|
Chapter 31:
Woman's View of the Crusades
Just as it is difficult to identify a single type of experience that was common to women involved in the Crusades, so it is probably not possible to talk of a single concept of Crusading specific to women, The Woman's View.
This is not because women were without attitudes to the meaning of the Crusades, but because we largely lack broad primary documentation to reach a theoretical position, and also because a view of the Crusades seems to have been related both to culture and to individuality. As well, attitudes to the circumstances of the First Crusade were remarkably different for most people than, say, the Fourth or later Crusades, by which time the pure zeal of the initial movement were becoming severely tainted with baser motives.
Rather, it is perhaps possible to talk about the range of views about the Crusades held by various groups and individuals.
This variety of views held about the Crusades can probably be multiplied by the numbers of individuals and institutions involved, as shown by a sampling of women who voiced ideas of the Crusade.
There were those women who were entirely in favour of the great journey, either for spiritual or personal reasons, such as Adela of Normandy, who sent her husband off on Crusade twice - finally to his death - and who backed up her instructions with financial support. Her badgering of Stephen was reported with some degree of glee by the chroniclers, including Ordericus Vitais, who in his tenth book puts these words in her mouth:
"Far be it from me, my lord, to submit any longer to the jibes you receive from all quarters. Pluck up the courage for which you were renowned in your youth and take arms in a noble cause for the salvation of thousands, so that Christians may have good reason to exult in all parts of the world to the terror of the pagans and the public humiliation of their detestable religion."
If there is any degree of accuracy in this reportage, Adela seems to have been motivated by considerations of her husband's reputation as much as by a desire for the salvation of fellow Christians coupled with eagerness to smite the pagan religion. Her views, therefore, cover quite a range of attitudes.
Eleanor of Aquitaine, of course, as a young woman seems to have combined a spiritual urge (which should not be discounted in any medieval person) with a thirst for adventure, the exotic and romance. In later life, she seems to have seen her son's Crusade purely in
|
|