Women's role in crusades and crusading examined through a close investigation of the narratives in which they appear. Narratives of crusading have often been overlooked as a source for the history of women because of their focus on martial events, and perceptions about women inhibiting the recruitment and progress of crusading armies. Yet women consistently appeared in the histories of crusade and settlement, performing a variety of roles. While some were vilified as "useless mouths" or prostitutes, others undertook menial tasks for the army, went on crusade with retinuesof their own knights, and rose to political prominence in the Levant and and the West. This book compares perceptions of women from a wide range of historical narratives including those eyewitness accounts, lay histories andmonastic chronicles that pertained to major crusade expeditions and the settler society in the Holy Land. It addresses how authors used events involving women and stereotypes based on gender, family role, and social status in writing their histories: how they blended historia and fabula, speculated on women's motivations, and occasionally granted them a literary voice in order to connect with their audience, impart moral advice, and justify the crusade ideal. Dr NATASHA R. HODGSON teaches at Nottingham Trent University.

Excerpt from Heroines of the Crusades Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, whether glorious in the beauty of her first temple, and the excellent wisdom of her philosopher king, or veiled in the darkness of that fatal eclipse in which the solemn scenes of Calvary consummated her glory and shame, has occupied a position in the great drama of human events, more interesting and important than any other city on the globe. But Jerusalem, in the gloom of that moral night which gathered over the nations after the fall of the western Empire of the Romans, exerted a greater influence upon the minds of men than at any for mer period. The insulting Moslem felt a degree of veneration for the splendid ruins over which he walked with all a conqueror's pride - the African anchorite left his solitary hermitage to weep upon Mount Olivet - the European adventurer wreathed his stafi' with the branch ing palm from her holy hills - the despairing Jew sat in sackcloth at her fallen gates, and even the mingled barbarians of the East united with the Christian to revere the spot where art achieved its proudest monument, and poetry found the theme of its sublimest song. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work provides an exploration of the issue of gender in relation to the crusades. It discusses a range of subjects, from the medieval construction of gender to the military participation of women in the crusades. It provides both readings of well-known texts and examinations of newer source material, as well as discussing other topics such as masculinity, the role of female saints and religious figures in the crusades, and the realtionship of crusaders to their families.

The crusade movement needed women: their money, their prayer support, their active participation, and their inspiration... This book surveys women's involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when the last crusader state, Cyprus, was captured by the Ottoman Turks. It considers women's actions not only on crusade battlefields but also in recruiting crusaders, supporting crusades through patronage, propaganda, and prayer, and as both defenders and aggressors. It argues that medieval women were deeply involved in the crusades but the roles that they could play and how their contemporaries recorded their deeds were dictated by social convention and cultural expectations. Although its main focus is the women of Latin Christendom, it also looks at the impact of the crusades and crusaders on the Jews of western Europe and the Muslims of the Middle East, and compares relations between Latin Christians and Muslims with relations between Muslims and other Christian groups.

Lady Sybil's Choice is a story by Emily Sarah Holt. It narrates a tale of the Crusades, with knights, kings, queens and many heroes and villains, in this classic story where heroism and tragedy intertwine.