Queen Sybil of Jerusalem, queen in her own right, was ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1190. Her reign saw the loss of the city of Jerusalem to Saladin, and the beginning of the Third Crusade. Her reign began with her nobles divided and crisis looming; by her death the military forces of Christian Europe were uniting with her and her husband, intent on recovering what had been lost. Sybil died before the bulk of the forces of the Third Crusade could arrive in the kingdom, and Jerusalem was never recovered. But although Sybil failed, she went down fighting – spiritually, even if not physically. This study traces Sybil’s life, from her childhood as the daughter of the heir to the throne of Jerusalem to her death in the crusading force outside the city of Acre. It sets her career alongside that of other European queens and noblewomen of the twelfth century who wielded or attempted to wield power and ask how far the eventual survival of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1192 was due to Sybil’s leadership in 1187 and her determination never to give up.

Queen Sybil of Jerusalem, queen in her own right, was ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1190. This study traces Sybil's life, from her childhood as the daughter of the heir to the throne of Jerusalem to her death in the crusading force outside the city of Acre.

This collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.The period between the First Crusade and the collapse of the "crusader states" in the eastern Mediterranean was a crucial one for medieval historical writing. From the departure of the earliest crusading armies in 1096 to the Mamlūk conquest of the Latin states in the late thirteenth century, crusading activity, and the settlements it established and aimed to protect, generated a vast textual output, offering rich insights into the historiographical cultures of the Latin West and Latin East. However, modern scholarship on the crusades and the "crusader states" has tended to draw an artificial boundary between the two, even though medieval writers treated their histories as virtually indistinguishable. This volume places these spheres into dialogue with each other, looking at how individual crusading campaigns and the Frankish settlements in the eastern Mediterranean were depicted and remembered in the central Middle Ages. Its essays cover a geographical range that incorporates England, France, Germany, southern Italy and the Holy Land, and address such topics as gender, emotion, the natural world, crusading as an institution, origin myths, textual reception, forms of storytelling and historical genre. Bringing to the foreground neglected sources, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.nean were depicted and remembered in the central Middle Ages. Its essays cover a geographical range that incorporates England, France, Germany, southern Italy and the Holy Land, and address such topics as gender, emotion, the natural world, crusading as an institution, origin myths, textual reception, forms of storytelling and historical genre. Bringing to the foreground neglected sources, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.nean were depicted and remembered in the central Middle Ages. Its essays cover a geographical range that incorporates England, France, Germany, southern Italy and the Holy Land, and address such topics as gender, emotion, the natural world, crusading as an institution, origin myths, textual reception, forms of storytelling and historical genre. Bringing to the foreground neglected sources, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.nean were depicted and remembered in the central Middle Ages. Its essays cover a geographical range that incorporates England, France, Germany, southern Italy and the Holy Land, and address such topics as gender, emotion, the natural world, crusading as an institution, origin myths, textual reception, forms of storytelling and historical genre. Bringing to the foreground neglected sources, methodologies, events and regions of textual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.ual production, the collection offers a holistic understanding of the impact of both crusading and settlement on the literary cultures of Latin Christendom.

Includes genealogical charts of kings and noblemen associated with the search for the grail.

Name Unknown: The Life of a Rusian Queen offers an example of an eastern European queen as a corrective to the western European focus of medieval queenship studies. Through a chronological approach, this book looks beyond the popular biographies of royal women such as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Berengaria of Castile and gathers material from sources throughout Europe. It engages with modern queenship studies literature to create a collective biography of a Rusian queen through the various cycles of her life from the marriage of eight-year-old Verkhuslava to the death of the ruler of Minsk whose generosity is recorded, but not her name. For medievalists interested in women and queens, Name Unknown: The Life of a Rusian Queen provides an entry point to an area of Europe rarely studied in that literature. For Slavists, it presents a way of looking at medieval Rusian women that has not yet appeared in this scholarly tradition. Ultimately, this biography integrates Rus, and eastern Europe, into the medieval world and acts as an important reminder that women are essential to our history and thus to our overall understanding of the past. This book is of great use to students and scholars interested in the history of women, queenship, and medieval Europe.

Robert of Nantes was Latin patriarch of Jerusalem from 1240 to 1254, and, according to Bernard Hamilton, was “the most important single person” in the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem after the Battle of Forbie in 1244. Despite this importance, he was a rather obscure figure: almost nothing is known about him before he became bishop of Nantes in 1236. How did he rise to such a prominent position in Jerusalem? Robert of Nantes, Patriarch of Jerusalem (1240–1254) follows Robert from his probable origins in Aquitaine, to Italy where he might have been the unnamed bishop of Aquino. He was briefly transferred to Nantes in the duchy of Brittany, but soon returned to Rome, where he was appointed patriarch of Jerusalem in 1240. As patriarch, he was present for the fall of Jerusalem to the Khwarizmian Turks, the Frankish defeat at Forbie, and the subsequent crusade of Louis IX of France. This is the first book-length biography of any of the Latin patriarchs of Jerusalem. It will be of interest not only to historians of the crusades but also to historians of Italy, Sicily, the Papal States, the Holy Roman Empire, Aquitaine and Brittany. It will hopefully inspire further research on other ecclesiastical and secular leaders of Jerusalem and Cyprus, who may not be traditionally considered “rulers”, but who nevertheless helped govern the Frankish kingdoms.

The 2006 volume of the Haskins Society features another impressive array of academics addressing the period from Anglo-Saxon to Angevin. This latest volume of the Haskins Society Journal presents recent research on the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, Viking and Angevin worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries; topics range from a major reassessment of King Alfred [the last work finished by Patrick Wormald] and examinations of William the Conqueror, Thomas Beckett and Sybil of Jerusalem, to questions of legal testimony, military organization, western geographic knowledge in the middle ages, and more. Contributors: WILLIAM M. AIRD, NATHANIEL LANE TAYLOR, DAVID BATES, JOHN D. HOSLER, ROBERT JONES, HELEN J. NICHOLSON, BERNARD HAMILTON