The Women of Antioch: Gender and Political Culture, 1095-1204

The Women of Antioch is both a biography of four women—Constance, Alice, Constance II, and Maria, all connected through marriage or birth to the crusader principality of Antioch—and an analysis of the political cultures within which they maneuvered, including eleventh-century France, Norman Italy, Antioch and Byzantium.

The book’s comparative perspective facilitates the discernment of differences and commonalities in these women’s experiences, identifying elements conducive to their exercise...