In Our Time: S22/10 Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem (Nov 21 2019)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most powerful woman in the Crusader states in the century after the First Crusade. Melisende (1105-61) was born and raised after the mainly Frankish crusaders had taken Jerusalem from the Fatimids, and her father was King of Jerusalem. She was married to Fulk from Anjou, on the understanding they would rule together, and for 30 years she vied with him and then their son as they struggled to consolidate their Frankish state in the Holy Land.

The image above is of the coronation of Fulk with Melisende, from Livre d'Eracles, Guillaume de Tyr (1130?-1186)
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

With Natasha Hodgson, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Nottingham Trent University; Katherine Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield; and Danielle Park, Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. Producer: Simon Tillotson.

READING LIST:

Derek Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (Blackwell, 1978), especially ‘Women in the Crusader States: The Queens of Jerusalem’ by Bernard Hamilton

Malcolm Barber, The Crusader States (Yale University Press, 2012)

Theresa Earenfight (ed.), Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), especially ‘The Spending Power of a Crusader Queen: Melisende of Jerusalem’ by H. A. Gaudette

Theresa Earenfight, Queenship in Medieval Europe (Palgrave, 2012)

Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert (eds,), Gendering the Crusades (University of Wales Press, 2001)

Natasha R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative (Boydell Press, 2017)

Therese Martin (ed.), Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture (Brill, 2015), especially ‘Melisende of Jerusalem: Queen and Patron of Art and Architecture in the Crusader Kingdom’ by J. Folda

Danielle Park, Fulk and Melisende: King and Queen of Jerusalem (forthcoming - Routledge, 2021)

Jonathan Phillips, Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades (Vintage, 2010)

Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus: vol. III, The City of Jerusalem (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Steve Tibble, The Crusader Armies (Yale University Press, 2018)

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