Helen Jane NicholsonCardiff University | CU · School of History, Archaeology and Religion
Helen Jane Nicholson
PhD
About
208
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Introduction
I recently retired as full professor at a UK Russell Group university. I am a world-leading scholar of the military religious orders and the Crusades and I research the roles of women in religious orders and in warfare in the middle ages. I analyse published documentary & narrative written sources & unpublished archival sources (e.g. in my research on the Templars' estates in Britain) and study literary sources as historical sources. I have recently published a book on women and the crusades.
Additional affiliations
September 2013 - present
Position
- Professor (Full)
Description
- 1994–present: 1994-96: fixed-term lecturer in Medieval History at the School of History and Archaeology; 1996–2000: Lecturer in Medieval History; 2000–2004: Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, 2004–2013: Reader in Medieval History. From 1 September 2013: Professor in Medieval History.
Publications
Publications (208)
In this wide-reaching and absorbing study, Uri Zvi Shachar explores the similarity in the language used by Catholic Christians, Jews and Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean region during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to portray holy warfare, cultural interactions between warriors and matriarchs, and their own journeys to their Holy Land and...
As promoters, propagandists, patrons and warriors, women were everywhere during the Crusades in medieval Europe and the Middle East.
This chapter appears in the published proceedings of a conference about the beginnings of the Knights Templar in the twelfth century. The best-known descriptions of the Templars’ origins – the account by Archbishop William of Tyre and the chronicle attributed to Ernoul and Bernard the Treasurer – were written more than two generations after the Tem...
Burgundy’s role in the crusades in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is well known to scholars of the individual crusades in which Burgundians took part, but the context and wider trends of their involvement have been less clear. Hilary Rhodes has skilfully disentangled the complex dynastic strands and relationships which have discouraged...
This chapter forms a part of the study _Jerusalem in Viken: Crusading ideology, church building and monasticism in south-eastern Norway in the twelfth century_, ed. Bjørn Bandlien_ ( Cappellen Damm Akademisk, 2023: ISBN pdf 9788202637705), pp. 177–92. It chapter sets out to offer a wider context for the establishment of the Hospitallers' house at V...
The medieval crusades needed women: women’s money, prayer support, active participation and inspiration. This book surveys women’s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when Cyprus, the la...
The medieval crusades needed women: women’s money, prayer support, active participation and inspiration. This book surveys women’s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when Cyprus, the la...
The medieval crusades needed women: women’s money, prayer support, active participation and inspiration. This book surveys women’s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when Cyprus, the la...
The medieval crusades needed women: women’s money, prayer support, active participation and inspiration. This book surveys women’s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when Cyprus, the la...
The medieval crusades needed women: women’s money, prayer support, active participation and inspiration. This book surveys women’s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when Cyprus, the la...
The medieval crusades needed women: women’s money, prayer support, active participation and inspiration. This book surveys women’s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when Cyprus, the la...
This is a book review of Magdalena Satora's new edition of the Templar testimonies presented to the pontifical commission at Paris between 1309 and 1311, produced to modern editorial standards.
This is a double book review of the two books in the title of this paper.
The medieval crusades needed women: women’s money, prayer support, active participation and inspiration. This book surveys women’s involvement in medieval crusading between the second half of the eleventh century, when Pope Gregory VII first proposed a penitential military expedition to help the Christians of the East, and 1570, when Cyprus, the la...
The normative texts of the Military Religious Orders generally sought to limit or even prevent all interaction between the professed Brothers and women, and the primitive rule of the Order of the Temple indicated that women should no longer be admitted to the Order. The reason for this restriction was to prevent the Brothers being distracted from t...
This is a book review of Stephen Spencer's book.
Building on earlier studies by Margaret Jubb and by me, this article analyses a thirteenth-century response to the Hospitallers’ charitable work: a story of a visit by Sultan Saladin (d. 1193) to the Hospital in Acre and the treatment he received there. The story is clearly fiction, but with just enough historical basis to suggest credibility, and...
Over seven hundred years after the pope dissolved their Order, the Templars remain as controversial as ever. How could warriors also be monks? What did they really believe in? Why did they fail to protect the Holy Land? What impact did they have on society? Why were they dissolved—were they really heretics? Based on the medieval evidence and the la...
The Templars held many famous castles, but arguably “Castle Pilgrim,” or ‘Atlit, is now the most famous of all. Incorporating the latest developments in defensive architecture, it never fell to siege and was abandoned only when it was clear that the Franks’ holdings on the Syrian-Palestinian mainland were lost without hope of relief. This chapter s...
The Templars in Britain and Ireland were not arrested until early 1308, three months and more after the Templars in France. The government of the English king in England and Ireland had no real interest in proceeding against the Templars, although some clergy supported the trial. While hardly any Templars confessed to any of the serious charges, th...
Over seven hundred years after the pope dissolved their Order, the Templars remain as controversial as ever. How could warriors also be monks? What did they really believe in? Why did they fail to protect the Holy Land? What impact did they have on society? Why were they dissolved–-were they really heretics? Based on the medieval evidence and the l...
Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers
This book pays homage to the work of a scholar who has substantially advanced knowledge and understanding of the medieval military-religious orders. Alan J. Forey has published over seventy meticulously researched articles on every aspect of the military-religious orders, two books on the Templars in the Corona de Aragón, and a wide-ranging survey...
As Alan Forey noted in his 1992 book on the Military Orders, the military orders ‘were often accused of profiting by abusing their rights and privileges’. Not only were they accused of abusing them, but ‘the secular clergy … frequently claimed that they were seeking to extend their ecclesiastical privileges unlawfully’. This chapter considers just...
It is a commonplace of medieval history that diocesans and metropolitans were in constant conflict with the exempt religious orders of the Church. From the second decade of the twelfth century onwards, a succession of papal privileges exempted the military religious orders from the authority of the diocesan bishops, as a means of enabling these ord...
This is a review of Steven Tibble's book on The Crusader Armies; it is not the book itself.
The so-called “Itinerarium Peregrinorum 1”, so named by Professor Hans E. Mayer in his 1962 study, is a contemporary Latin Christian record of events leading up to the Third Crusade (1189-1192) and covering the first fifteen months of hostilities. It appears to be a medley of sources forming a loose narrative of events in the kingdom of Jerusalem b...
This fine collection of eleven scholarly papers, edited by Gary P. Baker, Craig L. Lambert and David Simpkin, builds on and develops the research of Andrew Ayton, ‘one of the most distinctive voices in the field of late medieval military history' (p. xiii). Arranged in chronological order of subject, the papers range widely across the military hist...
Covers the events of the Third Crusade in the first six months of 1192, including the crusaders' first retreat from Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the defences of Ascalon, and rivalry between the various national groups on the crusade. News arrives from England that King Richard's younger brother John has driven King Richard's regent out of England a...
Covers the beginning of the Third Crusade in western Europe from the calling of the Crusade by Pope Gregory VIII, through King Richard of England's and King Philip of France's voyages to the East, and ending with King Richard of England's capture of Saladin's Great Ship, just before his arrival at the siege of Acre.
This chapter includes the original Itinerarium peregrinorum, known to scholars as IP 1, which covers Saladin's conquest of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187-89; the beginning of the Third Crusade; and the early stages of the crusaders' siege of Acre, 1189-90, ending with the death of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury at Acre in November 1190. The nar...
Covers the events of the Third Crusade from King Richard of England's arrival at the siege of Acre in early June 1191 to the city's fall in late July, ending with King Philip of France's departure from the Holy Land.
Covers the events of the Third Crusade from late June 1192 to the end of the Crusade, including the crusaders' final retreat from Jerusalem, the capture of a great caravan, the final breakdown of relations between the French-Burgundian and the Anglo-Norman contingents on the crusade, Saladin's attack on Jaffa and King Richard's relief of the city,...
Covers the events of the Third Crusade from August 1191 to the beginning of 1192. After King Philip of France has left Acre to return home, King Richard of England negotiates with Saladin, seeking the return of the relic of the True Cross which Saladin captured at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 in exchange for the prisoners taken after the city of Ac...
The author explains why he set out to write this account of the Third Crusade.
This chapter, part of the volume 'A Companion to Chivalry', discusses a key theme of medieval chivalry within the context of modern scholarly understanding of medieval chivalry and knighthood. The establishment of the military orders helped to establish a strong religious undertone to the chivalric ethos of the secular knighthood of the high middle...
Although the Templars are most famous for their military activity in the defence of Christendom, they also held extensive estates in western Europe whose purpose was to raise resources to maintain their military commitments.This paper sets out some of the initial findings from my own research on the unpublished records in the National Archives of t...
How far were the military religious orders involved in secular warfare? The vocation of the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller, Teutonic Knights and similar medieval institutions bound them to fight in defense of Christians, to prevent injustice to Christians and to lay down their lives for their brothers. Hence modern scholars of the medieval mi...
The Journal of Medieval Military History continues to consolidate its now assured position as the leading academic vehicle for scholarly publication in the field of medieval warfare. ‘Medieval Warfare’
Yvonne Friedman’s research has shown that in the context of the crusades, normal behaviour towards women of any religious belief was to take them prisoner: sometimes as captives taken after a defeat; sometimes as the deliberate goal of a slave-hunting raid. Yet the norm was not necessarily the ideal. This article discusses the works of contemporary...
The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades - edited by Anthony Bale January 2019
Memory forms a central part of institutional identity, underpinning what the members of an institution believe their function to be. It is not static, but is continually re-created to meet new challenges. In the context of the military-religious orders, predominant memory was not individual or based on a person’s own experiences but a collective re...
Sophia Menache pointed out in her article ‘Contemporary attitudes concerning the Templars’ affair’ (1982) that local chroniclers in England ‘supported the French version of the Templars’ heresy’, although King Edward II and his prelates did not. This raises the question of whether local chroniclers were aware of irregularities in the Templars’ reli...
(Book blurb) The lives of the medieval Templars seem hidden and mysterious. Helen J. Nicholson reveals their everyday world set out in early 14th-century records of the Templars’ estates. These records show us how they operated, the men and women who worked for them on their lands and houses, their tenants and the people who owed them money. We can...
This article represents a progress report on my research into the Templars’ properties in England and Wales, as recorded after the arrests of the Templars in Britain and Ireland and preserved in the UK National Archives at Kew. The detailed descriptions of the Templars’ properties drawn up when the Templars in England and Wales were arrested, combi...
Among other subjects discussed by the authors to this volume, scholars of the European Middle Ages are indebted to Denys Pringle for his contribution to castle studies, both in Western Europe and the Middle East. His research has encompassed both field archaeology and documentary research and has included study of perceptions of castles and the fun...
As the cult of St Ursula and her companions was extremely widespread during the Middle Ages, it is not surprising that the Military-Religious Orders shared in the cult and held some of the relics, as every religious order wanted to acquire such relics to demonstrate its piety and holiness. Relics associated with the 11,000 virgins were widely avail...
The crusader states were set up in Syria and Palestine during the conquests of the First Crusade (1096–1099) and centered on the cities of Antioch, Edessa, Jerusalem, and Tripoli. The crusaders also conquered other states in the eastern Mediterranean: Greece and the Byzantine Empire and the island of Cyprus. In these states the Europeans, known as...
This paper introduced the first session, 'Memory and Archives' in the 7th International Meeting on Military Orders: Between God and the King. The world of the Military Orders, which took place at Palmela – Portugal, October 14–18, 2015. It takes an overview of 'memory studies' and considers how the military religious orders of the Temple, Hospital...
Geographically Ireland is a long way from Jerusalem, but by the mid-thirteenth century there were clear links between Ireland and the Holy Land. In particular, the Jerusalem-based military orders of the Temple and Hospital held widespread properties in Ireland, emphasising a spiritual closeness; although it is questionable how far their role in thi...
This conference paper, presented at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, July 2015, considers a disagreement that occurred in 1521 between Charles Booth, bishop of Hereford 1516–35, and Thomas Docwra, grand prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England 1501–27. The exchange of views recorded in the bishop’s reg...
Book review: It is always good to see the publication of a long-neglected primary source. To those of the early-twelfth century, the chronicle of Baldric of Bourgueil (also known to modern scholars as Baldric or Baudrey of Dol) was one of the better-known accounts of the First Crusade, although not as widely read as that by Robert the Monk. Yet Bal...
Women in medieval Catholic Christendom were inevitably involved in crusading, which was central to their society and culture. Yet both the form that involvement took and its depiction by contemporary commentators were circumscribed by social convention and expectations. Both Christian and Muslim writers agreed that women should not be involved in p...
Recent years have seen increasing research into the military orders’ spirituality. The military orders encouraged devotion to martyr-saints. David Woods has noted that that the Templars may have translated relics of the supposed early fourth-century military martyr St Varus from Jezreel in Palestine (Le Petit Gérin, held by the Templars before 1187...
Book review of Crusading in Frankish Greece. A study of Byzantine-Western relations and attitudes, 1204–1282. By Nikolaos G.Chrissis. (Medieval Church Studies, 22.) Pp. xlii+338 incl. 7 maps. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. €90. 978 2 503 53423 7 - Volume 65 Issue 3 - Review by Helen J. Nicholson
This volume celebrates Peter Edbury's career by bringing together seventeen essays by colleagues, former students and friends which focus on three of his major research interests: the great historian of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, William of Tyre, and his Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum and its continuations; medieval Cyprus, in part...
Considers how the Hospitallers in Britain remembered the Templars after 1313, with particular consideration of Brother John Stillingflete's book of 1434.
This volume celebrates Peter Edbury’s career by bringing together seventeen essays by colleagues, former students and friends which focus on three of his major research interests: the great historian of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, William of Tyre, and his Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum and its continuations; medieval Cyprus, in part...
Book review: The popularity of the crusades among university and school students has never been greater, but every teacher of the subject knows the difficulties of finding good translations of medieval documents. Translations of complete crusade chronicles and collections of documents relating to specific crusades are invaluable, but teachers and t...
This book review is available online at: https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/1692
