This study is based upon historical narratives of the crusades and the Latin East and therefore it is necessary to provide a ‘working definition’ of what these entail. As well as narratives, a wide variety of relevant charters, letters and legal records survive from Europe and the Levant. Ecclesiastical records, Greek, Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic sources, and considerable architectural and archaeological data are also available to the historian of crusade and settlement. These forms of evidence provide a great wealth of historical data, but narratives provide a ‘precise framework’ which is perhaps better suited to ‘types of history which are...

It is impossible to generalise about the authorship of crusade narratives. To some extent authors shared social and literary influences, but as well as geographical and chronological diversity, each had unique perspectives or personal agendas in terms of patronage, opinion, justification or propaganda. The widespread practice of plagiarism during the medieval period meant that some authors simply compiled crusade texts, including additional evidence where they had access to it. All of these factors may have influenced opinion of women in crusade narratives. Unfortunately there is not space within the scope of this book to give detailed background information for each...

Having demonstrated that crusade narratives reflected both ecclesiastical and noble values and interests, the next step must be to consider whether the women portrayed in crusade narratives were deliberately intended to provide guidance for a female audience. Would women have had access to such histories through oral transmission, or even have been able to read them? Evidence about literacy amongst women is limited before the late medieval period, but some of the high-profile figures who featured in crusade narratives were associated with education, such as Queen Mathilda of England, Mathilda of Tuscany, Ida of Lorraine, Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, Adela...

The aristocratic focus of crusade narratives made it inevitable that evidence about daughters was heavily weighted towards the lineage, inheritance and betrothal of young noblewomen. To a lesser extent, their character and training were also discussed. This chapter will centre predominantly on unmarried aristocratic daughters, but heiresses will be discussed both before and after wedlock in matters pertaining to their birthright. Dowry was critical to a woman’s social position and will be considered here in reference to the negotiations preceding marriage, although it will also feature in later chapters on wives and widows. Sexual status was also a measure of...

Marriage has always played a prominent role in the formation of social bonds in western Europe, from Antiquity to the present day. In medieval society it usually involved a financial and legal transaction which enabled a new economic unit to provide for the propagation of the family line, but it also had links with the ‘mysterious and terrifying world of sexuality and procreation – in other words, the realm of the sacred’.¹ During the medieval period the Church took increasing control over marriage as a sacred institution and attempted to regulate it through ecclesiastical courts, but old secular customs, Roman,...

The historian of women, while recognising that motherhood is biologically exclusive to the female sex, must be careful to avoid applying ‘universal’ values or innate qualities to mothers, as their experiences were affected by a variety of criteria including wealth, social class, and individual perspective. It is true that medieval women were often defined solely by their unique capacity to produce children, but not all of them became mothers, especially where relatively high rates of celibacy existed. Even then, pregnancy and birth only formed part of the parental process – the conventions surrounding child rearing and the interaction between parents...

During the medieval period, life expectancy was relatively low because of disease, epidemics, warfare and poor medical care; thus the death of a marriage partner was common. Amongst the aristocracy, male life expectancy was curtailed by their traditional military role – ‘because noblemen were warriors and thus subject to violent death, women could expect to be married more than once’.¹ It has been estimated that 46 per cent of aristocratic men in England who survived past the age of fifteen during the late medieval period died violently.² Even where death was not linked specifically to the battlefield, sustained military campaigns...