Queens of Jerusalem by Katherine Pagonis
Women seldom exercised authority or power in the Middle Ages. However, instability on the Eastern Mediterranean shore during the Crusades gave several women opportunity to hold the scepter. The invading Crusaders—Roman Catholics determined to seize and hold the Holy Land against Islam—were relatively few in number and their leaders were often casualties of war. Needing to win allies among Eastern Christians native to the region, the Crusader King of Jerusalem, Baldwin, married an Armenian noblewoman, Morphia. She was crowned Queen of Jerusalem and gained power when her husband fell captive to his Muslim opponents. Her daughters would play crucial roles in the region’s byzantine politics.
Katherine Pangonis’ Queens of Jerusalem rescues those women from the obscurity to which they were consigned by (male) historians. She compares eyewitness accounts, scours through secondary sources and visits the sites where Morphia and her daughters ruled or co-ruled. Pangonis reads the historical record with contemporary feminist eyes while cognizant of the necessity to understand historical figures in the context of their societies. She also finds enough blood, intrigue and pageantry for a dozen Hollywood epics. Pangonis does good work not only in identifying the role of women in Crusader states but for painting a panorama of the heterogenous cultures of the Near East in the Middle Ages.
