Pod Insights Gone Medieval Women of the Crusades About this episode The image we usually associate with a Crusader - of a dashing nobleman on a mighty steed heading out for Holy War - often obscures all of the other medieval people who went to the Holy Land, especially the countless women.
In this edition of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega talks to Dr. Natasha Hodgson about the women who went everywhere that men went, and what our own expectations lead us to overlook in history. They discuss key figures like Eleanor of Aquitaine and lesser-known individuals like Margaret of Beverly, underscoring the impact and significance of women in the crusading campaigns and medieval society.
More:
Rise of Crusader States
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7JmbHJRMaDlRn4jOQUlQN8
Gone Medieval is presented by Dr Eleanor Janega. The audio editors are Ella Blaxill and Amy Haddow. The producer is Rob Weinberg, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.
Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.
You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on:
https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Matt Lewis? From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Yarnagger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:42 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
1:16 Speaker 02 This is Nick and Jack from The Best One Yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business.
1:21 Speaker 03 Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing.
1:29 Speaker 02 Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment.
1:37 Speaker 03 Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need.
1:44 Speaker 02 It's Walmart, built for your business.
1:46 Speaker 03 Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com.
1:56 Eleanor Janega? Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.
2:37 Speaker 05 When people hear the term crusader, it's most likely that it conjures up images of dashing Norman soldiers, charging about on fine horses in full armor.
2:51 Speaker 05 But in reality, all sorts of people headed to the Holy Land to fulfill what they saw as a spiritual mission.
3:01 Speaker 05 One group in particular that is often overlooked is the women who headed east. And by that, I don't just mean Eleanor of Aquitaine, the head of her own troops, though I do, of course, mean her as well, but the legions of women who cooked food, washed clothes, mended garments, and even provided sexual services for their fellow crusaders. A while ago, I spoke with Dr. Natasha Hodgson, the author of Women Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative. And it was such an amazing conversation that we thought these lazy summer days were the perfect time to revisit both it and the women who labored in the desert heat to answer a religious calling.
3:42 Eleanor Janega? First of all, Natasha, thank you so much for coming.
3:45 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's really nice to be invited, so thank you.
3:48 Eleanor Janega? So this is a topic near and dear to my heart, because I think that a lot of time, when we consider the Crusades, we think that it's a bunch of guys being blokes, and they're out there on their way to the Middle East, and it's kind of like a lads, lads, lads, but, you know, with religious overtones deal. But there's a lot of women who are also on crusade as well, right?
4:09 Speaker 06 Absolutely, yeah. There are definitely fewer women than men, but there are certainly women going right from the very first expedition. You're absolutely right. In the popular imagination, when people start to think about crusading, you know, they'll envision a knight on horseback with a red cross, you know, actually have a very particular image in their minds about what a crusader is. But actually, those kind of knights were the real minority on crusade expeditions. You know, they were the real elite forces. And of course, they were supported by lots of different types of men, archers, siege engineers, foot soldiers, all the rest of it, and a lot of women as well, who were performing other duties in the camps as they went along.
4:47 Eleanor Janega? So when we say women crusaders, are we sort of talking more about, you know, what you and I would call camp followers, the people who go along in the baggage train and, you know, make sure everyone gets fed? Or are we talking about women who kind of see themselves as engaged in fighting? Or is it a combination of everything?
5:06 Speaker 06 What I can say is there's definitely people of different social status and with different roles on the crusades. And there are noble women who go along with their families, who go along with husbands, brothers, fathers, et cetera. And there are people who are kind of auxiliaries within the camp. I think the term camp followers is sometimes a bit of a blurry term, because sometimes there's the kind of perception that these are people often performing other services for their armies. And they were certainly there too. But I think there were certainly servant roles that women were performing in crusading armies. Things like, for example, holding markets, grinding corn, doing cooking, doing healthcare. We know, for
5:49 Speaker 06 example, of a physician who looked after King Louis IX when he was ill on crusade, a female physician. So yeah, there are lots of people performing different roles. I mean, the question of motivation, whether they see themselves as crusaders is a pretty tricky one, and quite an interesting one to explore.
6:07 Eleanor Janega? Well, okay, I'm sorry, but you can't just say something interesting like that and expect me to not pick it up. So let's dive into that. Okay. Let's say I meet a woman on the road to Antioch and she's in there with the armies and everything. What are things that she is likely to say about herself? Now, I suppose there's a possibility of her saying that she's a crusader, but how else might she describe her situation?
6:29 Speaker 06 I think part of the blurring of the lines comes from this issue about what a crusade actually is. Because we call these expeditions that suddenly started going out to the Latin East in the late 11th, early 12th century as a crusade, but they didn't actually have a word crusade then. For people in the 12th century, they largely called it a pilgrimage. When you travel to a holy place like Jerusalem or Rome or Santiago de Compostela, you were usually going as a pilgrim and you would go often for penance. So if you committed some kind of sin. And the thing about the crusade was it offered full forgiveness for your sins. And this was a very attractive prospect to some people who didn't really have
7:12 Speaker 06 much opportunity to get that kind of carte blanche in their life. So if they were concerned about their salvation, crusading was a way of doing that. But it's very difficult to tell from the sources, especially the chronicle sources about motivation, because they largely said, oh, God decided that everyone would go and so they did.
7:32 Speaker 06 It's a tricky one to put your finger on. I mean, the main thing I suppose to point out is that the difference between a crusade and a pilgrimage was that crusaders were allowed to carry arms. They were allowed to take weapons with them, whereas pilgrims normally weren't. And because women didn't normally carry weapons, should we see them as just ordinary pilgrims who were traveling with crusade armies? Or would they have seen themselves as crusaders and involved in crusading activity? So you kind of have to look in a few other places to find out about how women perceived themselves in relation to the crusades. And very often, you know, they were involved in things like memorialization of family members who'd been on crusade.
8:13 Speaker 06 So they kind of showed their pride in their family members who'd been on crusade before.
8:19 Eleanor Janega? And what are the sources for this then? You say we have to look in non-traditional places, I suppose we could say. And where do we look to find these women?
8:29 Speaker 06 You know, we have some really amazing historical chronicles and accounts of crusading activities, especially the First Crusade, largely because everybody was so amazed that they'd actually managed to capture Jerusalem, that they all wanted to write about it straight away. So we do have these wonderful accounts, which, you know, sort of mention women here and there, sometimes by individual names, but not very often. And they sometimes just sort of say, women did this in the camp. But we don't have much detail about individuals. So you've got to do quite a lot of piecing together of different types of records, like charter evidence and other contextual evidence, in order to find out more about the individual
9:09 Speaker 06 women that participated. So, for example, one of the reasons we know that Hadid of Shini went on the First Crusade is that she and her husband, Dodo of Congrunville, went together and they came back together and they gave a Thanksgiving gift to a monastery. And that kind of tells us, okay, you know, they both went on the crusade together, they came back together and they were thankful for their safe return and gave a gift to a monastery. And so that's where things like charter evidence can be really useful to tell us more about the individuals that we can find out about.
9:40 Eleanor Janega? So I would imagine, given that these are the ways that we see a lot of women, we have a kind of stilted view of the women who go on crusade. And don't get me wrong, that's probably true in general of the medieval period. Because, you know, what survives to us is, as a rule, things that are written by the incredibly wealthy or the incredibly powerful, the sort of people who are involved in high level things, or who can pay someone to write something very nice about them, you know. So I would imagine that the records we have of crusading women skew towards the nobility, or at least the wealthy.
10:12 Speaker 06 Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I mean, the majority of the women that we know about by name will be kind of fairly high level elite women who are mentioned largely because they're traveling with important crusade leaders. Or say you could think about someone like Joanna of Sicily, for example, who goes with her brother, Richard the Lionheart. He kind of picks her up in Sicily on the way and uses her dowry money to help finance the crusade. So yeah, you know, he's making the best of it. But I think it's mostly elite women that we hear about. We do occasionally hear about some people of lower social status. So we know that they're there. I mean, definitely when they talk about women in the camp, women in servants' roles, you know, there are women looking after livestock for the crusaders.
10:57 Speaker 06 There are female prostitutes who are occasionally put aside from the army because they're worried about sin, that they might not be successful in their battles if they have women with them. So there are those kinds of activities as well. And then there are, as I say, healthcare roles, washerwomen. On the third crusade, you have a load of washerwomen, apparently, were the only women who were supposed to go on the crusade. They had to be washerwomen of good repute. Ambrose says that they were as good as monkeys for picking fleas. So, but obviously it's a very important job. You know, you need to keep your army clean and healthy.
11:31 Eleanor Janega? Mm hmm. Also, it's a really terrible job.
11:33 Speaker 06 Not one that I would have particularly enjoyed.
11:36 Eleanor Janega? One of the first things that medieval people ask someone else to do if they can is washing. So like, I'm getting a woman now, get, get her in here. I'm not doing it, you know, let alone a bunch of blokes who are on crusade, I suppose. That is very interesting to me, though, because those are the women I'm most interested in oftentimes is these ordinary women who we don't actually get to see. So for me, it's really lovely when we have a bit of a source that's like, oh, yes, well, the washerwomen are allowed to be here. But that's also very interesting because there's this sort of negative space that is said by this as well. So it's like, well, okay, well, who were the women who were there who weren't washerwomen? You know, and that's usually, as you say, sex workers. They are usually around the fringes
12:18 Eleanor Janega? of almost any activity in the medieval period, but cooks and things like that as well, I would have thought.
12:24 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well, that, I mean, one of the interesting phenomenons that you get with crusading is popular crusades. And these are kind of movements which are slightly looked down on because they represent this kind of outpouring of popular piety, which essentially means people of lower social status who are keen to go on crusades. And whether these are people who are migrating because their local circumstances are really bad, or because they've been inspired by preaching campaigns. There are a few sort of specific ones, like, for example, with the so-called Children's Crusade in 1212, which is made up of, you know, men and women of lower social status. And although you don't get a lot of individual women specifically referenced in
13:09 Speaker 06 the sources that relate to that, and of course, these aren't women who would leave charters behind or anything else that you can necessarily get more information from. But you find that they are mentioned quite a lot. And the question there is whether they're being mentioned to kind of discredit the movement, or whether there actually are large numbers of women involved. So there's those issues as well. But I think they were definitely present and inspired potentially by a message to get involved in these types of movements. And when you get into the 13th century, because people are travelling more by sea and it's more expensive, those types of people are struggling to make the journey out to the East in the same way that the more elite or paid for troops can.
13:51 Eleanor Janega? This is a really interesting point to me, because I think that we even now get quite swayed by the sources. The way that I've heard people talk about the Children's Crusade, for example, like, oh, and isn't that stupid? Aren't these people just incredibly silly? And part of that, I think, really is down to the tone of the sources that we have around it, because ordinary people can't advocate for themselves.
14:13 Speaker 06 It is an issue, especially with these movements, that, you know, these weren't the ones that were necessarily sanctioned by the Pope. He kind of didn't want these people to be involved in crusade armies necessarily, because they were seen to get in the way, they were using up supplies, they slowed everything down. So really, they wanted, you know, fighting men of a certain age. But alongside that, with elite women, you get a recognition that A, they can pay for troops, B, you know, they can perform important functions like negotiating marriage alliances and that kind of thing. They also are an important part of this political network that links the nobility that are settled out in Jerusalem and the so-called crusade estates with the families back in the West.
14:59 Speaker 06 There's a vested interest in keeping those people involved and they're also the ones who are often actually paying for crusades. They're raising money from family lambs to pay for people to go.
15:10 Eleanor Janega? It's interesting that you should mention raising money and noble women because, you know, as you say, by the 13th century, when people are going by sea, we then have perhaps our most famous woman crusader show up. We'd be remiss if we didn't mention Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think. And now granted, I'm biased and I like her, but she is really interesting because she's at the same time, a quite typical noble crusader woman and someone who is not typical at all whatsoever and does some really unique things. But having said that, also, our sources about her are quite difficult to read at times. So shall we talk about Eleanor and unpack her a little?
15:54 Speaker 06 Yeah, it's hard to avoid Eleanor, isn't it? I mean, effectively, you know, she's involved in two crusades. So she goes, first of all, in the middle of the 12th century, she goes with, when she's married to the King of France, Louis VII. This is probably a crusade expedition that's on the same scale as the first crusade. It comes about because the city of Idesa has been destroyed by Zengi and the county of Idesa, which was one of the first crusade estates established is in the Dire Straits. News of this gets back to the West and the Pope calls for a new crusade. Louis is keen to go and he decides to take his wife Eleanor with him. And when she's there, you know, she has a retinue of her own knights. She's a huge landowner. She's got this enormous Duchy of Aquitaine
16:39 Speaker 06 at her beck and call. And, you know, the pair of them go together. It's a funny one because you often have like a lot of information about Louis VII's motivation for going on crusade, but very few people explore why Eleanor might have been interested in going.
16:55 Speaker 06 It's true that by that point, she hadn't produced a male heir for the throne. And she'd only had one daughter thus far. So there may have been an element of her being alongside, so that she could continue to fulfil her sort of familial duties. But she also performed some really interesting kind of diplomatic functions on that crusade. So when they're in Constantinople, for example, she exchanges letters with the Byzantine empress. So she has this diplomatic element to her. I mean, we get sort of reports in some Byzantine sources of a woman who was, you know, dressed as a warrior, as an Amazon woman in armour on horseback. It's probably not Eleanor that the guy is referring to, but lots of people like to repeat this myth of her, you know,
17:39 Speaker 06 travelling as, you know, in full armour. But she, you know, she goes to Constantinople and then the real sort of trouble, I think, happens when she gets to Antioch. And that's where it all goes a bit difficult in the sources because she is related to the current prince of Antioch when the crusaders arrive there and they have just been through a really awful battle where they've lost a lot of their army. Louis had to put his army under the control of the Templars in order to try and get everybody back together and sort it out. So this is the Battle of Mount Cadmus. And then they end up in Antioch and Eleanor's uncle is the prince there. And at the time, he really wants support from the crusade in northern Syria to help support his own ends.
18:21 Speaker 06 So he's really keen to get Louis on side and get his army to come and fight for him and help secure the principality of Antioch. But Louis is not so keen to do this, you know, he's gone on crusade in order to get to Jerusalem and fulfil his vows. And he's not keen, basically, to sort of help his uncle out. But it seems like Eleanor was putting a lot of pressure on and this is then misconstrued or possibly accurately construed by some of the chroniclers as turning into an affair between Eleanor and Raymond. So there's this suggestion that she ends up in a sexual relationship with her uncle. But in sort of normal court functions, if you want to get the king's ear, you approach the queen, and that's the normal way to go about it. So whether this is misconstrued
19:05 Speaker 06 or whether there are other arguments going on, we're told by the chroniclers that Louis says, you know, no, I'm not doing it. Come with me. You're off to Jerusalem. And this causes a huge spat between Louis and Eleanor, which a few years later, they end up getting divorced. And how far this action is a reason for the divorce is open to question. So did they do it or didn't they? I don't know. I think this was normal politics. And I think that when Louis refused to help Eleanor's uncle after she'd, you know, been interceding on his behalf, she was particularly upset and annoyed. I mean, we do know that after the crusade is completed, and there's a failed siege at Damascus, Louis and Eleanor
19:47 Speaker 06 come back home and they reconcile. They go via the Pope in Rome. He even gets them back into the marital bed, which results in another daughter. So they do reconcile after the crusade. But then a few years later, they're divorced. So.
20:00 Eleanor Janega? Well, we've all had really difficult holidays with our partners.
20:03 Speaker 06 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
20:20 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
20:54 Speaker 02 This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business.
20:59 Speaker 03 Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing.
21:07 Speaker 02 Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment.
21:15 Speaker 03 Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need.
21:22 Speaker 02 It's Walmart built for your business.
21:24 Speaker 03 Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com.
21:30 Speaker 07 Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from History Hit.
22:14 Eleanor Janega? Now, I'm quite interested in the sources surrounding the Battle of Mount Cadmus and things like that as well, because the way they talk about Eleanor, and some of them really like to squarely put the blame on her for this disaster, saying, oh, her baggage train was too big. She's just such a silly woman and was carrying all of her dresses. And then that slowed people down, and she didn't pay attention, and she rode off and left the other people, and that's how, you know. It's a very gendered way of talking about the differences between men and women here. And also, it's this great way of just saying, oh, yeah, well, you know, something went wrong, probably the woman's fault.
22:54 Speaker 06 Yeah, absolutely. So the story about the baggage train, I mean, really, that comes from a couple of different sources, but certainly it's Geoffrey Ronsong, who is one of Eleanor's vassals, who is blamed for going ahead with the vanguard when he was supposed to wait for everybody else. It's because they're kind of strung out across the mountain that they're easy pickings then for the Turks to attack. But to be fair, so many myths and legends have accumulated about Eleanor over time. And one of the most frustrating things about her is that she didn't necessarily leave her own record of events. You know, she never told her own story. We don't have a chronicle that's specifically dedicated to Eleanor. And although there are sort of poetic works that might be linked to her literary circle and that kind of thing,
23:38 Speaker 06 again, she's got no one to advocate in the same way as some of the kings and monarchs do at the time. And it's when you put all of these colourful stories together, that's what makes her as a historical character so fascinating. And one of the reasons why she's so famous is because people just love re-examining those stories over and over again.
23:58 Eleanor Janega? They're certainly excellent. But I don't want to spend too much time on her because, you know, everything could just evolve to an Eleanor of Aquitaine fest if you let it. So this is kind of the 13th century iteration of these pilgrimages. Do we see as time goes on and conditions kind of worsen in the Levant, do we see a kind of tapering off of women's involvement? Or is it a ground swell at the beginning where everyone says, okay, that's it, we're going out, we're going to free the Holy Land, et cetera, et cetera. And then by the time, you know, things are getting a little bit more dicey, women stop showing up? Or is that just a function of how wealth works and the people who can move out there?
24:40 Speaker 06 Yeah, I mean, I think certainly there are still women involved in crusading activity right the way through the 13th century. We have women who take part in the Fifth Crusade, and they go as couples. We have, you know, a bit more charter evidence or legal evidence here and there that helps us to identify those women. So they maybe don't pop up so much in the Chronicles, but they are kind of there, still going. We have a list of a crusade ship from the mid 13th century that went out around the time of Louis the Ninth Crusade. I think it's the seventh. It gets a bit confusing, all the numbers kind of add up. I mean, the main thing is actually, we do tend to think about these crusades as being first, second, third, fourth, fifth. But there was constant
25:22 Speaker 06 pilgrim traffic going back and forth between the West and the Crusade States every year. So a bunch of pilgrims would arrive every year, especially for Easter, to see the services at Easter. And women were very much involved in that. And so this passenger list on the crusader ship tells us that there were a large number of women. So some of them travelling with husbands, some of them travelling in groups, some of them travelling potentially on their own. So it's definitely still something that women are involved in. And you also have women who have claims to titles in the East who travel out, like Lucia of Tripoli, for example, who goes out to claim her inheritance of Tripoli, right at the end of what we would call the end of the Crusader period. So she's there when it falls to Cala One in 1289.
26:06 Eleanor Janega? So I'm very interested in that, in the women who see themselves not just as pilgrims, not just as individuals who are kind of going out and they're performing a sacred duty and then they will eventually return home. But the women who settle or consider themselves to have links there, because it's generally assumed that the great majority of those who settle are men. But do we have a lot of evidence for women who stay around in the Levant?
26:34 Speaker 06 It's an interesting question to think about, women who go out on crusade, who actually then end up staying in the East. I think those are relatively few. But as I say, there are women who go out to get married often, and that then ends up leaving them to settle. And when they do go, you know, they take large resources with them. So the reason they're attractive as a marriage partner is because they can bring resources that they desperately need in the Crusader states. So you could look at Bolden I of Jerusalem's marriage to Adelaide Del Vasto, for example, in 1113, where she brings out a vast fleet with grain and archers and, you know, all sorts of things that they need and cash, of course, very important. So this hugely wealthy
27:15 Speaker 06 widow that he marries largely because he needs her money. And then in 1116, he decides he's fed up of her and divorces her.
27:23 Speaker 06 And goes back to his original wife because he'd already been married. Shock, horror. So she gets sent back to Sicily and is very annoyed about it. And this is a big insult to Roger of Sicily, who was potentially hoping to get the throne after Baldwin. It was a big scandal.
27:38 Eleanor Janega? See, I love this because here we have a bunch of people who are in theory engaged on a kind of holy endeavor, re-Christianizing the Middle East, or indeed Christianizing it at all. And they're acting a fool. They're still intrigued. They're still scandal.
27:53 Speaker 06 Oh, good Lord, yes. We could start talking about the mistresses of the patriarchs of Jerusalem. But, but yeah, I mean, it's very much a political space. And in fact, you know, you talk about the re-Christianization. There isn't really missionary activity going on here. That's not necessarily what the Crusaders are attempting to do. I mean, certainly what they try to do is establish Latin Christian rites as the main form of Christianity within the Crusader states. So they have a Latin patriarch of Jerusalem and they try to get a new system of Latin priests and bishops installed. But there are also a lot of existing Christians there. So there's, you know, Syriac Christians, Greek Orthodox Christians, Armenian Christians.
28:34 Speaker 06 So they already have a Christian population and those are the people that they tend to marry when they first arrive.
28:55 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
29:30 Speaker 02 This is Nick and Jack from the best one yet, and we are excited to tell you about Walmart Business.
29:34 Speaker 03 Staying ahead of business trends means moving fast and adapting quickly. Walmart Business helps you simplify operations so you can focus on building the next big thing.
29:42 Speaker 02 Find exactly what your organization needs with their ever-expanding business assortment and everyday low prices. Keep your momentum going fast with reliable shipping and fulfillment.
29:50 Speaker 03 Eligible organizations can take advantage of tax-free shopping, both in-store and online, saving you more while getting you everything you need.
29:57 Speaker 02 It's Walmart built for your business. Sign up for a free Walmart Business account today at business.walmart.com.
30:20 Speaker 06 So you have the first couple of rulers of the Crusader states making alliances with Armenian families, for example. And although they follow a slightly different form of Christianity, that's preferable perhaps to them to marry, say, indigenous Muslims. So we have Fulka of Chartres sort of saying, you know, we've started to marry into the local population. He uses the term Saracen, but he says that only with the grace of baptism. So they would have to convert to Christianity first. But we have some major figures like, I mean, Melisandre of Jerusalem is a particular favorite of mine, just because she's, well, she's awesome. But she is the child of a Crusader marriage. Her mom is Armenian, but follows the Greek Orthodox rites in the church, and her dad
31:04 Speaker 06 is a first Crusader, Baldwin II of Jerusalem. And she has this reign where she's sort of ruling jointly with her husband and son. But she's like really in charge through that whole middle period of the 12th century. So from, say, 1130 to 1150 really is her key period. And that's when the kingdom is at its height. It's expanding, they're building castles, she's pouring lots of money into patronage. And she's clever in that she patronizes not just Crusader activities, but also the Eastern Christians who were there. So that she builds relationships with those communities in order to stay popular.
31:47 Speaker 06 And she does it very effectively. She's kind of a bit of a bridge between these different communities. And I think, you know, women do perform that important function. I find it amazing to think that's also the time when the Second Crusade happens, that the Council of Palmaria, she would have been there with Eleanor. We'd never have any idea what conversation they might have had. So there are times when really powerful women are involved in some very big decisions.
32:11 Eleanor Janega? I find her absolutely enthralling because she does all my favorite things that women in the Middle Ages do. She's a real builder. She makes things and leaves an actual physical mark on the landscape. And I think it's really testament to the important function of women at the time. There's a tendency within history generally, and certainly the history of the Crusades, to say that, you know, the important things are battles. And the important things is one guy with a stick hitting another guy with a stick. And that's what history is, you know. But really, the things that survive to us, and the things that we can say objectively change culture or change society are often these so-called soft projects that women are
32:55 Eleanor Janega? engaged in. The making churches, or connecting to other people, and, you know, making sure that you've got good marriages, or even doing works for the poor, things like that, that bring people in and really bolster the monarchy. These are all these traditionally feminine things that get ignored because there's no blood involved.
33:16 Speaker 06 Absolutely. Like what we would call soft power is really, really influential in the medieval period. It's all about family. And if you've got the ability to influence the way that families are connected, and if you're a bridge between two different families, you have a particularly influential role. But also, in terms of thinking about monarchy as well, I do like this term, especially for Melis on corporate monarchy, where although monarchy is supposed to be the rule of one, it's actually a couple who are working together with different functions. And when the couple work well together, then things are harmonious and usually things go well. But if they fall out, then it can be another story. But I think there is this element of where, you know, you have this family that's at the
34:00 Speaker 06 heart of rulership, who all have their own roles to play and have to do them effectively. This is a case throughout the history of the Latin East, particularly because we have so many queens that end up ruling in Jerusalem and elsewhere. And that's partly because Crusaders keep coming out and dying, you know, they're busy sort of dying on the battlefield or whatever, or usually from illness of some form or other because they're not used to the diet or the climate or that kind of thing.
34:26 Eleanor Janega? It's truly remarkable, you know, if you want to look at a group of women who are really ruling in and of their own, it's often the Crusader states that we look to because, yeah, he's out on the battlefield or he contracted leprosy.
34:40 Speaker 06 Poor old Baldwin.
34:41 Eleanor Janega? I know, poor Baldwin, what a guy. Not that that has anything to do with being in the Crusader states in particular, but you know, it's notable, that's all. It's interesting because for a subject that is often considered to be very masculine because of the military elements of it, actually what is going on on a level of power or politics is often quite feminine.
35:07 Speaker 06 Yeah, this is a time where there's a lot of negotiation to be done and that requires gift giving, diplomacy, interpreting, so translation, language skills, understanding different communities. And I think that kind of soft power and etiquette is something that women are probably well educated and trained in because that's what their role is going to be at court. And we know, for example, that some Byzantine women were very well educated. They had somebody like Anna Komnena, for example, who writes the history of her father, Emperor Alexius, who's involved in the calling of the first crusade. She was hugely well educated in terms of literary education. People also don't know, she was
35:51 Speaker 06 really good at medicine, so she'd run a hospital before. You know, she's an astonishing woman and writes this amazing history of her father and gives us another interesting perspective on the arrival of the first crusade. But of course, she makes a bid for political power, but it's not successful. And she ends up confined to a monastery, which is why she ends up spending her time writing history. She's a really fascinating example of, you know, really high-powered, intelligent women who know politics intimately and are very skillful at kind of understanding their roles at court. But again, you know, the focus there tends to be on elites. But we do sometimes hear about women who are of lower social status, who were born out in the East.
36:34 Speaker 06 So someone like Margaret of Beverly, I don't know if you've come across her, but she's one of my favourites, so.
36:38 Eleanor Janega? I have not, tell me more.
36:41 Speaker 06 Oh, okay, you must know Margaret's story then. So, because you were asking me before about, you know, do we know anyone who's like not elite? She is probably still quite a rich towns person, but she comes from a small market town, Beverly, in East Yorkshire, or her parents do. But her parents go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and she's actually born in Jerusalem. So sometimes she's called Margaret of Beverly, sometimes she's called Margaret of Jerusalem. She talks about their hardships coming back on the journey. But then, when they arrive back in Beverly, she has a younger brother. He grows up to become a cleric and goes into the circle of Thomas Becket. I think her parents probably passed away because she's involved in looking after her brother. But when his career is kind of settled, she decides she wants to go back to the land of her birth.
37:26 Speaker 06 So she decides to go on pilgrimage and ends up hitting Jerusalem just at the time that Saladin besieges it, which is unfortunate, oops, in 1187. And we know about her because her brother writes this amazing poem about her after she dies. It's like in the first person, so it almost sounds like, you know, she's telling him the stories, it's really great. And she talks about how she's fought on the walls of Jerusalem, wearing a cooking pot on her head as a helmet, and takes water to the soldiers. And she gets hit in the leg by shrapnel from a millstone that's thrown against the walls, basically. And she's still got a scar to prove it. And then when the city is taken, Saladin takes a tribute from some of those who can
38:08 Speaker 06 afford it to go free. So she manages to pay for her freedom. But after that, she's taken into slavery for a bit. She has to do hard labour. She describes that in quite a lot of detail. She's finally ransomed by a kind Christian person from Tyre who pays for her ransom. And then she doesn't go home straight away, though. She decides to go on another pilgrimage towards Antioch to see Margaret of Antioch's place and then gets taken into slavery again and freed again. And then finally, she manages to get home with the troops that have come over from the Third Crusade. But she's not finished there. She goes on to Rome. She goes on to Santiago. And then finally, she turns up
38:50 Speaker 06 at her brother's monastery in France. By that point, he's over in France. He doesn't recognise her. So she has to tell him the names of their parents, Huan and Cibilla of Beverly, in order that he'll believe that she's his sister. And so she tells him, you know, her life story. And then he says, look, you've had loads of adventures. Now you need to go and end your days in their monastery. And so she does. And the poem is probably written after her death for the nuns in the monastery to kind of reflect on her experiences. And, you know, there's a lot of wandering in the wilderness. And it's probably not like reportage, you know, it's a poem, of course, as well. So we can't take everything at face value. But it's just such a brilliant story. And also, you know,
39:31 Speaker 06 somebody who is of independent means, who goes on her own on pilgrimage, but ends up in these amazing events and has this fantastic life story. So I always find it amazing how far they travel, how far they go, and how there are these women who are engaging with all sorts of adventures across Europe at this time.
39:52 Eleanor Janega? Well, I suppose it just goes to show, you know, even if we can't say that this is a 100% accurate record of what happened to her, the fact that this is being written indicates that there is an idea that it's somewhat possible, even if it's meant to be incredibly laudable and something to aspire to. I don't think that we're going to get better than Margaret of Beverly. So I think this is probably the place to leave it. Natasha, I can't thank you enough for being here. This has been an absolute delight.
40:20 Speaker 06 Oh, well, thank you very much. It's always a pleasure.
40:24 Speaker 05 Thanks once again to Natasha for joining me, and thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you were interested in women in the medieval period, why not check out our past episodes on women writers or warrior Viking women? Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, released weekly, as well as ad-free podcasts, by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.
41:29 Speaker 01 Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.
Previous The Battle of Bosworth Next King Edward I: Hammer of the Scots Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated