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1. G. Uhlein, Meditations With Hildegard of Bingen Bear, Santa Fe, 1983.
Part I
FIRST CRUSADES
Chapter 1:
"Behind It Goes Dona Ximenes"
A mighty medieval warlord in shining armour rides out of the gates of Valencia, astride a foam flecked stallion.
In his fist is clasped his lance, at his shoulder the shield which bears the bloody cross of Christendom.
At the head of a furious army, the white knight gallops into the maelstrom of besieging Moors, the dark skinned enemies of Europe and its civilization.
...One who fills them with dread,
Grown more huge than ever,
Who rides on a white horse,
A crimson cross on his breast,
In his hand a white signal;
The sword looks like a flame
To torment the Moors...1
Like foam before the iron prow of a warship, the panic stricken Moors part before him, and flee for their boats. Not even the fanatical Moorish leader Ben Yusuf can urge them to stand against this white knight.
For the knight is dead.
Rodrigo de Bivar, El Cid Campeador, the greatest warrior in Spain, had died the day before, wounded in a fruitless skirmish with the besieging Moors.
Yet now, he rides forth once again to do battle. Not even death can keep him from the service of his Lord.
El Cid's faithful wife, Ximenes, had with assistance from El Cid's liegemen dressed him in his armour and placed him astride his famous steed Babieca.
When it was midnight
The body, thus as it was,
They placed upon Babieca
And onto the horse tied it.
Erect and upright it sits,
It looked as thought it were living...2
Lance at rest, El Cid gallops off into legend, while his tearful wife and children watch fearfully yet proudly from the ramparts. In death, as in life, El Cid has saved Spain from the invading hordes of Islam. He becomes the perfect pattern of the chivalric Crusader.
The Cid's corpse rode forth
With a brave company.
One hundred are the guardians
Who rode with the honored corpse,
Behind it goes Dona Ximenes
With all her company,
With six hundred knights
There to be her guard.3
Such is the received version of El Cid's life, and to a large extent, of that greater clash between two worlds known as the Crusades. It is commemorated in statues such as the heroic bronze casting of Richard Coeur de Lion outside the Houses of Parliament at Westminster: the Crusading knight is glamorous, handsome, heroic, muscular - and solitary.
This, however, does not seem to accord with the documents of the Crusading era.
Rather, the case is that women were, from the beginning, active participants in these world shaking events, at every level and from every estate. And of perhaps even greater significance: it seems that it was their lives as individuals and as groups that were deeply affected by the Crusades, with a profound influence on the rest of European society.
Take Dona Ximenes, for instance.
In actuality, the famous ride of El Cid was an invention of balladeers.
Rodrigo had already died of age and wounds before the siege of Valencia began. It was his wife, Dona Ximenes, who provided the generalship during the two year siege which began in 1101.4
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