Melisende, Queen of Jerusalem

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: Bibliotheque nationale de France

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Natasha Hodgson No other episodes
  Senior Lecturer in Medieval History and Director of the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Nottingham Trent University
• Katherine Lewis 5 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
• Danielle Park No other episodes
  Visiting Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London

Reading list

• Medieval Women
  Derek Baker (ed.) (Blackwell, 1978) Google Books →
• The Crusader States
  Malcolm Barber (Yale University Press, 2012) Google Books →
• Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe
  Theresa Earenfight (ed.) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) Google Books →
• Queenship in Medieval Europe
  Theresa Earenfight (Palgrave, 2012) Google Books →
• Gendering the Crusades
  Susan B. Edgington and Sarah Lambert (eds,) (University of Wales Press, 2001) Google Books →
• Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative
  Natasha R. Hodgson (Boydell Press, 2017) Google Books →
• Reassessing the Roles of Women as 'Makers' of Medieval Art and Architecture
  Therese Martin (ed.) (Brill, 2015) Google Books →
• Fulk and Melisende: King and Queen of Jerusalem
  Danielle Park (forthcoming - Routledge, 2021) Google Books →
• Holy Warriors: A Modern History of the Crusades
  Jonathan Phillips (Vintage, 2010) Google Books →
• The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus: vol. III, The City of Jerusalem
  Denys Pringle (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• The Crusader Armies
  Steve Tibble (Yale University Press, 2018) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m000bg2y

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bg2y

Auto-category: 909.07 (Crusades)