What did medieval women do to survive during crusades?

Answer 1

1st Answer:

First, no women went on the crusades after Eleanor of Aquitaine so they didn't need to survive them. Second, they did what they always did through out history and that was to work and take care of the family. Women have had always to contend with men at war, dead, or missing and until recent modern history there was no means of support for them or their children. Since they also did not have any civil rights this meant that they had to get by any way they could. For centuries women couldn't own land, go to school, have bank accounts, or property.

2nd Answer:

The idea of going off on the crusades was fairly popular with women, and enough did it that Pope Urban II issued a decree that women, children, the infirm, and the elderly were not allowed to go. It didn't work. Eleanor of Aquitaine managed not only to go, but to lead a full company of women crusaders. And she was not the last woman to go; Eleanor of Castile, wife of King Edward I of England, went on crusade, as did Isabella of Aragon, wife of King Philip III of France.

Women also fought on the Islamic side. Shajarat al-Durr conducted military campaigns while she was reigning as Sultana of Egypt.

Married women whose husbands went off on the crusades typically took over the jobs their husbands did. Many women worked in partnership with their husbands in business, and so they were prepared to take over for them when they were away, when they were ill, and when they died. The businesses women were in included nearly everything one might imagine. Many were farmers, but there were a lot of medieval women who were stone masons, carpenters, city guards, tax collectors, and even physicians. Most of them were quite able to look out for themselves.

This was true of the nobility and royalty as well as common folk. Long after being the captain of a company of women crusaders, Eleanor of Aquitaine was the mother of King Richard I of England, and when Richard was away crusading, she ruled England for him. Other women did the same sort of thing; at the very time Eleanor was ruling England, France was being ruled by Adèle of Champagne, the wife of King Louis VII, who was also on the crusade.

All this was not extraordinary. It was typical.

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