Sexual Abuse and the Crusades

Introduction

The age of the crusades was disproportionately skewed towards the needs and interests of men.

This sad generalisation is even more spectacularly true of sexually based criminality. Conditions were perfect for exploitation and abuse. Men were generally at the top of the social hierarchies and exploited the power this gave them. Even in the lower reaches of society, this was an era when armies of mercenaries and other irregular soldiers were often uncontrolled and uncontrollable. In these male-dominated war zones, violence and rape were commonplace, as was, particularly in the Muslim world, the longer-term mistreatment of women as sex slaves.

Predation and Inequality

Perhaps not surprisingly, male entitlement dominated much of the geography of sexual relations at the time of the Crusades. Disappointingly, there was a well-established spectrum of predatory behaviour across the upper echelons of medieval society, regardless of conventions such as chivalry or its loose Muslim equivalent, furusiyya.

The inequality of sexual relations was rife in society, but it was exponentially heightened when there were major differences between the participants in terms of power or social status. As always, in our century as much as in any other, being successful, rich, and at the top of the social hierarchy brought serious sexual privileges along with it – and many opportunities to abuse those privileges.

A knight, for instance, not only had the chance to have affairs with the wives of his peers, but he could also play the field (often literally in these largely rural societies) much more widely. His resources gave him the opportunity to keep mistresses. And his social position made it far easier for him to have sexual access to women of lower status.

If there was a significant social distance between the two parties, the distinction between adultery – illicit extramarital sex – and rape could be a fine one. With sex between a knight and a peasant woman, for instance, issues of consent are often hard to judge – the boundaries between a coercive and a consensual liaison are almost impossible to determine from this distance.

The line between coercion and consent was further blurred by the issue of definition. Rape in medieval Europe was never an easy crime to classify. Religious law (that is, canon law) said that extramarital sex was wrong. Secular law said that violence was wrong. But rape, and sexual violence, fell uneasily between the two – it was often seen as trivial for the man but deeply shameful for the woman. And, from a practical point of view, rape was extremely difficult to prove – then as now – in a court of law.

Rape as a Crime Against Men?

Regardless of ties of affection, women were generally seen as male property. Perhaps not surprisingly, given the gender of those who were running the judiciary, the law and its consequences were framed to reflect that underlying attitude. This inevitably had ramifications for the way in which sexual violence was treated. Thus, perversely, even something as devastating as rape was seen as an affront to men, the male partner or male relatives of the female victim, as much as to the woman herself. ‘Honour’ was the elite status symbol par excellence, and anything which diminished that honour reflected on the male ‘victim’ as much as on the female.

In many instances, chivalry was a sadly shallow form of entertainment – little more than ‘virtue signalling’ for the male elite. Even the knights of the Round Table allegedly had to swear – on an annual basis – that they would not rape ‘ladyes, damesils, and jantilwomen’. This is encouraging on one level, but what does it say for a society in which such annual oath-taking is necessary? And what does it imply for the protection which might – or might not – be extended to ordinary females, those who did not have the protected status of ‘jantilwomen’?

‘Saving’ Women – But For What?

‘Saving’ women was certainly a common theme of chivalric tales, but what happened after they had been saved is more commonly overlooked. There were many coercive – or certainly less than entirely consensual – ways of interacting with women outside of marriage. The tales of chivalry, largely written by men for the entertainment of a male audience, idealised behaviour that would result in a lengthy prison sentence in a modern court, in the still unlikely event that such a case could be brought and proved, of course. Male superiority was a common theme, and such thinking drifted easily into ideas of sexual entitlement – particularly amongst the already vastly entitled upper classes.

Although chivalric literature was squarely aimed at the elite, even women in the highest echelons of society could find themselves at risk if events moved too quickly beyond their control. In the Story of Merlin, for instance, King Leodigan rapes the wife of one of his officials. While he is doing so, she is threatened that ‘if she shouted a single word, he would kill her with his sharp sword, or if she thrashed about in the least.’ Perhaps not surprisingly, ‘the lady defended herself with words as much as she could, but she did not dare speak out loud.’

Although there was no unified or mandatory rule of ‘chivalry’, the code, such as it was, did not often apply to lower-class women. Even the normally gallant King Arthur was said to have fathered bastard children, at least one of whom was with an attractive young woman whom he encountered while hunting. The ensuing ‘romance’ took a minute or two and was clearly less than fully consensual. The young woman, it was said, ‘still knew nothing of such matters…she began to cry out while he was lying with her, but it did her no good.’

Romantic love and chivalry were fine as far as they went – but only in their place. It was a natural assumption in northern Italian courts, for instance, that the upper classes would exercise their power in a sexual way and that any nobleman was entirely capable of acting as a ‘rapacious wolf’ amongst the women of his peasantry.

Templars and Sex

Even priests and monks got in on the act, and often in the most brazen way. The Templars were accused of many crazy things at their trial. One of the more plausible charges, however, was that some of the monks occasionally indulged in homosexual acts. Ironically, the defence of many brothers when facing such charges was to suggest, again, all too credibly, that this could not possibly apply to them – not because they were celibate (the obvious riposte) but because they were very actively heterosexual and had ready access to the local peasant women.

In Cyprus, similar boasts were circulated with typical Templar braggadocio – no girl could claim to be a real woman, they said, until she had had the pleasure of sex with one of the brother knights. One Templar was even more specific when questioned about his sex life. He protested that the charges of homosexuality pressed against him were outrageous – he was insulted on the grounds that he could get as many women as he wanted and often did just that.

And, although this was clearly forbidden by the religious authorities (and indeed by the Rule of the Templars), it does not seem to have been too frowned upon by the rest of society. Ironically, despite the charges of same-sex activity that were thrown at the Templars in the process of their dissolution, they had, until then, faced very little criticism in that regard – far less, in fact, than most other monastic orders. On the contrary, the Templars had, over time, become closely associated with courtly, romantic – and very aggressively heterosexual – love.

The underlying rationale for that part of the Templars’ image lay in the unhealthy expectation that adrenaline-filled elite troops were bound to need such outlets – after all, ‘knights will be knights’. Men of their class had a profound sense of entitlement and were known to be entirely capable of indulging in sexual activity with women if the opportunity arose. This was understood – and implicitly condoned – by others of their class. Chivalry was fine as far as it went, but it was not all that it was cracked up to be – or at least not from a female perspective.

A Man’s World

Rape, sexual slavery and the exploitation of women were far more pronounced than they are now. Shockingly, rape, like the murder of a wife, was often treated as a ‘lesser crime’. Partly this just reflected the gender bias and nature of the criminality – women were the primary victims, and men were the primary perpetrators. Even when girls and women were recognised as victims, however, the ‘offended’ parties were often assumed to be their men; women were male property, and the presumption was that their fathers or husbands were those who had been ‘dishonoured’ by the brutality inflicted upon ‘their’ females. This was a man’s world, with a male-dominated judiciary. Expectations of male sexual behaviour were low and, sadly, often with good reason.

In the war-torn frontiers of the Crusader states, sexual abuse at the hands of the enemy was so much the norm, so casual and habitual, that it was entirely expected – for female prisoners not to be raped was deemed to be unusual to the point of implausibility. Women released from captivity, whatever the circumstances and however much they might protest, were seen by all sides as ‘damaged goods’.

The reality, or very real threat, of sexual violence was everywhere.