The Franks on Cyprus

 Just as the native population of Cyprus differed in character from the local inhabitants of Syria and Palestine, the Frankish elite that established itself on Cyprus also differed in subtle but significant ways from the elite of the earlier crusading states. Frankish rule was created on Cyprus not by crusaders who had slogged their way across Europe and Asia in a grueling campaign inspired by religious fervor and characterised by hardship, attrition, and blood, but rather by the disinherited descendants of those first crusaders. 

 

The first Frankish lord, Guy de Lusignan, had the dubious honour of being responsible for the loss of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and, with it, the respect of his vassals and subjects. When he arrived in Cyprus in late 1192 with only a few supporters as landless as himself, he was a deposed king, unable to come to terms with his fate and still claiming his lost crown. Fortunately for Cyprus, Guy de Lusignan died within two years of his arrival, and his far more competent elder brother Aimery shaped the future kingdom. 

Although not born in Outremer, Aimery had settled there around 1170. He married into one of the established families, the Ibelins, and rose to Constable of the Kingdom under Baldwin IV. When Aimery stepped into his brother's shoes as Lord of Cyprus in 1194, he was more ‘Poulain’ than crusader. That meant he understood compromise, adaptation and survival in an ‘alien’ environment. The knights with Aimery were likewise men who had lost their lands in Syria, men who had once held fiefs in Oultrejourdain and Galilee, in Hebron, Bethsan, Nazareth or Ascalon – all the areas of the former Kingdom of Jerusalem that had not been regained in the course of the Third Crusade. They, too, knew that survival in the Near East required more than a force of arms; it required cooperation with the native population and exchange with the surrounding states in the form of trade and diplomatic relations. 

The Lusignans adopted a conscious policy of encouraging immigration. According to legend, Guy sent word to Armenia, Antioch, Acre and throughout the Latin East, saying he would give land generously to all settlers. Allegedly, Guy offered to reward not only knights but sergeants and burgesses as well, and the response included ‘shoemakers, masons and Arabic scribes‘.[i] The reference to Arabic scribes is notable as it highlights that Orthodox Christians also resettled in Cyprus after the establishment of Frankish rule. In particular, Maronites, Melkites and Armenians appear to have moved to Cyprus, settling on the coastal plains, principally on the north of the island. These ‘Syrian’ immigrants were granted special status by the Lusignan kings, who recognized their service and loyalty to the Franks on the mainland and gave them special privileges. Immigrants from the mainland crusader states also continued to provide turcopoles and infantry for the armies of their Frankish lords. 

In the second half of the thirteenth century, Cyprus experienced regular waves of refugees from Syria and Palestine as one metropolitan area after another fell to the Mamluks. The waves became a veritable ‘flood’ of refugees in 1291 when the last vestiges of the crusader states on the mainland collapsed under the Mamluk onslaught. Yet, like emigration to America centuries later, it was rarely the destitute and unskilled who escaped impending disaster. The bulk of the refugees from Latin Syria were noblemen, knights, affluent merchants and administrators, or, at least, skilled burgesses. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Franks and their Syrian allies made up approximately one-quarter of the population of Cyprus, which means they were between 35,000 and 40,000 strong. 

Long before that flood, however, Cyprus benefitted from the arrival of the nobility of Outremer: the Bethsans, Gibelets, Montbeliards, Briennes, Montforts and, of course, the Ibelins. These were not landless families like most of the refugees, but powerful lords that retained sizeable landholdings and titles on the mainland. They had resources and interests outside the Kingdom of Cyprus, a fact that proved both advantageous and dangerous. On the one hand, their holdings in Syria enabled them to bring resources and men to Cyprus. On the other hand, their interests in Syria often led them to draw resources away from Cyprus to prop up their holdings on the mainland. Critically, and often overlooked, Cypriot fiefs held from these nobles enabled ordinary knights, who had lost their fiefs on the mainland, to maintain their character and status as landholders. The lack of a Syrian fief did not necessarily mean that a Frankish knight belonged to the landless urban class, living on the handouts from the crown; many knights such as Philip de Novare held land-fiefs from the Syrian barons — on Cyprus. 

The Kings of Cyprus, on the other hand, were surrounded not by jihadist states but by water. The fiefs they distributed brought their holders income and status without requiring huge investments in the construction, manning and maintenance of expensive fortresses. The nobles of Cyprus had money for the pleasures of life – hunting, hawking, patronage of the arts and church. For the kings, it meant that the nobility was not well-positioned to rebel and far more dependent on royal patronage for status and prestige. 

The Cypriot nobles became famous for their wealth and love of pleasure. One visitor in the mid-fourteenth century claimed that the Cypriot knights and nobles were the richest in the world. He noted that the Count of Jaffa (a Cypriot, despite the title) had 500 hunting dogs, while others had dozens of falconers and some kept leopards for hunting. They also engaged in frequent tournaments. The Lusignan palace in Nicosia was considered one of the finest in the medieval world, with a great throne room, many golden ornaments, tapestries, paintings, organs, clocks, multiple baths and fountains, gardens and a menagerie.[ii] Unfortunately, the Lusignan palaces were destroyed during the Ottoman occupation, and all that remains are fragments now preserved in the museums of Cyprus. 

  Slaves

No description of medieval Cyprus is complete without reference to slavery. Unlike the Latin Church, the Orthodox Church did not condemn the slavery of fellow Christians. In the crusader states on the mainland, Latin dominance was strong enough to eliminate Christian slavery despite tolerating the enslavement of Muslims, primarily captives. In Cyprus, however, the custom of owning slaves was so widespread among the native elites that the ‘tolerance’ of the Lusignans shamefully extended to the acceptance of Christian slavery.

---

[i] Continuation of William of Tyre quoted in Peter Edbury, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades 1194-1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 16.

[ii] A History of the Crusades: The Art and Architecture of the Crusader States, Vol. 4, ed. Harry W. Hazard (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 175.

 

 

The bulk of this entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.

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Dr. Helena P. Schrader is also the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades.

                         

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Frankish Rule in Cyprus: The Fate and Status of the Greeks

 Whereas the crusader states in Syria/Palestine were populated by a patchwork of minorities adhering to various faiths, the Kingdom of Cyprus at the time of the crusader conquest was a homogenous state inhabited almost exclusively by Greeks. There were only comparatively small Armenian, Maronite, Jacobite, Coptic, Ethiopian and other Christian communities. Greek was the primary language, and most important, Cyprus had never been fully conquered and occupied by the Muslims. As a result, while the population had paid tribute, it had not been subjected to systematic decimation and humiliation in the form of deportations, enslavement and Islamisation. In short, the Greeks of Cyprus had not yet been ‘dhimmis’; a fate that did not overtake them until the Ottoman occupation. This necessarily impacted their reaction to the Franks and their interactions with them.

As in Syria and Palestine, however, most of the former elites, in this case, the Byzantine aristocratic class, emigrated before the establishment of Frankish rule. The despot Isaac Comnenus had driven most of the Greek landowning class back to Constantinople with excessive taxes, expropriations and tyrannical behaviour before Richard I’s conquest. Of those that remained, some left during the period of transition, while a few aristocratic families remained. Initially, the latter retained land and wealth but did not owe military service and were not feudal vassals. By the fifteenth century, however, even this distinction began to blur, and Greeks were enfeoffed.

In the era of the crusades, Cyprus was overwhelmingly agricultural, and rural inhabitants made up about 95 per cent of the population. The peasants of Cyprus were divided into two categories in accordance with Byzantine practice. There were ‘paroikoi’, unfree peasants tied to the land, similar to serfs in Western Europe, and ‘francomati’, free tenant farmers. The status of these lower classes was not substantially altered under Lusignan rule. For the most part, the new Frankish landowners employed Greek stewards on their estates. They also drew on the services of Greek ‘jurats’, who represented the interests of the communities, analogous to the ‘rais’ that represented the Muslim peasants in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. For the vast majority of peasants, the change of regime was hardly noticeable. While it was no worse than what had gone before, it was also not dramatically better, as in the case of former ‘dhimmis’ on the mainland. With time, increased prosperity brought benefits and growth in the urban population. This, in turn, increased the prices of agricultural products, benefitting the peasant class as well.

The small Greek middle-class was composed of professionals and bureaucrats who had administered the island for Constantinople ever since the Arabs were expelled in the tenth century. The civil servants were often members of the Orthodox clergy and sometimes belonged to ecclesiastical families with generations of government service. (Greek priests could marry, so a career in the church was often a family tradition). Others were remnants or lesser members of the old aristocracy. Otherwise, the middle class consisted of well-educated secular professionals such as doctors, lawyers, translators, accountants and the like. 

All these men were invaluable to the Lusignans, who had the sense not only to employ them but to retain the very institutions that the Byzantines had used to administer the island. Thus, although the language of the Lusignan court was French, the Greek administrative class remained in place, evolving into a new Greek ‘aristocracy of the pen’. By the fifteenth century, some members of this wealthy Greek elite had been accepted into the Frankish nobility, although conversion to Latin Christianity was necessary to hold a fief.

As in Latin Syria, the native — in this case, Greek — elites contributed to the defence of the realm by providing the vitally important horse archers of the Cypriot army, misleadingly called ‘turcopoles’.  These are recorded not only in royal service but in the service of individual lords, an indication of considerable prosperity for at least some rural Greek families. In the civil war against Emperor Frederick II’s lieutenants (1229-1232) and the Genoese war (1373-1374), the Cypriot Greeks sided with the Franks against the outsiders from the Holy Roman Empire and Italy.

Culturally and socially, the Greeks remained dominant. Although a Latin church was established on the island, the Orthodox Church retained its hierarchy and clergy. The Latin church siphoned off income in the form of land and tithes from the Latin landlords, but the vast majority of the population, including many wealthy patrons, remained Orthodox, enabling the Greek Orthodox Church to prosper throughout Lusignan rule. There was only one incident of persecution of Orthodox clergy in the entire Lusignan era. It was during a civil war in which the ruling king was a minor (and probably not in control) and possibly not present on the island at all.

Furthermore, there was no segregation based on religion or ethnicity. Greeks and Latins lived side-by-side, although the Italian communities voluntarily congregated in the coastal cities. The Latin feudal elite was most heavily concentrated in the capital of Nicosia, while the Italians were present primarily in the ports. Already by the late thirteenth century, the Latin population was commissioning Greek artists to paint icons for personal worship, while in the fourteenth century, the Greek Orthodox were happy to borrow Gothic style elements such as flying buttresses when building a new Orthodox cathedral.

Despite attempts by the pope to prevent intermarriage celebrated according to the Greek rites, by the fourteenth century, such marriages were so common that the Latin Archbishop of Nicosia could only attempt to impose some restrictions over them. Likewise, although Latin remained the language of the High Court, Greek was the language of the streets and much  diplomatic correspondence. Greeks learned French and Latin to advance their careers in the Lusignan bureaucracy, while the Franks learned Greek to conduct business on their estates, engage in trade and commerce and participate in cultural activities. Over time, a unique Cypriot dialect evolved, which borrowed many words from French and became the language of the island. 

The overall satisfaction of the natives with Frankish rule is reflected in the fact that there was not a single uprising after the establishment of the Lusignan dynasty, nor are there any reports of Frankish landlords being murdered or held for ransom. This was not due to ‘passivity’ on the part of an oppressed population, which had risen twice in the short period between the departure of Richard I and the arrival of the Lusignans. Crete provides an illuminating comparison. Here, there were seven major rebellions against Latin (Venetian) rule in the thirteenth century and another three in the fourteenth century. In contrast to the Venetians, however, Lusignan rule was not designed to exploit a colony for the benefit of a distant power. The Lusignans lived in Cyprus among their people and identified with them.

 

 

 

The bulk of this entry is an excerpt from Dr. Schrader's comprehensive study of the crusader states.

Order now!

Dr. Helena P. Schrader is also the author of six books set in the Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades.

                         

           Buy Now!                                                  Buy Now!                                                    Buy Now!

 

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Launch of The Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades: Kingdoms at the Crossroads of Civilizations by Helena P. Schrader.

 Launch of The Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades: Kingdoms at the Crossroads of Civilizations by Helena P. Schrader.

Medieval Women Part V: Women and Love

 Today I  conclude my mini-series on women in the Middle Ages with a look at cult of courtly love and the controversial topic of how it impacted the status of women.

The “Middle Ages” ought to be called either the “Feudal Ages” or the “Age of Chivalry” since the term “middle" (suggesting something interim or transitory) is an odd designation for more than a thousand years of history.  Feudalism, on the other hand, was a defining characteristic of the Middle Ages, and Chivalry was the secular ethos of that age. It was chivalry that gave birth to a radical transformation of man’s understanding of “love” and with it to a revolution in sexual relations.

To understand the latter, it is necessary to briefly reiterate the importance of Christian beliefs, and then to look more closely at chivalry itself. Christianity impacted the concept of love in two ways: 1) God is defined as Love with Christ as Love incarnate, and 2) it elevated women into souls, making them spiritual beings, equal to men in the eyes of God. Thus Christianity values love, including love for women, while making a clear distinction between love (which is divine) and lust (which is a mortal sin.) Love for the Virgin was an expression of the former, and extremely important in the history of the Medieval Church.  Yet chaste love for a living woman was also valued and cherished. Such feelings are well-illustrated by a letter from the 6^th Century poet and priest Venantius Fortunatus to the fifty-year-old Queen Radegund, then living as a nun in the convent of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. Fortunatus writes:

 

Honored mother, sweet sister

Whom I revere with a faithful and pious heart,

With heavenly affection, without bodily touch,

It is not the flesh in me that loves

But rather the desire of the spirit… (Pernoud, p.35.)

Chivalry, on the other hand, introduced for the first time the notion that a man could become more worthy, more “noble,” through love for a lady. Love for a lady became a central – if not the central – concept of chivalry, particularly in literature. Other characteristics of chivalry, as defined in handbooks on chivalry such as that written by the Spanish nobleman Ramon Lull, were nobility [of spirit not birth], loyalty, honor, righteousness, prowess (courage), courtesy, diligence, cleanliness, generosity, sobriety, and perseverance. Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzifal stresses a strong sense of right and wrong, compassion for the unfortunate, generosity, kindness, humility, mercy, courtesy (particularly to ladies), and cleanliness. Simplified, chivalry entailed upholding justice by protecting the weak, particularly widows, orphans, and the Church. Yet regardless of the exact definition, the inspiration for knights striving to fulfill the ideal of chivalry was love for a lady.

 

Critically, the chivalric notion of love was that it must be mutual, voluntary, and exclusive – on both sides. It could occur between husband and wife – and many of the romances such as Erec et Enide or my favorite Yvain, Or the Knight with the Lion (both by Chrétien de Troyes) or Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, revolve in part or in whole around the love of a married couple. The notion repeated so often nowadays that courtly love or the love of the troubadors was always about adulterous love is nonsense.  Nevertheless, the tradition of the troubadours did put love for another man’s wife on an equal footing with love for one’s own – provided the lady returned the sentiment. The most famous of all adulterous lovers in the age of chivalry were, of course, Lancelot and Guinevere, closely followed by Tristan and Iseult.

Likewise noteworthy in a feudal world was the fact that the lover and the beloved were supposed to be valued not for their social status or their wealth, but for their personal virtues.  A lady was to be loved and respected for her beauty, her graces, her kindness, and her wisdom regardless of her status, and a knight was to be loved for his manly virtues, not his lands or titles. 

Even more important, however, is the fact that regardless of which of the partners was the social superior, the lady always took on the role and status of “lord” to her lover. The term of address that a lover used in addressing his lady was “mi dons” ― literally “my lord.” The term denoted the knight’s subservience to his lady, his position as her “man” ― her vassal, her servant, her subject. In art, knights are shown kneeling before their lady and placing their hands in hers ― the gesture of a vassal taking the feudal oath to his lord. (I couldn't find an example of this exact gesture on the internet, but here are two images of knights keeling with folded hands before their ladies.

Last but not least, courtly or chivalric love was not a means to sexual conquest. For lovers who had the luck to be married, it certainly included physical love, and in many of the adulterous romances consummation was also achieved. Yet physical love was not the objective of courtly love. The objective of love was to become greater ― more courageous, more courteous, more generous, more noble, in short, more chivalrous than before. In this sense, courtly love reflected religious love because it was first and foremost love of the spirit and character rather than the body. 

All of these features set courtly or chivalric love apart from the erotic love of the ancients, the Arabs or the modern age.  Sadly, people still confuse “chivalry” with superficial gestures of courtesy (such as opening doors) and women in the name of “liberation” reject the concepts that first truly liberated them.

For more on this fascinating, complex and hotly debated subject, I recommend:

Barber, Richard W. The Knight and Chivalry. The Boydell Press, 1995.

Hopkins, Andrea. Knights: The Complete Story of the Age of Chivalry, from Historical Fact to Tales of Romance and Poetry. Quarto Publishing, 1990.

·                 Pernoud, Regine. Women in the Days of the Cathedrals. Ignatius, 1989.

 

For readers tired of clichés and cartoons, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader offers nuanced insight into historical events and figures based on sound research and an understanding of human nature. Her complex and engaging characters bring history back to life as a means to better understand ourselves.

Find out more at: https://www.helenapschrader.com/crusades.html

 

 

                       

      

 

Medieval Women Part IV: Women and Education

After wealth, education is arguably the most powerful means of empowerment. As I noted in last week’s essay on women and economic power, professional skills were mobile and endowed women with independence and self-respect.  Today, however, I want to look at abstract learning, “book-learning,” rather than practical, professional skills. It is still common to impute ignorance to people in the Middle Ages generally, and even more common to assume that women were not generally literate.

Admittedly, literacy was not as widespread or common in the Middle Ages as it is today. There was no requirement to attend school, and for the poor, the need to work from a very early age made schooling a luxury. It was possible to learn a trade by watching and listening to a master, rather than reading texts. Thus for a significant portion of society at the lower end of the social scale, reading and writing was neither a necessity nor particularly valuable. 

Yet, as with everything in feudal society, class more than gender determined whether a person was likely to be literate or not. Among the classes that valued and required higher levels of education, women were as likely to be educated as their brothers and husbands.  Indeed, some historians argue that in the early Middle Ages among the upper classes women were more likely to read and write than their husbands and brothers. Men, they hypothesize, were too busy fighting, leaving women to provide basic education to children while also maintaining control of the estates by doing the book-keeping and correspondence.

For merchants or skilled craftsmen running a business, the support of wives in keeping the books, conducting correspondence, collecting arrears, etc. was vital.  Recognizing this, burghers ensured that their daughters were sufficiently literate and numerate to carry out these tasks ― or they risked having unmarriageable daughters.

Noblewomen, likewise, needed to be literate and numerate in order to manage their own and their husband’s property. In fact, even in the later Middle Ages the everyday management of a household and estate generally fell to the lady of the house, since men were often engaged in warfare and politics, activities that took them away from their estates, sometimes for extended periods. The higher their status, the higher the level of educated expected. Noblewomen could usually correspond in both their own language and Latin. They were frequent patrons of the arts, owners of books, and in some cases authors as well. It is no coincidence that Eleanor of Aquitaine’s tomb shows her reading a book, while her daughter Marie of Champagne was the patroness of Chrétien de Troyes and it was to her that he dedicated some of his greatest works such as Yvain, or The Knight with the Lion.

Finally, women who chose a religious vocation chose a lifestyle that revolved around reading, writing, copying and illustrating Holy Scripture and more. The most highly educated women of the Middle Ages were, therefore, often found inside convents. Furthermore, by their work copying and illuminating manuscripts, nuns played a key role (along with monks) in preserving knowledge both sacred and secular, and in their role as educators, they were instrumental in spreading literacy to others.

The latter point is particularly important because it was only the wealthy that could afford to retain tutors for the education of their young. (Household accounts, incidentally, sometimes list women as tutors.) Thus education often fell to parents, who might not have the necessary time, inclination or talent for the task. Yet, it is evident that starting at least by the 6^th century AD convents and monasteries across Europe offered education to children. Interestingly, the sexes were not always segregated when very young; little boys were often entrusted to the care of nuns and only later sent to monasteries or given secular education as pages and squires.  Alternatively, particularly bright girls might be sent to monasteries to learn more or be trained in particular skills such as singing or illumination. Also notable is anecdotal evidence of education in the convents being affordable as there are references to poor children attending them.  

The most dramatic evidence of female education in the Middle Ages, however, is provided by the large number of women who were authors of important works. A certain noblewoman, Dhuoda, for example, wrote an extensive and erudite treatise on education in or about 842; the book is full of biblical and other references that indicate this “ordinary” noblewoman was herself very well read (and incidentally very busy). In 965, a certain Hroswitha composed a long epic poem of Otto I. In the 12^th century, there was Heloise, famous, unfortunately, more for her affair with Abelard than the fact that she was accounted a brilliant scholar in Latin, Greek and Hebrew before she even met him.  Indeed, Abelard claims to have wanted to seduce Heloise because of her learning ― as well as writing that he never really loved her, only lusted after her. In her letters to him, Heloise espoused a radical feminism that rejected both marriage and children. In the 15^th century, there was the poet Christine de Pisan who in the early 15^th century took on the University of Paris, mocking their misogyny.

Christine de Pisan with her Son

My personal favorite among the women of letters of the Middle Ages was Hildegard von Bingen. She was born in 1098 and died in 1179. She joined a convent at eight, took the veil at 15 and was abbess from 1136 onwards. She had visions, as she describes them:

Through God’s goodness, my soul sometimes surges up to the heights of the heavens and the air and sometimes wanders among different peoples, although they live in far regions and unknown places…I see them only in my soul, and the eyes of my body remain open, for I have never fainted in ecstasy. I see them awake night and day…The light that I see is not local, but infinitely more brilliant than the light that surrounds the sun.” (Cited in Pernoud, p. 43)

Yet for all her mystical visions, she remained a highly practical woman who wrote books on “simple” and “composite” medicine, books on linguistics, and also composed music (which can be found on the internet today.)  Furthermore, returning to my thesis on women wielding political power (See Women and Political Power), she corresponded with all the important rulers of her day from Pope Eugene III to Friedrich Barbarossa and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Hildegard, in short, was recognized as an intellectual and spiritual giant event by individuals themselves revered for their learning, power, and spirituality.

The heroines of these award-winning novels set in the Middle Ages reflect their respective class in terms of their level of education -- from Dowager Queens to serving girls.

 For readers tired of clichés and cartoons, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader offers nuanced insight into historical events and figures based on sound research and an understanding of human nature. Her complex and engaging characters bring history back to life as a means to better understand ourselves.

Find out more at: https://www.helenapschrader.com/crusades.html

 

 

                       

      

 

Medieval Women Part II: Women and Politics

 Building on last weeks' entry, which confronted the common myth that women were "mere chattels" of their husbands in the Middle Ages, over the next four weeks I will look more closely at the opportunities for women in the medieval world, starting today with a look at women's access to political power.

 

Non-historians are inclined to assume that progress is linear.  Since women did not obtain the right to vote in major democracies until the early 20^th century, the assumption is that before the 20th century women had no rights. Yet, as the noted French historian Régine Pernoud argues eloquently in her book Women in the Days of the Cathedrals (Ignatius, 1989) women enjoyed much greater power in the Middle Ages than in the centuries that followed. Pernoud attributes this retrogressive development to the Renaissance and the attendant fascination with all things “antique.” The focus on Rome ultimately led to the re-introduction of many elements of Roman law, a legal tradition that was extremely misogynous.

The higher status of women in the Middle Ages as compared to antiquity and the renaissance and early modern periods stems from the two principles that formed the basis of medieval society: 1) Christianity and 2) Feudalism. Christianity, as I discussed in length in my essay on “Women as Chattels,” accorded women unprecedented status because it eliminated polygamy and divorce, while elevating women from sexual objects to spiritual beings. Feudalism raised the status of women because power derived through hereditary titles to land.  

Simplified: in feudalism bloodlines were more important than gender. What this means is that although the hierarchy gave precedence to the first born son over his brothers, and to sons before the daughters, it nevertheless gave the daughters precedence over cousins and illegitimate children of either sex, much less individuals without any blood relationship to the hereditary lord. Bonds of marriage, furthermore, were considered “blood-ties,” meaning that wives were given very powerful rights over property, which in turn gave them control over the vassals, tenants, servants and serfs that went with the land. In practice, the feudal focus on blood-ties and land meant that in the absence of a male, whether temporarily or permanently, females exercised the same authority as the absent male. In other words, in a hierarchical society such as feudalism, class trumped gender. Thus, while women were to a degree subject to men of their own class, they nevertheless had a higher standing and more power than men of any lower class. 

At the pinnacle of feudal society, queens were anointed and crowned because they were expected to exercise authority over the entire kingdom, and so the blessings of the Divine were deemed essential. This was not a nominal nor ceremonial power. When a king died leaving a minor child as his heir, it was normal for the child’s mother to act as regent.  In France the custom goes back at least to 1060, when, at the death of Henry I, his wife Anna became regent for their son Philip I.  In England, an example of this is when Isabella of France served as regent for Edward III after his father’s death but before he attained his majority.  Even when a king was not dead, circumstances might hand power to his wife. In England, Marguerite of Anjou ruled during the frequent periods of mental illness exhibited by Henry VI.  When Louis IX of France went on crusade to the Holy Land in 1249, he left his mother as his regent ― a function she had fulfilled during his minority as well.  Indeed, when Louis IX was taken captive by the Saracens, he negotiated a ransom with the caveat that, since he was a prisoner, his queen was reigning and only she could confirm the terms of the agreement. 

Admittedly, in the 14^th Century, in order to preclude an English king claiming the throne of France, French jurists invented the so-called “Salic Law” that excluded women from the succession in France. This law stands in contraction to the laws that had been in place since the middle of the sixth century, when the edict of Neustria (ca. 580) ruled that daughters could succeed to the main manor (hereditary domain) if there was no son and sisters could succeed if there were no brother.  Notably, the same edict ruled that all other property (acquired by purchase or marriage) must be divided equally between all heirs regardless of gender. (Pernoud, p. 163).  Furthermore, the prohibition against women succeeding to the crown did not apply to other kingdoms from England and Castile to Jerusalem. 

Even more significant, across most of Europe women could be barons in the sense that they could both give and receive feudal oaths. The importance of this cannot be over stated: feudal oaths were the very basis of feudal society, they were the mortar that held society together, the social contract that made feudalism function. The recognition of a woman as a vassal and a lord ― not in her capacity as a man’s wife or daughter but in her own right ― entailed recognizing her as a fully independent legal entity. This was unthinkable under Roman or Athenian law, and, sadly, was not the case in the France from the 16^th  to the 20^th century!

As noted above, women were lords in the absence of males capable of representing their particular barony/fiefdom, but the essential point is that they were recognized as being capable of holding a title and the lands that went with it. Eleanor of Aquitaine held the Duchy of Aquitaine in her own right, and her vassals (powerful and militant barons for the most part) paid homage to her ― not to either of her royal husbands. The same is true of countless other women in the Middle Ages from Countesses of Flanders and Burgundy in France to Joan, Countess of Kent, in England. There were many, many others. In depth studies of specific lordships in France such as Troyes in the Champagne, for example, show that women held 58 of a total of 160 fiefs held directly (as opposed to being property of a higher lord, administrated by an appointee). (Pernoud, p. 180.) This suggests that women inherited at a rate of slightly better than one out of three. 

Not only did women hold the titles, they controlled the lands and commanded the men and women that went with them. One of my favorite stories is that of the “Keeper of the King’s Forrest” and Constable of Lincoln in 1217 ― a certain Nicholaa, who Austin Hernon has brought wonderfully to life in his well-researched novel The Women Who Saved England.  She defended the castle of Lincoln against forces attempting to put the King of France on England’s throne during the minority of Henry III. She withstood multiple assaults, commanding the men of the garrison in person. But there are literally countless cases of women holding and defending castles against siege and storm.

Last but not least, no description of political power in the Middle Ages would be complete without noting that the emergence of nuns and convents in the 5^th century AD opened completely new opportunities for women. Convents were centers of learning, music, and illumination (something I’ll discuss in more length in my essay on women and education).  The Order of the Hospital also offered women careers in social work and medical care ― not to mention an opportunity to travel to the Holy Land. Critical to understanding these institutions is to note that they were self-governing, so that women were not subject to any men inside the community, and ― often completely overlooked ― in many double foundations (monastery and convent side-by-side) the Abbess ruled over the men as well as the women. What this means is that monks entering the monastery took their vows to the abbess ― not the abbot. Finally, although such power is indirect, many abbesses enjoyed great influence outside the walls of the convent. As women of recognized learning and wisdom, some of the greater abbesses such as Agnes of Poitiers, Mathilda of Fontevrault, or Hildegard von Bingen, corresponded with popes, emperors and kings. 

Maria Comnena, Byzantine Princess and Queen of Jerusalem, was certainly a woman with political power. She is the female protagonist of my Jerusalem Trilogy and also plays a significant role in “The Last Crusader Kingdom.”

 For readers tired of clichés and cartoons, award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader offers nuanced insight into historical events and figures based on sound research and an understanding of human nature. Her complex and engaging characters bring history back to life as a means to better understand ourselves.

Find out more at: https://www.helenapschrader.com/crusades.html