Shepherd.com have published their ‘100 best books of 2023‘: that is, the books recommended by the authors whose books they promote. These are not necessarily the books you’ve seen recommended by Goodreads, Bookbub or Amazon! If you’re looking for that elusive really good read, it would be worth taking a look at these.
Sybil, queen of Jerusalem, 1186-1190 is out in paperback! Now at the much more affordable price of £38.00 plus free postage within the UK. Details on the publisher’s website: https://www.routledge.com/Sybil-Queen-of-Jerusalem-11861190/Nicholson/p/book/9781032234663
The online book site Shepherd.com has produced this plug for my 2010 book A Brief History of the Knights Templar, at https://shepherd.com/book/a-brief-history-of-the-knights-templar.
My book was kindly recommended by Dr Nicholas Morton of Nottingham Trent University!
My book Women and the Crusades was published by OUP in the UK on 23 Feb. This certainly isn’t the first book on the subject and it won’t be the last, but I hope it will give readers an insight into the enormous range of different ways women were involved in crusades during the period from the eleventh to the sixteenth century.
The book is thoroughly referenced, so readers should be able to track down fuller accounts of these women in the primary and secondary sources I used and read more about the cases that interest them! There were certainly far more women involved in crusades in one way or another than I have mentioned in the book, but it’s easy to overlook them in the primary sources if you’re not looking out for them.
I hope this book will encourage researchers to keep an eye open for women’s involvement in crusades, from planning crusades, encouraging people to go on crusade, raising troops, taking part in expeditions as someone who had ‘taken the cross’ or in a support role (servant, merchant, laundress …), looking after the family estates in the absence of crusaders, lending money to crusaders, praying, donating money to institutions that ransomed crusaders who had been taken prisoner, buying crusade indulgences to support crusaders, paying for memorials to crusaders … or caught up in crusades against their will: women who were taken prisoner, saw the loss of their property and their loved ones, and perhaps had to make the choice between death or captivity.
Initially I thought of including a list of all the women who were involved in the crusades, but this turned out to be impractical. Many women mentioned by contemporaries as present on crusades remained unnamed. Much of the support given by women (and by men) was part of everyday life: taking part in prayer during the Mass or in a liturgical procession to support a crusade, praying at the beginning of a meeting of a charitable fraternity for Christian recovery of the Holy Land, or buying an indulgence to help finance a crusade.
The book is available directly from the publisher, or from the usual online suppliers (Amazon , Waterstones …)
Very many years ago, back in the early 1990s when I was applying for university teaching posts, my next big research project was going to be women’s roles in the crusades. I had collected a good deal of primary evidence while working on my PhD project on medieval views of the military orders, and at that time there had been little research or acknowledgement that women played any role in the crusades.
But having got a teaching post I was told by ‘crusade’ colleagues that I mustn’t pursue this project. Another scholar was already working on it and I would damage their research if I started working on it too. So I published a research article on women on the Third Crusade, and stepped back from that project, waiting for the promised comprehensive study of women in crusading to be published.
Reader, it never was.
In 2003 the German scholar Sabine Geldesetzer published a detailed study of women’s involvement in the crusades to the Holy Land between 1096 and 1291. I waited for it to be translated into English. No English translation has been published yet.
To cut a long story short: at last I gave up waiting. With encouragement from a friendly publisher, at last I have been able to write up my own research on women and the crusades. It covers much more than the crusades to the Holy Land — the Iberian Peninsula, the Baltic, and crusades against heretics are all included, as are some Spanish and Portuguese expeditions further afield in the first half of the sixteenth century which used crusading ideology. The book considers women’s roles as initiators of crusades, their roles during crusade expeditions and conflicts, their support for crusaders on the home front, and how women perpetuated the memory of crusades and crusaders. It concludes that most women’s involvement in crusades was very like most men’s: support through donations and prayers rather than getting involved in the military action. When women did take part in expeditions they generally supported warriors (for example as medics, merchants, or helping to construct siege defences, carry water or perform other labouring tasks) rather than fighting, although they did take part in fighting in emergency situations, for example by throwing stones or using a bow.
I haven’t produced a list of known women crusaders, because in most cases contemporary commentators didn’t record their names. A list of ‘woman filling in ditch’, ‘woman whose baby girl was kidnapped’, ‘woman defending the wall’ is not particularly informative. But the index is full of names!
The book should be published on 23 February 2023 and can be pre-ordered from Amazon.
If you see any reviews of the book on Amazon or elsewhere before that date: they can’t be real, so ignore them!
A few months late: but as the Conference for the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East takes place next week, I should mention that my study of Queen Sybil of Jerusalem (queen 1186-92) was published by Routledge in March this year in its series ‘Rulers of the Latin East’. Details here: https://www.routledge.com/Sybil-Queen-of-Jerusalem-11861190/Nicholson/p/book/9781138636514
Here’s the blurb:
Queen Sybil of Jerusalem, queen in her own right, was ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem from 1186 to 1190. Her reign saw the loss of the city of Jerusalem to Saladin, and the beginning of the Third Crusade. Her reign began with her nobles divided and crisis looming; by her death the military forces of Christian Europe were uniting with her and her husband, intent on recovering what had been lost. Sybil died before the bulk of the forces of the Third Crusade could arrive in the kingdom, and the Crusade did not recover Jerusalem. But although Sybil failed, she went down fighting – spiritually, even if not physically.
This study traces Sybil’s life, from her childhood as the daughter of the heir to the throne of Jerusalem to her death in the crusading force outside the city of Acre. It sets her career alongside that of other European queens and noblewomen of the twelfth century who wielded or attempted to wield power and ask how far the eventual survival of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1192 was due to Sybil’s leadership in 1187 and her determination never to give up.
Don’t look at the price! The e-book is cheaper … but still expensive.
About a year ago, ARC Humanities Press published a short book on the Knights Templar in their ‘Past Imperfect’ series. The series ‘presents concise critical overviews of the latest research by the world’s leading scholars’. It was an honour to be asked to contribute to the series. Regrettably publication was delayed by the Covid-19 restrictions, but here is the book: https://www.arc-humanities.org/9781641891684/the-knights-templar/
And there’s a lovely review of it here, by Dr Nicholas Morton of Nottingham Trent University: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/34467/37767
But don’t try buying it from Amazon.co.uk: they’ve mixed it up with my earlier books on the Knights Templar, so if you order it from them they might send you the wrong book.
Update 23.06.22: I’ve contacted Amazon via the ‘author’ page and they’ve sorted out the mix up on the Amazon.co.uk page, although may still be a problem for other countries.
Road safety: something we should all pay more attention to, perhaps?
I fell over this by accident:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/creating-a-road-collision-investigation-branch-rcib
You may be a better-informed reader and have already seen it.
Effectively, the Government has noticed that road traffic collisions tend to go uninvestigated except in so far as required for criminal prosecutions, insurance payouts and negligence actions. This creates a rather piecemeal approach that will endeavour to allocate blame (not always very successfully) without considering road safety in the round.
In some cases collisions are made more likely by features of the road. Here’s an example. From this dubious drawing it may look like a standard signal-controlled T-junction.
Now it looks tidy until you discover that the pelican on the right that controls traffic vanishing off down East Road is semi-synchronised with the main junction. It will never show red unless the main set of traffic lights for traffic…
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It was a great honour to examine the brilliant doctoral thesis which has now been transformed into this book. If you are studying the Templars’ estates, their operations in Europe, their logistics, or studying the economic history of medieval Europe, do read this book!
As well as sorting out what properties the Templars held in Lincolnshire, Mike Jefferson looks at what they produced on their farms, who worked there and what they did, and what became of these properties after the Templars were dissolved. He also includes analytical tables setting out his data, so readers can check how he’s reached his conclusions and do some analysis of their own.
Available directly from the publisher at: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783275571/the-templar-estates-in-lincolnshire-1185-1565/ or from Amazon.
If you want a copy of my Proceedings Against the Templars in the British Isles but can’t afford it, the volumes are currently available from Postscript books at £30 the pair: https://www.psbooks.co.uk/Proceedings-against-the-Templars-in-the-British-Isles
Gawain's Mum 