Corresponding
author. Tel.: +41-61-322-79-67; fax: +41-44-634-49-13.Christoph T. Maier
This article gives a survey of the roles women played within the medieval crusade movement. Apart from considering the evidence for women joining crusade expeditions as pilgrims, fighters or camp followers, attention is given to the vast area of women’s contributions away from the battlefields and the impact women had on the propaganda, recruitment, financing and organising of crusades and their roles in looking after families and properties as well as providing liturgical support at home for crusaders on campaign. The aim is to map out the gender boundaries, their genesis and development, which defined women’s roles both within crusade armies and in the wider crusade movement in the 12th and 13th centuries and beyond. The article surveys available studies and also introduces, as particularly illustrative examples, the experiences of two prominent female exponents, Margaret of Beverley, who went on crusade in the 1180s, and Catherine of Siena, an ardent and outspoken promoter of the crusade in the 1370s.
The relative dearth of scholarly work concerning women in the crusade movement is matched by an almost complete absence of substantial studies on the role of women in medieval warfare in general., 7 By comparison, the themes of ‘women’ and ‘gender’ in wars and warfare during the post-medieval era have been the subject of much fruitful research in recent years., 8 The apparent neglect of the question of women’s roles in medieval warfare is all the more surprising if one considers Megan McLaughlin’s hypothesis, which claims that access to the male dominated sphere of warfare was much easier for many medieval women than for their counterparts in later centuries: at least up to the 14th century, medieval warfare was in essence based on feudal structures, which meant that aspects such as military training or the recruitment of warriors usually happened within the context of household and family., 9 This gave medieval women, generally speaking, much better access to and greater familiarity with all aspects of warfare than in post-14th-century Europe, when warfare became increasingly professionalised and technical and was therefore further removed from the everyday experience of the majority of women. It thus comes as no surprise that, despite the bias of medieval sources, which tend to portray warfare as a fundamentally male activity, texts of the 10th to 13th centuries occasionally mention the active participation of women in warfare., 10
Both topics, ‘women and medieval warfare’ as well as ‘women and the crusade movement’, should not, however, be reduced to the question of women’s participation in military expeditions and warfare on the battlefield. There has for a long time been a tendency to view wars as taking place in extraordinary situations divorced from the ‘normal’ world of everyday life. By the same token, warlike behaviour and mentalities have been considered to be governed by rules and traditions particular to war contexts, standing in clear contrast to patterns of behaviour and thought in ‘normal’, i.e. peaceful, circumstances. In contrast, recent developments, particularly in gender history, emphasise the connections and mutual interactions between women’s and men’s roles in times of war and peace, on the battlefield and on the home front. Gender roles in military contexts are perceived as having an impact on gendered behaviour in civilian life and vice versa, in the same way as gendered experience during war time is said to shape the roles of men and women in everyday life in times of peace., 11 From this perspective, the further investigation of themes linking war and gender, such as ‘women and medieval warfare’ or ‘women and the crusade movement’, seems a task worth tackling.
In this essay, I want to survey the roles women played in the crusade movement by also including the vast area of women’s contributions away from the battlefields and the purely military aspects of the crusades in the course of preparing for the campaigns and on the home front during the wars. The impact women had on the propaganda, recruitment, financing and organising of crusades and their roles in looking after families and properties as well as providing liturgical support at home for crusaders on campaign have been investigated systematically in only a few isolated studies, notably by Constance Rousseau, James Powell and Therèse de Hemptinne., 12 My aim is to map out the gender boundaries, their genesis and development, which defined women’s roles both within crusade armies and in the wider crusade movement in the 12th and 13th centuries and beyond. In order to do so, I shall draw on available studies which touch on the roles of women within the crusade movement, and also introduce, as particularly illustrative examples, the experiences of two prominent female exponents, Margaret of Beverley, who went on crusade in the 1180s, and Catherine of Siena, an ardent and outspoken promoter of the crusade in the 1370s.
Margaret of Beverley’s story, which is hardly mentioned in the existing studies,, 13 probably represents the best documented case of one woman’s experience on crusade. Margaret’s brother, the Cistercian Thomas of Froidmont, recorded her story in his Hodoeporicon et pericula Margarite Iherosolimitane, which is now available in a new scholarly edition by Paul Gerhard Schmidt., 14 The Hodoeporicon tells Margaret’s life from her birth during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land around the middle of the 12th century to her death as a nun in the Cistercian monastery of Montreuil-sous-Laon around 1215. Written in the form of an opus geminum, i.e. divided into a prose and a verse section, Thomas mentions the principal stations of his older sister’s life. Few episodes are described in great detail, and it is not by any means a complete record of Margaret’s life. Her journey to the Holy Land in the mid 1180s, however, takes up the greater part of the verse section of the Hodoeporicon., 15 The text describes Margaret’s crusade in the following manner. Margaret took the cross as an adult and left for the Holy Land, arriving in Jerusalem just before the city was besieged by Saladin’s forces in the late summer of 1187 in the aftermath of the battle of Hattin. During the siege, which lasted for 15 days, Margaret fought with the defenders on the ramparts of the city and was wounded in the process. After the Christians surrendered Jerusalem to Saladin, Margaret was among those women who were allowed to go free after paying a ransom., 16 Despite this, Margaret was captured by some Muslims soon afterwards and spent 15 months in captivity as a forced labourer. In early 1187, a Christian burgher of Tyre finally ransomed her and 24 fellow captives., 17 Margaret then decided to go on pilgrimage to the tomb of her patron saint, St Margaret at Antioch, which was, however, delayed because she had no money and had to spend some time working as a washerwoman., 18 At Antioch, Margaret again got involved in fighting between a Christian and a Muslim army; she was reported to have taken part in the plundering of the dead Muslims after the battle, before continuing her journey towards Tripoli., 19 On the way, she was once more taken prisoner by a Muslim who recognised some of the plundered items she was carrying, but was finally freed again., 20 In summer 1191 she was in Acre, from where she returned to Europe., 21
In his Hodoeporicon, Thomas of Froidmont was particularly concerned with the piety of his protagonist sister and the suffering and sacrifice endured by her. Thomas introduced the theme of pious sacrificial suffering and the good that could be derived from it at the beginning of his text by quoting a passage allegedly taken from St Augustine about human suffering representing ‘death before death’., 22 With regard to Margaret’s crusade, the sacrificial suffering was represented by her willingness to accept the mortal dangers of war and her readiness to endure captivity and poverty. These sufferings were salutary because Margaret underwent them in the spirit of following Christ (consecutio Christi), one of the central elements of crusade ideology: ‘She took the cross, to follow Christ as a Christian.’, 23 By the same token, Thomas of Froidmont portrayed his sister as a ‘servant of Christ’,, 24 and her crusade as service for Christ done in Christ’s name., 25 But Margaret of Beverley did not become a martyr and thus did not suffer sacrificial death in a radical interpretation of an imitatio Christi; twice the Virgin Mary miraculously saved her from being killed by her captors., 26 This marked a re-orientation in Margaret’s life: instead of following Christ into death as a crusader, she became a nun in the Cistercian nunnery of Montreuil-sous-Laon. In Thomas of Froidmont’s interpretation, this re-orientation did not, however, change Margaret’s focus in life, i.e. her preoccupation with the suffering and death of Christ. Symbolically, so Thomas argued, his sister’s devotion to the Virgin Mary, whose life was so closely linked with her son’s suffering, still kept her in close spiritual touch with Christ and his passion., 27 In essence, Thomas wanted to explain the salutary sense of suffering and deprivation in his sister Margaret’s life, first as a crusader then as a nun, against the background of her christocentric devotion. The story of Margaret’s crusade to the Holy Land served Thomas as the central narrative element to convey this meaning.
Even if the Hodoeporicon faithfully renders historical details,, 28 Thomas of Froidmont’s text was not primarily written as a historical record of his sister’s crusade. This explains why there is no detailed information about the concrete circumstances of Margaret of Beverley’s journey to the Holy Land or indeed her exact motivation. If we presume that Margaret left on crusade around the middle of the 1180s, it is probable that she was travelling alone or with a group of other pilgrims independent of a crusade army proper. We do not know whether she expected to be involved in warlike action. Even though no major crusade campaign was being organised at the time, Margaret could well have followed other individual crusaders who expected to serve with the armies of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the years prior to the battle of Hattin there would have been plenty of opportunity to do so. On the basis of Thomas of Froidmont’s short report, we also do not know whether Margaret went to Jerusalem in order to serve in the defending forces or whether she happened to fulfil her pilgrim’s obligations when the city came under attack.
Regarding the way in which Margaret was involved in the fighting at Jerusalem, Thomas’s text describes how she fought on top of the walls like a ‘heroine’ (virago) and how she was wearing a helmet ‘like a man’, even though she used an upside-down cooking pot instead of a real helmet; Margaret was portrayed as ‘a women who feigned to be a man, like tufa pretending to be sapphire’., 29 Margaret was also said to have brought drink to the fighting men, because it was hot and there were no breaks in the fighting., 30 This description shows many parallels with portrayals of other female crusaders involved in the fighting during sieges. As Helen Nicholson, Keren Caspi-Reisfeld and Rasa Mazeika have highlighted in recent studies, women were repeatedly portrayed in auxiliary roles, drafted in to fight with weapons when not enough male crusaders had been available, operating catapults, helping with filling ditches or supplying the fighting men with food and drink., 31 The description of Margaret of Beverley’s experiences on crusade thus fits the traditional stereotyped image of the female crusader that narrative sources convey. This is not only true for Margaret’s purported role during the siege of Jerusalem but also for the description of her captivity, which also reflects typical experiences attributed to women captured during the wars in the Holy Land, recently analysed by Yvonne Friedman., 32
The portrayal of Margaret’s role during the siege of Jerusalem reveals a fundamental problem hampering the analysis of women’s roles on crusade, namely stereotyping. As Sarah Lambert, Matthew Bennett and Michael Evans have recently pointed out, the vast majority of narrative accounts of female crusaders on campaign were written by male authors, who portrayed crusading as a typically male activity., 33 The most poignant expression of this designation of crusading as a male sphere can be found in an often quoted passage of the Itinerarium peregrinorum referring to the preparations for the Third crusade:
The enthusiasm for the new pilgrimage was such that already it was not a question of who had received the cross but who had not yet done so. A great many men sent each other wool and distaff, implying that if they exempted themselves from this expedition they would only be fit for women’s work. Brides urged their husbands and mothers incited their sons to go, their only sorrow being that they were not able to set out with them because of the weakness of their sex., 34
Here, crusading was not only defined as a fundamentally male activity, participation in the crusade was in fact designated as an element of maleness. In contrast, women were said to have been barred from the activity of crusading on account of an alleged lack of bodily strength, even though they were portrayed as enthusiastic supporters of the crusade. The text of the Itinerarium thus constructed a division between the male sphere of the crusade as a military expedition and the female sphere of the crusade’s home front symbolised by the activity of spinning. Here, as in other narrative accounts of the period, women and female behaviour on crusade were, as a rule, not represented in their own right but were set against the ideal image of the male crusader, who was male, pious, obedient to God and fearless in battle, an ideal elsewhere also encouraged by crusade sermons., 35 In these texts, women’s roles on crusade were set against such male ideals and patterns of behaviour. Either women were said to have shed their femininity by assuming male roles when fighting side by side with men in situations of special need, or they were depicted performing ancillary tasks enabling their male co-crusaders to fulfil their own roles as soldiers.
By the same token, women among the train and camp followers of crusade armies were primarily categorised into different groups offering specific services for male crusaders, such as washerwomen, cooks or prostitutes., 36 As James Brundage, one of the pioneers of the study of women’s roles in crusading, pointed out long ago, these services were not always seen in a positive light; prostitution especially, because of its inherent sinfulness, was often condemned as endangering the success of the military expeditions of male crusaders., 37 Women’s experiences on crusade were rarely described as achievements or sufferings particular to women, just as female behaviour on crusade was only seldom acknowledged as acts performed by women independently. Even if, as Sarah Lambert has stressed, chronicles of the First crusade did mention the harsh conditions on the march especially affecting women (and children),, 38 reports such as the one about a group of female camp followers on the Third crusade who, seemingly of their own accord, decided to decapitate a number of Muslim prisoners were rare among the narrative accounts., 39 There was no ideal of the female crusader which, as in the case of male crusaders, would have allowed individual behaviour to be portrayed with reference to established independent role models of women on crusade.
Given the nature of the available sources, it is difficult to say how many women participated in the crusades and why they did so. The roles ascribed to women in contemporary texts are the following ones. Mention was made of women in the train and among the camp followers, who were involved in various kinds of logistic activities., 40 In this, crusade contingents did not differ from other medieval armies, but it would be rash to assume that because of their activities as washerwomen, cooks or prostitutes these women were not religiously motivated when joining a crusade army. Even though we do not know whether they took the cross and thus looked at the crusade as a primarily spiritual experience, there is no obvious justification to presume that they did not. Another group of female crusaders mentioned were women, usually of the higher nobility, who were leading their own contingents of (male) retainers. They thus chose a military role contributing to the overall war effort of the crusade armies, even though few of these noblewomen would probably have taken an active part in the fighting., 41 Only in isolated cases do we hear of women who, having some sort of military training, joined the crusade armies as armed fighters., 42 Again, this is not a phenomenon confined to the crusades,, 43 but there is no clear indication of how common such fighting female crusaders were. Muslim sources make a great deal of female crusaders pitched against their own forces, even though, as Carole Hillenbrand and again Helen Nicholson have pointed out, they probably over-emphasised their importance and numbers in an attempt to underline the allegedly immoral or even perverted attitude of Christian soldiers towards their own women., 44 In contrast, Christian sources, as indicated above, tended to cast the crusade effort as a typically male activity, thus neglecting any tangible military input provided by women. The argument advanced by Maureen Purcell that technically most female participants were not crusaders because they were not explicitly described as crucesignatae in the sources is not convincing because the same can be said for most male members of crusade armies, certainly before the beginning of the 13th century., 45 But this area, too, is in great need of further research. After all, with the exception of Helen Nicholson’s study of the Third crusade, no systematic investigation of women’s participation in crusade armies has so far been undertaken., 46
Because of the stereotypical accounts of the narrative sources and since there are no writings by women who went on crusade, it is difficult to arrive at an adequate description of the full range of female roles in the context of the military campaigns of the crusades. It is equally difficult to determine whether there was a specifically female motivation which caused women to go on crusade. Crusading was, after all, not just a collective military effort like any other war. There was a distinct individual component in crusading in that it was considered to be a personal act of service and devotion to God, coined on the model of pilgrimage as a journey undertaken in the service of a particular saint. The individual crusader’s service to God was embedded in the collective effort of the crusade armies, but it was not necessarily geared towards the military success of the crusades. The primary aim behind the individual crusader’s efforts was the salvation of his or her soul. In return for his or her service on crusade, the crusader expected to become the recipient of God’s grace. This was conceptualised as the plenary indulgence, which the crusader hoped to earn, mediated by the sacrament of penance and attained through the fulfilment of the formal criteria inherent in the crusade vow., 47
It is important to be aware of this individual component of crusading for understanding the motivation of crusaders, both male and female. Participation in a crusade was not necessarily dependent on assuming an active role in the military or logistic side of a crusade venture. The crusades also offered participants a chance to pursue their desire for transcendence and salvation within the military expeditions in the belief that the crusade as the army of God (exercitum Dei) offered them a context of privileged access to and contact with God that would help them to deal with their sins and free them from divine punishment in this life and the next. This religious motivation was not primarily dependent on the individual crusader’s gender and caused men and women alike to join the crusades. As Constance Rousseau has pointed out, when Pope Urban II announced the First crusade in 1095, he did not really expect women to sign up for it., 48 Despite this, a great number of women (and other non-combatants) responded to his call., 49 The majority of these women probably did not go on crusade in order to make a conscious military contribution to the expedition but rather because they identified with the overriding aims of the First crusade, i.e. the re-establishment of Christian rule over the holy sites in Palestine, and because they hoped to further their own salvation., 50 In this as well as later crusades, the majority of women may well have joined the crusade as a primarily devotional and penitential exercise rather than a military venture.
Crusade expeditions thus differed from other military campaigns of the Middle Ages in that there were always some participants who joined up as pilgrims without necessarily envisaging a military or logistic role for themselves. Medieval pilgrimages were always open to women as well as men, and female pilgrims made up a large number of the people who went on pilgrimages. The pilgrimage tradition, on which many formal and legal aspects of the crusade were modelled, thus provided equal access of men and women to the crusades. Since the decision to go on a crusade was based on the individual act of taking a crusade vow, there was, at least initially, no effective way of controlling who joined the crusade armies. James Brundage’s research has made it clear that canon law supported the right of women to take up a crusade vow, but stipulated that a woman should, if possible, be accompanied by a male family member., 51 These male minders were not only supposed to protect female crusaders but also stop them from sexual advances towards other (male) crusaders. In general, women crusaders’ sexuality was viewed negatively and portrayed as a potential threat to the sexual mores, the vow of chastity and thus the spiritual health of men on crusade. Moreover, medieval chroniclers and canon lawyers claimed that illicit sexual activities within the crusade armies, allegedly instigated by accompanying single women, caused God to withdraw his favour from the crusade armies and thus led to military failure., 52
Canon law further ruled that female crusaders who were married needed their husband’s consent. This potentially curtailed women’s free access to the crusades but, since the rule was reciprocal, it also gave them the power to stop their husbands from crusading without their permission., 53 It is difficult to say what effect this mutual vetoing power had on the actual participation of married men and women. Men will no doubt have found ways of going on crusade even against their wives’ will. But there are also indications that a wife’s veto might not have been without effect. Otherwise, as James Brundage pointed out, Pope Innocent III would not have considered it necessary to lift the wife’s right to veto her husband’s crusade at the beginning of the 13th century, a measure which some canon lawyers did not approve of., 54 At around the same time, we also find the topos of the wife trying to prevent her husband from going on crusade cropping up in crusade propaganda material, which also suggests that married women did manage to insist on their vetoing powers., 55 All in all, canon law guaranteed the right of women to participate in the crusades based on legal principles derived from the pilgrimage tradition, but it also subjected women’s participation to the control of their husbands and male family members and the alleged need to protect male crusaders’ moral and sexual integrity.
A feature which potentially facilitated the participation of women in crusades was the length of the expeditions, especially the ones to the Levant, which could last for months if not years. This seems to have been one reason why husbands and wives, simple people as well as kings and queens, often went on crusade together throughout the 12th and 13th centuries, as studies by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Benjamin Kedar, Bernard Hamilton and James Powell show., 56 It is difficult to say what caused couples to go on crusade together. There were many possible reasons: mutual affection and the desire to be together; the need to protect the wife while she or her husband was on crusade; the husband not wanting to dispense with the wife’s care while on crusade; plans to settle in territories conquered by the crusade; one-sided coercion or persuasion. In any case, the long duration and geographical distance of many crusades made such reasons all the more urgent and thus increased the likelihood of women going on crusade. In this respect too, crusades proved fundamentally different from other military ventures of the Middle Ages, which usually took place in much more restricted geographical and chronological contexts.
In many aspects, the character of 12th-century crusades to the Holy Land probably resembled that of early modern mercenary armies, which were always accompanied by a large number of non-combatants, many of whom were women, wives and children of the fighting soldiers., 57 In contrast to the early modern period, however, 12th-century crusades also attracted men and women of all ages who travelled as pilgrims. These unarmed crusaders were sometimes involved in the military actions, but because they were neither trained for war nor properly equipped, they could not make an effective contribution to the military efforts of the crusades. On the contrary, they posed a logistical problem: the armies were too big, too slow, hard to control and difficult to supply. At the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century, after the failure of the Second Crusade and the attempts to re-launch the crusades to the Holy Land, the leading exponents were demanding the streamlining of crusade armies so as to make them more effective from a military point of view. One way of doing this was to exclude a large number of non-combatants, especially women, children, the poor and the old., 58 Even though this was not intended as a misogynous measure, it would primarily have affected women.
The passage of the Itinerarium peregrinorum quoted above, which suggested that only men went on the Third crusade and that women stayed at home, belongs in this context. Portraying the crusade as an exclusively, or at least predominantly, male activity was not new at the turn of the 12th to the 13th century. What was new was the programmatic context which allowed this kind of gendered propaganda to develop greater impact and effect. Constance Rousseau has argued that the crusade reforms instigated by Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) also marked a turning point regarding crusading as a gendered activity., 59 Generally speaking, Innocent followed two principal aims: to involve a maximum number of people in supporting the crusade movement as a whole, and to make the crusade a more powerful and versatile instrument of papal politics by streamlining crusade armies., 60 Innocent’s main measure for achieving these objectives was the introduction of a legal framework for implementing the redemption of crusade vows without lengthy administrative procedures. In future, all those who could not efficiently contribute to the military effort of a crusade were supposed to redeem their vows for a money payment. Apart from children, the elderly and the sick, this concerned, above all, women. This new regime meant that in principle everyone was allowed to take a crusade vow, even if they did not have the means to actually go on crusade, since the amount of the redemption payments depended on the individuals’ financial means. In extremis, people were even allowed to use their testamentary legacies to pay for a redemption. But this also meant that women and other non-combatants could be forced by crusade preachers, sometimes on the spot, to redeem their crusade vows and stay at home., 61
The practice of systematic and un-bureaucratic vow redemptions, which was advanced primarily by the crusade propagandists of the mendicant orders from the 13th century onwards,, 62 contributed towards re-structuring women’s access to, and participation in, the crusades. Even though women, as well as other non-combatants, still retained the right and were even encouraged to take crusade vows, their participation in the military expeditions was de facto curtailed. The widespread redemption of crusade vows meant that fewer and fewer non-combatant pilgrims, and thus fewer women, would have joined the crusades. Given the nature of our sources as well as the lack of research in this area, it is difficult to accurately assess the effect vow redemptions had on women’s participation in crusade expeditions after the beginning of the 13th century. There is no doubt that even after Innocent III’s pontificate, women still formed part of crusading forces. Benjamin Kedar’s analysis of an extant passenger list of a transport vessel shipping crusaders on their way to join Louis IX’s forces to the Levant in 1250 reveals that of the 453 passengers 42, i.e. about 9%, were women. We do not know what these women’s exact status was and what role they intended to play; 15 of them were accompanied by their husbands, three by other family members., 63 In his study of the Fifth crusade, James Powell came up with a figure of 3% for the proportion of women among the participants known by name., 64 Even though these data are not necessarily representative of other crusades, the list shows that women still went on crusade after the beginning of the 13th century, although their number probably dropped sharply compared to crusade expeditions of the 12th century.
Pope Innocent III’s reforms led to a situation in which gender roles became more and more clearly defined, especially when taking into account the home front as an integral element of the crusade movement. Innocent’s vision was of a society in which everybody contributed to the crusade effort. Different people’s roles in doing so were ideally derived from their usual function in society. Men who had military training and were experienced in war were supposed to become active crusaders; men and women who could not themselves go on crusade but had sufficient financial means were meant to finance other crusaders or contribute to the overall cost of a crusade; those not in a position to contribute to the military effort were asked to redeem their vows; monks and the clergy were obliged to pay taxes and support the crusades by regular intercessory prayers and other liturgical acts; laymen who could make no other contribution were at least supposed to take part in processions and prayers and to put an occasional offering in the collection boxes reserved for the crusade., 65 As Constance Rousseau pointed out, Innocent’s vision of a society organised for the crusade carried implicit gender divisions, as active participation in the crusade expeditions was primarily assigned to men, and women’s contributions were located on the home front., 66 Reality was, however, more complex. Not only did some women, as we have seen, go on crusade, their roles in supporting the crusades on the home front also included much more than praying and giving alms. There were three principal areas in which women made vital contributions towards making crusades viable: recruitment, finance and looking after family and property. There has so far been next to no systematic research into these areas, even though single aspects are mentioned in Jonathan Riley-Smith’s work on the First Crusade and Christopher Tyerman’s study of the English contribution to the crusade movement., 67
Despite the fact that women could theoretically veto their husbands’ decision to go on crusade,, 68 women did not always hamper the recruitment of crusaders. On the contrary, at times women seem to have encouraged their husbands or relations to take a crusade vow. Jonathan Riley-Smith’s genealogical research for the first crusades has, for example, shown that often marriage ties bound together families with a particularly high number of crusaders among them. Prime examples of this are the 12th-century families of Monthléry and Le Puiset and the counts of Burgundy. In particular, brothers-in-law can be shown to share an enthusiasm for the crusade, which suggests that the wives/sisters might have played a decisive role in passing on enthusiasm for the crusade from one family to the next., 69 Such genealogical connections are, of course, not sufficient proof that the women were instrumental in recruiting crusaders from among in-laws’ families. But their vital influence should not be discounted, since we know that in other contexts women did directly influence their family members’ decision to go on crusade. Orderic Vitalis, for example, reported that Stephen of Blois, who had abandoned the First Crusade at Antioch, was pushed by his wife to return to the East to complete his crusade., 70 Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of King Louis VII of France, who went on the Second crusade, was even said to have been actively recruiting many crusaders when touring her native lands in the run-up to the crusade., 71 James Powell presented an example from the early 13th century in which James of Vitry described how, in 1216, a group of women from Genoa caused their husbands to follow their own examples in taking crusade vows., 72 These cases illustrate that medieval sources did not only portray women as obstacles to the crusade, but that they also at times mentioned their active support in recruiting participants. It is both significant and typical that these efforts by women were positively remarked on inasmuch as they were contributions made on the home front.
Women’s roles in supporting the crusade on the home front also include finance. As Jonathan Riley-Smith showed, female family members were sometimes involved in paying the expenses of their husbands’ or other family members’ crusades. Women who controlled funds from dowries or legacies could make an independent contribution towards covering the sometimes enormous costs of crusades. This could happen in the form of individual payments, such as in the case of Saure de St Jean, who belonged to a noble family from Savenès in Gascony and helped to finance the crusades of two of her uncles in 1147., 73 crusaders, especially those from poor family backgrounds, often depended on financial contributions from several family members. In such cases, women acted as part of the family collective when selling or mortgaging common assets in order to provide cash for the crusade of a family member., 74 Christopher Tyerman also presented a number of cases of English crusaders of the end of the 12th and the 13th centuries who were given funds out of their wives’ dowries., 75 Much more research is needed to gauge the precise impact women had in financing crusaders within their own families. It seems clear, however, that women did make an important contribution in this area.
Women may also have been responsible for a significant amount of the crusade finance supplied by the redemption of crusade vows from the 13th century onwards. The most profitable area of redemption payments seems to have been the use of testamentary legacies for redeeming crusade vows, in which both men and women were involved., 76 James Powell’s case study of a group of women in early 13th-century Genoa provides a particularly telling example., 77 From the point of view of the papacy, the great advantage of redemption payments over other sources of crusade finance was their easy availability, since payment was often made on the spot and directly passed on to local crusaders; in contrast, income taxes levied to support the crusade often took years to collect., 78 For this area, too, we have as yet not enough data for determining what share women contributed towards redemption payments. But it seems reasonable to suggest that this share was not insignificant.
Another important task which women on the home front got involved in was the care of families and the administration of properties during the absence of male family members on crusade. Jonathan Riley-Smith and Thérèse de Hemptinne quote several cases in which mothers and wives were left in charge of the often difficult and hazardous task of administering and defending family estates., 79 Despite the legal privileges and protection granted by the Church to the families and properties of crusaders,, 80 estates had to be managed efficiently and if necessary fought over in the courts. The English legal records of the 13th century discussed by Christopher Tyerman show that women had to get involved in defending their crusading husbands’ possessions by litigation., 81 Among the higher nobility, women’s tasks as administrators of the family estates often went hand in hand with their taking over their husband’s political offices for the duration of the crusade. Well known examples are the countesses of Flanders in the 12th century, and Blanche of Castile, the mother of King Louis IX of France, who took over the government for their respective husbands and sons., 82
All in all, recruitment, finance, care for the family, administration of estates and praying for crusaders in the field provided women at home with numerous opportunities for giving significant support without which crusade expeditions might not have happened. At least from the 13th century onwards, the practice of vow redemptions, the possibility of paying regular financial subsidies and the participation in the many public prayers and processions were ways for women to contribute to the collective military effort of the crusades on the home front., 83 While doing so, a woman could still take on an active individual role as a penitent, becoming a crucesignata by taking a crusade vow and gaining a plenary indulgence without joining a crusade army. In contrast to other medieval wars, for which women provided similar auxiliary tasks on the home front, the crusades thus offered women (and other non-combatants) a variety of practices by which they could become part of, and identify with, a crusade movement which went far beyond the military crusade expeditions and had a clearly defined context on the home front.
As with women’s participation in the military expeditions of the crusade, lack of evidence and research makes it difficult to quantify their share of support and participation on the home front. It is, however, clear that from the end of the 12th century at the latest, participation in the crusade movement was subject to the projection of specific gender roles which placed women’s contributions primarily in the context of the home front. The strict division between the male military sphere and the female home front of the crusade was given an iconographic expression in the scene of the crusader’s departure which was frequently depicted and described from the 12th century onwards and has recently attracted new research., 84 The scene usually featured a male crusader leaving his wife, children or family. The crusading men were characterised as typically pious soldiers mastering the breakup of the emotional ties with their loved ones for the purpose of following a higher commitment to the cause of the crusade. In contrast, the women were typically represented as overcome by the emotions of parting, grieving and shedding tears, mourning the temporary and fearing the final loss of their menfolk. The iconography of these scenes introduced a subtle but clear hierarchy of the sexes, with men acting and women reacting to them., 85
Even if there existed clearly demarcated gender roles which were projected onto the medieval crusade movement and even if crusades were mostly fought and almost always instigated by men, one should not forget that the enthusiasm for the crusades, which intermittently gripped medieval European society, was not in principle gendered. This is not only borne out by the participation of many women alongside men in the military campaigns of the crusades of the 12th century but also by the fact that even in the later Middle Ages, women at times occupied prominent roles in promoting the crusade on the home front. One outstanding example of a woman who responded particularly enthusiastically to the appeal of the crusade and put a huge effort into promoting an expedition to the Holy Land in the second half of the 14th century was Catherine of Siena, who died in 1380 and was later made a saint. Curiously, the case of Catherine of Siena has not been discussed in any of the recent studies concerning women and crusading., 86
Catherine was a Dominican tertiary and a mystic who earned great respect within the Dominican order and in public for her spiritual efforts and pastoral activities., 87 In the 1370s, she became very interested in papal politics and in particular the crusade project advanced by Pope Gregory XI, as is apparent from her letters of the years 1375–1377., 88 Again and again Catherine wrote to the pope about the crusade against the Turks, asking him finally to put his plans into reality, albeit with little success, since the crusade never took place., 89 At the same time, she put great efforts into mediating peace between the city-states of Florence and Siena, which was a precondition for bringing about the crusade., 90 Catherine of Siena also wrote to various kings, queens, cardinals and leading Italian noblemen encouraging them to support her campaign for the crusade., 91 She also addressed lesser men and women, among whom were monks as well as nuns, advising them to participate in the projected crusade., 92
Catherine of Siena’s enthusiasm for the crusade was not of a principally political nature but was motivated by her ideas of human redemption shaped by her christocentric mysticism. For her, the crusade was closely bound up with the figure of Christ and its metaphorical meanings. Crusading primarily meant paying service to Christ and for his bride the Church. In 1375, Catherine wrote to John Hawkwood, a mercenary leader working in Italy, suggesting he stop fighting other Christians and enter the ‘service of the good gentle Jesus as a repayment for all the sins we have committed against our Saviour’ and join ‘Christ’s companies’ on crusade in order to free the holy sites from the hands of ‘the unbelieving dogs’., 93 Around the same time, she asked Joan of Anjou, the queen of Naples, ‘in the name of Christ crucified to come to the aid of Christ’s bride [i.e. the Church] in her need with your possessions, your person and your counsel’ and to join her, Catherine, on crusade in order ‘to die for Christ’., 94 To a group of nuns from Fiesole, Catherine suggested, also in 1375, that they go to Jerusalem and seek martyrdom there: ‘I am inviting you to shed your blood for him [i.e. Christ] just as he shed his for you.’, 95 Her frequent exhortations to Pope Gregory XI to speed up his preparations for the crusade were also worded in terms of the obligation of the Vicar of Christ to follow Christ’s wish., 96 In fact, in practically all her letters of the 1370s concerning the crusade, Catherine spoke of the crusade as a service for Christ and his Church., 97
In the terms of Catherine of Siena’s particular brand of mysticism, crusading was above all seen as a service for Christ the Crucified, who shed his blood for the salvation of humankind. For her, going on crusade was one way of getting in touch with the redemptive powers of Christ, symbolised by his blood. In the final consequence, which Catherine herself was willing to accept,, 98 this meant that the crusader was ready to die for Christ: to give ‘blood for blood’, as Catherine termed it in several instances., 99 Dying a martyr’s death was thus presented as the most extreme form of christocentric devotion. Even the pope’s role vis-à-vis the crusades was couched within the language of the salvific properties of Christ’s blood. Catherine called Gregory XI as the initiator of the crusade the ‘cellarer’ of the blood of Christ whose duty it was to distribute it to the faithful., 100 But Catherine’s view of the crusade was not confined to the individual crusader’s role. For her, the crusade also represented a way towards salvation for humankind, including Christians as well as ‘non-believers’. This collective aspect of the crusade too was expressed through the metaphor of Christ’s body. In one of her visions, Catherine saw the image of the Christian and the supposedly converted ‘non-believing’ peoples marching into Christ’s body through the wound on his side., 101 Here, Christ’s body was merged with the mystical corpus Christi, the community of believers in union with God. Catherine of Siena thus promoted the crusade as a path towards salvation and, in terms of eschatology, a way of establishing divine order.
Catherine’s christocentric approach to the crusade was by no means new for the second half of the 14th century. The emphasis of the idea of imitatio Christi, presenting the crusade as a penitential exercise and a vehicle of personal salvation, was already well established as a central element of the ideology and propaganda of the crusades by the middle of the 13th century., 102 Catherine of Siena simply offered a radical interpretation of the imitatio Christi idea, expressing it in the language of her own exuberant blood-of-Christ mysticism. What was remarkable about Catherine’s view of the crusade was the almost total absence of the notion of the crusade as a war. The warlike aspects were only hinted at implicitly, when the crusades were portrayed as a measure directed against the ‘non-believers’ and as an opportunity for martyrdom. The military aspects of crusade rhetoric, grounded in Old Testament language and narrative, played a central role in crusade ideology,, 103 yet they formed no part of Catherine’s concept of the crusade. As a consequence, her view of the crusade was hardly affected by gender divisions. Since for Catherine the crusade was a means of achieving martyrdom for both men and women and since she did not really take into account the military aspects of the crusade, the gender divisions between the male sphere of the battlefields and the female domain of the home front were of no great consequence to her. This is why she encouraged men and women alike, and for the same reasons, to take up the cross and join the armies of the crusade.
Catherine of Siena’s enthusiasm for the crusade was by no means typical of the role women played in promoting the crusades in the later Middle Ages. Her views and ways of advocating the crusade were clearly those of an extreme eccentric, but she was not the only woman taking an active role in furthering the cause of the crusades in this period., 104 It is therefore difficult to argue that Catherine’s ‘un-gendered’ vision of the crusade represented a typically female view. Catherine’s example, however, clearly illustrates that the crusade movement, despite its focus on the military expeditions of the crusade armies, was couched in religious mentalities and informed by religious discourses which could produce an enthusiasm for the crusades that was not primarily tied to their political and military aims. Indeed, the crusade movement was always bound up with typical forms of medieval religious revivalism aimed at the renewal of Christian society by penance and greater devotion to God, at times with clear eschatological undertones., 105 In the context of these overriding religious concerns, the gender divisions within the crusade movement between battlefield and home front did not necessarily play a decisive role.
As examples of women involved in the armies and the home front of the crusades, the stories of Margaret of Beverley and Catherine of Siena clearly show that gender roles within the crusade movement varied and changed according to context and that women’s contributions went far beyond their involvement in other medieval wars. Despite the fact that gender divisions did exist and gender roles were promoted to cement these divisions, the crusades were fought by men and women, not only because some women did participate in the military campaigns but because women’s involvement on the home front played a large part in making men’s crusades happen. If we try to understand the crusade movement as a collective expression of medieval religious culture, which was supported by and affected large parts of medieval European society, we must also attempt to describe the crusade movement in terms of the different ways in which men and women were involved in it, the way in which it designated spaces for men and women, how these spaces functioned and how they developed., 106
I would like to thank Cathy Aitken (Basel) and Christian Koller (Zurich) for valuable comments and bibliographical advice.
Corresponding
author. Tel.: +41-61-322-79-67; fax: +41-44-634-49-13.2 Gendering the crusades, ed. S. B. Edgington and S. Lambert (Cardiff, 2001). Cf. my review in crusades, 2 (2003), 175–8.
3 See the essays in Gendering the crusades by S. Lambert (‘crusading or spinning’, 1–15), M. Bennett (‘Virile Latins, effeminate Greeks and strong women: Gender definitions on crusade?’, 16–30), M. R. Evans (‘“Unfit to bear arms”: The gendering of arms and armour in accounts of women on crusade’, 45–58), Keren Caspi-Reisfeld (‘Women warriors during the crusades, 1095–1254’, 94–107), Susan B. Edgington (‘“Sont çou ore les fems que jo voi la venir?” Women in the Chanson d’Antioche’, 154–62).
4 H. Nicholson, ‘Women on the Third crusade’, Journal of Medieval History, 23 (1997), 335–49; R. C. Finucane, Soldiers of the faith. crusaders and Muslims at war (London/Melbourne, 1983), 174–84.
5 See J. Riley-Smith, The crusades. A short history (London, 1987). Also The Oxford illustrated history of the crusades, ed. J. Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1995).
6 For the role of women in the Baltic crusades, see R. Mazeika, ‘“Nowhere was the fragility of their sex apparent”. Women warriors in the Baltic crusader chronicles’, in: From Clermont to Jerusalem. The crusades and crusader societies 1095–1500, ed. A. V. Murray (Turnhout, 1998), 229–48; B. Hamilton, ‘Eleanor of Castile and the crusading movement’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 10 (1995), 92–103; W. Schulz, Andreaskreuz und Christusorden. Isabella von Portugal und der burgundische Kreuzzug (Freiburg i.Ue., 1976); C. Cannon Willard, ‘Isabel of Portugal and the fifteenth-century Burgundian crusade’, in: Journeys toward God. Pilgrimage and crusade, ed. B. N. Sargent-Baur (Kalamazoo, 1992), 205–14; M. Zerner, ‘L’épouse de Simon de Montfort et la croisade albigeoise’, Femmes. Mariages—lignages XIIe–XIVe siècles. Mélanges offerts à Georges Duby (Brussels, 1992), 449–70.
7 See M. McLaughlin, ‘The woman warrior: Gender, warfare and society in medieval Europe’, Women’s Studies, 17 (1990), 193–209. Single aspects are treated by H. Solterer, ‘Figures of female militancy in medieval France’, Signs, 16 (1991), 522–49; E. Lourie, ‘Black women warriors in the Muslim army besieging Valencia and the Cid’s victory: A problem of interpretation’, Traditio, 55 (2000), 181–209; C. Reinle, ‘Exempla weiblicher Stärke? Zu den Ausprägungen des mittelalterlichen Amazonenbildes’, Historische Zeitschrift, 270 (2000), 1–38. But see now D. Hay, ‘Attitudes towards female military leaders up to the time of Gratian: Some texts and their historical contexts’, in: A great effusion of blood. Interpreting medieval violence, ed. Mark Meyerson et al. (Toronto, forthcoming).
8 See the survey by K. Hagemann, ‘Venus und Mars. Reflexionen zu einer Geschlechtergeschichte von Militär und Krieg’, in: Landsknechte, Soldatenfrauen und Nationalkrieger. Militär, Krieg und Geschlechterordnung im historischen Wandel, ed. Karen Hagemann and Ralf Pröve (Frankfurt/New York, 1998), 13–48, and her article, ‘“We need not concern ourselves...”. Militärgeschichte–Geschlechtergeschichte–Männergeschichte: Anmerkungen zur Forschung’, Traverse, 5 (1998), 75–94; C. Hämmerle, ‘Militärgeschichte als Geschlechtergeschichte? Von den Chancen einer Annäherung’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschicht, 9 (1998), 124–35. See also J. S. Goldstein, War and gender. How gender shapes the war system and vice versa (Cambridge, 2001), 59–127.
9 McLaughlin, ‘The woman warrior’, 202–5.
10 McLaughlin, ‘The woman warrior’, 196–9. For women’s involvement in late medieval warfare, see P. Contamine, La guerre au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1980), 393–5.
11 M. R. Higonnet and P. L.-R. Higonnet, ‘The double helix’, in: Behind the lines. Gender and the two World Wars, ed. M. R. Higonnet et al. (New Haven/London, 1987), 31–47. Also Hagemenn, ‘“We need not concern ourselves...”’; Goldstein, War and gender, 403–14. For the Middle Ages in particular, see B. Studt, ‘Helden und Heilige. Männlichkeitsentwürfe im frühen und hohen Mittelalter’, Historische Zeitschrift, 276 (2003), 1–36, especially 14–24.
12 C. M. Rousseau, ‘Home front and battlefield: The gendering of papal crusading policy (1095–1221)’, in: Gendering the crusades, 31–44; J. Powell, ‘The role of women in the Fifth crusade’, in: The Horns of Hattin. Proceedings of the second conference of the SSCLE, Jerusalem and Haifa, 2–6 July 1987, ed. B. Z. Kedar (Jerusalem/London, 1992), 294–301; T. de Hemptinne, ‘Les épouses de croisés et pélérins flamandes aux XIe et XIIe siècles: l’Exemple des comtesses de Flandre Clémence et Sybille’, in: Autour de la premère Croisade. Actes du colloque de la SSCLE, Clermont-Ferrand, 22–25 June 1995, ed. M. Balard (Paris, 1996), 83–95.
13 See, however, Evans, ‘“Unfit to bear arms”’, 46.
14 P. G. Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa.” Thomas von Froidmont über die Jerusalemfahrten seiner Schwester Margareta’, in: Kontinuität und Wandel. Lateinische Poesie von Naevius bis Baudelaire. Franco Munari zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. U. J. Stache, W. Maaz, F. Wagner (Hildesheim, 1986), 461–85. The Hodoeporicon is edited on 472–85.
15 Vv. 40–194 of altogether 234; see Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 476–85.
16 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 478–9, vv. 40–60.
17 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 479–80, vv. 63–98.
18 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 480–1, vv. 105–32.
19 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 482, vv. 149–56.
20 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 482–3, vv. 157–94.
21 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 483–4, vv. 195–206.
22 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 472: ‘Igitur exempli gratia stili remedio personam mundo restituimus, que mortem prevenit moritura, iam mundo mortuam, dicente Augustino qui ante mortem non moritur, male mortuus est.’
23 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 473: ‘Hic autem adolescentie complevit annos, et adulta baiulans sibi crucem, ut Christum Christiana sequeretur, pergere profecta (?) est in transmarina.’ For the idea of consecutio Christi in crusade propaganda, see C. T. Maier, crusade propaganda and ideology. Model sermons for the preaching of the cross (Cambridge, 2000), 59–61.
24 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 473: ‘Sciendum itaque est ancillam Christi, de qua nobis sermo, …’.
25 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 474: ‘...capta pro confessione Christi... corpus et animam pro Christo exponens vento et mari...’; 479, v. 63: ‘Capta iugo tristi trador pro nomine Christi.’
26 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 475: ‘Merito quidem, per Mariam semel et secundo, miraculo satis evidenti erepta est de manu tribulantis’; 480, vv. 85–6; 483, vv. 185–92.
27 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 475: ‘Ingressa est igitur monasterium Virginum, cui nomen est Monasteriolum, in episcopatu Laudunensi, conversa, ibique per annos duodeviginti conversata est, frequenter atque fortiter salutando Mariam, que multum laboravit in nobis, maxime quando ipsius animam mortis Christi amaritudo amarissima pertransivit. Unde satis probabile est, filii gloriam cum matre non tam communem esse quam eandem. Equidem cum sit una passio Marie cum Christo, una caro, spiritus unus, ex quo ei dictum est, Dominus iterum inseparabiliter perse... it promissum ei donum.’
28 The siege of Jerusalem, which Thomas correctly described as having lasted for two weeks, began on 18 September and ended with the Christian army’s capitulation on 2 October 1187. The ransoming of the defenders, which initially saved Margaret from captivity, is also described in other sources. The same is true for the meeting of the French and English kings mentioned by Thomas as having taken place during Margaret’s stay in Acre in the summer of 1191. See La continuation de Guillaume de Tyr (1184–1197), ed. M. R. Morgan (Paris, 1982), 63–9, 131–3 (chs 50–5, 128–31); Das Itinerarium peregrinorum. Eine zeitgenössische englische Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprünglicher Gestalt, ed. H. E. Mayer (Stuttgart, 1962), 263–5 (ch. 9).
29 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 478, vv. 44–7: ‘Impleo pro posse seva virago virum./ Assimilata viro galeam gero, menia giro,/ In cervice lebes cassidis instar habet./ Femina fingo virum, tophus pretendo saphirum.’ For the meaning of virago, see Reinle, ‘Exempla’, 24–5; Studt, ‘Helden’, 9–10.
30 Schmidt, ‘“Peregrinatio periculosa”’, 478, vv. 49–50: ‘Estus erat, nec erat requies pugnantibus; ergo/ In muro fessis pocula trado viris.’
31 Nicholson, ‘Women’, 337, 343–4; Caspi-Reisfeld, ‘Women warriors’, 97; Mazeika, ‘“Nowhere”’, 229–30, 234–5.
32 Y. Friedman, ‘Captivity and ransom: The experience of women’, in: Gendering the crusades, 121–39.
33 Lambert, ‘crusading’, 4–8; Bennet, ‘Virile Latins’, 27–8; Evans, ‘“Unfit to bear arms”’, 55–6.
34 Das Itinerarium peregrinorum, 277: ‘In tantum vero nove peregrinationis fervebat studium, ut iam non esset questio, quis crucem susciperet, sed quis nondum suscepisset. Plerique colum et pensa sibi mutuo transmittebant innuentes occultius, ut ad muliebres operas turpiter demigraret, quisquis huius milicie inveniretur immunis. Ad tam insigne certamen et nupte viros et matres incitabant filios, quibus dolor unicus erat propter sexus ignaviam conproficisci non posse.’
35 Maier, crusade propaganda, 51–68.
36 See, for example, the passages quoted in Caspi-Reisfeld, ‘Women warriors’, 96–7, and Nicholson, ‘Women’, 337.
37 J. Brundage, ‘Prostitution, miscegenation and sexual purity in the First Crusade’, in: crusade and settlement. Papers read at the first conference of the SSCLE and presented to R. C. Smail, ed. P. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), 380–95. For the Third crusade, see C. Tyerman, England and the crusades 1095–1588 (Chicago/London, 1988), 62–3.
38 Lambert, ‘crusading’, 11–2.
39 Das Itinerarium peregrinorum, 324 (ch. 34). A similar incident was reported on the Fifth crusade; see J. M. Powell, Anatomy of a crusade 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986), 161.
40 Nicholson, ‘Women’, 337; Caspi-Reisfeld, ‘Women warriors’, 96–7.
41 Caspi-Reisfeld, ‘Women warriors’, 101. See also R. Pernoud, La femme au temps des Croisades (s.l., 1990), 95–113.
42 Nicholson, ‘Women’, 337–47; Caspi-Reisfeld, ‘Women warriors’, 101–5.
43 McLaughlin, ‘The woman warrior’, 196–8.
44 C. Hillenbrand, The crusades. Islamic perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), 278–80, 347–51; Nicholson, ‘Women’, 340–3.
45 M. Purcell, ‘Women crusaders: A temporary canonical aberration?’, in: Principalities, powers and estates: Studies in medieval and early modern government, ed. L. O. Frapell (Adelaide, 1979), 57–67.
46 Nicholson, ‘Women’.
47 For a definition of the crusades, see J. Riley-Smith, What were the crusades? 3rd ed. (London, 2002). Also E.-D. Hehl, ‘Was ist eigentlich ein Kreuzzug?’, Historische Zeitschrift, 259 (1994), 297–336.
48 Rousseau, ‘Home front’, 32–4.
49 There are no reliable figures. Some chroniclers mentioned tens of thousands of women on the First crusade. For a discussion, see Finucane, Soldiers, 175–6.
50 The eschatological overtones of the propaganda for the First crusade may well have heightened its attractiveness to non-combatants, the majority of whom were probably women. For the propaganda of the First crusade, see P. J. Cole, The preaching of the crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Toronto, 1991), 1–36.
51 J. A. Brundage, Canon law and the crusader (Madison, 1969), 32, 44, 77; id., ‘The crusader’s wife: A canonistic quandary’, Studia Gratiana, 12 (1967), 427–41.
52 Brundage, ‘Prostitution’. See also Finucane, Soldiers, 179–80.
53 Brundage, ‘The crusader’s wife’, 428–34.
54 Brundage, ‘The crusader’s wife’, 434–6.
55 C. T. Maier, Preaching the crusades. Mendicant friars and the cross in the thirteenth century (Cambridge, 1994), 119; id., crusade propaganda, 65.
56 See the examples in J. Riley-Smith, The first crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge, 1997), 107; B. Z. Kedar, ‘The passenger list of a crusader ship, 1250: Towards the history of the popular element on the Seventh crusade’, Studi Medievali, 13 (1972), 267–79, especially 272; Hamilton, ‘Eleanor’; Powell, ‘The role of women’, 299–300.
57 B. C. Hacker, ‘Women and military institutions in early modern Europe: A reconnaissance’, Signs, 6 (1981), 643–71.
58 C. Libertini, ‘Practical crusading: The transformation of crusading practice’, in: Autour de la premère Croisade, 281–91; Maier, Preaching, 135–7; E. Siberry, Criticism of crusading 1095–1274 (Oxford 1985), 45–6. See also Radulphus Niger, De re militari et triplici via peregrinationis ierosolimitane (1187/88), ed. L. Schmugge (Berlin, 1976), 154, 223–7. For the Albigensian crusade, see ‘Chronicon Turonense’, in: Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 18 (Paris, 1879), 313.
59 Rousseau, ‘Home front’.
60 C. T. Maier, ‘Mass, the eucharist and the cross. Innocent III and the re-location of the crusade’, in: Innocent III and his world, ed. J. C. Moore (Aldershot, 1999), 351–60.
61 For redemptions generally, see Maier, Preaching, 135–48; M. R. Evans, ‘Commutation of vows: Some examples from the English Midlands’, in: From Clermont to Jerusalem, 219–28. Also: Brundage, Canon law, 68–111, 131–8.
62 Maier, Preaching, 135–60.
63 Kedar, ‘The passenger list’, 272–4.
64 Powell, Anatomy, 167.
65 Maier, ‘Mass’, 358–60. For crusade liturgy, see C. T. Maier, ‘Crisis, liturgy and the crusade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 48 (1997), 628–57, and A. Linder, Raising arms. Liturgy in the struggle to liberate Jerusalem in the late Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2003).
66 Rousseau, ‘Home front’, 37–9.
67 Riley-Smith, The first crusaders; Tyerman, England and the crusades.
69 Riley-Smith, The first crusaders, 98–103, 167–88, 246–9.
70 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis. Volume V. Books IX and X, ed. M. Chibnall (Oxford; 1975), 324–6.
71 Pernoud, La femme, 96–100.
72 Powell, ‘The role of women’, 294–7.
73 Riley-Smith, The first crusaders, 129–30.
74 Riley-Smith, The first crusaders, 130–5; id., ‘Early crusaders to the East and the cost of crusading 1095–1130’, in: Cross cultural convergences in the crusader period. Essays presented to Aryeh Grabois on his sixty-fifth birthday, ed. M. Goodich, S. Menache and S. Schein (New York et al., 1995), 237–57, here 253–5.
75 Tyerman, England and the crusades, 209–11.
77 Powell, ‘The role of women’, 295–7; id., Anatomy, 104–5.
78 Maier, Preaching, 123–34.
79 Riley-Smith, The first crusaders, 98–9, 137–9; de Hemptinne, ‘Les épouses’, 83–95.
80 Brundage, Canon law, 159–90.
81 Tyerman, England and the crusades, 208–17.
82 de Hemptinne, ‘Les épouses’, 87–95; W. C. Jordan, Louis IX and the challenge of the crusade. A study in rulership (Princeton, 1979), 105–33.
83 For women’s participation in processions, see Maier, ‘Mass’.
84 Cf. Lambert, ‘Crusading’, 7–8; Riley-Smith, The first crusaders, 97–8. Also N. Kenaan-Kedar and B. Z. Kedar, ‘The significance of a twelfth-century sculptural group: Le retour du Croisé’, in: Dei gesta per Francos. Etudes sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard—crusade studies in honour of Jean Richard, ed. M. Balard, B. Z. Kedar and J. Riley-Smith (Aldershot, 2001), 29–44; C. T. Maier, ‘The bible moralisée and the crusades’, in: The experience of crusading, ed. Marcus Bull and Norman Housley (Cambridge, 2003), 209–22, especially 212–6.
85 The appeal of the image of the departing crusader seems to have been great, judging by the fact that it appeared again and again throughout the later Middle Ages. It even reappeared in the historicising tales and depictions of the crusades in 19th-century literature and painting. See E. Siberry, ‘The crusader’s departure and return: A much later perspective’, in: Gendering the crusades, 177–90.
86 See, however, P. Rousset, ‘Sainte Catherine de Sienne et le problème de la croisade’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, 25 (1975), 499–513; R. Fawtier and L. Canet, La double expérience de Catherine Benincasa (Sainte Catherine de Sienne) (Paris, 1948), 347–53.
87 E. Pàsztor, ‘Katharina von Siena’, in: Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 5 (Zurich, 1991), cols. 1072–4 with further bibliography. Also B. Acklin Zimmermann, ‘Katharina von Siena’, in: Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, vol. 5 (Freiburg i.Br., 1996), cols. 1333–4.
88 For the letters, see Noffke’s introduction in: The letters of Catherine of Siena, trans. and intr. by S. Noffke, 2 vols (Tempe 2000, 2001), i, xvi–xxxix. For Gregory XI’s crusade plans, see P. Thibault, ‘Pope Gregory XI and the crusade’, Canadian Journal of History, 10 (1985), 312–32.
89 Epistolario di Santa Caterina di Siena, vol. 1, ed. E. Dupré Theseider (Rome, 1940), nos 63, 64, 69, 71, 74, 80, 81. See also the letters only included in the old general edition: Le lettere di S. Caterina di Siena, 4 vols, ed. N. Tommaseo (Florence, 1860), nos 209, 270.
90 Rousset, ‘Sainte Catherine’, 503–5.
91 Epistolario, nos 17, 23, 32, 33, 36, 39, 40, 41, 50, 68, 78, 79, 82; Le lettere, nos 16, 157.
92 Epistolario, nos 30, 34, 35, 52; Le lettere, nos 60, 172, 191, 267.
93 Epistolario, no. 30, 124–5: ‘...con desiderio di vedervi figliuoli e cavalieri di Cristo, sì e per sì fatto modo che desideriate mille volte, se tanto bisognasse, dare la vita in servigio del dolce e buono Gesù, el quale sarebbe scontamento di tutte le nostre iniquità le quali aviamo commesse contra il Salvatore nostro. ...Ora desidera l’anima mìa che mutiate modo e che pigliate el soldo e la croce di Cristo crocifisso, voi e tutti e’ vostri seguaci e compagni; si che siate una compagna di Cristo, ad andare contra a’ cani infideli che posseggono el nostro luogo santo, dove si riposò e sostenne la prima dolce verità morte e pene per noi.’
94 Epistolario, no. 41, 169: ‘Rizzate in voi, per amore e per desiderio, el gonfalone della santissima croce, però che tosto si converrà rizzare, chè, secondo che mi pare intendare, el padre santo la banderià sopra i Turchi, e però vi prego che vi disponiate, sì che tutti di bella brigata andiamo a morire per Cristo. Ora vi prego e constringo da parte di Cristo crucifisso che soveniate la sposa di Cristo nel bisogno suo, in avere e in persona e in consiglio, e in ciò che si può dimostriate che siate figiuola fedele della dolce e santa Chiesa.’
95 Epistolario, no. 34, 143: ‘Or oltre, carissime figliuole: tutte di bella brigata corriamo e inestiamoci in su questo verbo; e io v’invito alle nozze di questo inesto, cioè di spandare el sangue per lui, come egli l’à sparto per voi, cioè al santo Sepolcro, e ine lassare la vita per lui.’
98 Epistolario, no. 32, 136: ‘...coloro che avessero desiderio di morire per Cristo oltre mare e andare sopra l’infedeli’. See also the passages quoted in , 94, 95.
99 Epistolario, no. 39, 160: ‘Maggiore sacrifitio nè maggiore amore gli potete mostrare che dispornavi a dare la vita per lui, se bisogna. O, quanta dolcezza sarà quella, a vedere dare sanguine per sanguine...’; no. 52, 205–6: ‘E io v’invito, da parte di Cristo crocifisso, a dare il sangue vostro per lo sangue suo, quando verrà el tempo aspettato da’ servi di Dio, d’andare a racquistare quello che ci è tolto, cioè el luogo santo del sepolcro di Cristo,...’. See also the passage quoted in , 95.
100 Epistolario, no. 81, 331: ‘E anco d’adempire el desiderio de’ servi di Dio, el quale ànno di vedere rizzare el gonfalone della santissima croce sopra gl’infedeli. Allora potrete ministrare el sangue del’agnello ne’ tapinelli infedeli, però che voi sete el celleraio di questo sangue, che ne tenete li chiavi.’
101 Epistolario, no. 65, 275: ‘Crescendo in me el fuoco del santo desiderio, mirando, vedevasi nel costato di Cristo crucifisso intrare el popolo cristiano e infedele, e io passavo, per desiderio e affetto d’amore, per lo mezzo di loro, intrando con loro in Cristo dolce Gesù accompagnata col padre mio santo Domenico e Iohanni singulare, con tutti quanti e’ figliuoli mei.’
102 Maier, crusade propaganda, 59–61.
103 Cole, The preaching of the crusades, passim. Maier, crusade propaganda, 54–6.
104 For example, Eleanor of Castile (ca. 1240–1290), Bridget of Sweden (1302–1373) or Isabel of Portugal (1397–1471). For Eleanor, see Hamilton, ‘Eleanor’. For Bridget, see E. Christiansen, The Northern crusades. The Baltic and the Catholic frontier 1100–1525 (London, 1980), 183–5; S. Schein, ‘Bridget of Sweden, Margery Kempe and women’s Jerusalem pilgrimages in the Middle Ages’, Mediterranean Historical Review, 14 (1999), 44–58. For Isabel, see Schulz, Andreaskreuz, and Willard, ‘Isabel’.
105 Cf. G. Dickson, ‘Encounters in medieval revivalism: Monks, friars, and popular enthusiasts’, Church History, 68 (1999), 265–93; S. Schein, ‘Die Kreuzzüge als volkstümlich–messianische Bewegungen’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 47 (1991), 119–38.
106 This essay was completed prior to the publication of: Sabine Geldsetzer, Fruven auf Kreuzzügen 1096–1291 (Darmstadt, 2003), which represents the first full length study of women on crusade.
Maier: CHRISTOPH T. MAIER teaches medieval history at the University of Zurich. His main research interests centre on the crusades and the medieval cult of relics. His principal publications include: Preaching the crusades: Mendicant friars and the Cross in the