Considers how elite women could participate in Crusade, their means and motivations. The popular perception of the medieval Crusades is of conflicts spanning from the Holy Land to the Baltic, with huge armies of religious zealots led by knights wearing crosses. However, the reality is far more nuanced. The vast majority of those living in western Europe did not go on crusade at all. But that does not mean that crusading was not on their minds, or that they could not influence the movement. They urged others to take up the cross, provided financial support, and prayed for the campaigns in the Holy Land; for them, this was crusade. This book investigates how English laywomen were encouraged to support crusades and identify with holy war during the Middle Ages, challenging preconceptions of what crusade "meant", and bringing out the diverse ways of their participation. It draws on detailed analysis of cartularies, judicial records, chronicles and lyrical sources; it also examines the rich material culture of commemoration that celebrated the endeavour, alongside the papal propaganda which idealised women's sponsorship of crusade. This study therefore sheds new light not only on the role of women in crusade, but on their influence and piety more generally.

These papers explore major themes in recent scholarship on the medieval crusade and its religious, political and cultural context, re-evaluating the issue of "were the Templars guilty?" and suggesting their problem was one of organisation; one study looks at the impact and effect of the crusade on Jewish-Christian relations, another at crusaders and their interaction with indigenous Christians in the county of Edessa as a case study of developments in other crusader states; and there are papers on Peter the Hermit, on the political and religious context and impact of the Fourth Crusade, on the influence of the crusade on Piers Plowman, and on the political context for the failure of crusading ideals in fifteenth-century Burgundy. Contributors ALFRED ANDREA, ROBERT CHAZAN, KELLY DEVRIES, CHRISTOPHER McEVITT, THOMAS MADDEN, JONATHAN RILEY-SMITH, WILLIAM E. ROGERS, JAY RUBINSTEIN SUSAN J. RIDYARD is Professor of History, University of the South.

The motivations behind those who went on the Third Crusade examined through close investigation of their social networks.

Legal records illuminate womens' use of legal processes, with regard to the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage and children, women as traders, etc. Determined and largely successful effort to read behind and alongside legal discourses to discover women's voices and women's feelings. It adds usefully to the wider debate on women's role in medieval society. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW What is really new here is the ways in which the authors approach the history of the law: they use some decidedly non-legal texts to examine legal history; they bring together historical and literary sources; and they debunk the view that medieval laws had little to say about women or that medieval women had little legal agency. ALBION The legal position of the late medieval woman has been much neglected, and it is this gap which the essays collected here seek to fill. They explore the ways in which women of all ages and stations during the late middle ages (c.1300-c.1500) could legally shift for themselves, and how and where they did so. Particular topics discussed include the making of wills, the age of consent, rights concerning marriage, care, custody and guardianship (with particular emphasis on the rights of a mother attempting to gain custody of her own children within the court system), women as traders, women as criminals, prostitution, the rights of battered women within the courts, the procedures women had to go through to gain legal redress and access, rape, and women within guilds. NOELJAMES MENUGE gained her Ph.D. from the Centre of Medieval Studies at the University of York. Contributors: P.J.P. GOLDBERG, VICTORIA THOMPSON, JENNIFER SMITH, CORDELIA BEATTIE, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, NOEL JAMES MENUGE, CORINNE SAUNDERS, KIM M. PHILLIPS, EMMA HAWKES

The first major study of the principality of Antioch, reasserting its significance and challenging the dominance of Jerusalem in modern crusading historiography.

Gender and Exemplarity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain gathers a series of studies on the interplay between gender, sanctity and exemplarity in regard to literary production in the Iberian peninsula. The first section examines how women were con¬strued as saintly examples through narratives, mostly composed by male writers; the second focuses on the use made of exemplary life-accounts by women writers in order to fashion their own social identity and their role as authors. The volume includes studies on relevant models (Mary Magdalen, Virgin Mary, living saints), means of transmission, sponsorship and agency (reading circles, print, patronage), and female writers (Leonor López de Córdoba, Isabel de Villena, Teresa of Ávila) involved in creating textual exemplars for women. Contributors are: Pablo Acosta-García, Andrew M. Beresford, Jimena Gamba Corradine, Ryan D. Giles, María Morrás, Lesley K. Twomey, Roa Vidal Doval, and Christopher van Ginhoven Rey.

Medieval virginity theory explored through study of martyrs, nuns and Margery Kempe. This study looks at the question of what it meant to be a virgin in the Middle Ages, and the forms which female virginity took. It begins with the assumptions that there is more to virginity than sexual inexperience, and that virginity may be considered as a gendered identity, a role which is performed rather than biologically determined. The author explores versions of virginity as they appear in medieval saints' lives, in the institutional chastity of nuns, and as shown in the book of Margery Kempe, showing how it can be active, contested, vulnerable but also recoverable. SARAH SALIH teaches in the Department of English at King's College London.

Edition and English translation of eye-witness account of Third Crusade, with emphasis on Richard the Lionheart. The Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, an early example of vernacular chronicle, by the Norman poet Ambroise, presents an eye-witness account of the Third Crusade (1188-92) in a highly-polished rhetorical style. Central is the character of Richard the Lion Heart, Ambroise's hero, but the narrative is also enlivened by short anecdotes, sometimes heroic and sometimes more down-to-earth, about other participants. It depicts clearly the privations and sufferings of the ordinary crusaders, whether at the siege of Acre or on the march, and provides both a detailed record of events and a personal perspective on the Islamic warriors and their leaders, in particular Saladin and Saphadin. Ambroise also shows remarkable knowledge of contemporary weapons of war, such as siege engines and types of ship. This, the first new edition of the Estoire since 1897, offers text and prose translation into English. Detailed notes identify most of the participants and clarify literary, biblical and historical allusions, while the introduction looks at historical, literary and philological aspects of the poem and assesses its significance as literary artefact and historical record, setting it in context and bringing forward new evidence about the identity of the poet. Dr MARIANNE AILES is Lecturer at Wadham College, University of Oxford, and Honorary Research Fellow at Reading University; MALCOLM BARBER is Professor of History at Reading University.

Studies of ways in which the rapidly evolving society of medieval Europe developed social, legal and practical responses to public and private violence.

"This study will be valuable not only to those interested in English political history, but also to historians of women, the medieval church, and medieval culture."--Jacket.