ABSTRACT
Inspired by Sharon Farmer's work on the complexity of gendered discourses of power, clerical understandings of female persuasion, and the effects of crusading contacts on medieval Christian Europe, this chapter explores the work of the ardent crusade advocate and advisor to the French crown, Philippe de Mézières (1327–1405). Philippe’ss pro-crusade writings blend allegorical pilgrimage, mirror for princes, and crusade recovery treatise genres. In the process, they bring practical questions of crusading, reimagined gender norms, and community definition into striking conjunctions. In exploring Philippe’s’ interdependent constructions of gender, community, and crusade, this chapter brings a growing body of existing work on late medieval conduct, gendered reform, and crusading into dialogue with explorations of the powerful ways in which late medieval authors employed personifications to encourage the reimagination of the individual and the community found in the work of Sarah Kay, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Daisy Delogu, Helen Solterer, and Carolyn P. Collette. The chapter pays particular attention to how Philippe de Mézières employs regulations for crusader wives, the figure of Griselda, and evocative female personifications for the sake of promoting gendered and hierarchical understandings of individual and communal virtue which he considered central to the creation of a successful crusading society.
