[The Christians] believe in this iniquity, that their God came forth from the privates of a woman and was created in a woman’s womb, and that a woman was made pregnant by their God and gave birth to him … Anyone who believes that God came out of a woman’s privates is quite mad; he should not be spoken to, and he has neither intelligence nor faith.10
Then again, Muslims of the era generally had a low opinion of Franks. The geographer Ali ibn al-Husayn al Mas’udi described the Slavs and Franks (in this case, the inhabits of France and Germany) as follows: ‘Their bodies have become enormous, their humour dry, their morals crude, their intellect stupid and their tongue sluggish’.11
Women in Outremer – A Unique Status?
The crusader states established in the wake of the crusades were inhabited by a diverse population adhering to various faiths. Although most of the population was Christian, both Orthodox and Latin, there was a sizable Muslim minority divided between Sunni and Shia, and there were also Jewish and Samaritan communities. The rulers of the states established in the Levant avoided widespread interference in the social and religious lives of the various ethnic and religious groups living inside their territories. On the contrary, Muslims were allowed to live in accordance with Sharia Law, Jews and Samaritans followed their respective traditions, and the various Christian Orthodox groups continued to conduct their lives as they had always done. Only to settle conflicts between religious groups or regulate relations between the subjects and the crown did the Franks seek to introduce new laws and courts. The Franks wisely recognised that meddling in customs governing marriage and women’s social status and roles would only cause resentment, alienation and rebellion. Thus, nothing much changed for many women in the crusader states, particularly Muslim, Jewish and Samaritan women.
However, an estimated 140,000 Latin Christians emigrated from Western Europe to the crusader states in the twelfth century. They intermarried with the local Christian population and, together with their offspring, represented a significant portion of the population. They were, by and large, the subjects of the unique laws and customs that came to characterise the crusader states. It is the status of these Frankish women that represent the focus of this book.
All Frankish women were either Western European in origin or the descendants of Europeans on at least one side of their family tree. That is, the traditions of the Catholic Church, feudalism and chivalry had shaped them or their forefathers. Yet, as a minority in an Eastern environment, surrounded by states that denigrated and segregated women, one might have expected Frankish women to undergo a reduction in status once they were settled in the Near East. This was not the case.
Historian Sylvia Schein argues that Frankish women ‘enjoyed more legal rights, held more important positions and carried out more functions than their contemporaries in the West … [they had] more freedom of action within both state and society than in the West, for instance in England and France’.12 Historian Sarah Lambert, furthermore, draws attention to the fact that the comprehensive account of the crusades written by a leading cleric of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, William Archbishop of Tyre, lacks the misogyny common among clerical chroniclers of this period writing in the West. According to Lambert, Tyre ‘seemed to approve of the involvement of women in the First Crusade … [and] not to share the horror of active sexuality during pilgrimage … characteristic of [other] First Crusade chronicles’.13
In short, not only were women more powerful and active in Outremer, but Frankish men, including clerics, apparently accepted women on these more equal terms without approbation. In the chapters that follow, this volume seeks to highlight and explain this unique situation.
Chapter 2
The First Crusade and the Establishment of the Crusader States
Casus Belli: Jerusalem
In 326 AD, Empress Helena, the mother of the ruling Roman Emperor Constantine I, made a pilgrimage to the Roman city of Aelia Capitolina in the Roman province of Judaea. She had converted to Christianity roughly fifteen years earlier and, in 313, had convinced her son to issue the Edict of Milan that ended the religious persecution of Christians. Thereafter, she sponsored the construction of many churches, but now she was looking for something more spiritual as she approached 80 years of age.
It was 293 years since Christ had been crucified, 256 years since the destruction of the Second Temple, and 190 years since the expulsion of the Jewish and Christian population from the city that had formerly been called Jerusalem. Although expelled and persecuted, she knew that Christians had never completely abandoned Jerusalem. There were still Christians living in Aelia Capitolina whose grandparents’ grandparents had lived in Jerusalem in the time of Christ. She knew or suspected these Christians maintained traditions about the sacred venues associated with Jesus. Furthermore, even if knowledge had not been passed down over the generations, Helena knew the Romans had built a temple to Venus on the site where Christ had been crucified and buried. The Romans had intended to humiliate the Christians by burying the most important physical reminder of their messiah under a temple to the pagan goddess of love. The effect had been to mark with marble the location of Christ’s execution and resurrection.
In consultation with the local Christian community and their bishop Marcarius, Helena ordered excavations under the porch of the Roman temple. These revealed ancient quarries or tombs, which according to Rufinius (writing less than a century later), brought to light three crosses lying in one of the chambers. Helena and Marcarius brought pieces of each cross to a sick woman, who recovered miraculously on contact with the third. Thereafter, that cross was revered as the cross on which Christ had been crucified, and the place where it was found was identified as the tomb of Christ.
To mark the site of Christ’s tomb and commemorate his sacrifice and resurrection, Emperor Constantine the Great ordered and financed the construction of a great church over the grave discovered by his later sainted mother, Helena. This church was constructed in the style of a monumental Greek basilica, 150 by 75 metres, covering almost precisely the same area as the temple to Venus. Furthermore, the church incorporated both the site of Christ’s crucifixion and his grave. The latter could be reached by stairs leading underground. From its consecration onwards, this church became the holiest site in Christendom, more sacred than Agia Sophia in Constantinople or St Peter’s in Rome. It was known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and instantly became the destination of countless pilgrims across Christendom as Christianity spread across Europe.
For almost 300 years, the Holy Sepulchre sat securely in Jerusalem, surrounded by Christian inhabitants and protected by a mighty Christian empire ruled from Constantinople. Yet slowly the power of Constantinople eroded, and in 614 AD, a Persian army swept across Judea. The Persians captured and sacked Jerusalem, killing an estimated 26,500 men and enslaving roughly 35,000 women and children. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was burned to the ground. It took fourteen years before armies under Emperor Herakleios expelled the Persians in 628.
Although the reconstruction of a church over the tomb of Christ was undertaken immediately, the population and economic losses of the war with Persia inhibited spending. Only a modest structure replaced Constantine’s great basilica. The building was probably temporary, with expectations of later expansion. Instead, just nine years later, Jerusalem was again under siege. This time the enemy at the gates was the Muslim Caliph Umar. After a year-long siege, Jerusalem could no longer resist and fell under Muslim domination.
Under Sharia law, the public practice of any religion other than Islam was prohibited, condemning the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to fall gradually into disrepair. Meanwhile, contrary to popular modern myths, the Christian population was subjected to an annual tribute, extra taxes, forced labour, and land expropriation, as well as systematic persecution and humiliation punctuated by sporadic violent attacks entailing plunder, rape and slaughter.14 All churches and monasteries suffered during the ensuing centuries of Muslim rule. Symbolic of them all, the Holy Sepulchre was burned by Muslim troops in 969 AD, and although partially and modestly repaired by 984, the church was again demolished by the Caliph al-Hakim in 1009. No new attempt to construct a church on the site of the crucifixion was undertaken until almost fifty years later, in 1048. That anything could be built at all was an act of generosity by the Muslim ruler of the period; Sharia law prohibits the construction of any houses of worship not dedicated to Islam. Nevertheless, given the impoverished state of the Christian community under Muslim rule and the restrictions imposed by Islam, this new church was not a significant architectural monument.
Meanwhile, the armies of Islam had spread across the Near East to the gates of Constantinople. They had also subdued the North African continent and stormed onto the Iberian Peninsula. All these conquests were justified by the Islamic concept of jihad, which calls for the elimination of the non-Islamic world. The theory was simple. Islam divides the world into two houses or camps: the Dar al-Islam (usually translated as the Abode of Islam) and the Dar al-Harb (the Abode of War). In the name of peace, all regions still in the Dar al-Harb must be conquered and eliminated until the entire world lives harmoniously together in the house of the Dar al-Islam.
Practical politics interfered with this simplistic world view, and Islamic states found it increasingly convenient to make truces with non-believers. This led to the acknowledgement that there was a grey area between the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-Harb, namely the Dar al-’Ahd or Dar al-Sulh – the Abode of the Treaty. Throughout the crusader era, however, treaties with non-believers were viewed as temporary conveniences that could not exceed ten years, ten months and ten days. In short, during this period the Islamic world fundamentally rejected the concept of permanent peace between Islam and the Christian powers of Byzantium and the West as contrary to Sharia law.
Despite the successful advance of Muslim armies, the Christian states did not entirely collapse. The Byzantine Empire fought off Muslim sieges of Constantinople in 678 AD and again in 717. In 732, the armies of Islam were halted on the Loire by a Frankish army under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours. Roughly simultaneously, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula commenced and would continue for another 700 years. By 746, the Byzantine Empire had regained control of Armenia and Syria but not Palestine. In the succeeding three centuries, the struggle for control of the Mediterranean basin continued with victories and defeats on both sides, but through it all, the Holy Land remained under Muslim rule.
Sadly, that did not mean it was at peace. On the contrary, the Holy Land was a battleground fought over by competing Shia and Sunni caliphates centred in Cairo and Baghdad, respectively. Jerusalem changed hands violently five times between 637 and 1099. In addition, one rebellion against the Arab occupiers was quashed with a massive loss of life. Meanwhile, the Seljuks swept across Anatolia and defeated a large Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
A New Kind of War: The Combination of ‘Just War’ and Religious Pilgrimage
The victory of Muslim armies did not necessarily signify the victory of the Islamic faith. Sharia law prohibits forced religious conversions, although it advocates the humiliation and punishment of non-believers to encourage them to see the error of their beliefs. Despite the material benefits of adopting Islam, the pace of conversion was slow. Historians now estimate that the majority of the Levant’s population remained Christian in 1100. It was the dire circumstances in which these Christians lived and the numerous instances of murder, rape and enslavement involving Christian pilgrims travelling to the Holy Land that ignited a new kind of warfare.
The Byzantines had never forgotten Jerusalem, but their strength had been insufficient to recapture the lost territories of the Levant and Egypt. Western Europe, too, had been on the defensive until the victory at Tours, and after that, the struggle ebbed and flowed. However, the West gradually gained wealth and strength, and thoughts turned towards more ambitious projects to reclaim lost territories. In 1074, Pope Gregory VII proposed a military campaign against the Turks to restore Christian control of the Holy Land, but nothing came of it. Twenty years later, in 1095, Byzantine Emperor Alexios I’s urgent appeal to Rome for military aid fell on receptive ears. The new pope, Urban II, decided not only to respond positively but added innovative elements in a dramatic appeal he made to the nobles and knights of France in a rousing recruiting speech at Clermont in November 1095.
First and foremost, he put the liberation of Jerusalem (rather than general help for the beleaguered Byzantines) at the centre of the proposed campaign. In feudal Europe, Christ was seen as the ‘king of kings and lord of lords’. Since under feudalism, a vassal was obliged to come to the assistance of his lord if his lord were attacked, Urban reminded the assembled Christian knights that the destruction of churches or their conversion into mosques constituted an insult to their ultimate feudal lord: Christ himself. Urban called upon Christian knights to do their duty to their Lord Christ by rescuing his earthly kingdom (the Holy Land) from occupation.
Second, Urban II invoked the concept of ‘Just War’. This theory, propagated by St Augustine in the fifth century, broke with earlier Christian pacifist traditions by designating wars declared by Christian leaders against aggression and oppression (e.g., defensive wars) as legitimate or ‘just’. While St Augustine explicitly condemned wars of religious conversion and the use of ‘excessive force’, most mediaeval Christians viewed all wars against pagans as fundamentally legitimate. By the eleventh century, Western Europe had a tradition that honoured, glorified and even sanctified Christian fighting men, provided they fought non-Christians. In his appeal at Clermont, Pope Urban II stressed the fundamental elements of a just war (fighting oppression and aggression) by drawing attention to the suffering of fellow Christians in the Muslim-occupied Near East and highlighting the threat posed by the pagan Seljuks to the New Rome, Constantinople.
Yet, the most radical feature in the appeal at Clermont was Urban’s promise of the remission of sins for those who undertook to liberate Jerusalem. In addition to the assurance they were fighting a just war against aggression and oppression, the participants were offered a route to heaven. This transformed the entire campaign from a military expedition into a pilgrimage, albeit an armed pilgrimage. Possibly Urban had not fully thought through the consequences of his offer. He certainly had not expected the response.
Within a short time, tens of thousands of people had taken vows before their local priest or bishop to go to Jerusalem and pray at the Holy Sepulchre. Notably, the vow was not to kill or fight Saracens; but to pray in Jerusalem. Since the Holy Sepulchre was under Muslim control, the reconquest of Jerusalem was the implicit prerequisite for fulfilling the vow. Yet the vow itself did not require killing or fighting, so it was a vow that anyone could take, regardless of age, gender or health.
To Urban’s dismay, women and children, older people and the disabled– all of no military value – rushed to ‘take the cross’. (The symbol of the crusader vow was a cloth cross worn on one’s outer garment.) This was not what Emperor Alexios had asked for, nor was it what the pope had intended. Alexios had expected trained fighting men who would serve as mercenaries under his officers. Urban wanted Christian knights and sergeants who could fight effectively against the Muslim enemy. Urban vigorously tried to discourage non-combatants from taking the vow and urged the clergy to absolve unsuitable persons of oaths already taken. His efforts may have slowed or reduced the number of non-combatant participants, but neither he nor the secular rulers of the age had the power to stop free men and women from setting off on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
The People’s Crusade
Thus, while the pope diligently coordinated with leading secular lords for an armed expedition led by noblemen and composed of well-armed and provisioned fighting men, thousands of people set off for Jerusalem on their own. They clustered around and followed charismatic leaders, the most famous and successful of whom was a preacher known as Peter the Hermit. Peter first recruited tens of thousands of followers in France and then crossed into Germany, where he was equally successful. Although some knights and isolated nobles joined his improvised host, the preponderance of those who filled his ranks – and numbered in the tens of thousands – came from the lower classes. Most were armed with nothing more than farm and household implements. Many were women.
As they advanced, they felt entitled to food and other necessities. If it was not given to them, they stole it. Some elements in this undisciplined yet fanatical host targeted Jews, plundering and killing them to finance their pilgrimage or as a substitute for the more difficult task of fighting Turks. The problems increased after the hoard passed into Byzantine territory. Clashes with the communities through which this zealous and undisciplined mob passed would have been worse had not the Byzantine Emperor responded by setting up markets along the way.
By 1 August 1096, while the organised military contingents were still marshalling in France, the tens of thousands led by Peter the Hermit reached Constantinople. Here they insisted on continuing into Asia against the emperor’s advice. Cynically, the emperor provided boats to transport them across the Bosporus on 6 August. Once east of the Dardanelles, the host split into two contingents based mainly on language. The German component was surrounded and exterminated by the Turks first, and then several weeks later, the French pilgrims suffered the same fate. Those that converted to Islam were sent east as slaves, while those that did not were killed on the spot. There are no reliable estimates of how many were killed and captured or how many were women. Historians suggest that 20,000 people were lost in this ill-considered expedition. Whatever their numbers, women participants shared the fate of the men: capture or death.
The First Crusade
The official armed expedition organised by the pope set out from France in mid-August 1096 and advanced by various routes to avoid overburdening the local markets. The various contingents converged again in Constantinople. Most arrived by the end of 1096, although some troops did not reach the Byzantine capital until April 1097. Even after all elements had united in Constantinople, they did not merge into a disciplined army under a unified command. Instead, as Professor Thomas Madden worded it, they remained ‘a loosely organised mob of soldiers, clergy, servants and followers heading in roughly the same direction for roughly the same purposes’15
Furthermore, all participants were volunteers. Oaths of fealty that bound vassals to their lords at home were irrelevant in the context of a pilgrimage far beyond the borders of their liege’s territory. Indeed, it could be argued that oaths of fealty were temporarily suspended or superseded by the oath before God to fight for Christ. That said, at the core of any band of soldiers was a nobleman surrounded by his household, his dependants (vassals) and his kin. Most lords had brothers, uncles, nephews and cousins who rode with them. They travelled surrounded by these close-knit groups of men who knew each other well and spoke the same language.
The total host assembled is estimated at anywhere between 50,000 to 60,000, of which 10 per cent or 5,000 were knights. The most important secular leaders of this host were ten noblemen:
Robert, Count of Flanders;
Raymond, Count of Toulouse;
