Expanding Borders and Redrawing Boundaries: Gender and State Formation in the 12th-Century Latin East

The paradigm of state formation constructed by Joseph Stayer in The Medieval Origins of the Modern State casts a long shadow on the scholarship of political life in the Middle Ages. Although the purview of scholars has expanded exponentially since the book’s publication, both geographically and thematically, Strayer’s portrait of the medieval state has yet to be fully amended or adjusted. Not only does he position the French model of state formation as the medieval default, but he assumes that all principle actors in the political system were male. As a result, regions that fail to conform to the norms of governance identifiable in France are characterized as outliers. When women are detected in the historical record wielding public authority, they are dismissed as exceptional at best, aberrant at worst for violating political norms which purportedly reserved power for men. This discussion of the nascent polities of Jerusalem and Antioch in the 12^th century seeks to expand the borders and boundaries of Strayer’s model in order to develop a more accurate and inclusive understanding of the processes by which the medieval state evolved, paying particular attention to the governing apparatus that emerged in the Latin East in response to a unique set of conditions and circumstances which allowed, and at times even required, the active participation of women. It will examine the political actions of Melisende of Jerusalem and Constance of Antioch, women who not only inherited authority, but actively wielded power with the full approbation of their male contemporaries, demonstrating the extent to which political expediency and the needs peculiar to a particular region influenced the structure of the state and determined the eligibility of its political actors.