14. 900-1200 Women Crusaders and Stabilizers   

During the Crusades, women did not sit idly by but took action on the battle field along side their male counterparts. In addition, they stepped into various roles of power. Though not talked about, these women's impact on the results of the crusades is undeniable. 

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Matilda of Tuscany, Wikimedia Commons

Threatened by the growing and vibrant Islamic Empire, between 1095 and 1291 CE, the Latin Christian Church based in Rome joined the Eastern Orthodox Church in Constantinople to lead a series of religious wars known as the Crusades. Armies faced off in the Levant, home to many sites revered in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions. There were nine Crusades to the Holy Lands during this period, though most historians tend to highlight the first three or four because they were the most significant. As is typical in the study of wars, most scholars focus their attention on the actions of men in their roles as religious or political leaders and as soldiers. However, women took part in the Crusades in a variety of ways, including as leaders and even as soldiers. ​
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The Crusades
In theory, when Pope Urban II issued a call to arms for the First Crusade in 1095, no one expected women to make the trip. Church leaders appealed to women with wealth to fund expeditions and new military orders. By the Second Crusade, some male authorities actively discouraged women from participating, saying that women would hinder the armies on campaign. However, as going on Crusade offered distinct spiritual benefits to those who went, it had to be open to any devout Christian. In this sense, the Crusades were a kind of super-pilgrimage and women had been taking part in pilgrimage for centuries in Europe. The other thing paving the way for women’s participation was the importance of noble lineage. Noblewomen looked to their own ancestors for inspiration and hoped to leave a legacy to their descendants.  Furthermore, medieval society was thought to be represented by three orders: Those who pray, meaning the clergy; those who fight, meaning the nobility; and those who work, meaning everyone else. If being noble meant being willing to fight, then noblewomen had to have a place in that order.
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​Dozens of women went on Crusades, and it would be impossible to list them all. Matilda of Tuscany never got to go on an official Crusade, but she paved the way for women who did. Matilda had a reputation for military leadership before the Crusades began. She had long been a loyal defender of Pope Gregory VII who had a conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor. Initially, church and civil law prohibited anyone but a secular male warrior from taking up arms. However, for a just cause, anyone could fight and pretty quickly fighting monks emerged. And, like many daughters of feudal lords, Matilda had been trained in strategy even if she never personally wielded a weapon. Sources say she was a brilliant strategist and that she was passionate about defending holy causes. Matilda was prepared to lead forces against the Turks as early as 1074, when they defeated a Byzantine army at Manzikert. However, when the first Crusade was announced in 1095, Matilda was still wrangling with the Holy Roman Emperor and his supporters.

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Eleanor of Aquitaine, History Extra

Most of the crusaders traveling from Western Europe to the Holy Lands had to pass through the Byzantine capital Constantinople.  Though she was only a child during the First Crusade, Anna Comnena’s historical account is the only source from a Byzantine perspective. Anna was the daughter of Emperor Alexios I Comnenos and she wrote a history of his reign after she, herself, had retired to a monastery in the 1140s. She based her history on eyewitness accounts from members of court and veterans, but she also had access to the Imperial archives. Her work, known as the Alexiad, describes the tension at court over the influx of heavily armed crusaders passing through Byzantine lands. She describes both the Latins and the Turks as “barbarians” and states outright that her father did not trust any of them very much even though he hoped the Franks and Latins would help keep his Empire intact.

One of the most famous women to go on Crusade is Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was the sole heiress to the territory of Aquitaine in southwestern France and was married to the French prince Louis when she was only thirteen or fourteen. In 1147, Eleanor and her husband, who was by then the king of France, together joined the Second Crusade. Louis knelt in the cathedral to “take the cross”, as it was called, and inspire the faithful of France to join the fight. Eleanor then knelt beside him to take the cross in the name of Aquitaine, to call on those loyal to her family. She also inspired numerous noblewomen to take the cross to accompany their husbands and brothers. The entire entourage was said to be glorious.

However, as the army slowly made its way down the coast towards Antioch, disaster struck. Torrential rains swept away equipment, men, and horses. The terrain was brutal, and supplies ran low. Worse yet, the vanguard under the leadership of Eleanor and two of her noble vassals set up camp farther ahead than Louis and the rest of the army expected them to. The army was unable to catch up before night fell. Turkish forces took advantage of the gap between Eleanor and Louis’ forces, attacking the exhausted army when Eleanor’s guard was too far away to send supplies. After that defeat, the royal couple and what was left of their army returned to the coast to try and find enough ships to carry on with the Crusade. They eventually arrived at Antioch, which at the time was under the rule of Eleanor’s uncle. Relieved to be among familiar faces and customs, Eleanor seemed happy to settle in for a while, but Louis became jealous and impatient. He forced her to come to Jerusalem with her troops. She did but refused to participate any longer in the war. The Second Crusade ended in humiliation for Louis, and they had their marriage annulled not long after they returned to France. Eleanor’s reputation after the Crusade was a poor one, as many blamed her leadership for the loss.

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Eleanor regained her lands and married the grandson of Henry I of England, Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy. They had eight children all of whom would be married into political marriages to secure peace and power. Eleanor earned the title “grandmother of Europe” as so many of her descendants ruled. Although they had many children, her new husband was not faithful to her. She instigated a revolt by her sons against her husband. The revolt failed and she was held in captivity until her husband died. 

Her son Richard the Lionheart became king and Eleanor played a greater political role than ever before. When he led a Crusade to the Holy Land she kept his kingdom running smoothly and put his brothers in place when they tried to take his crown. He was captured and mommy Eleanor came to save him, collecting his ransom and personally returning him to England. Richard’s brother John succeeded him and almost every one of his successes could be traced back to his mother. Other women, nuns, of the time described her as “beautiful and just, imposing and modest, humble and elegant… who surpassed almost all the queens of the world.”

Tombs of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II Plantagenet, flickr

​Melisende of Jerusalem's coronation, World History Encyclopedia

When it came to the crusades, did women actually participate in combat? It seems that some did. Christian male writers debated whether or not women should fight in the Crusades and very few of them broached the topic as it related to combat. One Greek historian from the First Crusade wrote of women among the warriors, noting that they rode on horseback “in the manner of men, not on coverlets side-saddle but unashamedly astride, and bearing lances and weapons as men do.”  Islamic sources also confirmed that women were among the combatants. The twelfth century historians Imad ad-Din and Baha ad-Din reported that a noblewoman arrived by sea in 1189 with an escort of 500 knights. She led her army on raids against the Turkish camps. Both historians also wrote of women in armor, wielding weapons, who were not discovered until their armor was removed after death. Baha further commented on the women who would stand on the walls of the city, firing arrows down on their enemies. It could be that Christian writers had mixed feelings about women in combat and preferred to focus on their other activities while on Crusade.

Women, children, and men too old to fight accompanied the armies and sought to make themselves useful and worthy of the spiritual benefits that came with participation. They brought water and food to the warriors, offering encouragement and prayers. They dug ditches and cleared rubble. Albert of Aachen reported in 1099 that women helped weave the material need to build a siege engine. It is pretty clear there were also some prostitutes in the mix. But most women—whether Christian or Muslim--were associated with the absolutely vital food preparation, laundry, and care for the sick and wounded. During the Second Crusade, Louis of France relied on a woman named Hersenda, who was identified in other sources as a medical practitioner in Paris. So much medical knowledge passed from Islamic practitioners to Christians that European medicine grew in leaps and bounds. Trota of Salerno practiced medicine in the south of Italy in the twelfth century; she is often regarded as the first gynecologist.

From the male Christian point of view, women who ruled were as dicey a proposition as were women who fought. This led to very mixed and contradictory accounts of the women who helped stabilize the Latin States. Alice of Antioch, for example, would gain a reputation as an evil and greedy usurper for trying to take over the principality of Antioch. Her husband of four years was killed in 1130 and their daughter, his heir, was only an infant. Alice had a lot of support among her vassals, but her father, Baldwin II of Jerusalem, wanted a male regent to run Antioch until the baby Constance grew up. He sent forces to remove Alice from power and she retreated to Latakia and Jabala, cities she had received as dowry upon her marriage.  From there, Alice consolidated support and went on to make two more attempts to take over Antioch. During all this time, Alice created the tools of government, appointing a constable and other offices, setting up a scriptorium to handle her decrees and alliances, and establishing a clear court culture. It was all for nothing. Alice finally admitted defeat when Raymond of Poitiers arrived and was chosen as Constance’s consort. Once the heir had a male partner to cement her claim to the principality, all of Alice’s supporters shifted to what seemed like a more stable option.

​At the end of the First Crusade, victorious Christian leaders claimed rulership of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and surrounding territories. We call these the Crusader States or the Latin States. These states were regularly involved in continued fighting, however, as the Latins tried to claim more territory and the Islamic leaders sought to reclaim what had been taken.  Many male leaders on both sides died in this ongoing conflict, and women became essential for stability in the region.  Even leaders from kingdoms that had never recognized a woman’s claim to rule, such as France, supported the right of daughters to inherit their father’s titles. The frequent loss of male guardians also meant that women needed to serves regents and feudal lords. Finally, marital alliances created ties between people from the West and Christian leaders among the Greeks, Syrians, and other areas within the Levant. On top of all of this, the existence of stable Latin states made pilgrimage to the Holy Land easier and encouraged even more women to come.

​Melisende of Jerusalem, Alice’s sister, had a different fate and much more support for her claim on Jerusalem. Baldwin II had married Melisende to Fulk, the Count of Anjou. Upon Baldwin’s death, Fulk and Melisende ascended to the throne. Together, they resisted one of Alice’s attempts on Antioch and it was Fulk who chose Raymond to marry Constance. However, at Melisende’s request, Fulk agreed to stay out of Alice’s business going forward.
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​In 1143, Fulk died and Melisende remained on the throne. It was under her leadership that the Crusader state of Edessa fell. She sent word to the pope and inspired the call that launched the Second Crusade. In 1150, Melisende had to fight her own son, Baldwin III, to hold onto Jerusalem. She used many of the same tactics Alice had tried, and ultimately had settle for serving as a regent while Baldwin was still young or away on campaign.  Melisende is remembered fondly in the chronicles, however, unlike Alice. This is perhaps due to her involvement in the Second Crusade.

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The family drama would continue into the next generation of the royal family. Melisende’s son, Count Almaric of Jaffa was married to Agnes of Courtenay, a Frankish Countess born in Edessa. Almaric was not initially meant to take the throne in Jerusalem but after Baldwin III died, he became king. At that point, High Court of Jerusalem in 1161 rejected Agnes as queen. Since Edessa had fallen to Turkish forces, Agnes was no longer politically useful. The High Court forced Alaric to annul their marriage, though they agreed to recognize the Agnes’ children as legitimate heirs. The children, Baldwin the IV and Sibyalla, were raised in separate courts. When Baldwin took the throne, his mother joined him in Jerusalem and accompanied him on military campaigns. She did this in part because he had leprosy and was losing his eyesight. Baldwin trusted his mother and even appointed her to the task of choosing the Latin patriarch in Jerusalem. Furthermore, since he had no heirs of his own, Baldwin oversaw the second marriage of his sister Sibyalla. A rival had paired her with someone else in order to undermine Baldwin, but Sibyalla’s first husband died when she was pregnant with her first child. She joined her brother and mother at Jerusalem.

As time passed, Sibyalla’s brother, Baldwin, grew to distrust her and her husband. He named Sibyalla’s son as his heir and appointed a regent to rule while the child was young. Baldwin died and then the child died soon after. Sibyalla swiftly claimed the throne for herself. Sibyalla ruled Jerusalem alongside her husband. In theory, they ruled from 1186 to 1190.  However, the Third Crusade began under their reign and they lost the city of Jerusalem in 1187. The chaos among the Latin rulers was not lost on Islamic leaders and Saladin, a Kurdish leader, took advantage. Sibyalla died of illness in Acre while it was under siege. Though the early queens of the Latin states had brought stability, the last generation was just as enmeshed in politics as the noblemen.

The women of the Islamic world in the age of Crusades left a similarly impressive legacy. The Seljuk Turks and the later Ottomans were descended from a central Asian federation of Turkish tribes. Their pre-Islamic epic stories included many heroic women and, even after they accepted Islam, they kept up a tradition of unveiled women attending ceremonies along with men. They were culturally very different from many Arabic and Persian Muslims, who tended to keep women and men separate and expected women to remain veiled outside their homes. Nevertheless, when it came to defending their homes from invaders, Muslim women from across the cultural spectrum stepped up.  The Frankish writer Guibert noted at Antioch in 1097 that women rode onto the battlefield with the men, often carrying stores of arrows and quivers. Another chronicle reported that two women attempted to interfere with the crusaders’ siege machine but were crushed in the attempt.

Sadly, most accounts of the fates of Muslim and Jewish women in the Holy Lands are descriptions of the wholesale slaughter of women and men, or of the enslavement of young women. War is cruel and local women suffered tremendously. However, when the Latins stayed to occupy the territory after the First Crusade, non-noble men were said to have taken Syrian, Armenian, and even Muslim as wives and the Latin church approved as long as those women agreed to convert to Christianity. Such marital alliances helped to stabilize the region just like the royal and noble marriages had done.

There are fewer tales of women who ruled during this era of Islamic history, but there were certainly prominent women in the Levant. Zumurrud of Damascus was a noblewoman and a contemporary of Melisende of Jerusalem. Zumurrud was the mother of the lord of Damascus, Isma’il.  When her son proved to be a cruel and greedy ruler, she had him assassinated and put his corpse on display. Zumurrud already had a reputation for running the territory behind the scenes, and now she was the kingmaker. She placed another of her sons on the throne after ruling as regent for a couple of years. Zumurrud was one of the only Muslim women to have received an oath of loyalty from her people and rule with the blessing of the Caliph. She went on to marry the Turkic atabeg Zengi, who himself was the bane of the Latin kings and queens of Jerusalem.  Like Melisende, Zumurrud was a patron of the arts and religion—while Melisende had paid to expand the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Zumurrud built the Madrasa Khatuniyya in Damascus. Other noblewomen among the Turks and Kurds were known to have played prominent roles, but sadly many of their names have been lost.

[Setting up the Inquiry] So, what do you think of the women who went on the Crusades or helped to shape the Middle East after the wars were over? Did they break the rules, or did they fulfill their proper calling? Did their presence among the Crusaders help achieve success or cause more problems? And how did women in positions of authority compare to male rulers—were they forces of stability or just as likely as men were to start trouble?

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Bibliography

Asbridge, Thomas. “Alice of Antioch: A Case Study of Female Power in the 12th c.” In The Experience of Crusading. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
 
Cassagnes-Brouquet, Sophie & Michèle Greer. “In the service of the Just War: Matilda of Tuscany.” Clio, No. 39, Gendered laws of war (2014)
 
Hodgson, Natasha R. Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative. Boydell Press, 2007.
 
Kostick, Conor. The Social Structure of the First Crusade. Brill, 2008.

Miles, Rosalind. The Women’s History of the World. London, UK: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.

​​Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.

Primary AUTHOR:

Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer

Primary Reviewer:

Dr. Katherine Koh
Sara Stone and Lauren Cole

Consulting Team

Editors

Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University

Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant
Professor of History at Maryville University. 

Chloe Gardner, Consultant
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University

Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant
Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University

Jacqui Nelson, Consultant
Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University

​Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval
PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University

Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy
Ron Kaiser
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy
Chris Canfield
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy

Reviewers

Ancient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman
Professor of History at Colorado State University
Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon
Professor of History at Wilson College
Sarah Stone
PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University
Medieval:
Dr. Katherine Koh
Professor of History at La Sierra University
Dr. Jonathan Couser
Professor of History at Plymouth State University
Dr. Shahla Haeri
Professor of History at Boston University 
Lauren Cole
PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University
Modern:
Dr. Jack Gronau
Professor of History at Northeastern University