Women in the Crusades

While to some extent this is true, some women also took part in other activities, including armed combat in the battles of the Holy Land.

[2] For a discussion of the sociological and religious aspects of the mixing of women with the predominantly male crusaders, the reader is referred to the referenced documents.

Women who were of the common people were also present throughout the venture, performing tasks such as removing lice from soldiers' heads and/or washing clothes.

In fact, the washerwoman was the only role for a woman approved by the Catholic Church and permitted during the First Crusade, as long as they were unattractive, for fear that the troops would engage with them in sexual relations.

Unmentioned in victory, they took the blame for defeat and were purged from the campaign several times throughout the crusades, for relations with them were considered sinful among soldiers who had left their homelands to fight a holy cause and were supposed to be pure in thought and deed.

[4] In addition, numerous nuns also accompanied the religious men, namely priests and bishops, that traveled as part of the quests, while other women took up arms, against their Muslim foes.

[7] The story of women in the Crusades begins with Anna Komnene, the daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.

As widows, they held a degree of independence that they had previously lacked, allowing them control over their own property, the opportunity to preside over courts and trade meetings, and fulfilling obligations of military and political service, in direct contravention of European gender norms of the period.

"[33] As a result of these frequent remarriages widowed princesses and countesses carried the substantial estates to their next husbands and became seen as a prize, with various European men leaving their homes for a landed wife in the Levant.