Gone Medieval - Women and the Crusades

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

Women were an integral feature of the crusade movement. They were not only sometimes participants on the battlefields but also played their part recruiting crusaders, and supporting the effort with patronage, propaganda, and prayer. In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Professor Helen J. Nicholson, author of Women and the Crusades, which explores the roles that women played and how their contemporaries recorded their deeds, limited by social convention and cultural expectations. This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android > or Apple store > Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The Crusades dominated parts of the medieval period in Europe, the Near East and North Africa. We know about famous sieges and battles and kings and knights. But what can we learn about the women who were affected by or took part in crusading efforts? Helen Nicholson's book Women and the Crusades sets out to answer that very question and to explore female power, influence and input in the crusading movements. Welcome to God Medieval, Helen. Thank you very much. It's pleasure to be here. Thank you for joining us. Can we start off by talking about what the problems are in trying to

identify women who were involved in the crusades? Do we see a lot of women or are they actually quite hard to find? There were certainly many women on the Crusades as the German historians to be Gelts that's established when she wrote about this in 2000. But what she found was that only the elite women generally are named. And so if you try making a list of all the women who are involved in the crusades, you end up with a great many who are nameless, as in woman helping to fill in ditch, woman with both an arrow defending castle. Our main problem is that the narrative accounts on both sides of the crusades

came from cultural traditions where women should not be involved in warfare except in emergency situations where the men were unable to act for some reason or other. And then it was socially, culturally and religiously acceptable for women to step in. But most of the time, they didn't want to talk about women being involved because that reflected badly on their own side. So they would mention women on the other side fighting, because this showed how terrible their enemy was, allowing women to fight, how degraded they must be, what a decadent society this must be. But they didn't generally talk about women on their own side being involved in conflict. Or if they did, it was only in very specific, carefully defied areas. a woman is allowed to give spiritual support, for example. So we find the queens in the Spanish

kingdoms are allowed to give verbal support to their husbands and sons, but we should never mention that they are actually involved in raising an army. That would be beyond what women should be doing. And likewise, a woman shouldn't be in defence of a fortress unless her husband is not available. And even then she should be doing it with fear and trembling. And we're all supposed to be made feel very sorry for her, Margaret of the province, Queen of France, Queen of France. France is defending Damietta when her husband, King Louis the 9th, has been captured by the Muslims. Her contemporary and friend, Jean-Lord of Ruanville, depicts her as being very frightened and calling on male help to help her. On the other hand, we also have a contemporary account explaining how

the Queen had put together a scouting force to go and try and find her husband. Nothing about her being frightened and in tears at all. So if you read one account, you might think she wasn't doing anything useful. She's just a weakened people woman. And then if you got hold of the document, she'd realise that actually she's in a completely different position. So we're somewhat at the mercy of what accounts have survived. And we have to do a lot of reading between the lines to work out what women actually were doing as against what the idealised perceptions of them were.

And another problem with this is that sometimes narrative accounts invented women. If you needed a nice female victim, somebody to say, oh, it's too dangerous women to go on crusade. You invent one. So, for example, in the First Crusade, a noble woman called Florina, who is supposed to be daughter of the... the Duke of Burgundy is mentioned as dying during the campaigns in Turkey, killed by the Turks

while she is riding out with her husband to be. And this is so tragic. Only the historian Hillary Rhodes, looking into this in detail, established that Flomina never existed. She's a misreading of another document. So you just had to invent yourself a damsel in distress in order to make a point. Yes, absolutely. These are major problems in trying to identify women in the crusades. And I guess to some extent that's a problem that exists with men as well. You know, there were thousands of men who were on Crusade as men at arms, foot soldiers in support activities who wouldn't have been named either. But it's probably, I guess, much more striking the small number of women who actually have their names recorded, as you say, probably

the elite and royalty. Yes, we do get names when somebody is making their will, either because they're the testator or if they're receiving something in the will. So then you have a name, fantastic. And some women who are making donations, either just before they go on Crusade or when they get back, to a charitable body such as a religious house, asking for their prayers, then obviously we have a name then, and some of these then are not necessarily from the elite. I want to mention as well with the men involved in the Crusades, many of them were not actually taken the cross. They would be mercenaries being employed to go on Crusade, so they might get listed as Crusaders when strictly speaking, they're not there for the spiritual benefits of crusading. And of course, there are a lot of clergy on the Crusader

were not supposed to fight. And again, if they were monks, their religious rules didn't actually allow them to go on crusade. They were supposed to stay at home in their monasteries. Another issue when we're looking for women in the Crusades is what capacity are they there for? Are they, like the men, actually there to make a living, for example? So they might be out there as merchants. So as a woman who's a merchant on the Crusade, actually a crusader? If she's there as a doctor supporting Louis XIV, then does that make her a crusader?

And in my book, I tried to bring in all the women who are involved in crusading, not just those who had taken the cross as official crusaders. This was attempting to avoid one of the problems that previous scholars have found that they found they couldn't actually define whether people were, strictly speaking, crusaders or not. I guess the big, juicy, meaty bit here is women being involved in the military aspects of the Crusades. Do we have records of women actually being involved as competence, or do we need to look at them as victims of these battles and wars? and sieges going on. There are women inside these cities who are deeply afflicted by all of these things. So do we see them as competent? And do we need to be aware that they do exist there as victims of the Crusades as well? Yes, they are involved at every level. They don't become involved as competence except in emergency situations or because something unexpected has arisen.

For example, I mentioned the Queen of France, Margaret of Provence, having to defend the city of Damietta, which the Crusade of Louis I had captured. And Louis had then led his army south into Egypt, leaving his wife who was pregnant and suitable force and the Italian merchants behind in Damietta. Only Louis was then captured and Damietta comes under siege. So what had been a safe place was no longer a safe place. So apart from organising a scouting party to try and find out what's happened to her husband, Margaret has also left in a position of having to organise the defence of the fortress of Damietta. It's a port city.

and she couldn't actually go out of the battleman superintendings herself in any case because she was just about to give birth, she was giving birth, and then it was just after the birth. So this is a part of a woman's life cycle when she's supposed to be lying in bed, waiting for a certain number of days before she goes out and about again after the birth of a child, and Margaret can't actually do that. She has to evacuate Damietta in exchange for her husband's release before the set period of days are finished. But that was never supposed to happen. So she ends up defending this as sort of emergency.

measure. And there are other accounts of the men were away on a scouting party and suddenly the enemy appeared in an attacking posse out of the forest and so the women all donned helmets and grab what all they had and went to the battlements and threw things at the enemy and used their bows and arrows and so on. A bow is a weapon that's generally socially acceptable for women to use. That is not to say they didn't use other weapons, but contemporary accounts are worried about saying our women are using weapons that were not strictly women's weapons. Apart from the fact that women would not generally be formally trained in using these weapons. A noble woman may have learned how to ride on a horse with a lance

and use a couch lance, but this would not be part of her official training. And because daily practice is needed to be able to be a knight on horseback, there would not be many elite women who are actually in a position to be able to do that sort of thing, but they can certainly stand on the battlements and command their defence forces from the fortress. even if their commanders would let them out onto the battlefield because they'd be very worried about losing their commander. In fact, by the middle of the 13th century, Armours were quite worried about letting a commanding officer,

like if it was a king, someone like Louis I, into the battlefield in any case. When a king is leading an army himself, there's always somebody saying, this is wise? Should we be sending our king into the battlefield? He might get captured. And of course, when kings do get captured, that is disastrous. So all the more worried about the queen.

There are accounts in the Muslim chronicles of Christian noble women fighting and Christian female warriors being found at the battlefield after the battle, but it's not clear whether these are actually true or whether they've been exaggerated as a way of showing how degraded and decadent the Christians are because they let their women fight, and this is not something that Muslim women would have to do because Muslim warriors are much braver than the Christians and the women don't have to fight. On the other side, across the history says we have the victims

and should be noted that women also attack women during the Hussite crusades in what's now the Czech Republic. There's one account of the women, Hussites, leading the Catholic women out of city, and the Catholic women think they're going to be safe, and actually they're locked up at a house, and it's burned down over their heads. So it isn't that women are particularly nice to other women. And there is, however, a topos of the female victim. If sources are going to talk about are people being murdered by the enemy, it's usually the women and children that they talk about

because that will make their audience much more angry and full of pity and determined to avenge our women. And obviously there are men being killed too, but they don't say so much about those. It would appear people don't worry so much about the men getting killed. And particularly famous instance of women, victims of the Crusades, is the pogroms against the Jews in the Rhineland during the First Crusade where the Crusaders stirred up the locals to attack the Jewish communities

and the Jewish communities decided, There was no point in fighting against his superior force, and they would die defending the name of God. They talk about the Christians as being the worshippers of a corpse, Christ on the cross, of course. And they will be degraded, and they have to have anything to do with these Christians. So fathers killed their wives and children, and mothers killed their children. And they're sort of heart-rending stories, particularly of one of the Jewish leaders of the community. She's a rabbi's daughter, Rachel, who killed her own children with her own hand and then killed herself. and these stories, yes, they're heart-rending,

they were written down to warn later communities that this might happen again, but there was also the question that arose of what is the best thing to do, should we have just gone somewhere else? And you can see that this is a debate that goes on during the Second Crusade when some of the Jews just kept themselves

in their own communities and kept out of the way of the Christians altogether rather than getting into a position where they had to kill themselves. The Jews were not involved in the Crusades, technically. From the Christians' point of view, it's supposed to be a battle to get Jerusalem back from the Muslims, but they get dragged into it of both sides, have it in for the Jews.

And are there examples that you were able to pull out of particular women who we do know a little bit more about, where we have names and we can detail their involvement a little bit more? Could you give us a few examples of some of those, please? Yes, there is the case of King Louis the Ninth's medic, her sender. We know she was on the crusade to Egypt with him because he gave her and a husband a donation afterwards in thanks for having served him during the crusade. And in fact, she probably saved his life during the retreat in which Louis was captured. He was left lying in her arms overnight. He was suffering from a very unpleasant condition at that point. And everybody thought

he was going to be dead by the morning. But obviously she managed to keep him going overnight. And then the following morning, they're on the move again. And then the Miltons actually captured Louis and realized he was the king of France and worth hanging onto and not killing. He was worth a lot of money. So Hercenda we have, we know her name, we know her husband's name, Jacob, they came from Paris, they'd go out with the king, they return to Paris afterwards. We don't know if she did anything else. It's been suggested. Perhaps she could have been Queen Margaret's midwife, but there's absolutely no evidence for that. Margaret must have had a midwife, but we don't have a name. Hesenda's done a pretty good job there. You know, she's not only saved the king's life,

but Louis goes on to become a saint, so you've saved the life of a king and of a saint. That's a pretty impressive CV. That must have stood her in good stead when she got to the Perligate, yes. Then most of the women we have, of course, are women of the elite, but there are a number of other people who support crusades for whom we have names, but who are not noble women. For example, there's Dorothea of Montau, who was the daughter of a Dutch engineer who had migrated to Prussia invited by the Teutonic Order to help drain their land while they were setting up new colonies in Prussia. So this is part and parcel of the Baltic Crusades, but Dorothea is not a crusader herself. She's a very devout woman who wishes to spend all her time in church rather being at home with her husband

and looking after the children. And her husband did his part. He certainly looked after the children if he'd get rather exasperated with his wife who wanted to spend all her time in church. After he died, Dorothea became a hermit in a local church and then found that she was falling foul of the local priests because they thought she was nuts because she spends all her time in prayer and sometimes in a complete transport of delight on the floor, having visions. and they said she must be a heretic. But she was, as it were, rescued by a priest of the Teutonic Order, Your Highness and Marian Verda,

who invited her to go to Marian Verda, which is one of the Teutonic Order's churches, where she could be a hermit and she could pursue her religious life. And in this case, she's having visions and passing our messages from God to the Teutonic Order who were carrying on their crusade against the Lithuanians. Now, this time, the Lithuanians had converted to Christianity. So the Teutonic Order was not fighting pagans in the Baltic anymore, but they still said the Lithuanians were in fact pagans,

hadn't converted properly. So Dorothea was supporting them with her visions and her prayers, and they supported her and gave her a safe place to be a hermit and a saint. And after her death, the order pressed for her canonisation because she had been such a great supporter to them and said God has made a new type of knighthood to support the crusade,

which, interestingly, is the same form of words that Bernard of Claervo used when the Templars were set up, that this is a new form of knighthood. And no doubt the Pope realized that. And they did go ahead with trying to get the canonised. through, but this was the early 15th century. There was a great schism going on, but there were two or the 1.3 popes, and it wasn't possible to get the canonisation through before the Teutonic Order got beaten in battle by the Poles and

the whole thing just died. So it's many centuries before Dorothea was actually made the same officially. Anyway, she's an example of the non-nobles who support crusades, but not actually in physical battle, but spiritual battle, prayers, visions, telling people that they should support the order. This sort of thing is very valuable for crusaders, in fact. There's another middle-class woman, Catherine of Siena, who pushed for a crusade a generation before Dorothea, supporting the popes, telling them they had to have a new crusade,

and she got the Queen of Naples and Sicily, Joanna, to support her. But again, that didn't actually come to anything. The great schism broke out between different popes. And Crusades, words on anybody's list of things to do by that time, we need to sort out the schism in the church first. so Catherine was disappointed. I felt to myself as I was writing this, it's all very well for people,

armchair crusade fanatics that tell everyone they have to go on crusade. Maybe Catherine was intending to go out and crusade herself and get martyred, but it's not quite the same as being a knight in having to invest your life for savings and a crusade. Yeah, armchair crusading. I quite like that idea.

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I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. There are some significant women of the elite who were heavily involved in crusading. I'm thinking possibly the most famous example is Eleanor of Aquitaine. What does her experience on Crusade tell us about the experiences of potentially of other women who were involved in this movement? Eleanor was actually involved in two crusades, the second crusade where she went with her first husband, Louis VIII of France, And then the third crusade she didn't go herself, but she supported her son, Richard the Lionheart, who was on the Third Crusade, and after he was captured, she raised the ransom. So these were two different aspects of crusading. In the first case, she was physically present with Louis as they went to Constantinople, through Turkey, down to the principality of Antioch, and then proceeded south towards Jerusalem.

And Eleanor seemed to have a diplomatic role in that she's getting letters from the Empress of Constantinople. who was actually a German princess who had married the Emperor, Manuel Comneness. And then when she gets to Antioch, she was negotiating with the Prince of Antioch, Prince Raymond, who was actually her uncle, trying to organise a campaign with him and her husband, Louis. Only Louis was very suspicious, both of the Emperor Constantinople and of Prince Raymond. He seems to be afraid that his crusade is going to be diverted or taken over by somebody else, and he's not going to be able to achieve what he hopes to achieve. And he seems to have thought that Eleanor was being far too friendly with his other

people, and particularly with Raymond. So Eleanor is accused of having an affair with her uncle, for which in fact there isn't any physical evidence or evidence at the time. It's afterwards, after the Second Crusade has failed, that Ellen is being blamed for its failure. She was far too friendly with her uncle. She having an affair. So that's one of the pitfalls for an elite woman on Crusade. If she even speaks to another man, question marks are raised about her fidelity and is she a good Christian woman, is she fit to be here? Later generations accused Ellen of not just being too friendly with her uncle, but having an affair with Saladin, who would have been about 10 at that point, so a bit of a mixture of chronologies there, or wearing armour and riding with her

maidens as if they're going to go into battle. But it was dangerous as well for women going on crusade on the way back from the crusade. The French expedition gets mixed up with a conflict between the Sicilians and the Byzantines, and Ellen's ship was stopped by the Byzantines for short time, and it looked like Eleanor was going to be taken to captivity. She was rescued and released, but just a woman travelling not by herself because she would have an armed force with her is always at risk and of course she would have been a great prize

and got a good ransom for the Queen of France. So the second time she's involved in a crusade she went to Sicily when Richard was on his way out of the crusade to take Beringari of Navarre to meet him, Berengari and Richard were married there which means that Richard's

assured of the support of this kingdom which is also involved in the crusades in the Iberian Peninsula and presumably she was happy for her daughter Joanna, Richard's youngest sister, to go with Richard to the east. Joanna's dowry gets used by Richard to finance his crusade. Then she went back to England, probably by the Pope, fill him in what was going on, and has to effectively take over the government of England to stop Richard's little brother John taking over the kingdom. And there were the news comes that Richard has been captured on his way back.

then Eleanor, who with other leading members of the government in England, initiates to search what's happened to Richard and negotiating the ransom, and she goes out to bring Richard back from Germany when he's released. So that's another role that women take in the Crusades, holding the home front when their men folk are away, the mothers looking after their sons or wives looking after their husbands, and paying the ransom if a ransom is there to be paid. A letter survives, which is supposed to be from Eleanor to the Pope,

it may have been actually fabricated later, which says that this is ridiculous that Richard is not covered by the protection that's due for crusaders, that he's been captured on his way back from crusade. And he should have been exempt from anything of that sort because he was a crusader. But it seems that nobody can stop the Duke of Austria

capturing him and then handing him over to the Emperor of Germany, just to show in this case international law, the Pope's law, doesn't seem to have worked. Yeah, it's almost a shame that we don't quite know whether that letter was really sent or not, because if you read it, it's a fantastic letter. I mean, it's absolutely dripping with contempt for the Pope and trying every little angle to poke at him to force him to act on Richard's behalf and sort of saying, you know, you promised to protect his lands while he was away. So how about you actually do that?

It's a great letter to read. Yes, and we would love it to be by Eleanor. It sounds that it could be by Eleanor. We could imagine her saying all these things. But unfortunately, we don't actually know that it is by Eleanor. And scholars have argued about this for years. In my head, I'm just going to say it was by Eleanor. When we talk about Crusader, we sometimes are in day.

of focusing on the Holy Land around Jerusalem. But you've touched on a little bit there, the Teutonic Crusades in the Baltics, and a little bit about the Hussite Crusade in what is now the Czech Republic. Are there other examples of women who were involved in crusades that weren't necessarily in the Holy Land? I think the most famous one in France is the Albigensian Crusade. Is there an example of a woman who was heavily involved in that, for example? I'll mention two women here. One is Alison Montmorency, who was the wife of Simon de Montfort, the elder, who became the leader of the Abigensian Crusade. And Alice spent much of the crusade, travelling round northern France and the low countries, raising recruits for that crusade to support her husband.

In fact, he couldn't have kept going on the crusade if it hadn't been about Alice. She was also defending the castle at Toulouse, which is confusingly known as the Nalban fortress. While the Albugenzians were organising a resurgence against Simon, she was defending the fortress of Toulouse, and then Simon was bombarding Toulouse from the outside, and he was hit by a stone from a stone thrower, which, interestingly, was reported as being operated by women, so that's women on the Abegensian side, but we don't have their names. And he was killed, at which point Alice is devastated,

but her eldest son, their eldest son, Amory then becomes leader of the crusade, and she then goes north again to try and raise more forces to support him. So she carried on doing that even after her husband had died. The other woman that I'd mentioned in connection with the Arbigensian Crusades was Blanca or Blanche of Castile, who was wife of Louis the 8th of France. And Louis had joined the Albuquerque duxian crusade while he was still the Lord Louis before he became king. And then after he became king of France, he led an expedition south. And tragically for Blanche and her children, he died on the way home from that expedition. Blanche was absolutely devastated at his death.

but she then carried on the war sending forces south to fight against the Albugencians and getting the treaty negotiated with the Albugencians, which brought the whole thing to an end, and the Count of Toulouse has to come to terms. He's told he has to go on crusade, and he's supposed to be supporting the crushing of the heretics and so on. Blanche is responsible for that treaty, so she actually brought the thing to an end. At that point, she was acting as regent for her son, Louis VIII, whose name is all. already been mentioned as a crusader. Blanche did not want Louis to go on that crusade to Egypt. When she heard he'd taken the cross while he was ill, she wouldn't believe that he'd done it.

And then she said he wasn't a fit mind. This oath should not be taken seriously. I'm trying talk him out of it. And Louis refused to be talked out of it. No, he did want to go on crusade. Like his father and his grandfather, Philip, had been on crusade, and now his father, Louis I the 8th and died on crusade. And Louis was to go on crusade. This is what a great Christian king should do and Louis was a very pious man, again, like his mother was a very pious woman. But when it comes down to actually losing your son as well as losing your husband, Blanche seems to have bolted at that. And in fact, it wasn't just Louis who went on crusade. Eventually all her sons go, and they don't all come back. But she did support Louis in his absence. She acted as regent. She raised money for him

when he was captured in Egypt. He helped to raise the ransom. So she continued to support him on this crusade in the East, even though she didn't want him to go. Just as she supported him. her husband when he was fighting with the Abigensi Crusade and she continued the crusade after his death. And I think that's an aspect of crusading where we can perhaps extrapolate more female involvement that if all of the men essentially evacuate Europe and head off to the near East to go and fight Muslims, someone has to keep the homes and the estates and the business of everyday life running and wherever there's a wife involved, you would suspect that she's the most likely person

to have been stepping up and performing that role in her husband's absence. Yes, absolutely. And we can see that with elite women, of course, when the charters are being issued in their names now. And sometimes they associate their eldest son with them so people can say, yes, this is a legitimate authority, but sometimes they don't. And sometimes issuing coins in their own names. Usually would have been put into that position by their husbands before husband departs and everybody has agreed to this. But in any case, yes, the natural person to step in, as you say, is the wife. She's acting on her own authority and also delegations. authority from her husband. And I think the other big crusade that happens outside the Near East that we possibly overlook quite often, I mean it stretches on for centuries and centuries, is the crusade in the Iberian Peninsula that the Kingdom of Spain eventually will call the reconquista, driving the Moors back out who'd have come from North Africa. And I guess one of the most famous women involved in that would be Isabella of Castile at the end of it. So what do we know about her role in the reconquista? Because I think if we get to a point, we can say maybe does

Columbus ever go on his voyage west if the reconquista hasn't happened and Isabella is in a position to back, you know, a speculative voyage to the west? Isabella is at a long succession of Queens of Castile who've supported crusading, although the dominant narrative here again is that the woman doesn't actually go out and fight herself, but she supports with words and money, the men, her husband, or her son who are actually leading the crusade. So in the case of Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, the way they spin it is that she's the spiritual support, she's the pious queen who is going to complete this just work and recover the holy land of Spain once of war from the Muslims who'd come from North Africa, and her husband would be the ones actually doing the campaigning. But when Isabel does turn up at a siege, everybody turns out to meet her and they declare that the Muslims are trembling in their shoes because they've seen the queen, and now she's come, they know that we are going to win this, and we are going to drive them out of their fortresses. Actually, for years and years, Granada had been paying tribute to Castile, so she was going to lose quite a good income stream by driving the Muslims out, but no, we have to do this work.

So eventually, yes, they conquer Granada and send the room of Granada into exile. And yes, this is the point where Columbus is coming to Castile and asking for money for his madcap voyage across the Atlantic, which incidentally had already been turned down by the king of Portugal, who reckoned he was nuts. and all Columbus's calculations are completely batty. He was wrong. The world is not as small as he thinks it is. And the Portuguese were already aware of this because they were working their way down the coast of Africa, so they know how big the planet is.

They just hadn't quite managed to turn the bottom of Africa yet. And the King of Portugal reckons that the way to get to the Indies to go around Africa. But no, here comes this nutcase from Italy, who says we go across the Atlantic. So the Portuguese wouldn't finance it. but Columbus span it for Ferdin and Isabella that this will be an alternative route to Jerusalem. The Portuguese haven't managed to get around Africa yet.

We know that the Muslims are further east in Asia. If we want to attack them from behind, this is the way to go. In fact, people have been talking about doing this for centuries on account of how we could progress the crusade from the 1320s when Rwaios suggests that actually you need to go through the Gulf of Aden. You need to go down the Red Sea and go that way. That's the way we're going to get to Jerusalem. So I think Columbus was taking advantage of a moment when the kingdom of Castile and the king of Aragon

looking for a new way to progress crusading and destroy Islam and why don't we do it this way and they picked up on it so he chose the right moment to go to them and of course though he was wrong about so many things he was right about there was another landmass out there and there was some gold so in the end it turned out to be a good investment by the monarchs of Aragon and Castile but not quite for the reasons he said it was. Yes. It's interesting the timing of all of that. The reconquistory is centuries in the completion, and then it all seems to fall into place at exactly the same time

as someone is off on this journey to the West. The Spanish monarchs come back, and that sort of sets Spain on its course for the next several centuries, really, doesn't it? Yes, and when they go out to the West, they're taking with them, they're crusading saint, St. James and Compostela, and they've got their images of Our Lady and their crosses. So when they're actually exploring Mexico, for example, they're doing it very much as a Christian force, looking for God's aid in the same way that the Crusader's used to,

although they never got the Pope to agree that this was a crusade. So you don't get Crusade's spiritual advantage by going to Mexico or going to America, as you would do if you were going to North Africa or going to the Holy Land. But they're still talking the same sort of language. We're doing this for Christ. We're fighting Christ's battles. that takes us into a whole new discourse of colonialism, which I suggest we don't get this afternoon. Yeah, we'll save that one for another day.

So just to end on, of all of the women that you explored in this book and learned a little bit about, if you could go back in time and sit down and meet one of them and talk to them, who would you most like to meet and have a chat with? I think Margaret de Provence, because her terrifying experiences in Damietta, is bad enough having a child giving birth without also having to wonder what an earth happened to your husband. and wondering if you're ever going to see him again. And she had to persuade the Italian merchants not to run away because their inclination was,

there's no money for us here, we're just going to leave the city. And she says, please don't, because if you do, everything is lost. And I will pay you for the food you've got, so we have enough food to feed the city. All that when most women will be at their lowest ebb, and she had the mother-in-law from hell. Because Blanche of Castile, being a very strong-minded woman herself, and very fond of her eldest son,

it never really seems to have trusted Margaret with Louis. And it's notable also that Louis was so upset when his mother died. And poor Margaret was left standing on the sidelines. And John of Joanneville record, we really think that the king ought not to be showing quite so much grief for his mother. When he has a wife and children, an army to look after. That's been really, really fascinating. Thank you very much for joining us to speak about that, Helen. Thank you.

It's an absolute pleasure. Helen's book, Women and the Crusades is available now in all good bookshops. You can join Dr Kat Jarman on Tuesday for another brand new episode. Don't forget to also subscribe wherever you get your podcast from and to tell your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you get a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify now. It really does help new listeners to find us. If you're enjoying this and looking for a bit more medieval goodness in your life, you can subscribe to History Hits Medieval Monday newsletter. Just follow the links in the show notes below.

Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with history hits.