Medieval London widows, 1300-1500 (review)

Reviews 227 archaeologist of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, discusses the small forts at Cisterna Rubea (Qal'at ad-Damm / Maldoim) and Bait Jubr at-Tahtani which guarded the pilgrim route from Jerusalem to the Jordan. These forts, Maldoim certainly, were constructed by the Templars to fulfil their vow of protecting pilgrims in their journeys to the Holy Places. Robert Irwin offers a revised interpretation of the Devise des chemins de Babiloine, a Hospitaller document drafted in 1306 or 1307 to provide information about Mamluk Egypt for a future assault on Egypt by a Crusader force. Joan Williamson examines the ideas of the Chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus, Philippe de M6zieres, le vieil pelerin, developed in a series of writings ca 1367-96, for new Crusades and a Crusading Order: bis Nova religio milicie passionis Jhesu Christi pro acquisicione Sancte Civitatis Jherusalem et Terre Sancte. Peter Lock examines the fragmentary evidence for the role of the Military Orders in the Balkans after the Fourth Crusade in "The Military Orders in mainland Greece' and Helen Nicholson offers an interesting contribution on 'Knights and lovers: the Military Orders in the romantic literature of the thirteenth century', in which she examines the development of the literary themes of the Military Orders providing refuges for disappointed lovers and assisting couples in love. Obviously, no collection of papers offered at random to the organizers of a conference can hope to meet all expectations. One has to accept what is offered. Yet, if there is a single yawning chasm which still remains to be bridged in the study of the activities of the Military Orders, one which is not bridged in this collection, it is that of the processes by which the Hospitallers and Templars took to the sea during the later-twelfth and the thirteenth centuries and created the foundations for the later defence of Christendom at sea by the Order of the Hospital from the fourteenth. John H. Pryor Department of History University of Sydney Barron, Caroline M. and Anne F. Sutton, eds, Medieval London widows, 1300-1500, London and Rio Grande, Hambledon Press, 1994; cloth; pp. xxxiv, 271; 12figures,3 plates, 5 tables; R.R.P £37.50. Motivated by the conviction that women are most visible in medieval records during the years of their widowhood, the essays in this collection set 228 Reviews out to reconstruct the lives of widows in medieval London from surviving sources. Individual women are taken as historical subjects and agents, their economic and legal activities are investigated, social networks are traced, and famUial experiences are explored. Other themes are also considered: female piety, marital relationships, women's involvement in education, and evidence of book-keeping. The result is a number of biographical studies, which are framed and informed by Caroline Barron's 'Introduction: the widow's world in later medieval London'. The lack of written and material evidence for the lives of medieval women is the central problem faced, to varying degrees, by the authors of these essays. In several chapters widows are studied collectively to overcome the paucity of sources for individuals. Using evidence of the social context of London's fourteenth century tanners and their families, Derek Keene is able to offer cautious but convincing conclusions about the experiences of tanners' widows. Robert A. W o o d takes a more descriptive approach in his study of poor widows, providing a quantitative analysis of 39 wills, but refrains from making any extensive comment upon his categories of analysis or his results. Mary C. Erler's essay on fifteenthcentury vowesses represents a modification on die collective study approach. She focusses upon three women and presents comparisons between then lives as vowesses and the examples of other vowed widows. The remainder of the essays concentrate upon individuals. In many of these essays it becomes clear that the problem of writing about medieval women is not only lack of documentation but also the nature of the sources used and the questions asked of them. Wills and testamentary records feature largely in the evidence used to retrace women's lives. According to Barron, they 'provide an insight into the character of then widowhood' (p. xvi). But can a...