Roles for Women in Colonial Fantasies of Fourteenth-Century France: Pierre Dubois and Philippe de Mézières

A forceful statement of intention with regard to the European past and future of the Levant was in preparation in the kingdom of France in the later middle ages. The Norman lawyer Pierre Dubois and the royal advisor and diplomat Philippe de Mézières both wrote treatises, each about a century apart, in which they proposed plans for the reconquest of the Holy Land. Strikingly, both advised that women should play important roles. What these two strategists had to say about the place of women in future crusading conquests suggests that a new terre d’outremer resembled the colonial future much more than it did medieval fantasy or the high medieval past.