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Romance Captivities in the Context of Crusade: The Prose Lancelot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peggy McCracken
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Extract

The Taking of captives was a common practice in crusade warfare. Although men were more easily ransomed, many women were also taken captive. Women were not combatants on the battlefield, but when the fighting overran crusader camps, women in the camps were likely to be taken. Women were also captured when cities were taken or besieged cities were abandoned by their defenders. Albert of Aachen notes that in 1101 when the crusaders lost the battle at Paphlagonia, they left the undefended women to be captured by their enemies:

The Christians left their tents and all their equipment with all their wagons, with their delicate and beloved wives, with all the goods which are needed by so many nobles and so great an army…. The Turks … cruelly attacked these noble women and eminent matrons, seized them wickedly and held them in fetters, sending over a thousand into barbarous lands where the language was unknown; they plundered them like dumb animals and sent them into perpetual exile … as if they were in a cage or prison. (qtd. in Friedman, “Captivity” 123)

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 576 - 582
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

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References

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