Eleanor of Aquitaine (3 page)

William VIII died in 1086, when his son was just fifteen. William IX, Eleanor's grandfather, was a handsome and courteous, yet complex and volatile man who is regarded by historians as the first of the troubadours.

Romantic literature flourished in the twelfth century, particularly in Aquitaine and Provence. The
chansons de geste
tended to celebrate military ideals of courage in battle, loyalty, honour, and endurance, as well as legendary heroes such as Charlemagne, Roland, and King Arthur, while the romantic poems and
lais
(lays) sang of love.

It was the poets of the south, the troubadours, who popularised the concept of courtly love, revolutionary in its day. Drawing on ideas from Plato and from Arab writers, and influenced by the growing popularity of the cult of the Virgin Mary, these poets composed their lyric poetry and rather complex songs in the mellifluous
langue d'oc
and accompanied them with the music of rebec and viol, fidel and bow, pipe and tabor (tambourine). They deified women, according them superiority over men, and laid down codes of courtesy, chivalry, and gentlemanly conduct. These precepts were to be echoed in the lays of the
trouueres
of northern France, who wrote in the
langue d'oeil.
Thus were born ideals of honour and courtship that in the centuries to come would permeate European literature and culture to such a degree that their influence is still with us today.

Under the rules of courtly love, the mistress, who is an idealised figure, often high-born and even married, remains unattainable to her humble, worshipping suitor, who must render her homage and prove his devotion and loyalty over a period of time before his love is even acknowledged. In this aristocratic game-- for such it was-- the woman always had the upper hand and set the pace and tone of the relationship. Her wishes and decrees were absolute, and any suitor who did not comply with them was deemed unworthy of the honour of her love. There was an underlying eroticism to these precepts, for it was tacitly understood that the persistent lover would one day have his hoped-for reward.

The ideals of courtly love were at breathtaking variance with contemporary notions of courtship and marriage, and there were many-- Henry II among them-- who regarded these newfangled ideas as subversive and pernicious. They were taken most seriously in the relaxed cultural atmosphere of southern France, where they evolved as an absorbing intellectual pastime of the upper classes, while in the more sober north, courtly love was often seen merely as an excuse for adultery.

The age of the troubadours ended in the early thirteenth century with the vicious persecution of the Cathar heretics in what became known as the Albigensian Crusade. Culminating in the holocaust at Montsegur, this left southern France so devastated that its native culture, which had flourished under the auspices of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her forebears, was effectively suppressed and, in many cases, irrevocably lost.

Duke William IX was intelligent and gifted, artistic and idealistic, with an insatiable thirst for sensual passion and adventure. His verses are erotic and occasionally blasphemous, and when coupled with his amoral behaviour, they succeeded-- unsurprisingly-- in offending the sensibilities of the Church.

He began his reign well enough, quickly establishing himself as a capable and respected ruler and styling himself "Duke of the Entire Monarchy of the Aquitanians." In 1088 he married Ermengarde, the beautiful daughter of Fulk IV, Count of Anjou, but it was not long before she began to have violent mood swings and to manifest the symptoms of what was possibly manic depression or schizophrenia. As there were no children of the marriage, William had no difficulty in getting it annulled. Ermengarde then married the Count of Brittany, and William, in 1094, went off to Aragon in serious pursuit of King Sancho Ramirez's nineteen-year-old widow, Philippa.

Philippa was heiress to the county of Toulouse, which bordered Gascony in the south and was regarded by William as a desirable addition to his domains, since within it lay the important trade routes that linked Aquitaine with the Mediterranean. A great-niece of William the Conqueror, King of England, Philippa was a spirited lady in the tradition of the duchesses of Aquitaine: pious, high-minded, strong-willed, and of sound political judgement.

Her father, William IV of Toulouse, after bestowing her in marriage, had gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, leaving his brother, Raymond, Count of Saint-Gilles, as regent of his duchy. But when William died five years later, Raymond, ignoring Philippa's right of inheritance, usurped her title. She was therefore anxious to marry a man with the political power and resources to recover Toulouse for her, and she accepted William of Aquitaine with alacrity.

The early mediaeval period was an age of great religious fervour, when thousands of men and women went on long and dangerous pilgrimages to holy, shrines, such as that of St. James at Compostela, St. Peter's in Rome, or even to the Holy Land itself, where was to be found the most sacred shrine of them all, Christ's burial place, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Since A.D. 640, Palestine had been under Arab rule. In 1095 Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade, in the hope of liberating Jerusalem from the Infidel. William IX considered taking the Cross at this time, but thought better of it. It was Raymond of Toulouse who, in 1096, led an army of 100,000 crusaders to the East, having first renounced his claim to Toulouse in favour of his son Bertrand. In 1098 William marched into Toulouse and successfully laid claim to it, incurring the anger of the Church by violating the Truce of God, which required all Christians to refrain from invading the lands of a crusader during his absence. The intercession of the Bishop of Poitiers successfully averted the threat of excommunication by the Popes but William's relations with the Church were thereafter strained.

In 1099 Philippa bore a son, called William the Toulousain after the place of his birth, and in the same year news of the taking of Jerusalem by the crusaders filtered through to Europe. This set Duke William thinking that perhaps he should have taken the Cross after all, so he mortgaged Toulouse to Bertrand to provide himself with men and funds, left Philippa as regent in Poitiers, and set off for Asia Minor. In 1101, at Heraclea, he watched from a hill, weeping, as his army was cut to pieces by the Turks. After that, he had no choice but to return home, although he lingered on the way to enjoy the exotic delights of the court of Antioch and visit the holy shrines of Jerusalem.

Back in Poitiers, inspired by the culture of the East and the erotic works of Ovid, he began writing poems6 in the Provencal dialect, with robust, sensual lyrics celebrating female beauty, carnal delights, and the pleasures of love. Eleven of his works survive. Some are crude, portraying women as horses to be mounted or as wives chafing at the jealous vigilance of their husbands; others are melancholy. Nothing like them had been written since ancient times, and they caused a predictable stir, not least because William dared assert the unheard-of notion that a man should not demand love from a woman: it should be she who freely bestows it. Nevertheless, he openly admitted that he usually pursued a woman with only one end in view, and that most of his encounters ended with "my hands beneath her cloak."

It was not long before William's court at Poitiers became renowned throughout Europe for this new trend in literature; it was certainly, by the twelfth century, the foremost cultural centre in France.

For the next few years, as his family grew, the Duke remained in his domains, writing poems and fighting useless wars against his unruly vassals, which only served to weaken his position and strengthen theirs. Increasingly self-indulgent, he openly pursued women, even boasting that he would found an abbey for prostitutes near his castle at Niort. He was "brave and gallant, but too much of a jester," finding "pleasure only in one nonsense after another, listening to jests with his mouth wide open in a constant guffaw.''7 Not surprisingly, the Church and many of his more sober contemporaries were outraged by William's behaviour, while his wife maintained a dignified silence and turned increasingly to religion for solace.

Robert d'Arbrissel, founder of the Order of Fontevrault, was a Breton scholar and inspired teacher who wandered the roads of northwestern France with his growing band of followers. A large number were women, attracted by his enlightened and sympathetic view of the female sex, and by his compassion for the outcasts of society. His reputation quickly spread, and Pope Urban II recognised him as an apostolic preacher. Nevertheless, there were those who resented his assertion that women were in many respects the superior sex and made better administrators and managers of property than men. To his critics, this sounded like heresy.

Impressed by what she had heard of d'Arbrissel, the Duchess Philippa persuaded her husband to grant him some land in northern Poitou, near the Angevin border, where he could establish a religious community dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In noo, by a fountain at Fontevrault, near the Raver Vienne, he founded a double monastery for priests, monks, lay brethren, and three hundred segregated nuns, all under the rule of an abbess-- a revolutionary arrangement for its time. In other respects, the abbey followed the rule of St. Benedict. The community was housed in wooden huts and had a simple chapel. In 1119 building commenced on a new stone church, consecrated that year.

The head of the order was the Abbess of Fontevrault; d'Arbrissel stipulated that she had to be nobly born and a widow, in order to confer prestige on the order and ensure that it was administered by someone familiar with running a large household. The office was filled by several notable ladies during the twelfth century, among them Isabella of Anjou, the widow of "William the Atheling, son and heir of King Henry I of England.

By the time of d'Arbrissel's death in 1117, Fontevrault Abbey had become very popular with aristocratic ladies wishing to retire or temporarily retreat from the world; among them was "William IX's first wife, Ermengarde of Anjou, who withdrew there after the death of her second husband. These ladies were accommodated in their own apartments, where they could enjoy worldly status and comforts while living in seclusion. The majority of the nuns came from noble families and had lay sisters as maids, but no one, however humble, was turned away.8 Fontevrault also became a refuge for battered wives and penitent prostitutes, and housed a leper hospital and a home for aged religious. Above all, it quickly earned a reputation for piety and contemplative prayer, and thus fulfilled its founder's aims of enhancing the prestige of women in general and promoting their rights.

Philippa's absorption in what was going on at Fontevrault irritated "William of Aquitaine, and he turned elsewhere for female company. He was again at odds with the Church, having once more been threatened with excommunication. But as the Bishop was about to pronounce the sentence of anathema in the cathedral of Saint-Pierre, William charged in with drawn sword, grabbed the startled prelate by the neck, and threatened to kill him if he did not absolve him. The Bishop stood his ground, and William backed off. "I do not love you enough to send you to Paradise," he sneered.'

In 1115 the Duke had conceived a violent passion for the wife of his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Chatellerault; she was appropriately named Dangerosa. She had been married to Aimery for seven years and had borne him three children: Hugh, his heir; Raoul; and Aenor. With no regard to the consequences of his actions, William abducted her from her bedchamber and bore her off to his palace at Poitiers, where he appears to have installed her in the newly built Maubergeonne Tower. Soon the affair became notorious, and Dangerosa was nicknamed "La Maubergeonne."10 Aimery made no recorded protest: he was probably afraid of offending his volatile overlord.

When Philippa returned from a visit to Toulouse, she was shocked at what she found and begged the papal legate, Giraud, to remonstrate with William. But it was useless, for the Duke told the bald legate that curls would grow on his pate before he would part with the Viscountess. Even a renewal of the sentence of excommunication against him had no effect on William.11 He defiantly had Dangerosa's portrait painted on his shield, saying that "it was his will to bear her in battle as she had borne him in bed."12 A local hermit cursed this sinful union and predicted that neither William nor his descendants would ever know happiness in their children.13

Philippa refused to tolerate his behaviour. Before the year was out, she retired in grief to Fontevrault, where she died of unknown causes on 28 November 1118. A year or so later, Dangerosa suggested that William's son and heir marry her daughter Aenor. Their marriage may almost certainly be dated to 1121.

Young William was a reluctant bridegroom. Very tall, broad, and robust, with a huge appetite-- it was claimed that he ate enough for ten men-- and a quarrelsome nature, he had inherited some of the Duke's charm but also his violent temper, and he was very resentful of the way in which his father had betrayed and humiliated his mother.14

We know very little about Aenor of Chatellerault, Eleanor's mother. Her position cannot have been an easy one, abandoned by a mother who was branded an adulteress, and then married to a man who did not want her.

Aenor's first child, the daughter who became known to history as Eleanor of Aquitaine, was born in 1122. The exact date is not known, but the year can be determined from evidence of her age at death and from the fact that the lords of Aquitaine swore fealty to her on her fourteenth birthday in 1136. Some chroniclers give 1120 as her birth date, but her parents cannot have been married until 1121. Eleanor's birthplace was probably either the ducal palace at Poitiers or the Ombrière Palace at Bordeaux, although a local tradition claims that she was born in the chateau of Belin near Bordeaux, one of her father's residences. She was christened Alienore, a pun on the Latin
alia-Aenor,
"the other Eleanor," to differentiate her from her mother,15 although her name is variously spelled in different sources and has been anglicised for this text.