’t think plate armour, this is 1096, think very murderous rich men with good swords – who could always use forgiveness, on account of all the murder. The Roman Catholic church, unlike the Eastern Orthodox church, also subscribed to the concept of ‘just war’, that war could be acceptable for the right reasons. And so a whole lot of nobles from the area of modern France, Belgium, England, Germany, and Italy decided that this new Crusade thing was something they wanted in on – and they took several armies with them.

I’m going to skip over a bunch of stuff involving the People’s Crusade (a popular movement of poorer people, got literally slaughtered in Anatolia), the massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe, and a lot of battles, but the takeaway is this: Alexios probably thought he was getting mercenaries. He got a popular religious movement that, somewhat unfortunately, actually achieved its goal (Jerusalem), did next to nothing to solve his Anatolia problem, and gave a succession of Popes a convenient outlet for errant knights, nobles, and rulers: going on Crusade.  

How many were there?

Official Crusades that anybody cares about: Nine, technically. Crusade-like military events that immortal soldiers might have got involved with, plus local stoushes in Outremer: way more. WAY more.

The First Crusade (1096-1099): First and original, set a frankly (heh) terrible precedent, founded the Crusader States and captured Jerusalem. Only regarded as a clash of civilisations by the Western Christians involved. For the local Muslims it was just another day at the ‘Byzantium hires Frankish mercenaries to make our lives difficult’ office.

The Crusade of 1101: Everybody who peaced out on the First Crusade hurried to prove they were actually up for it, once the remaining First Crusaders took Jerusalem. Didn’t do much.

The Second Crusade (1147-1150): The County of Edessa falls, Eleanor of Aquitaine happens (my fave), the only winners are the people who semi-accidentally conquer Lisbon (in Portugal) (but from Muslim rulers so that…counts?).

The Third Crusade (1189-1192): You all know this one because it has RICHARD THE LIONHEART and SALADIN. Much Clash of Civilisations, very Noble, did enough to keep the remaining Crusader kingdoms going but access to Jerusalem for Christian pilgrims was obtained by treaty, not conquest. Indirectly responsible for the Robin Hood mythos when Richard gets banged up in prison on the way home and is away from England for ages.

The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204): Aims for Jerusalem, ends up sacking the Eastern Orthodox city of Constantinople, just not a great time for anybody, more or less the eventual cause of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.  

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221): Still going for Jerusalem, starts with Cairo instead, does not get anywhere it wants to even after allying with the Anatolian Sultanate of Rum, making the whole ‘Christians vs Muslims’ thing even murkier than it already was post the Fourth Crusade.

The Sixth Crusade (1228-1229): Somehow these things are still going. Nobody even does very much fighting. Access to Jerusalem is negotiated by treaty, yet again.

The Seventh, Eight, and Ninth Crusades: Seriously nobody cares anymore and also nobody is trying very hard. Kings have better things to do, mostly. People end up in Egypt a lot. We covered these in one lecture and I have forgotten all of it.

The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229): Why take a three-year trip to the Holy Land to fight pagans when you can fight the ones in your own backyard (southern France), AND take their stuff? Famously the source of the probably apocryphal ‘Kill them all, God will know His own’ quote, regarding the massacre of most of a city harbouring Cathars (a Christian sect deemed heretical).

Can we circle back to that ‘massacres of Jews’ bit? WTF?

Crusades, historically, were Not A Good Time for Jewish communities in Europe; when Christians were riled up to go and Fight The Infidel, it was a lot quicker to massacre local Jews than travel to the Holy Land. Also, then you could take their stuff. I will note here that it is VERY TACKY to use historical pogroms as backdrops for your non-Jewish main characters so keep this in mind but, like, use with extreme caution in fanfic, okay? Generally life was a lot easier for Jewish communities in Muslim-ruled states in this period, which is why so many Hispanic Jews ended up in Turkey after they were expelled from Spain. 

What were they really about, then?

Historians still Have Opinions about this. Genuine religious fervour was absolutely a key motivator, especially of the First Crusade. The ability to wage war sanctioned by the Church, or to redeem your local sins by going and fighting against the pagans, was part of that, too. Control of key trade routes to the East was probably not not a part of it. The Crusader States were definitely Baby’s First Experiment With Settler Colonialism, and paved the theological and rhetorical ground for the colonisation of the Americas. But many individuals on the Christian side would absolutely have believed they were doing God’s work. The various Muslim rulers and certainly the local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim inhabitants of the Holy Land itself were mostly just getting invaded by Franks. As time wound on the Crusades became more and more political (frequently featuring intra-religious violence and inter-religious alliances) and less and less about their forever nominal goal, control of Jerusalem.

How’s Wikipedia on this?

Basically not too bad but I’m not totally confident on some of the bits about motivation (see: white supremacists love this period, ugh.)

Why did they stop?

The prospect of re-taking Jerusalem vanished entirely as the Ottoman Empire centralised and took a firm hold over most of the Levant (and made inroads into Europe, as far as Austria, taking Constantinople in 1453 and finally ending the continuous Roman Empire), the Spanish Reconquista and various intra-European conflicts (the Hundred Years’ War, for example) absorbed military attention, and then the Reformation happened and half of Europe stopped listening to the Pope and started stabbing each other over who was the right kind of Christian. But the concept lingered; white supremacists love the Crusades. Which is why it is a very good idea to be sparing with Crusader imagery around Niccolò in fanfic set in the modern era, and please for fuck’s sake stop with the ‘crugayders’ tag, Yusuf wasn’t a Crusader.  

What other fun facts should I keep in mind re: Nicky | Nicolò and Joe | Yusuf?

·        Genoa is not the same as Italy; Nicolò is Nicolò di Genova and would have spoken Genoese (Ligurian) and considered himself to be Genoese. Italian as a language didn’t really exist yet. The language he and Yusuf would most likely have had in common was the ‘lingua franca’ (Frankish language, literally) of the Mediterranean trading region, a pidgin based heavily on maritime Italian languages. Yusuf 300% would have thought of him as a ‘Frank’ (the generic term for Western Christians) and probably annoyed him by calling him that until at least 1200 or so.

·        Yusuf is apparently from ‘Maghrib’, which I assume means al-Maghrib/the Maghreb (as his actor is IIRC of Tunisian descent), i.e. North Africa. He could have had relatives in al-Andalus (southern modern Spain), he may have spoken languages other than Arabic natively (Mozarabic or Berber), his native area had universities before Europe did. Basically: this is as useful as saying he’s ‘from Europe’, do better backstory writers.

·        Taking the whole ‘Nicky used to be a priest’ backstory at face value: being a priest in 1096 looked pretty different to how it did even 200 years later. They were still working on the celibacy thing. The famous monastic orders were still forming. Some priests could and did hold lands and go to war (this wasn’t common but it happened, especially if they were nobles by birth). Nicolò di Genova would not necessarily have seen a conflict between going on Crusade and being a priest, is what I’m getting at. If he was ALSO trained as a knight, he was from a wealthy family; it took the equivalent several villages to support a knight.

·        ‘Period-typical homophobia’ is going to look very different for this period. They are NOT getting beaten up for holding hands. Or sharing a bed! Or even kissing, depending on the circumstances! I am not an expert on Islamic sexual mores of the era but Christian ones were heavily on the side of ‘unsanctioned sex is bad, sanctioned (marital) sex is slightly less bad’, and there was no concept of ‘being gay’. An interfaith relationship would be in some ways more of a problem for them than the same-sex one (and in some ways less difficult to navigate than a heterosexual interfaith relationship.) The past is another country.

·        Look just no more fanfics where Yusuf is trying to learn ‘Italian’ in the early twelfth century I am BEGGING you all

[histoireettralala]

Blanche as Regent, and the narrative of Louis's minority

There was no real threat or challenge to the status of young Louis as king. He had been designated by his father in his will, and the Capetian line had descended from father to son since 987. But when power was personal, minority government was always contested government. Magnates like Theobald of Champagne and Peter Mauclerc, who had been chafing under the heavy fists of Philip Augustus and Louis VIII, would certainly take advantage of the minority to push claims to additional land and power as far as they could, and protect themselves against what they saw as royal encroachment on their lordships. Others who were fundamentally loyal to the Capetians would still see a minority as an opportunity to bolster their positions. Peter Mauclerc was already exploiting Henry III's desires to regain the Angevin lands as a lever of personal power: he would not let slip the opportunity offered by a minority. All this could be expected.

Blanche's status as guardian and custodian of king and kingdom was another matter. There were no established norms for regency, whether in the case of a minority or when the king was out of the country in Crusade. The only previous Capetian to have succeeded as a minor was Philip I in 1060. The realm was ruled during his minority by his uncle by marriage, Count Baldwin of Flanders, probably with some assistance from Philip's mother, Anna of Kiev. Arrangements for Crusading regencies had varied. Philip Augustus had left the country in the guardianship of his mother, Adela of Champagne, her brother, the archbishop of Reims, and six prominent Paris merchants, who supervised the financial accounts. During the Second Crusade, the regents, "elected" under the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux, were an unlikely, and not very successful, triumvirate: Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, the archbishop of Reims and Louis VII's cousin Ralph of Vermandois. No powers were vested in Louis VII's mother, Queen Adela of Maurienne. The great principalities had a stronger tradition of leaving power in the hands of an absent prince's wife or a minor prince's mother. Recent notable examples were the successive countesses of Champagne, Mary of France and Blanche of Navarre. But leaving the kingdom in the hands of the queen alone was novel. (At least in France, though there was the recent example of Margaret of Navarre in Sicily). At the very least, one might have expected her to hold power jointly with a prominent churchman. The archbishop of Reims was the traditional choice- but William of Joinville had died shortly before Louis, on the return from the Albigensian Crusade.

[..]

There certainly were challenges to the regency from the French baronage. Political songs of the day accused Blanche of sending money to Spain, and accused both Blanche and Walter Cornut of preferring the men of Spain to the barons of France. They accused Blanche of keeping young Louis unmarried so that she could remain in power, and accused her of being the mistress of, variously, Theobald of Champagne and Cardinal Romanus Frangipani. Like most regents, Blanche would have to make concessions and obtain by diplomacy what a king would have obtained by command.

The narrative of Louis's minority produced by all his biographers, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, William of Nangis and Joinville, is a dramatic one, of terrible threat to Blanche's rule, and even to the king himself. All of them were writing long after the events, but all of them knew many of the protagonists, and reported first-hand accounts from Louis himself. The same dramacic story is told by the contemporary chroniclers, the Flemish Philip Mousquès, the English Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris, and the slightly later Ménestrel of Reims. But there are problems with all these sources. Their chronology of events is unclear and sometimes contradictory. Wendover may have had some information from those who campaigned with Richard Marshall alongside the most fractious of the French barons, Peter Mauclerc; at all events, Wendover's account, while a splendid source of French "baronial" gossip, is not always reliable as to facts. Matthew Paris, reworking Wendover's text, could not resist the baronial gossip, though he often dismissed it as lurid rumour. Of the contemporary French chroniclers, Philip Mousquès was well informed on French court gossip from a Flemish perspective, but his chronology is confused. The Ménestrel of Reims' court gossip was more second-hand, and his main aim was to entertain: his chronology is even more confused. St Louis's biographers tend to collapse together events that happened over a long time span, while Joinville, as seneschal of Champagne, was particularly concerned with events in and affecting that county. For all these sources, the narrative of the valiant widowed queen protecting her young son against the powerful wicked barons of France was irresistible. Indeed, it is clear from Louis's reminiscences, as reported by his biographers, that it had become the family's own narrative.

But it is a dramatization and an oversimplification. Many French magnates remained loyal. Those who proved particularly fractious had already been so under Louis VIII. The most consistent plotter of all, Peter Mauclerc, count of Brittany, continued his conspiracies long after St Louis had reached his majority; and Theobald of Champagne's major revolt occurred under Louis's personal kingship. Private war remained endemic in France, though Louis tried to outlaw it, to the disgust of his barons, in 1258. Blanche faced a continual need to control marriage alliances that might lead to dangerous power blocs — but that had been true in the previous two reigns, and continued to be an issue after Louis attained his majority. Much of the worst trouble was not aimed at toppling Blanche’s status as guardian of the realm; it was a series of attacks against Theobald of Champagne. The succession to Champagne had long been an issue, as had the border zone berween Champagne and Burgundy. Blanche and Louis intervened, for the king (or his regent) should ensure peace within his realm, and they did so with reasonable success. The exact chronology of the troubles is difficult to establish, but it seems that, after a difficult few months, stability had been restored by March 1227. In summer 1229 came the major attack on Champagne by members of the Burgundian aristocracy together with various related allies — though the fact that their relations included Peter of Brittany gave it a dangerous edge, for Peter was also plotting an invasion from England with Henry III. By summer 1230 it was clear that had failed, and although Peter of Brittany made war in western Normandy and the western Loire in most subsequent campaigning seasons until 1236, he was increasingly isolated. After 1230 he was an irritant rather than a threat to the Capetian kingship.

Joinville makes much of Blanche being a foreigner, from Spain, "who had neither relatives nor friends in all the kingdom of France". This was untrue. She had both friends and relatives on whom she could depend. The friendship and patronage networks that she had developed since her arrival in France, as the Lady Blanche and as queen consort, now supported her. The administrators, both lay and eccsiastical, who had worked so closely with her husband, and who were in many cases inherited from Philip Augustus, notably Bishop Guérin of Senlis (until his death in April 1227), Walter Cornut, archbishop of Sens, and his relations, the Clément family, Bartholomew of Roye, the chamberlain, and Matthew of Montmorency, the constable, proved intensely loyal. It was in their interests to support the Capetian crown, from which they derived their power and prestige. They might have been slightly cool in support of a queen regent, but they were not. Like her husband, Blanche could rely on the support of the aristocracy of the north-east, where her dower lands lay, such as Michael of Harnes, Arnold of Audenarde and John of Nesle, and on some of the most important reformist churchmen, notably the Cistercian bishop Walter of Chartres. She made the loyal, and partly Spanish, Theobald of Blaison seneschal of the politically sensitive Poitou. The important Angevin families of Craon and Des Roches supported the Capetians, as did the rich city of La Rochelle. Many of the great barons, too, were faithful, notably Stephen of Sancerre, John of Nesle, Amaury of Montfort and the counts of Blois and Chartres. The last two held their counties through their wives, the sister countesses Margaret of Blois and Isabella of Chartres, who were members of the Capetian family and cousins of Blanche herself.

Lindy Grant- Blanche of Castile, Queen of France

[roehenstart]

Simon IV de Montfort (c. 1160/1165-1218) was Lord of Montfort-l'Amaury, fifth Count of Leicester, Count of Toulouse, Viscount of Béziers and Viscount of Carcassonne, he was the main protagonist of the Albigensian Crusade.

[nanshe-of-nina]

Favorite History Books || The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History by Thomas N. Bisson ★★★★☆

In this case the monuments may be more eloquent than the history. Among dynastic federations of the Middle Ages, the Crown of Aragon is not perhaps the most memorable. Upstaged from the start by the marriages uniting Anjou, Normandy, Aquitaine, and England, it lacked the power and wealth of the combined Plantagenet domains, the grandeur of the Hohenstaufen empire, or the glamorous impudence of Charles of Anjou’s. Set back by catastrophic defeat in the Albigensian wars and stripped of Provence in the thirteenth century, the union of Aragon and. Catalonia might then have seemed destined to vegetate in provincial squalor. Historians have lately stressed its political and economic failings in the later Middle Ages. Yet the Crown of Aragon long survived all the federations mentioned above, falling heir, indeed, to the Mediterranean spoils of two of them. Even as it lost most of its trans-Pyrenean annexes, it turned aggressively against the Moors and forged ties of marriage with the Hohenstaufen. Majorca, Valencia, Minorca; Sicily and Sardinia; Naples; the duchies of Athens and Neopatria—the list of conquests or settlements is long and glittering; and while not all its colonies were assimilated or suffered Catalan domination for long, the original dynastic union together with its Hispanic conquests outlasted the dynasty itself to become Ferdinand the Catholic’s gift to the patrimony of modern Spain.

There was nothing chimerical about the Crown of Aragon. The marriage from which it stemmed, for all the problems to which it later gave rise, was an act of political logic that made sense in the twelfth century. It was neither the first nor the last dynastic union of peninsular lands that never knew a Philip Augustus in the Middle Ages. The Aragonese union early found positive expression in the collaborative activity of a bi-regnal court. Even when national jealousies arose to weaken the solidarity, Catalans and Aragonese who fought or traded abroad or benefited from subsidies or royal protection must have regarded their ruler as a multi-regnal dynast. The count-kings, for their part, did what they could to administer their lands en bloc. James II founded his new university at Lerida because of its centrality and convenience in his peninsular realms, and in 1319 he decreed that his realms should remain undivided. His successors continued to think of Mediterranean hegemony in federative terms. When the dynasty died out in 1410 the succession was resolved in counsels representing the notables of Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia. And when Ferdinand and Isabella later created an enlarged Crown of Castile, Leon, Aragon, and Sicily, they not only replicated (and subordinated) the old Pyrenean union, they also drew on federative institutions pioneered by their Mediterranean forerunners.

So, it may be said that the Crown of Aragon, considered precisely as a dynastic federation, had a history of its own. This history is the subject of this book—or, more exactly, its titular subject. The qualification is necessary, for to understand this subject it is not enough to examine a union that was often threatened and always artificial; not enough to adopt the inspiring perspective of rulers who were an untypical minority, to say the least. More fundamentally our subject must be the history of the lands they ruled, of societies in Aragon and the Catalan-speaking counties that were on the threshold of national identity when their ruling dynasties merged and that continued to evolve in distinctive ways. In one sense the histories of Aragon and Catalonia begin with the marriage of Ramon Berenguer IV and Petronilla in 1150 and what happened thereafter was much affected by the contacts and reactions of the two peoples with and to each other. But these histories were influenced by antecedent factors—geography, substructures of ancient and Visigothic culture, struggles against the Moors—which go far toward explaining the most salient peculiarity of the medieval Crown of Aragon: the rise of Catalonia to pre-eminence in the federation.

This peculiarity creates a serious difficulty for any historian who seeks to be impartial. To this day some Catalans find it hard to understand why Ramon Berenguer IV or his son failed to assume the style of king in Catalonia, while some Aragonese resent the blatant partiality of James the Conqueror toward Catalonia. The political passions of the present are so bound up with the medieval past in the case of these lands that one is tempted to pass over such incidents in silence. Yet the historical explanations for them are often as illuminating as they are troubling; one cannot avoid them even at the cost of taking sides. If these chapters were merely to sketch the parallel histories of Aragon and Catalonia, they would surely fail to convey one larger lesson of our story.  Neither land evolved freely of the other still less do the post-conquest histories of the Balearic Islands and Valencia make sense in isolation. To write of one land I necessarily to write of all, and so, perhaps, to do less than justice to any.

It is possible to interpret the medieval federation from an Aragonese point of view: José María Lacarra did so brilliantly. It is easier—and perhaps not more misleading—to lay stress on the centrality of Catalonia. That is what is attempted here. Catalonia was the Normandy of the late medieval Mediterranean. She did not give her name to the confederation, she was content to leave the crown to others. What she gave, above all, were the gifts of people and their language, of enterprise and culture. How did these things come about? What did they mean?  

[silvestromedia]

SAINTS OF THE DAY FOR MAY 29

Bl. Richard Thirkeld, 1349 A.D. English martyr, also listed as Thirkild. Born in Durham, England, he studied at Oxford and was said to be quite old when he left the isle to receive preparation for the priesthood at Reims and Douai, France. Ordained in 1579, he went back to England and served the Catholics in the area around Yorkshire until his execution for being a priest on May 29 at York.

St. William Arnaud, Roman Catholic Priest and Martyr. A member of the Dominicans, he held the post of inquisitor general in Southern France during the effort to extirpate the Albigensian heresy. He was martyred by the heretics with eleven companions and is counted among the Martyrs of Toulouse. Feast May 29

Martyrs of Toulouse, Roman Catholic Martyrs. Twelve martyrs put to death by Albigensian heretics nearToulouse, France, on the eve of the feast of the Ascension. Four diocesan priests, three Dominicans, two Benedictines, two Franciscans, and one layman died singing the Te Deum. Feastday May29

ST. URSULA LEDÓCHOWSKA, FOUNDRESS OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE URSULINE SISTERS OF THE AGONIZING HEART OF JESUS

ST. PAUL VI, POPE

THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE

[dwellordream]

“…If the crusades were primarily military expeditions, and women were not expected to fight, we might first ask why they were present in significant numbers. What motivated their involvement? The answer to this question is not easily discernable since there were women from all classes of society present on crusade. Moreover, historians have no way of knowing for sure how many women and other non-combatants actually left with the crusading armies. The sheer length and size of many campaigns meant that for any medieval army to function effectively, it required many non-combatants – engineers, bakers, artisans, tailors, squires, prostitutes and so on – in addition to the presence of fighting men and their commanders.

Numerous women formed a part of this retinue; however, the vast majority of women were poor and, in comparison to the knights, foot soldiers and other male warriors who set out alongside them, militarily unsuited to the task of conquering the Holy Land. Many of these women came alone or unmarried, while others had left their homes to come on crusade with their whole family in search of a better life, no doubt influenced to some extent by the enthusiasm and excitement which greeted the whole concept of a holy war. Other factors probably also influenced their decisions to leave for with the crusade army. The fact that certain celestial phenomenon such as aurora and comet sightings around the time that the First Crusade was being preached auspiciously coincided with the end of a long French drought in 1096 may have prompted some women to leave with the crusade army, although it is hard to know for certain.

Moreover, there is also the possibility that, for those who wished to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the prospect of travelling with an armed force who could protect them all the way appealed to unarmed female (and male) pilgrims. One eyewitness to the preparations for the First Crusade, Bernold of Constance, even recorded that ‘innumerable’ numbers of women disguised themselves in men’s clothing, possibly because they wished to actually take up arms against the enemy. This suggestion is supported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which asserted that ‘women and children’ were amongst those who ‘wanted to war against heathen nations’. Furthermore, we cannot discount the spiritual incentive of simply going to the Holy Land, which undoubtedly would have also helped motivate the masses of men and women to leave on crusade.

In some cases noblewomen also left on crusade, usually in the company of their husbands or other male relatives. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie of Champagne, Marguerite of Provence and Eleanor of Castile are all well-known examples of women who followed their husbands on crusade to the Holy Land. Once again though, the motivations for noblewomen who went on crusade are not easily ascertained, although the length of the crusade expeditions (which could last for years) probably had something to do with it, especially for couples who wanted to stay together. Other women appear to have acted fairly independently: around the time of the First Crusade, Emerias of Altejas took the cross by herself, but was persuaded by the bishop of Toulouse to endow a monastery instead of leaving for Jerusalem.

Alice, countess of Brittany, took a crusade vow in the 1260s, and, after her husband died in 1279 without fulfilling his vows, left for the East – specifically the city of Acre – in the late 1280s. On a broader scale, Kedar has drawn attention to an extant passenger list of a crusader ship in the mid-thirteenth century that had 453 passengers on board, forty-two of which were women, and of these women twenty- two were travelling with no male companion. Whatever their motivation, the fact that certain lords and their wives had to consider such decisions at all helped differentiate the crusades from other, more localised military escapades fought on a smaller scale that did not involve the same prospect of spiritual reward or the same possibility for material gain (at least early on) in the form of land.

Clearly, then, there were women from a range of different backgrounds present on crusade, for a variety of different reasons. The support which they rendered to the fighting men, however, was primarily indirect and auxiliary regardless of their social rank, and included such tasks as washing, cleaning clothes, cooking, gathering supplies – even picking lice and fleas off the men’s bodies. They might also provide comfort to the men (through prostitution), or when new territory was conquered they could assist with and become a part of settlement plans within that territory. In another sense, however, women could provide spiritual support for the men, encouraging them whilst they fought and praying for God’s favour.

The medieval poet Baldric of Dol, for instance, in his account of the First Crusade, noted that women and other non-combatants were an integral part of the spiritual side of the crusade and prayed for the men whilst they were fighting. Although this may not sound like a particularly useful form of ‘support’ to those living in the twenty-first century, spiritual supplication was still important since the crusades were a holy war and it was believed that God was on their side. Prayer thus helped ensure God’s favour and consequently the likelihood of military success.

The provision of supplies to the fighting men, most notably water, was another basic but essential form of support women rendered to men on crusade. Describing the female presence at the battle of Dorylaeum, one anonymous chronicler at the scene notes how ‘[t]he women in our camp were a great help to us that day, for they brought up water for the fighting men to drink, and gallantly encouraged those who were fighting and defending them’. Likewise Margaret of Beverly, whose brother recorded her experiences in the Holy Land around the time of the Third Crusade, recounted how she put a pot on her head for protection and brought water to the men on the walls during Saladin’s siege of Jerusalem, being injured in the process by an enemy projectile.

Oliver of Paderborn, whose account of the Fifth Crusade is one of the most detailed and important sources available, also recalled a similar form of female support during the crusaders’ attack on Damietta in Egypt, when he mentions that ‘the women fearlessly brought water and stones, wine and bread to the warriors’. Not long afterwards, during a skirmish between crusaders and Saracens at a castle south of Damietta, he mentions women carrying and distributing water to clerics and foot-soldiers.

The Fifth Crusade also offers examples of how women might assist an army with other supplies besides water. Powell has documented how women were said to have helped grind corn for the Christian army whilst it was besieging Damietta, how they were in charge of the markets selling fish and vegetables to the crusaders, and how they helped attend to the sick and needy. Most notably, Powell notes that women even acted as guards in the crusade camp and were assigned with weapons to prevent desertions and maintain order while the army prepared for a fresh attack against the city.

Joinville too, in his chronicle of the Seventh Crusade, described women who ‘sold provisions’ raising a cry of alarm when the Count of Poitiers was captured at the battle of Mansourah (February 1250). These examples suggest that women could be of definite help on a military expedition, and whilst we should not generalise and assume that women fulfilled the same logistical roles in every crusade or medieval military campaign, it is important to be aware of the different ways they might have rendered basic support and provisions to armies on campaign.

At the same time, however, women sometimes did become much more involved with military actions and appear to have actually used weapons themselves on the enemy, though not specifically in hand-to-hand combat. During the second siege of Toulouse in 1218, for instance, women from within the city supposedly operated the mangonel or perrière (a stone-throwing device) that killed Simon de Montfort, leader of the Albigensian Crusade, just as a Frankish woman ‘shooting from the citadel’ with a mangonel was said to have destroyed the Muslims’ mangonel at Saladin’s siege of Burzay in 1188.

Acting in a similarly defensive manner were the women who helped repel the French attack during the siege of Hennebont in 1342 by throwing stones and pots of chalk from the walls onto the enemy at the urging of Jeanne de Montfort. Likewise, in 1358 women also played an important role in defending the French township of Senlis from an attack by French nobles during the short-lived but violent peasant uprising known as the ‘Jacquerie’. In this case, the townsfolk were forewarned of the attack and had their women stationed at windows ‘to pour great quantities of boiling water down upon the enemy’ while their men-folk fought off the attackers.

…Nevertheless, there are accounts of women who dressed in armour and who may have physically fought the enemy. In studying the evidence available, though, we must be very careful in accounting for possible bias in the sources, particularly in accounts where the author’s ulterior motive may have been to portray the enemy in an unfavourable light and especially when it comes to descriptions of actual female combatants. Hence we must treat as suspicious a passage by the Byzantine chronicler, Niketas Choniatēs, about mounted women bearing ‘lances and weapons’ and dressed in ‘masculine garb...more mannish than the Amazons’ on the Second Crusade. According to the modern translator, this passage was assumed by Steven Runciman to refer to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her retinue, despite the fact that her name was not specifically mentioned. While Eleanor was indeed present on this crusade, the passage makes more sense, however, if it is understood as an attempt to criticise the Franks as uncivilised and even barbaric compared to the Greeks, because they allowed their women to don armour and unnaturally fight as warriors.

In the same way, Muslim chroniclers’ descriptions of Frankish women who supposedly dressed up and rode into battle at the siege of Acre ‘as brave men though they were but tender women’, and who were subsequently ‘not recognised as women until they had been stripped of their arms’ – as well as another Muslim account of a Frankish noblewoman who allegedly fought at Acre alongside 500 of her own knights – must be treated with caution. As Nicholson has noted, for both Christians and Muslims ‘it was expected that good, virtuous women would not normally fight...in a civilised, godly society’. By depicting Frankish women as warriors, therefore, the Muslim chroniclers could illustrate the barbarous and heathen nature of Christian society and contrast it with the properly ordered Muslim society where women knew their place. Thus, while we cannot rule out the possibility that some women at Acre may have actually dressed up and fought, the Muslim accounts are certainly questionable.

Likewise, other accounts of female combatants and women in armour that do not appear to be influenced directly by religious bias must still be carefully evaluated. In France, Orderic Vitalis recorded how Isabel of Conches rode ‘armed as a knight among the knights’ during a conflict in 1090 between her husband, Ralph of Conches, and Count William of Évreux. Although Orderic remarked on her courage among the knights, he says nothing about her subsequent actions, and thus we have no way of knowing if she actually fought. In a similar vein, the English chronicler Jordan Fantosme, writing primarily of the rebellion against Henry II by his son Henry ‘the Young King’ in 1173-1174, asserted that the earl of Leicester had his wife, Petronella, countess of Leicester, dressed up in armour and given a shield and lance before the battle of Fornham in October 1173.

According to Fantosme, Petronella encouraged the earl to fight the English, but fled from the battle while it was in progress and then fell into a ditch where she nearly drowned. Fantosme, however, was the only chronicler to describe Petronella’s martial deeds, and Johns has argued that he was clearly trying to portray Petronella in an unsympathetic way in order to emphasise that women should not be involved in military affairs. Fantosme wrote to entertain, but also to instruct moral lessons and highlight divine law; Petronella thus served as an example against women’s involvement in war and the follies of accepting female advice. Nevertheless, Petronella must have been present or involved in some way since other sources do mention that she was captured after the battle along with the earl and that she was present with him on campaign in England.

Further afield, in the Holy Land, William of Tyre contended that in the first crusade army’s excitement at the imminent capture of Jerusalem ‘even women, regardless of their sex and natural weakness, dared to assume arms and fought manfully far beyond their strength’. His account, however, cannot be verified as no eyewitness accounts of this siege actually describe women acting in such a manner. Likewise, although the memoirs of the twelfth century Muslim nobleman Usāmah Ibn-Munqidh mention several female combatants – a female Muslim slave who rushed into battle ‘sword in hand’; a Frankish women who used a jar to try and help fend off an attack on Frankish pilgrims; a Muslim woman in Shayzar who captured and had killed three Frankish men – it is important to be aware that Usāmah was recalling these anecdotes sixty years after they supposedly took place.

…It is because of this need for more defenders that other accounts of female combatants may be considered more reliable. For, even though Muslim writers are our source for the story of a female archer at Acre who, in defending the city, ‘wounded many Muslims before she was overcome and killed’, it is quite possible that in the heat of battle, when manpower was necessary to fight off attackers, this woman was forced to draw a bow. Equally plausible are these same Muslim writers’ astonishment at finding women amongst the dead on the battlefield after a failed Christian attack on Saladin’s camp, though this revelation does not tell us that these women actually fought.

Then there is the case of Christian women who executed the crew of a captured Turkish ship at Acre. According to the Itinerarium Peregrinorum, ‘the women’s physical weakness prolonged the pain of death, because they cut their heads off with knives instead of swords’. Again, although the women were not actually fighting in battle, it is quite possible that this event did occur given that the men had been defeated already and the women were perhaps motivated by thoughts of revenge. As Evans points out, the passage still displays ‘a gendered approach to weaponry’ in that the Muslims’ death at the hands of women is emphasised as ‘humiliating’ and reference made to women’s weakness – implying that the women were acting in an unnatural way.”

- James Michael Illston, ‘An Entirely Masculine Activity’? Women and War in the High and Late Middle Ages Reconsidered