Description
By (author) Nicholson, Helen J.
Short /annotation:
Helen Nicholson surveys women”s involvement in medieval crusading from the 11th century to the 16th, arguing that medieval women were deeply involved in the crusades, but that the roles that they could play and how their contemporaries recorded their deeds were dictated by social convention and cultural expectations.
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The crusade movement needed women: their money, their prayer support, their active participation, and their inspiration…This book surveys women”s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when the last crusader state, Cyprus, was captured by the Ottoman Turks. It considers women”s actions not only on crusade battlefields but also in recruiting crusaders, supporting crusades through patronage, propaganda, and prayer, and as both defenders and aggressors. It argues that medieval women were deeply involved in the crusades but the roles that they could play and how their contemporaries recorded their deeds were dictated by social convention and cultural expectations. Although its main focus is the women of Latin Christendom, it also looks at the impact of the crusades and crusaders on the Jews of western Europe and the Muslims of the Middle East, and compares relations between Latin Christians and Muslims with relations between Muslims and other Christian groups.
Table of contents:
PrefaceAcknowledgementsChronology of the CrusadesList of PopesList of Maps and FiguresA note on namesMapsFigures1: Locating Women in the Crusades: Definitions and Evidence2: Initialising crusades3: Crusade Campaigns4: The Home Front: Supporting the Crusade5: After the Crusade: Memory and ImaginationSumming UpBibliographyIndex
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Selected as a Book of the Year 2023 by Medievalists.net
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A significant and timely addition to the field.
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4*: Nicolson”s careful and detailed retelling of women of all socioeconomic classes during the crusades makes Women and the Crusades one of the most helpful new publications for history enthusiasts and students.
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Nicholson…covers her subject with all the comprehensiveness and breadth readers might expect from a scholar of her caliber.
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This book is a boon for instructors incorporating the female experience into their courses on the crusades and students seeking to expand their understanding of how medieval women encountered holy war.
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This is also a book that will find its way into the undergraduate classroom very easily and it is to be hoped that future generations of students will now find it much easier to locate and understand the integral place of women in the crusading movement.
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The main contribution of Nicholson”s book is her mere emphasis on women”s involvement in the crusades movement for centuries. Based on an impressive breadth of sources, she convincingly shows that beyond fighting in the front line, women indeed made an important contribution to the Holy War of Christendom.
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Widely researched from a wide spectrum of sources and broadly focused, Helen Nicholson”s comprehensive study reveals the considerable and varied roles women played in the promotion, conduct, support and memorialisation of crusading and crusaders over more than four centuries. Using telling vignettes of participation, she shows how women of different social status and economic condition were integral to crusading culture and practice, not just marginal or ornamental.
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This book is evidently the product of decades of accumulated research expertise and is panorami
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