Women were widely involved in crusading as leaders and patrons, even though they seldom if ever fought on the battlefield.¹ Some – most famously the Byzantine princess Anna Comnena – wrote about the crusades, and women also acted as patrons of art, architecture, and literature related to the crusades. Women’s struggle was invoked by writers on the crusades to epitomise the struggle of Christianity as a whole. This chapter will survey women’s contribution to the literature and culture of the crusades, and ask whether it was significant and whether it followed the same pattern as the contributions of men.

Modern readers may be most familiar with women’s least direct contribution to the culture of crusading: as the inspiration for literature and legend. So, for example, Thomas of Froidmont wrote an account of the living martyrdom of his elder sister, Margaret of Beverley, who was present in Jerusalem at the time of Saladin’s siege of 1187, assisted in the defence of the city, was made a prisoner, ransomed, and eventually returned to Europe.² One of St Hildegund of Schönau’s fellow novices described her pilgrimage in male disguise to the Holy Land just before the Third Crusade, seeing her disguise as a sign of spiritual strength.³ But although these women’s actions inspired men’s spiritual writing, these women did not themselves actively create written or material memorials. Holy women’s approval of crusading was cited as evidence both of their piety and of the piety of the undertaking: so Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) wrote that Marie d’Oignies (d. 1213) wished to die for her faith on crusade, and Peter von Dusburg (d. after 1326) wrote of a German ‘woman of holy life’ who obtained news of the crusade in Prussia through spiritual means.⁴ Female saints formed the focus of crusaders’ devotion: the military religious orders, particularly the Teutonic Order, were devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary, while the brothers of the Teutonic Order produced literature on St Hester and St Martina.

Women were also invoked in imaginative secular writing. The thirteenth-century biography of the twelfth-century troubadour Jaufré Rudel claimed that he was infatuated with a countess of the crusader county of Tripoli, possibly Countess Hodierna, younger sister of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem (d. 1161), a politician but not otherwise known as a patron of the arts.⁵ Eleanor of Castile (d. 1291), who accompanied her husband Edward of England on his crusade to Acre in 1271–2, became the heroine of one of the legends of the crusade, which claimed that she had sucked the poison from her husband’s wound when he was wounded by an assassin. Her great-great-grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine (d. 1204) became the focus of scandalous stories after her involvement in the Second Crusade alongside her first husband, Louis VII of France; by the early thirteenth century these included a story of an affair with Saladin, which would have been impossible as the future sultan was only around ten years old when Eleanor was in the East.⁶ However, although these women’s actions might have formed the initial inspiration for these stories, the stories were based on cultural expectations and prejudice, not on female agency.

As well as forming a focus for writing on the crusades, women could encourage such writing: it was usual for noblewomen to patronise literature and poets. Yet patronage might come about through a woman’s influence rather than actively carried out by her in person, and the connection between patron and writer could be implicit rather than explicit.⁷ For example, the most comprehensive eyewitness chronicler of the Albigensian crusade, Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, knew the commander of the crusade forces, Simon de Montfort, and his wife, Alice de Montmorency. He travelled with them, admired them, and described them sympathetically, recounting anecdotes that emphasised the countess’s virtuous deeds and support for her husband. Although Alice did not explicitly promote the writing of Peter’s history of the crusade, she was clearly supportive of the man himself, and this influenced his writing.⁸

However, women involved in crusading did not necessarily promote literature about the crusades. Although Eleanor of Aquitaine was mentioned by the poet Bernard de Ventadour at the end of one of his works, there is little evidence for her patronage of specific works and the surviving Chansons de croisade do not mention Eleanor as a patron.⁹ Her daughter Marie of Champagne was patron of the great poet Chrétien de Troyes, but Chrétien’s work for Marie makes only very brief allusions to crusading: a reference to knights who had taken crusading vows in Le Chevalier de la Charette, and a mention of Nūr al-Dīn in Yvain: crusading was part of knightly life but it was not its focus.¹⁰ Gerard d’Amiens named Eleanor of Castile as the source of his Arthurian romance Escanor, but this story did not mention the crusades; while at Acre with her husband, Eleanor commissioned a French translation of Vegetius’s De re militari for him; again, this was not a crusading text although it was a practical guide to strategy and tactics.¹¹ Personal or family involvement in crusading did not lead these noblewomen to commission works specifically on the crusades: they patronised literature that celebrated knighthood in general rather than this aspect of it. Likewise, the Lais of the poet Marie de France, dedicated to a ‘noble king’ who was probably King Henry II of England (d. 1189), did not refer specifically to the crusades, although a single reference to the father of the heroine Le Fresne having brought a cloth from Constantinople, ‘where he was’, suggests an awareness of the proximity of the East.¹²

Women might not be the named patron of a literary work or artefact but nevertheless had a role in influencing its development. For example, in around 1170 one Konrad the Priest composed the Ruolantes Liet, a German version of the legend of Roland. His book ends with the statement that a Duke Henry had the original brought from France, where it was written, ‘because the noble duchess wished it’. The Duke was probably Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and husband of Matilda of England, daughter of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Although set long before the First Crusade, the story of Roland’s death at Muslim hands as part of the struggle between Islam and Christianity for control of the Iberian Peninsula has obvious links to crusading. Given Henry II’s family connections to the kingdom of Jerusalem (his grandfather, Fulk of Anjou, married Melisende of Jerusalem and became king of Jerusalem in 1131), and Matilda’s own interest in literature, it is not surprising that Matilda was involved in commissioning Konrad’s work.¹³

Eleanor of Provence, queen of King Henry III, apparently owned a copy of an epic crusading poem. On 17 May 1250, King Henry III sent Henry of the Wardrobe to the New Temple in London to fetch ‘for the queen’s use’ ‘a certain large book … written in the French language, in which are contained the deeds of Antioch and of other kings, etc’. – a description which would best fit the Chanson d’Antioche.¹⁴ But we do not know whether she commissioned the book herself or received it as a gift. Some nuns also had access to works on the crusades. David Bell’s analysis of the books and libraries in medieval English nunneries in the late Middle Ages reveals that three nunneries (Swine, Syon, and Thetford) had the ‘revelations’ of St Birgitta in English, and one (Swine) in Latin: as will be seen below, these included revelations about crusading in the east Baltic. Barking Abbey had a French account of the death of King Louis IX on crusade. Polsloe had a copy of the Latin history of Charlemagne and Roland, allegedly by Charlemagne’s Archbishop Turpin, while Syon had a copy of William of Tripoli’s De statu Saracenorum, ‘on the condition of the Saracens’, a description of the Middle East and how the Holy Land could be reconquered.¹⁵ Obviously these lists are incomplete, as full records do not survive and no records survive for some houses. Nevertheless, clearly some nunneries did obtain texts about the crusades and subjects related to them, even if we have no direct evidence that the nuns then read them.

The examples so far are indirect, implicit, and only suggest female influence or interest. Yet women did write explicitly about the crusades. The best known is now Anna Comnena (d. c. 1153), eldest child of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus, whose biography of her father, the Alexiad, includes extensive commentary on the First Crusade. Anna explains in her work that it is based on notes made by her husband Nikephoros Bryennios, who died in 1137 before he could complete it. As her husband was involved in some of the military events of the crusade, this gave the work eyewitness authority. Anna herself may have witnessed some of what she describes, such as the arrival of the Western armies at Constantinople and the arrival of Bohemond at her father’s court; and she could have consulted others who were directly involved. The work was written four decades after events, and as its primary aim was to praise Alexius it was not an objective record of events. However, it provides a unique interpretation of the First Crusade from the viewpoint of the Byzantine court: a Christian account by a non-Latin Christian, who regarded the Latin Christians as cultural inferiors.

At the end of the Albigensian Crusades the Occitan troubadour Gormonda de Monpelsier sang in support of papal policy in the crusade. Her sirventes, or political satire, was probably composed early in 1229, just before the Treaty of Meaux that ended the war. Gormonda wrote in reply to a sirventes by Guillem Figueira which attacked the pope (called ‘Roma’, Rome), accusing the papacy of being the root of all evil, criticising papal policy against King John of England and the Greeks, blaming the papacy for the failure of the Fifth Crusade, and condemning it for promoting the Albigensian Crusades and the killing of Christians. Responding stanza by stanza to Guilhem’s song, Gormonda defended the papacy over the Fifth Crusade and the Albigensian Crusades, arguing that it was more important to defeat heretics than Saracens. She criticised the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VII, and condemned the heretics as people without faith, urging her listeners to take up the cross against them – that is, to join the crusade. Comparing Gormonda’s song to a scholastic debate, Katherina Städtler has suggested that it was written to be performed to a monastic audience or another religious community, such as the Dominicans.¹⁶

Gormunda is the only woman troubadour known to have written on the crusades. Anonymous ‘crusade’ songs presented through a woman’s voice were not necessarily composed or even sung by women, although they demonstrate that crusades affected women as well as men.¹⁷

Much of women’s spiritual writing in the later Middle Ages reflects the devotion that inspired the crusades. They focused on Jerusalem, Christ’s death and resurrection, and emphasised their suffering while on pilgrimage to Jerusalem without specifically mentioning the crusades, as if the physical battles of the crusade were a distraction from spiritual warfare on sin. When in spring 1176 Count Philip of Flanders approached the visionary Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) for advice on his forthcoming expedition to the kingdom of Jerusalem, she replied that he should purge his own sinfulness before waging war on the infidel.¹⁸ However, some mystics and holy women threw their spiritual authority behind crusade expeditions to Jerusalem and in the Baltic area. Their authority came not from theological learning but through their visions, sometimes linked to extreme ascetical exercises, and the support of their male priest-confessors who recorded and presented their work.

For example, the visions or spiritual revelations of St Birgitta of Sweden (d. 1373), who came from a noble family and was briefly an advisor to Blanche of Namur, queen of Sweden, included ‘about twenty’ justifying crusades, but she also criticised the motivation of the crusaders. The crusades in question were two expeditions by King Magnus Eriksson (Magnus IV, d. 1374) to Finland and Russia in 1348–51. Sweden already controlled part of the east Baltic area and Magnus’s invasion was prompted by a dispute with the city of Novgorod over borders, but he also proposed to debate doctrinal differences between the Latin and the Russian Orthodox Churches and his campaign included conversions of the peoples he conquered. However, he made no territorial gains. Birgitta’s revelations depict these crusades as justified by the need to convert pagans and impose justice on them, providing the minimum of force was used and the aim was to establish peace. Later Birgitta criticised the king’s actions on crusade, accusing him of not following the advice given and failing to convert the infidel. In the words of Bridget Morris, ‘For Birgitta … the failure of the crusade was a moral condemnation of the king’.¹⁹

Dorothy of Montau (d. 1394) came from a West Prussian peasant family and became an anchoress at Marienwerder in Prussia after her husband’s death. She had read Birgitta’s revelations and regarded her as a spiritual model – in addition to Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231), of whom more below. Dorothy urged the brothers of the Teutonic Order, rulers of Prussia, to launch crusades to convert the pagan Lithuanians, and recorded visions of the late Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Konrad von Wallenrod (d. 1393) being tortured in hell. Ute Stargardt ascribes her criticism of the grand master to his alleged Wycliffite sympathies and his attempts to prevent Dorothy being enclosed as an anchoress at Marienwerder cathedral. Her confessor, John of Marienwerder, dean of the cathedral, wrote her Vita in Latin and the vernacular and recorded her visions and other compositions, which circulated around Prussia. Despite her criticisms, the Teutonic Order supported John’s campaign for Dorothy’s canonisation – although this was unsuccessful. Clearly the Order believed that her potential patronage as a saint would be a valuable asset.²⁰

The great letter-writer Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) spent several years campaigning for a crusade against the Turks, which she presented as part of a programme of reform which included unifying Christendom, bringing the papacy back to Rome, and converting Muslims. She intended to join the crusade herself and find martyrdom in the East. In 1375 she wrote to Giovanna di Capo ‘and her other daughters’ (female disciples) in Siena that she had met the ambassador of the queen of Cyprus, who was going to discuss the crusade with the pope, and that ‘the affairs of the Crusade are going constantly better and better’. She wrote to the famous military leader Sir John Hawkwood that as a crusade had been called he should no longer wage war against Christians but go to fight the infidels. She wrote urging Pope Gregory XI to press on with his return to Rome and his plans for crusade: he should ‘raise the standard of the most holy Cross’, which would enable him to win peace in Christendom and turn all war against the infidels. In subsequent letters she continued to urge the pope to proceed swiftly with the crusade, as she believed that it would make all his enemies unite eagerly with him because ‘they are ready to give their life for Christ … you will see the wolves become lambs’. She continued to urge the pope to ‘raise the standard of the most holy Cross’, her metaphor for calling a crusade; and ‘minister the Blood of the Lamb to those wretched infidels’ – first he should fight them and then convert them to Christ. She pressed King Charles V of France to stop fighting Christians, because his wars had harmed both Christians and infidels by preventing the start of a crusade and the conversion of the infidel. Instead, he should follow in Christ’s footsteps by undertaking the crusade. Everywhere she tried to make peace so that a crusade could be launched.²¹ But although she was greatly respected for her sanctity, her efforts were in vain. In 1378 the Great Schism put an end to her hopes of Christian unity in a crusade.

It was not only holy women who campaigned for crusades. Women played an important role in recruiting for the crusades, especially among their family networks.²² They also proposed and promoted crusading more widely. Agnes of Harcourt, biographer of King Louis VIII of France’s daughter Isabelle (d. 1270), tells us that after her father’s death Isabelle used some of the money he left her to send ten knights overseas: that is, to help protect the kingdom of Jerusalem.²³ To both Agnes and Isabelle this was self-evidently a pious deed, a Christian duty for a Latin Christian noblewoman. In 1301 a group of Genoese noblewomen planned to sponsor a crusade; their planning included the appointment of a commander, and plans for their own participation, but regrettably it appears that only Pope Boniface VIII’s approval for their scheme has survived and not the information they sent to him.²⁴ In 1429 Joan of Arc announced her intention of leading a crusade as soon as her war with England was over, writing to the King of England and the Duke of Bedford that: ‘les Franchois feront le plus bel fait que oncques fu fait pour la chrestienté’ (‘the French will do the fairest deed which was ever done for Christianity’). Her contemporary and admirer Christine de Pisan wrote that Joan would destroy unbelievers and heretics and lead King Charles of France to the Holy Land to conquer the Saracens, and that both Joan and Charles would die in the Holy Land, in fulfilment of prophecy. To underline Joan’s potential as a crusade leader, in describing her achievements to date Christine added: ‘Greater things were not done before Acre’, an allusion to the Third Crusade.²⁵ Although such plans demonstrated and reinforced Joan’s role as a devout Christian military commander, they do not appear to have progressed any further than good intentions.

Women were not only involved in promoting and supporting crusading but also played a role in manufacturing the memory of the crusades and crusaders. Idonea de Camville and Countess Ela of Salisbury, respectively wife and mother of William Longespee, English hero of King Louis IX’s first crusade who perished at the Battle of Mansurah in February 1250, may have instigated the references to William’s deeds in historical records created at the abbeys of Barlings (Lincolnshire) and Lacock (Wiltshire); Idonea’s family were patrons of Barlings, while Ela founded Lacock and became its abbess.²⁶ Dietrich of Apolda wrote a ‘life’ of Landgrave Ludwig IV of Thüringia, who had died on crusade in 1227, for his widow Elizabeth of Hungary.²⁷

Women were also the inspiration for or patrons of cultural artefacts reflecting the impact of the crusades. A moralised Bible commissioned by Queen Blanche of France (d. 1252) for her daughter-in-law Margaret of Provence in 1234 included images of crusading in the pages of the Old Testament (now BL Harley MS 1526). Where the biblical text described the Israelites’ wars against pagan tribes, the illuminations depicted contemporary knights fighting heretics, with images of Cathars and demons. Blanche’s Bible drew a parallel between Old Testament condemnation of idolatry and the contemporary war against heresy.²⁸

There is usually no clear evidence of who commissioned a work. Even where a female donor is illustrated (as in the icon of Saint Sergios at the Monastery of St Catherine in Sinai, with a female supplicant kneeling at his foot), the identity of the donor is not always known.²⁹ But it has been suggested that an Histoire Universelle or ‘History of the World’ produced at Acre in 1287, which depicts the Amazons in very positive roles ‘as defenders of the social order’, was commissioned by a female patron: possibly Countess Alice of Blois, who arrived in Acre in 1287 and died there the following year.³⁰

Scholars agree that the Melisende Psalter (now BL Egerton MS 1139) was produced for Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, daughter of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Morphia of Melitene. Although it has been suggested that it was commissioned for her by her husband Fulk of Anjou, it may equally have been commissioned by the queen herself. It was produced between 1131 and 1143 in the scriptorium of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The text of the psalms, with a liturgical calendar, the creeds, canticles, and other prayers and offices, are prefaced by beautiful illustrations in the style of contemporary Byzantine art, each with a background of gold leaf. The cover included ivory panels carved with scenes from the life of King David. The whole combines a variety of cultural traditions in art, including French, English, and Italian characteristics as well as Byzantine, demonstrating the multicultural nature of society in the crusader kingdom and Melisende’s own descent from Latin Europeans and the ethnic Armenians of Melitene.³¹

Queen Melisende also supported and presided over reconstruction and new construction projects in Jerusalem which, in the words of Nurith Kenaan-Kedar, ‘created a new urban landscape … that reflected the new power and function of the kingdom’. This building programme included five large projects: rebuilding the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the central focus of Christian pilgrimage and the focus of the crusades; rebuilding the Abbey Church of Saint Anne and the convent of St Lazarus at Bethany, outside Jerusalem; and building the Armenian cathedral of Saint James, the Armenian church of the Archangels, and the royal tombs of her mother and Melisende herself, in the church of Saint Mary in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. All but the last of these buildings included ‘goudron’ stone frieze work, a style of frieze characteristic of north Syria and Armenia, and Kenaan-Kedar argued that this decoration was a statement of Queen Melisende’s role as patron of both the Latin and Armenian communities in Jerusalem.³²

Melisende may also have sponsored the new mosaic decorations in the Dome of the Rock or Templum Domini and an iron grille around the Rock itself to protect it from pilgrims. She was also involved in other smaller building projects in Jerusalem. The great churches that visiting crusaders would have seen in Jerusalem from the 1150s onwards were, then, largely due to her efforts. Her grand-daughter Queen Sybil (d. 1190) has not been credited with any impressive building projects during her short reign, but presumably she was responsible for the lavish tomb of her son Baldwin V (d. 1186) and her reign may have seen the completion of the renovation and redecoration of the Coenaculum (or Cenacle, traditionally the ‘upper room’ where the Last Supper was held), work which was done in the 1180s before the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187.³³

Another means of supporting and promoting the culture of crusading was to support the military religious orders which developed in the Holy Land and the West, dedicated to the care of Christian pilgrims and defence of Christendom. Women gave valuable donations and patronage to these institutions, and could have considerable influence over their development. So, for example, Queen Sancha of Aragon’s (d. 1208) foundation at Sigena of a house of Hospitaller sisters reflected the links between the royal house of Aragon, crusading, and the military religious orders that had existed since at least the 1120s. Her foundation for this order which supported the crusade and crusaders comprised magnificent Romanesque buildings and a Chapter house painted with biblical scenes, in the Byzantine style.³⁴

In the 1130s, Matilda of Boulogne, niece of the first two Latin rulers of crusader Jerusalem, gave generous gifts of land to the Templars at Cressing (Essex) and Cowley (Oxfordshire). Such gifts promoted the culture of crusading and could inspire male relatives to give generously: Matilda’s husband, King Stephen of England, not only confirmed her gifts but also apparently gave the Templars the village of Eagle in Lincolnshire.³⁵ Margaret de Lacy’s foundation of c. 1216 of a Hospitaller women’s house at Aconbury in Herefordshire may have prompted her nephew John de Braose to donate St Illtud’s church on the Gower Peninsula to the Hospitallers.³⁶ In 1156 Margaret, countess of Warwick gave the church, vill and land at Llanmadoc in the Gower, in Wales, to the Templars, a gift approved by her underage sons Henry, Robert, and Geoffrey de Newburgh.³⁷ Jordan de Bricet and his wife Muriel de Munteni together founded the Hospitallers’ house at Clerkenwell in around 1144, as well as the neighbouring women’s house of St Mary Clerkenwell.³⁸ According to her vita, Hedwig of Silesia persuaded her husband, Duke Henry I (d. 1238), to give the Templars ‘certain great estates’, at Klein Öls (now Mała Oleśnica, Poland).³⁹

From these donations, the military orders developed administrative centres for their estates, but not all donations went the way intended by the donor. Driven into exile by her nephew, Ermengaud of Narbonne took refuge in the Templar house of Mas-Deu and in 1196 willed her possessions to the Templars and Hospitallers; but her nephew did not execute her wishes.⁴⁰ Elizabeth of Hungary, dowager countess of Thüringia, bequeathed the hospital she had founded at Marburg to the Hospitallers, but her brothers-in-law successfully petitioned Pope Gregory IX to transfer it to the Teutonic Order, the crusading order preferred by the comital family.⁴¹

Other constructions initiated by female donors included the Hospitaller commandery at Alguaire in Catalonia, constructed from 1250 by the widowed noblewoman Marquesa de la Guàrdia and her daughter Gueralda, and the chapel which the Templar associate sister Adelisa, widow of Henry Morsels, ‘our associate sister’, founded at the Templars’ house at Ghent before 1288.⁴² Through initiating such building works, women expanded the influence and physical impact of these religious orders that supported crusaders and pilgrims.

In conclusion, although it can be difficult to identify works of literature and cultural patronage by women during the Middle Ages, women of different classes did contribute to the literature and cultural patronage of the crusades in various ways. The wealthy had the most opportunity and means to give patronage, although the difficulty in distinguishing female patronage indicates that it did not differ from men’s. No chronicles specifically focused on the crusades were authored by women – Anna Comnena’s history was a biography of her father which included an account of the First Crusade – but women did possess works about the crusades. Holy women, claiming visionary inspiration from God, wrote to exhort or criticise crusaders, urging them to act according to God’s directions as given through them. For such women their spirituality offered them a form of agency, although this was tightly circumscribed by what was viewed as acceptable action for lay people: for example, Dorothy of Montau was accused of heresy at Gdansk for requesting the Eucharist too often. Women promoted the crusades and memorialised crusaders. In their writing and cultural patronage for the crusades they expressed the same concerns as their male counterparts, although many (Marie d’Oignies, Catherine of Siena, and even Joan of Arc) may have aimed to achieve martyrdom at the hands of the Muslims rather than participating in a military victory.