p. 4 On 15 July 1099, after gruelling years of war and marching across Europe and Anatolia, the crusaders took Jerusalem. The result of this success was that, for nearly 200 years, |Western European occupited Outremer. They created Christian states there, built fortresses that still dominate the landscae today, and for 88 years, held Jerusalem itself as a Christian capital. The deeds of men in Outremer in this period are a hyperactive field of study, yet the study of the deeds of the women is comparatively dormant. Women plated a key role in both the crusades themselves and the governance of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. When armies mached east from Europe, women marched with them. Men who could afford to often hrought their families and poorer women also travelled with the army. These women prepared meals, washed clothes, nursed the wounded, collected firewood and were the lovers of the soldiers. On rare occasions they even sallied onto the battlefield either to bring water to the men or to fight themselves. In the established territories of Outremer noblewomen organised the logistics of sieges and negotiated with the enemy and the women of the lower classes toiled with the men to undermine fortifications. They endured unimaginable hardships, died alongside the men and also fell victim to rape, imprisonment and slavery. Thousands of European women found themselves traded in the slave markets of Aleppo and Damascus during the 12th century. When the male rulers of Outremer overplayed their hands and found themselves rotting in enemy dungeons, they were ransomed by their wives.”
p. 52 Given Alice’s position as the mother of the heir of Antioch and the possessor of such important lands, she was too valuable a commodity to be allowed to remain single. According to the laws of the land, she should have been given a choice between three suitors but she would have nad no say in who those options were and would have been forced to marry one of them very quickly..If she was to reject Jerusalem’s suzerainty, then all of a sudden she was the highest status noble in the Principality. With her father and his armies far away in Jerusalem, the chance was Alice’s to seize Antioch and claim control of her own life. Thus, in an act of open rebellion against Jerusalem and her father’s authority, she assumed the regency of Antioch and proclaimed herself in control of the city. While it was not particularly shocking for rulers of one area to reject the suzerainty of another, it was shocking indeed for a daughter to reject the authority of her father, as this challenged the partriarchal fabric of society and transgressed established gender roles and the Christian doctrine of deference to parents”
p. 111 It is unclear how long Melisende’s renovations of the Holy Sepulchre and the surrounding area of the city took, but testimony of the Muslim geographer Muhammed al-Idrisi in 1154 demonstrates that the Holy Sepulchre’s bell tower at least was finished by this point.. This indicates that the bulk of the construction was carried out during the period of Melisende’s primact in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Given her other demonstrated interest in ecclestiastical patronage, it is certain that she plated a large part in arranging and commissioning this renovation, in cooperation with the Patriarch of Jerusalem.. Eminen t crusades historian Hans Eberhard Mayer has suggested further that Melisende’s support of the renovation went further than a display of her personal piety and patronage, but rather was a bid to consolidate her political position by winning the support of the church as her son grew older. The importance of this would be demonstrated in the coming years. A storm was brewing that would fracture the relationship between mother and son.
Melisend had a strained relationship with her eldest son. She favoured her second child Amalhric, who remained her staunch supporter all of his life. Melisende much have always regarded Baldwin III with unease. Given the laws of succession, he was always going to be the one to supplant her, and she much have lived with the fear that he too might try to exclude her from rule, just as Fulk had tried to. .. he was an annoited co-ruler, and queenship was less secure than kingship.”
p. 154 “For all the reams writen about Eleanor of (Aqutaine) she is also one of the most mysterious women of the medival period. Even before her death, she was written into the narrative of medieval romance… The talk of her infidelity proved fertile fodder for the rumour mill, and soon stories were circulating in literature and by word of mouth that, beyond having an affair with her uncle, Eleanor had attempted to elope with Saladdin himself, and that she had been reclaimed by her husband with one foot on a Saracen ship, preparing to sail off into the sunset. It is worth noting that at the time of Eleanor’s journey to the Holy Land, Saladin was not yet 12 years old.”
p. 217 “A compromise was brokered whereby the barons made Sibylla an offer … the trone of the Kingdom of Jerusalem on the condition that she consented to divorce Guy. Sibylla countered this with the conditions that her daughters remained leitimate, that Guy kept his lands as a nobleman of the Kingdom, and that she be allowed to choose her next husband from among the nobility of the region. This was duly agreed, the consensus being that no one else could be as incompetent a king as Guy, and preparations began for Sigylla’s coronation. … perhaps the most dramatically charged episode in the history of the Queens of Jerusalem. T… once the sacred oil had touched Sibylla and the crown had been settled on her brow, she was invincible in her court and had absolute authority… the first time a woman would be crowned in her own right without a husband alongside her. Melisende had been crowned for her blood right, but jointly with two men, her husband and son. Other queens had been crowned as consorts with their husbands, but here Sibylla was setting a precedent with an unmarried female monarch with the power to choose her own consort. Her first deed as monarch was an act of daring brilliance …Sibylla stood. She ‘invoked the Grace of the Holy Spirit’… She declared ‘I, Sibylla, choose for myself as King and as my husband Guy of Lusignan, the man who has been my husband… Sibylla had been very crafty indeed.. she had artfully constructed a loophole and at her coronation darted through it triumphantly.”
About