Abstract
Crusaders’ wives, who took over the regency while their husbands or sons were fighting for Christ in the Holy Land, were a quite common phenomenon in medieval France. They not only differed from ‘regular’ female regents due to the fact that their husbands or adult sons, for whom they ruled in absentia, were still alive. Moreover some of them even had papal privileges that guaranteed the safety of the property and family the crusaders had left behind. Furthermore the absence of crusaders was long-term and could overlap with their wives’ widowhood, so that the once temporary regency of crusaders’ Wives could continue for decades. Crusading research has so far not paid enough attention to the ruling women at home, so that the picture of a fragile, liminal interim in crusading times still prevails. Following up on this discussion the main aim of this paper is to understand how two Crusaders’ wives, Maria and Blancha of Champagne, wanted to be seen as lords, and to analyze how they communicated and visualized their status and power in this situation. On the basis of the countesses’ seals and the tombs of their husbands as traces or reflections of their political performance, this article shows a broad range of practices the crusaders’ wives used in order to legitimize and demonstrate their powerful status as regents of the county of Champagne.
Published Version
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