Dan Snow's History Hit - Queens of Jerusalem

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

In today's episode of the podcast, I am joined by Katherine Pangonis a historian specialising in the medieval world of the Mediterranean and Middle East. She has recently written a fantastic book about the powerful women who dared to rule in the Crusader States of Outremer following the First Crusade; something that was largely absent from other states of the period. We talk about how and why the phenomenon occurred, the rule of Queen Melisende and her granddaughter Queen Sibylla, the influence of these rulers on Eleanor of Aquitaine and how these powerful women have largely been ignored by history.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I hope you all enjoyed the podcast over the last week, getting a lot of feedback on General Sir Rupert Smith, who beat me metaphorically around the head and neck like I was an overworked

aide-de-camp, and I deserved it. I deserved it, folks. If you can ask stupid questions of an illustrious general, an author, military strategist, you're going to get short shrift. I imagined the same if I was pestering Frederick the Great or the Marshal de Saxe or those kind of dudes. On this podcast, I'm hoping for a slightly gentler reception. I'm talking to the very brilliant young historian, Catherine Pangonis. She's a historian who's writing about the medieval world of the Mediterranean and Near East. And she's just written a really interesting book called The Queens of Jerusalem about the women who dared to rule. They dared to rule in the crusader states of Outremer. Have I got that right? I don't know. Outremer is the French basically overseas. And those were the four

statelets, I guess we call them kingdoms, polities, established in the 1090s and into the very beginning of the 12th century, following the First Crusade. And in these states, as you'll hear, there was a phenomenon absent from many of the states in Western Christendom, and that was Queen's regnant, female rulers. It's a piece of history that we kind of touched upon last year with that lovely podcast about Eleanor of Aquitaine, and this just gives us a lot more detail, lots to think about. If you wish to go and watch medieval history, then the place for you to do that, it's at historyhit.tv. You simply go over to historyhit.tv. It's a web site. You enter it in a browser, historyhit.tv. It'll take you to a history channel, the likes of which you've never seen before, a revolutionary new concept in which we have a History Channel for history fans on which there is historical programs, not lifestyle

programs, not featuring neo-Nazis or alien civilizations, but things that have actually happened in our past, narrated by some of the world's best historians. So please go and check it out. And don't forget to come to the live tour, historyhit.com slash tour. It's all happening. We're all going to have vaccines, big cities around Britain. See you there. In the meantime, everybody, please enjoy this podcast with Catherine Pangonis. Catherine, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. So what are the Crusader States and how long are they there for?

It's a very good place to start. So the Crusader States are territories in the Middle East that were carved out by the Crusaders, who mainly came from Western Southern Europe over to the Holy Land at the end of the 11th century. And then they colonized or proto-colonized mainly in the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 12th century. And there's four major territories. They're called the counties of Edessa and Tripoli. Tripoli is similar shape to modern day Lebanon. Edessa occupies southern Turkey, the Principality of Antioch surrounding what is now the city of Antakya and occupied a territory that was that little dip in the south of Turkey and a chunk of modern Syria, and then the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which occupies an area around Israel and Palestine

centering on the city of Jerusalem. And there were states carved out by these people and ruled as sort of outposts of Christianity in the east. And they squabbled a lot between each other for power and sort of scissority. But really, the Kingdom of Jerusalem was the most important territory and the King of Jerusalem had most of the power in that region. And are they just mini versions of European states or is it something fundamentally different? Like, is it a place, as you suggest in your book, where, for example, women could exercise power?

Are there important differences to the states of Christendom in which these colonisers have come from? They're definitely not like mini-Frances out in the east. And there are crucial cultural differences. And those crucial cultural differences aren't necessarily what make it possible for women to take more power, because culturally, they do follow the pattern of Western Europe and the cultures who founded the states. But what stops them being sort of like mini-Francis or mini-Italys out in the Middle East is the fact that most of the population of these states are native Christians. They're Armenian Christians, Maronites, Eastern Orthodox Christians. It's not like colonialisation or an idea that loads and loads of peasants and ordinary people from France came over and set up shop in the East.

I mean, obviously, there was a lot of that, but the population was mixed race. There were multicultural hubs. And so it was very different culturally and ethnically to Europe. The reason I argue that they're different and there's more opportunities for women to take power there is simply because they're frontier lands. They're lands in very unstable territories with enemies pushing from all sides. And it's that instability and their constant state of crisis for these states that are fighting for their survival that create the conditions in which women are able to take power. And if they want dynastic continuity, the men around it have to accept that because there's a shortage of legitimate male rulers. So that's really interesting. So unlike the dodgy Salic law that the French used to exclude the Plantagenets from the crown at the beginning

of the Hundred Years' War, there weren't enough male Prince of the Blood knocking around. You had to allow power to flow through women as well. So the first woman to take real power in this region is Melisande of Jerusalem. She's the first queen regnant of Jerusalem, and she has a long reign which she co-rules with her husband and rules on her own. The rest is regent for Melisande of Jerusalem. She's the first queen regnant of Jerusalem. And she has a long reign, which she co-rules with her husband and rules on her own. Theoretically, it's a regent for her son, but really on her own. And then she shares rule with her son. That doesn't go brilliantly, but it happens. The good comparison with her in Europe is Matilda of England. Their inheritance should have followed a similar pattern. They were both declared their father's heirs. And the big difference is that Melisande was able to succeed to the throne relatively

simply, whereas Matilda was not able to, and it plunged England into the anarchy, this decades long civil war, and she never was formally crowned and formally recognised as the Queen of England. And those are the differences, because her opportunistic cousin, Stephen of Blois, was able to step in and usurp her power, or to arguably legitimately take it, however you look at it. But he was there in Abel and had the support of nobles around him, whereas there wasn't a male rival like that to challenge Melisande in the east. And so for that reason, she was able to take power. Is there also a sense that it's a bit stupid to have a massive internecine cousin war when you've got the enemy at the gates. Exactly. There's an element of

necessity forcing them to swallow quite a bit of pill of being ruled by a woman. But the key factor that enabled Melisande to take power, it's important to remember that she didn't inherit the throne on her own. Her father essentially made a sneaky deathbed amendment to his will. And so what was expected up until the death of Walden II was that Melisande's husband, Fulke of Anjou, who was a seasoned soldier, had ruled as the Count of Anj II was that Melisande's husband, Fulke von Joux, who was seasoned soldier, had ruled as the Count of Anjou for many years. He was actually the father-in-law to Matilda of England, a very experienced and important nobleman in Western Europe, would take the throne of Jerusalem and rule. It wasn't expected that Melisande would share that.

But then on his deathbed, Balder II altered his will and left power in equal measure to his daughter, Fulke, her husband, and their infant son, who would be Baldwin III. And there's lots of reasons for why he did that. And some of them would have been sort of dynastic and selfish. He didn't want Fulke to be able to take the throne of Jerusalem and then find a pretext to divorce Melisande and marry a new woman and just sideline the bloodline of Baldwin. The king wanted to make sure the throne was tied to his bloodline. But then there's also the strong argument for the political prudence of including Melisande and Baldwin III in that succession, because as would be seen shortly after Fulk's ascension to power, the local barons, so the people who had settled before Fulk came out there

and had power in the East, weren't necessarily going to be happy to be ruled by a western newcomer. And so it was quite prudent, so it includes Melisande in that handover of power to keep the local baronage happy, because Melisande was born in the east. She was born in Edessa, she had an eastern mother, she was very much of her kingdom. And so she was a good choice of queen to command loyalties from different angles. The old nationalism trumping misogyny there, right? It's brilliant. Slightly anachronistic terms. And then you get other women, and this becomes something of a theme in these kingdoms, is it? Yeah, it does. So it's an unhappy theme. It's not what was planned by the male rulers, but it does happen. And with limited degrees of success. So we don't really have a case,

as much as I would like to say that we did, of a woman successfully facing down all adversaries and ruling well into her old age and then dying peacefully and passing the crown to her daughter. That doesn't happen. We're not there yet. But it's beginnings of acceptance of female rule and power. And there's evidence to show that women thought it was possible to take this power. So Melisande's sister, Alice of Antioch, she was ultimately unsuccessful. She rebelled and tried to take power in the Principality of Antioch three times. And each time those rebellions were foiled, with varying degrees of humiliation for Alice involved in that. But the fact that she tried and that at least one of her rebellions really did get underway, and it was a real threat to the power of the King of Jerusalem. The fact that that could happen demonstrates that more and more people and more and more men are willing to accept, or at least rally behind female rulership against regimes that they disagree with. So there is more options for them.

Was there anything different about the way that women wielded power within these crusader states when the women were in charge? Were they, dare I say, more effective? So the short answer, I think, is no. Someone asked me once, dare I say, more effective? So the short answer I think is no. Someone asked me once, did I think Sibylla of Jerusalem, Melisande's granddaughter, who was queen when Jerusalem fell to Saladin and the Crusader States collapsed? Someone asked me, did I think she was to blame? Did I agree that she was to blame for the loss of Jerusalem? And it's a very hard question to answer because there are so many other factors that contribute to success or failure in rulership in that period and that region, other than just the panache of the ruler. I think some of the women were worse,

the Queen of Jerusalem, Melisande and Sibylla, I think some of them were worse at ensuring cohesion between the barons and asserting the scissority of Jerusalem over the other crusader states. Melisande's father, by force of personality and ruling with an iron fist, managed to keep the suzerainty of Jerusalem over Antioch, Tripoli and Edessa quite well asserted, whereas Melisande didn't have the same control over her barons. In that sense, perhaps she's a less effective ruler. But it's also true that under the reign of Queen Melisande, the Kingdom of Jerusalem reached its greatest territorial extent. So there are highs and lows over a long reign, and it's hard

to directly compare. The area where women definitely were more limited than the men is that they didn't lead the armies. And again, a lot of people like the idea of talking about warrior queens and Amazons and this sort of thing. But we don't see that happening. Women are fighting sometimes in extreme circumstances, but there aren't queens leading soldiers onto the battlefield. And that does limit their power, because they have to appoint deputies to command the army. And that can lead to difficulty. So Melisande appoints someone called Manassas of Piège, and he's really unpopular. And that leads to a lot of discontent and rebellion. It's hard to directly compare the success of the queens and the kings. They both have ups and downs. ripped the mask off modern politics to show us what was really going on. From Rousseau to Rosa

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a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man Thank you. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth, now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Although they couldn't lead their armies in person, did they take a close interest in military affairs, in the defensive architecture of the castles, for example, in these traditionally quite sort of masculine areas of interest? Yeah, so women are involved

in military matters. So a good example of this is during the Second Crusade when Anne of Aquitaine and King Louis of France, they arrive and Anne of Aquitaine is into all sorts of scrapes in the East during the time. So she's sort of in disgrace for a large chunk of her time in the East. But William of Tyre, the main source of this period, describes when King Louis arrives in Jerusalem, they convene this big council just to the north, where they decide what the strategy of the crusade is going to be. Are they going to march on Aleppo? Are they going to march on Damascus? What are they going to do with these troops in the East? And Melisande is highlighted as a key figure at this council. So she is certainly taking a keen interest in military affairs. However, Eleanor of Aquitaine is excluded from this council, her name doesn't

appear. And whether that's to do with the fact that Eleanor isn't Queen Regnant of France, although she is the ruler of Aquitaine, which is the command of many vassals, or because she's in disgrace for some reason, it's not clear why she's not at that council, but Melisande is. The other key way in which women are seen as taking part in military matters is in siege warfare. Women do defend in sieges, famously. Even Muslim women defend in sieges. I think it's the siege of Banyas. You have the woman who will eventually become Saladin's wife, negotiating with the king of Jerusalem the terms of the surrender. And that's really unexpected, given the role that Muslim women played at that time and the crusader women are certainly doing that so Sibylla is present at the siege of Jerusalem to what extent

she's commanding it's not related but it's possible she was taking a leading role Bailey and Aviblin's wife Maria Kamnena defends in a siege as well as does Raymond of Tripoli's wife Ashiva at the siege of Tiberias so we have clear records of women defending and negotiating in siege warfare, but they aren't leading troops on the battlefield. That's a key distinction. We have done a podcast on Eleanor of Aquitaine, and she obviously comes back from the Holy Land, having learned a lot. I think she's probably the secret reason of the success of the Plantagenet Empire, because it basically collapses the minute she dies. Useless sons. Anyway, we're not talking about her. Were these women prepared for office? Were they given education? This is a great question. It's

case-by-case basis, and it depends on the foresight of the father, and whether or not the father or the one who leaves them power believes that there's a good chance that they will have to play a role governing. So the best examples to use there are Melisande of Jerusalem, who we've talked about already, and her granddaughter, Sibylla of Jerusalem. Melisande is the oldest of four daughters. And from her early teens, she is present at meetings of the High Council, and she is standing witness to charters. heir to attract a better husband, whatever, or he's preparing her for rule. And whatever his reason for including her in the high council meetings, she is there and she's witnessing charters and she's learning the business of governing. And we can see that in the way her reign pans out because she's a deft politician and she has the respect of the chroniclers. In contrast, Sibylla of Jerusalem is the eldest child, but she has a younger brother. So her

younger brother is going to inherit and her parents' marriage is dissolved when she's still a young child. And she's sent off to live at a nunnery and she would have received some form of education there, but it was not like sort of hands-on work experience in the governing of the kingdom. She probably would have been educated in church Latin and the like. And then her brother famously is the leper king. He dies of leprosy, has no heir, and there's a power struggle and Sibylla becomes the queen of Jerusalem. But she has not had the same education and preparation that Melisande did. And that's clear from the early days of her reign. She never rules. Despite having the authority to rule, she never manages to convert authority

into real power. And it seems like her husband is the one calling all the shots. And so it depends on the foresight of the father, the parents as to whether or not they think it's necessary to prepare their daughter for queenship. In the case of Melisande, they certainly did. In the case of Sibylla, they didn't. And the proof is in the pudding of their reins, whether or not they were prepared. What about now coming on to you writing this book? How much did you have to peel back layers of historiography, the previous histories written by men who were predisposed to marginalise the role of women? Yeah, it's a really interesting one. It's been really rewarding. Even a lot of the historians I really, really respect. Christopher Tyerman is a leading expert on the Crusades, and I've really

relied on his work in many areas. But in his big book, God's War, which is the one I had at A-level and things, when he's talking about Alice of Antioch, he does still dismiss her. And there is this trend, even among really brilliant historians, to just not focus on the roles that these women played and to just follow the traditional narrative around them. And the traditional narrative around Alice of Antioch is that she's a manipulative, power-hungry, ill-prepared menace. And she's usually just resigned like that. And even other more popular historians like Zoe Oldenburg, who wrote a big book on the Crusades and is obviously a woman, likewise, calls her flighty and silly and things like that in her

book. And there's just this casual dismissal of this quite important historical figure. And so it was more about scrubbing away those assumptions and just going back to the primary evidence and trying not to look through the lens of more recent historians. And again, Hans Eberhard Meyer, he's one of the best historians of the Crusades. I've read a lot of his work. Even he just uses this funny language to talk about Queen Melisande. He talks about her tentacles extending to Nablus and things like that. And I'm like, why are we using that language? The same for Alice. So it was more about trying to go back to the primary material, William of Tyre and other chronicles and look at what they're saying without going with the assumption that I'm going to agree with the judgments that

he's made and just try and look at actually what these women have done and then piece together a slightly more neutral image of them. And so I think Alice of Antioch does still come across as rash, as not making the best decisions. It's definitely power hungry. But then I'm trying to contextualise that with the fact that if she doesn't fight for power, then she's going to have a pretty miserable life. And so it's not sort of vaulting ambition that's causing her to fight in this way. It's quite a reasonable desire to create a better life for herself and for her children. And then contextualising that within the fact that everyone, all the politicians and rulers in the medieval Middle East are power hungry and fighting for more land. That's just

the thing. Everyone's got dynastic ambition. Everyone wants more land. Everyone wants more power. So to dismiss her and be critical of her because of that just doesn't really hold water when you compare to the other crusaders. She hadacles rich the lionheart had an iron fist yeah tentacles versus an iron fist it's just so ridiculous yeah i've never really studied the crusader states and i've always been fascinated by them though but did they understand how fragile they were was there always a sense that these were potentially pretty transient entities or did these people think they were building dynasties and it would be like the Baltic Crusades, the Germanic Crusades in Eastern Europe, and you'd be conquering bits of territory and it would be forever bits of Christendom? I mean, did it feel permanent? They wanted it to be permanent, that's

for sure. And it's hard to glean what extent they actually were aware of their own fragility is hard to tell. Because when you read Crusader Chronicles, and they were written by William of Tyre, who's a brilliant historian, by the way, I think he's one of the greatest historians in the Middle Ages in terms of big picture analysis, as well as original research and things. But if you read his chronicle, you don't get the impression that the Kingdom of Jerusalem is like a tiny, fragile principality the size of Wales. You sort of think you're dealing with something on par with the Byzantine Empire from the grandeur, the way he talks about it and its significance. And it just wasn't. It wasn't an international player in the way that France or Constantinople were. And to what extent that

William is part of the propaganda machine and the Chronicles are part of that propaganda, you have to weigh that up as a historian. I think they always knew that they were on borrowed time. Certainly, they would have been aware of their fragility for sure, because you're losing and regaining fortresses all the time. I mentioned the siege of Banias. I mean, that fortress changes hands several times. The crusader states in general are there for about 200 years, but those key four in their entirety are only there for under a century. And life expectancy there is lower. So you know, life expectancy for a native king in Jerusalem is about 26, as opposed to about 56 in France and England. So there is a

fragility that they're aware of. And Edessa is lost. That's what causes the Second Crusade. And that's a major territory, it's just lost. And the princes of Antioch are repeatedly killed. Two princes of Antioch have their heads cut off and sent to the Caliph of Baghdad. There's definitely a sense of their own fragility. I mean, I think the propaganda they're putting out is that the kingdom of Jerusalem is Christian and they will hold it forever. But they know there's a very real risk, especially when Saddam comes to power. They know they're really at risk. And I think that fear causes a good deal of desperation. And that can be part of what led to the fracture towards the end. Let's finish up on the queens again.

Did they have any legacy? I mean, is it useful to think about Eleanor of Aquitaine and her experience in the Holy Land and what she might have gleaned there in terms of wielding actual power and influence? Or do you think this was an interesting experiment in royal government that sadly didn't go anywhere for another couple hundred years?

It's an interesting question. I think there's no way that Eleanor of Aquitaine didn't find her crusade experience on Crusade thought-provoking, at least. I mean, while she was over there, not only did she become embroiled with the scandal of this affair or not with her uncle, but she met Melisande of Jerusalem and she met Constance of Antioch. And she saw these women, she saw Melisande wielding power. She saw Melisande sitting in a war council, which she was excluded from. She would have seen that this was possible and this was happening. And I think that would definitely have motivated her to seize more agency because after the crusade, she goes back,

she has her marriage sort of hastily patched up in Rome, goes home, has another daughter, and then that marriage is over. And very quickly, she marries Henry Plantagenet. And that decision, that's when her career really takes off. And she really becomes a very forceful player on the European stage. And I don't think that it's a coincidence that it came out. I think that trips the East would have been a game changer in her view of the world and her own ambition, for sure. Yeah, she runs England for her husband and sons. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Catherine, for coming on this podcast. I really, really enjoyed that. Tell us what the book is called. The Queens of Jerusalem. Go and buy it, everyone. It's a fantastic book. Catherine, thank you very much. Thank you. our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all work on and finish. Hi everybody, just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast

material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast. We can do more and more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams, The Ends of the Earth, explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity.

Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.