Women were specifically prohibited from going on crusade, along with children and the elderly, or anyone else who was unable to fight. Wives, sisters, mothers - they were all supposed to stay at home and take care of their male family members’ property. So what did this mean for them, while some or all of their male relatives were gone?

The families and property of crusaders were supposed to be protected by the local parish church or local monastery, and anyone who harmed them in any way was supposed to be excommunicated. Crusaders often made contracts with the church for mutual protection - the church would take care of their lands and families while they were away, and the crusader would donate money and land to support the church.

But these sorts of contracts developed gradually in the 12th and 13th century. At the time of the First Crusade in 1095, most crusaders had to find a way to protect their family and property on their own. A crusader might come back and find their lands ruled by someone else or that their sisters or other female relatives had married someone they didn’t like. Jonathan Riley-Smith gives the example of Hugh of Chaumont - when he returned from the First Crusade, his castle had been taken over by his uncle, who arranged a marriage between a female relative and another man who was now ruling Hugh’s lands in his place.

In the generation after the First Crusade, Jonathan Riley-Smith also gives another example, Baldwin of Vern d’Anjou, who went on crusade with Count Fulk V of Anjou (the future king of Jerusalem) in 1120. Baldwin had only a daughter so he was worried that if he left, his territory might be claimed by his brother, Raul. They agreed that Baldwin’s wife and daughter would manage half of his land and Raul would manage the other half. If Baldwin died on crusade, his wife should remarry and all of his territory would pass to her new husband. If his daughter married while he was gone, then she, her husband, and Raul would split all the territory equally in half. If Baldwin’s daughter died Raul would inherit all of the property.

“Raul promised always to deal faithfully with Baldwin and the two women, never to try to ‘take away property to which they had a right and to aid them against anyone who injured them’ even to making war himself. The agreement, which demonstrates clearly the threat posed by a younger, and probably unmarried, brother to a crusader's wife and daughter and the need to take steps to counter it while the crusader was thousands of miles away, was witnessed by ten men and was guaranteed by Baldwin's immediate lord.” (The First Crusaders, pg. 135-136)

So, things could get pretty complicated for a crusader’s wife and other female relatives. It was a good idea to make arrangements to protect them before leaving, especially in an age before the church was powerful enough to protect them.

Maybe the most common solution was to leave territory in the hands of a wife, sister, mother, or another female relative. It’s often not easy to see this happening in the medieval sources, since the women were stuck at home and didn’t appear very interesting, at least compared to their male relatives who were off having adventures in the east. Women typically couldn’t inherit land or rule on their own in western Europe, and if their husbands or bothers came back home, they would simply get the land back. But women must have administered their territories well, if their relatives still had land to come back to! Adela of Blois, for example, managed her husband Stephen’s lands while he was gone, and for many years afterwards when he died on crusade. Many other wives must have done the same even if we don’t really know much about them.

Medieval authors (usually male, usually from the church) mention women more often in the context of the roles and behaviour that they were expected to show - e.g., urging their brave husbands to go on crusade, or properly mourning the dead when they didn’t come home. A stereotypical crusader’s wife tearfully begged her husband not to leave at first, but also stoically encouraged him when it was time to leave. An example is Elisabeth of Thuringia, whose husband Ludwig IV of Thuringia died in 1227 (not in the east, but from an illness on the way). His servants brought back his signet ring to prove that he had died and Elisabeth exclaimed

“He is dead, dead, and the world and everything that is sweet in the world is dead to me!”

The story comes from a hagiography written after she was declared a saint, so it’s probably a bit imaginary, but this was considered the ideal reaction to the death of a crusading relative. Scenes like this must have been familiar to family members who remained at home.

The wife of a crusader might not believe her husband had died and might do everything she could to find him. For example, Ida of Louvain’s husband Baldwin II of Hainault disappeared during the First Crusade. His body was never found, and although everyone was sure he had died, Ida insisted on travelling to the east in person to search for him herself. She never found him either, but apparently this was another appropriate reaction.- a wive bravely searching for her lost husband, even if the search was in vain.

Some wives, at least according to the medieval men who wrote these things down, could simply be shrews who nagged their husbands until they agreed to go on crusade. The best-known example here is Adela of Blois, who I mentioned earlier - in reality she was probably an excellent administrator and confident enough to govern her territory by herself. But her husband Stephen abandoned the First Crusade and returned home early. Adela couldn’t stand the shame so, supposedly, she forced him to go back on another crusade, where he ended up being killed.

Not all the wives stayed home like they were supposed to, either. Families were definitely present on the First Crusade, and other crusades as well. For example, Eleanor of Aquitaine accompanied Louis VII of France on the Second Crusade, and At one point she was described as riding into battle dressed like an Amazon (Presumably an exaggeration…could the queen of France fight in battle?) Eleanor later married Henry II of England and had a famous crusader son, Richard the Lionheart.

In the crusader states in the Holy Land, women seem to have had a much higher status than women back home in Europe. At first there were hardly any women there at all, so the crusaders sometimes married local Christian women. Eventually settlers started arriving from Europe, both men and women. At the highest levels of society, women were definitely more powerful than in Europe. In Europe it was extremely unusual, even impossible, for a kingdom to be ruled by a queen. But in crusader Jerusalem, women could inherit the entire kingdom, smaller fiefs, and houses and other properties. It’s not really clear why they introduced something innovative like that, but one common suggestion is that because crusader men frequently died in battle, sometimes their wives were the only ones left to inherit their fiefs.

In the 12th century Jerusalem was inherited by Queen Melisende, and although she was expected to rule alongside her husband (King Fulk, the Count of Anjou mentioned above) or her son (Baldwin III), the kingdom was legally hers. There were several other queens as well - Sibylla, Isabella I, Maria, Isabella II, and in the crusader Kingdom of Cyprus, Queen Alice. They all inherited their kingdom in their own name.

Sources:

Natasha R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Boydell, 2007).

Sarah Lambert and Susan B. Edgington, Gendering the Crusades (Columbia University Press, 2002).

Myra Bom, Women in the Military Orders of the Crusades (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

Bernard Hamilton, "Women in the crusader states: the queens of Jerusalem (1100-1190)”, in Studies in Church History (1978), pp. 143-174

Hans E. Mayer, "Studies in the history of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem”, in Dumbarton Oaks Papers 26 (1972), pp. 93-182

Peter W. Edbury, “Women and the customs of the High Court of Jerusalem according to John of Ibelin”, in Chemins d'Outre-mer (Paris, 2004), pp. 285-292

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986)

Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders, 1095-1131 (Cambridge University Press, 1997)

Nicholas L. Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 2012)