Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love & the Troubadours 0313325235

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FFIONA SWABEY

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Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours

Titles in the Series Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Medieval World

The Black Death The Crusades Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours

Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War

Magna Carta Medieval Castles Medieval Cathedrals

The Medieval City Medieval Science and Technology

The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon

The Rise of Islam

Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love , and the Troubadours ffiona Swaney

Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Medieval World

Jane Chance, Series Editor

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Swabey, ffiona. Eleanor of Aquitaine, courtly love, and the troubadours / ffiona Swabey. p. cm.—(Greenwood guides to historic events of the medieval world) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-313-32523-5 (alk. paper) 1. Eleanor, of Aquitaine, Queen, consort of Henry II, King of England, 1122?— 1204- 2. Louis VII, King of France, ca. 1120-1180—Marriage. 3. Great Britain— History—Henry II, 1154-1189—Biography. 4. Henry II, King of England, 1133-1189—Marriage. 5. France—History—Louis VII, 1137-1180—Biography. 6. Queens—Great Britain—Biography. 7. Queens—France—Biography. 8. Courtly love in literature. 9. Courtly love. I. Title. II. Series. DA209.E6S93 2004 942.03'1’092—dc22 [Bl 2004044868 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright © 2004 by ffiona Swabey

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2004044868 ISBN: 0-313-32523-5 First published in 2004

Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 987654321

Copyright Acknowledgments The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following ma­ terial:

Primary Documents: Excerpt from The Historia pontificalis of John of Salisbury, edited and translated by Mar­ jorie Chibnail (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Copyright © 1986. Reprinted by per­ mission of Oxford University Press. Excerpt from The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated by Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin Books, 1966). Translation copyright © Lewis Thorpe, 1966. Used by permission of The Penguin Group (UK).

Excerpt from Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine—By the Wrath of God, Queen of England. Copyright © 1999 by Alison Weir. Used by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Excerpts from Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology of Poems and Melodies, edited by Samuel Rosenberg, Margaret Switten, and Gérard Le Vot (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). Copyright © 1998. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. Excerpts from Andreas Capellanus on Love, edited with an English translation by P.G. Walsh (London: Gerald Duckworth, 1982). Copyright © 1982. Used by permission of Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Excerpts from The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated by Betty Radice (London: Penguin, 1974). Copyright © Betty Radice, 1974. Used by permission of The Penguin Group (UK). Excerpt from Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian Romances, translated with an introduction and notes by William W. Kibler (London: Penguin, 1991). Copyright © William W. Kibler, 1991. Used by permission of The Penguin Group (UK). Picture credits: Illustration from CCC Ms 10 (Gratiani Decretum, Cent, xii-xiii), showing a model of the tree of affinity with empty medallions. Conway Library, Courtauld Institute for Art. Used with the kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cam­ bridge.

Pythagoras, from the south door of the Royal portal (stone relief). Chartres Cathedral, Chartres, France, www.bridgeman.co.uk.

Vase of Alienor (Eleanor), from the Treasure of Saint-Denis, Sassanid Period, 6th or 7th century, with setting done in France in the 12th century (crystal, gold, and precious stones). Louvre, Paris, France/Peter Willi, www.bridgeman.co.uk. Marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France (1137) left, and embarkation for the Second Crusade 1147-49. From “Chronique de St. Denis,” Musee Conde, Chan­ tilly. Ann Ronan Picture Library.

vi

Copyright Acknowledgments Minstrel, Adenet le Roi (c. 1240-c. 1300), French poet and musician, reciting the ro­ mance Cleomades to Blanche of Castile (1188-1252), wife of Louis VIII and mother of Louis IX of France. Facsimile of a miniature in a 13th-century manuscript. Ann Ronan Picture Library.

The Siege of the Castle of Love: ivory, c. 1350. Mirror case. V&A Images, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Gauthier Le roman de Lancelot du Lac, “The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot)” based on the tale (c. 1165-80) by Chrétien de Troyes. Lancelot in the cart. French manuscript, 1344. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Ann Ronan Picture Library. Effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine (c. 1124-1204), Queen of France, then of England (stone) (b/w photo) by French School (13th century). Fontevrault Abbey, Fontevrault (Fontevraud), France, www.bridgeman.co.uk.

Stone heads, once believed to be those of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. (a) En­ gaged Capital: carved in high relief with two crowned heads; once thought to be Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Formerly from the church of Notre Dame du Bourg, Langon, France—12th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1934. (b) Two crowned heads with a lion above, on a stone pillar in Rutland Castle, Oakham, England—12th century. Used with permission of the Rutland County Museum. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book, but in some instances this has proven impossible. The author and publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgments in subsequent printings of the book, and in the meantime extend their apologies for any omissions.

What you look hard at seems to look hard at you.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

Contents

Series Foreword

xiii

Advisory Board

xxv

Preface

xxvii

Acknowledgments

xxxi

Chronology

xxxiii

Maps and Genealogical Tables

xxxix

Chapter 1. Narrative Historical Overview

Chapter 2. The Twelfth Century Awakening

1

15

Chapter 3. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France: Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

29

Chapter 4. Eleanor, Queen of England: Motherhood, Imprisonment, and Widowhood

41

Chapter 5. The Troubadours: Origins, Themes, and Demise

55

Chapter 6. Courtly Love

69

Chapter 7. Conclusion: What Is She Reading?

83

Biographies

93 Peter Abelard

93

Saint Thomas Becket

94

Contents

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

96

Blanche of Castile

97

Saint Francis of Assisi

99

Henry II, King of England

100

Henry, the “Young King”

102

Hildegard von Bingen

103

John “Lackland,” King of England

105

John of Salisbury

107

Louis VII, King of France

108

Empress Matilda

109

Philip Augustus II, King of France

111

Richard I, the “Lionheart,” King of England

112

Abbé Suger

113

William, IX Duke of Aquitaine, VII Count of Poitou

115

William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke

116

Fontevraud Abbey

117

The Legend of Tristan and Iseult

119

Primary Documents 1 and 2.

3.

4.

121

Two Chroniclers Comment on Eleanor’s Removal from Antioch

121

Merlin’s Prophecy from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae

124

Richard the Poitevin Laments Eleanor’s Removal to England

126

Contents

xi

5 and 6. 7.

8, 9, and 10.

Two Letters Dating from Eleanor’s Old Age

128

Letter to Pope Celestine III Erroneously Attributed to Eleanor

132

Three Troubadour Songs

134

Guilhem de Peiteu

135

Bernart de Ventadorn

137

Arnaut Daniel

139

11 and 12. Two Letters from the Correspondence of Heloise and Abelard

141

13 and 14. Two Excerpts from De Amore by Andreas 15.

Capellanus

145

Excerpt from Chrétien de Troyes’s Romance The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot)

148

Annotated Bibliography

151

Index

161

Photo essay follows Chapter 4

Series Foreword

The Middle Ages are no longer considered the “Dark Ages” (as Petrarch termed them), sandwiched between the two enlightened periods of clas­ sical antiquity and the Renaissance. Often defined as a historical period lasting, roughly, from 500 to 1500 c.e., the Middle Ages span an enor­ mous amount of time (if we consider the way other time periods have been constructed by historians) as well as an astonishing range of coun­ tries and regions very different from one another. That is, we call the “Middle” Ages the period beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire as a result of raids by northern European tribes of “barbarians” in the late antiquity of the fifth and sixth centuries and continuing until the advent of the so-called Italian and English renaissances, or rebirths of classical learning, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. How this age could be termed either “Middle” or “Dark” is a mystery to those who study it. Cer­ tainly it is no longer understood as embracing merely the classical in­ heritance in the west or excluding eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, or even, as I would argue, North and Central America. Whatever the arbitrary, archaic, and hegemonic limitations of these temporal parameters—the old-fashioned approach to them was that they were mainly not classical antiquity, and therefore not important—the Middle Ages represent a time when certain events occurred that have continued to affect modern cultures and that also, inevitably, catalyzed other medieval events. Among other important events, the Middle Ages saw the birth of Muhammad (c. 570-632) and his foundation of Islam in the seventh century as a rejection of Christianity which led to the im­ perial conflict between East and West in the eleventh and twelfth cen­ turies. In western Europe in the Middle Ages the foundations for modern

xiv

Series Poreioon

nationalism and modern law were laid and the concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages, this latter event partly one of the indirect con­ sequences of the Crusades. With the shaping of national identity came the need to defend boundaries against invasion; so the castle emerged as a military outpost—whether in northern Africa, during the Crusades, or in Wales, in the eleventh century, to defend William of Normandy’s newly acquired provinces—to satisfy that need. From Asia the invasions of Genghis Khan changed the literal and cultural shape of eastern and southern Europe. In addition to triggering the development of the concept of chivalry and the knight, the Crusades influenced the European concepts of the lyric, music, and musical instruments; introduced to Europe an appetite for spices like cinnamon, coriander, and saffron and for dried fruits like prunes and figs as well as a desire for fabrics such as silk; and brought Aristotle to the European university through Arabic and then Latin translations. As a result of study of the “new” Aristotle, science and phi­ losophy dramatically changed direction—and their emphasis on this ma­ terial world helped to undermine the power of the Catholic Church as a monolithic institution in the thirteenth century. By the twelfth century, with the centralization of the one (Catholic) Church, came a new architecture for the cathedral—the Gothic—to re­ place the older Romanesque architecture and thereby to manifest the Church’s role in the community in a material way as well as in spiritual and political ways. Also from the cathedral as an institution and its need to dramatize the symbolic events of the liturgy came medieval drama— the mystery and the morality play, from which modem drama derives in large part. Out of the cathedral and its schools to train new priests (for­ merly handled by monasteries) emerged the medieval institution of the university. Around the same time, the community known as a town rose up in eastern and western Europe as a consequence of trade and the ne­ cessity for a new economic center to accompany the development of a bourgeoisie, or middle class. Because of the town’s existence, the need for an itinerant mendicancy that could preach the teachings of the Church and beg for alms in urban centers sprang up. Elsewhere in the world, in North America the eleventh-century set­ tlement of Chaco Canyon by the Pueblo peoples created a social model like no other, one centered on ritual and ceremony in which the “priests”

Series Foreword

were key, but one that lasted barely two hundred years before it collapsed and its central structures were abandoned. In addition to their influence on the development of central features of modern culture, the Middle Ages have long fascinated the modern age because of parallels that exist between the two periods. In both, terrible wars devastated whole nations and peoples; in both, incurable diseases plagued cities and killed large percentages of the world’s population. In both periods, dramatic social and cultural changes took place as a result of these events: marginalized and overtaxed groups in societies rebelled against imperious governments; trade and a burgeoning middle class came to the fore; outside the privacy of the family, women began to have a greater role in Western societies and their cultures. How different cultures of that age grappled with such historical change is the subject of the Greenwood Guides to Historic Events of the Me­ dieval World. This series features individual volumes that illuminate key events in medieval world history. In some cases, an “event” occurred during a relatively limited time period. The troubadour lyric as a phenomenon, for example, flowered and died in the courts of Aquitaine in the twelfth century, as did the courtly romance in northern Europe a few decades later. The Hundred Years War between France and England gen­ erally took place during a precise time period, from the fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries. In other cases, the event may have lasted for centuries before it played itself out: the medieval Gothic cathedral, for example, may have been first built in the twelfth century at Saint-Denis in Paris (c. 1140), but cathedrals, often of a slightly different style of Gothic architecture, were still being built in the fifteenth century all over Europe and, again, as the symbolic representation of a bishop’s seat, or chair, are still being built today. And the medieval city, whatever its incarnation in the early Mid­ dle Ages, basically blossomed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries as a result of social, economic, and cultural changes. Events— beyond a single dramatic historically limited happening—took longer to affect societies in the Middle Ages because of the lack of political and social centralization, the primarily agricultural and rural nature of most countries, difficulties in communication, and the distances between im­ portant cultural centers. Each volume includes necessary tools for understanding such key

xv

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events in the Middle Ages. Because of the postmodern critique of au­ thority that modern societies underwent at the end of the twentieth cen­ tury, students and scholars as well as general readers have come to mistrust the commentary and expertise of any one individual scholar or commentator and to identify the text as an arbiter of “history.” For this reason, each book in the series can be described as a “library in a book.” The intent of the series is to provide a quick, in-depth examination and current perspectives on the event to stimulate critical thinking as well as ready-reference materials, including primary documents and biogra­ phies of key individuals, for additional research. Specifically, in addition to a narrative historical overview that places the specific event within the larger context of a contemporary perspec­ tive, five to seven developmental chapters explore related focused aspects of the event. In addition, each volume begins with a brief chronology and ends with a conclusion that discusses the consequences and impact of the event. There are also brief biographies of twelve to twenty key in­ dividuals (or places or buildings, in the book on the cathedral); primary documents from the period (for example, letters, chronicles, memoirs, di­ aries, and other writings) that illustrate states of mind or the turn of events at the time, whether historical, literary, scientific, or philosophi­ cal; illustrations (maps, diagrams, manuscript illuminations, portraits); a glossary of terms; and an annotated bibliography of important books, ar­ ticles, films, and CD-ROMs available for additional research. An index concludes each volume. No particular theoretical approach or historical perspective charac­ terizes the series; authors developed their topics as they chose, generally taking into account the latest thinking on any particular event. The ed­ itors selected final topics from a list provided by an advisory board of high school teachers and public and school librarians. On the basis of nom­ inations of scholars made by distinguished writers, the series editor also tapped internationally known scholars, both those with lifelong expert­ ise and others with fresh new perspectives on a topic, to author the twelve books in the series. Finally, the series editor selected distinguished me­ dievalists, art historians, and archaeologists to complete an advisory board: Gwinn Vivian, retired professor of archaeology at the University of Arizona Museum; Sharon Kinoshita, associate professor of French literature, world literature, and cultural studies at the University of Cal­ ifornia-Santa Cruz; Nancy Wu, associate museum educator at the Met­

Series Forewort

ropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, New York City; and Christopher A. Snyder, chair of the Department of History and Politics at Marymount University. In addition to examining the event and its effects on the specific cub tures involved through an array of documents and an overview, each vol­ ume provides a new approach to understanding these twelve events. Treated in the series are: the Black Death; the Crusades; Eleanor of Aquitaine, courtly love, and the troubadours; Genghis Khan and Mon­ gol rule; Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War; Magna Carta; the me­ dieval castle, from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries; the medieval cathedral; the medieval city, especially in the thirteenth century; me­ dieval science and technology; Muhammad and the rise of Islam; and the Puebloan society of Chaco Canyon. The Black Death, by Joseph Byrne, isolates the event of the epidemic of bubonic plague in 1347-52 as having had a signal impact on medieval Europe. It was, however, only the first of many related such episodes in­ volving variations of pneumonic and septicemic plague that recurred over 350 years. Taking a twofold approach to the Black Death, Byrne inves­ tigates both the modem research on bubonic plague, its origins and spread, and also medieval documentation and illustration in diaries, artis­ tic works, and scientific and religious accounts. The demographic, eco­ nomic, and political effects of the Black Death are traced in one chapter, the social and psychological patterns of life in another, and cultural ex­ pressions in art and ritual in a third. Finally, Byrne investigates why bubonic plague disappeared and why we continue to be fascinated by it. Documents included provide a variety of medieval accounts—Byzantine, Arabic, French, German, English, and Italian—several of which are translated for the first time. The Crusades, by Helen Nicholson, presents a balanced account of var­ ious crusades, or military campaigns, invented by Catholic or “Latin” Christians during the Middle Ages against those they perceived as threats to their faith. Such expeditions included the Crusades to the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291, expeditions to the Iberian Peninsula, the “cru­ sade” to northeastern Europe, the Albigensian Crusades and the Hussite crusades—both against the heretics—and the crusades against the Ot­ toman Turks (in the Balkans). Although Muslim rulers included the con­ cept of jihad (a conflict fought for God against evil or his enemies) in their wars in the early centuries of Islam, it had become less important

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in the late tenth century. It was not until the middle decades of the twelfth century that jihad was revived in the wars with the Latin Chris­ tian Crusaders. Most of the Crusades did not result in victory for the Latin Christians, although Nicholson concedes they slowed the advance of Islam. After Jerusalem was destroyed in 1291, Muslim rulers did per­ mit Christian pilgrims to travel to holy sites. In the Iberian Peninsula, Christian rulers replaced Muslim rulers, but Muslims, Jews, and dissident Christians were compelled to convert to Catholicism. In northeastern Europe, the Teutonic Order’s campaigns allowed German colonization that later encouraged twentieth-century German claims to land and led to two world wars. The Albigensian Crusade wiped out thirteenth-cen­ tury aristocratic families in southern France who held to the Cathar heresy, but the Hussite crusades in the 1420s failed to eliminate the Hus­ site heresy. As a result of the wars, however, many positive changes oc­ curred: Arab learning founded on Greek scholarship entered western Europe through the acquisition of an extensive library in Toledo, Spain, in 1085; works of western European literature were inspired by the holy wars; trade was encouraged and with it the demand for certain products; and a more favorable image of Muslim men and women was fostered by the crusaders’ contact with the Middle East. Nicholson also notes that America may have been discovered because Christopher Columbus avoided a route that had been closed by Muslim conquests and that the Reformation may have been advanced because Martin Luther protested against the crusader indulgence in his Ninety-five Theses (1517). Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours, by ffiona Swabey, singles out the twelfth century as the age of the individual, in which a queen like Eleanor of Aquitaine could influence the develop­ ment of a new social and artistic culture. The wife of King Louis VII of France and later the wife of his enemy Henry of Anjou, who became king of England, she patronized some of the troubadours, whose vernacular lyrics celebrated the personal expression of emotion and a passionate dec­ laration of service to women. Love, marriage, and the pursuit of women were also the subject of the new romance literature, which flourished in northern Europe and was the inspiration behind concepts of courtly love. However, as Swabey points out, historians in the past have misjudged Eleanor, whose independent spirit fueled their misogynist attitudes. Sim­ ilarly, Eleanor’s divorce and subsequent stormy marriage have colored ideas about medieval “love courts” and courtly love, interpretations of

Series Foretoon

which have now been challenged by scholars. The twelfth century is set in context, with commentaries on feudalism, the tenets of Christianity, and the position of women, as well as summaries of the cultural and philo­ sophical background, the cathedral schools and universities, the influ­ ence of Islam, the revival of classical learning, vernacular literature, and Gothic architecture. Swabey provides two biographical chapters on Eleanor and two on the emergence of the troubadours and the origin of courtly love through verse romances. Within this latter subject Swabey also details the story of Abelard and Heloise, the treatise of Andreas Capellanus (André the Chaplain) on courtly love, and Arthurian legend as a subject of courtly love. Genghis Khan and Mongol Rule, by George Lane, identifies the rise to power of Genghis Khan and his unification of the Mongol tribes in the thirteenth century as a kind of globalization with political, cultural, eco­ nomic, mercantile, and spiritual effects akin to those of modern global­ ization. Normally viewed as synonymous with barbarian destruction, the rise to power of Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes is here understood as a more positive event that initiated two centuries of regeneration and creativity. Lane discusses the nature of the society of the Eurasian steppes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries into which Genghis Khan was born; his success at reshaping the relationship between the northern pas­ toral and nomadic society with the southern urban, agriculturalist soci­ ety; and his unification of all the Turco-Mongol tribes in 1206 before his move to conquer Tanquit Xixia, the Chin of northern China, and the lands of Islam. Conquered thereafter were the Caucasus, the Ukraine, the Crimea, Russia, Siberia, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kash­ mir. After his death his sons and grandsons continued, conquering Korea, Persia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Azerbaijan, and eastern Europe—chiefly Kiev, Poland, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary—until 1259, the end of the Mongol Empire as a unified whole. Mongol rule created a golden age in the succeeding split of the Empire into two, the Yuan dynasty of greater China and the Il-Khanate dynasty of greater Iran. Lane adds biographies of important political figures, famous names such as Marco Polo, and artists and scientists. Documents derive from universal histories, chroni­ cles, local histories and travel accounts, official government documents, and poetry, in French, Armenian, Georgian, Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Chaghatai Turkish, Russian, and Latin. Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years War, by Deborah Fraioli, presents

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the Hundred Years War between France and England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries within contexts whose importance has sometimes been blurred or ignored in past studies. An episode of apparently only moderate significance, a feudal lord’s seizure of his vassal’s land for harboring his mortal enemy, sparked the Hundred Years War, yet on the face of it the event should not have led inevitably to war. But the lord was the king of France and the vassal the king of England, who resented los­ ing his claim to the French throne to his Valois cousin. The land in dis­ pute, extending roughly from Bordeaux to the Pyrenees mountains, was crucial coastline for the economic interests of both kingdoms. The series of skirmishes, pitched battles, truces, stalemates, and diplomatic wran­ gling that resulted from the confiscation of English Aquitaine by the French form the narrative of this Anglo-French conflict, which was in fact not given the name Hundred Years War until the nineteenth cen­ tury. Fraioli emphasizes how dismissing women’s inheritance and succession rights came at the high price of unleashing discontent in their male heirs, including Edward III, Robert of Artois, and Charles of Navarre. Fraioli also demonstrates the centrality of side issues, such as Flemish involve­ ment in the war, the peasants’ revolts that resulted from the costs of the war, and Joan of Arc’s unusually clear understanding of French “sacred kingship.” Among the primary sources provided are letters from key play­ ers such as Edward III, Etienne Marcel, and Joan of Arc; a supply list for towns about to be besieged; and a contemporary poem by the celebrated scholar and court poet Christine de Pizan in praise of Joan of Arc. Magna Carta, by Katherine Drew, is a detailed study of the importance of the Magna Carta in comprehending England’s legal and constitutional history. Providing a model for the rights of citizens found in the United States Declaration of Independence and Constitution’s first ten amend­ ments, the Magna Carta has had a role in the legal and parliamentary history of all modern states bearing some colonial or government con­ nection with the British Empire. Constructed at a time when modern na­ tions began to appear, in the early thirteenth century, the Magna Carta (signed in 1215) presented a formula for balancing the liberties of the people with the power of modern governmental institutions. This unique English document influenced the growth of a form of law (the English common law) and provided a vehicle for the evolution of representative (parliamentary) government. Drew demonstrates how the Magna Carta

Series Foreivon

came to be—the roles of the Church, the English towns, barons, com' mon law, and the parliament in its making—as well as how myths con­ cerning its provisions were established. Also provided are biographies of Thomas Becket, Charlemagne, Frederick II, Henry II and his sons, In­ nocent III, and many other key figures, and primary documents—among them, the Magna Cartas of 1215 and 1225, and the Coronation Oath of Henry I. Medieval Castles, by Marilyn Stokstad, traces the historical, political, and social function of the castle from the late eleventh century to the sixteenth by means of a typology of castles. This typology ranges from the early “motte and bailey”—military fortification, and government and economic center—to the palace as an expression of the castle owners’ needs and purposes. An introduction defines the various contexts—mil­ itary, political, economic, and social—in which the castle appeared in the Middle Ages. A concluding interpretive essay suggests the impact of the castle and its symbolic role as an idealized construct lasting until the modern day. Medieval Cathedrals, by William Clark, examines one of the chief con­ tributions of the Middle Ages, at least from an elitist perspective—that is, the religious architecture found in the cathedral (“chair” of the bishop) or great church, studied in terms of its architecture, sculpture, and stained glass. Clark begins with a brief contextual history of the con­ cept of the bishop and his role within the church hierarchy, the growth of the church in the early Christian era and its affiliation with the bishop (deriving from that of the bishop of Rome), and the social history of cathedrals. Because of economic and political conflicts among the three authorities who held power in medieval towns—the king, the bishop, and the cathedral clergy—cathedral construction and maintenance always re­ mained a vexed issue, even though the owners—the cathedral clergy— usually held the civic responsibility for the cathedral. In an interpretive essay, Clark then focuses on Reims Cathedral in France, because both it and the bishops palace survive, as well as on contemporary information about surrounding buildings. Clark also supplies a historical overview on the social, political, and religious history of the cathedral in the Middle Ages: an essay on patrons, builders, and artists; aspects of cathedral con­ struction (which was not always successful); and then a chapter on Ro­ manesque and Gothic cathedrals and a “gazetteer” of twenty-five impor­ tant examples.

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The Medieval City, by Norman J. G. Pounds, documents the origin of the medieval city in the flight from the dangers or difficulties found in the country, whether economic, physically threatening, or cultural. Iden­ tifying the attraction of the city in its urbanitas, its “urbanity,” or the way of living in a city, Pounds discusses first its origins in prehistoric and clas­ sical Greek urban revolutions. During the Middle Ages, the city grew primarily between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, remaining es­ sentially the same until the Industrial Revolution. Pounds provides chap­ ters on the medieval city’s planning, in terms of streets and structures; life in the medieval city; the roles of the Church and the city govern­ ment in its operation; the development of crafts and trade in the city; and the issues of urban health, wealth, and welfare. Concluding with the role of the city in history, Pounds suggests that the value of the city depended upon its balance of social classes, its need for trade and profit to satisfy personal desires through the accumulation of wealth and its consequent economic power, its political power as a representative body within the kingdom, and its social role in the rise of literacy and educa­ tion and in nationalism. Indeed, the concept of a middle class, a bour­ geoisie, derives from the city—from the bourg, or “borough.” According to Pounds, the rise of modern civilization would not have taken place without the growth of the city in the Middle Ages and its concomitant artistic and cultural contribution. Medieval Science and Technology, by Elspeth Whitney, examines science and technology from the early Middle Ages to 1500 within the context of the classical learning that so influenced it. She looks at institutional history, both early and late, and what was taught in the medieval schools and, later, the universities (both of which were overseen by the Catholic Church). Her discussion of Aristotelian natural philosophy illustrates its impact on the medieval scientific worldview. She presents chapters on the exact sciences, meaning mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, astrol­ ogy, statics, kinematics, dynamics, and optics; the biological and earth sciences, meaning chemistry and alchemy, medicine, zoology, botany, ge­ ology and meteorology, and geography; and technology. In an interpre­ tive conclusion, Whitney demonstrates the impact of medieval science on the preconditions and structure that permitted the emergence of the modern world. Most especially, technology transformed an agricultural society into a more commercial and engine-driven society: waterpower and inventions like the blast furnace and horizontal loom turned iron

Series Forewort

working and cloth making into manufacturing operations. The invention of the mechanical clock helped to organize human activities through timetables rather than through experiential perception and thus facili­ tated the advent of modern life. Also influential in the establishment of a middle class were the inventions of the musket and pistol and the print­ ing press. Technology, according to Whitney, helped advance the habits of mechanization and precise methodology. Her biographies introduce major medieval Latin and Arabic and classical natural philosophers and scientists. Extracts from various kinds of scientific treatises allow a win­ dow into the medieval concept of knowledge. The Puebloan Society of Chaco Canyon, by Paul Reed, is unlike other volumes in this series, whose historic events boast a long-established his­ torical record. Reed’s study offers instead an original reconstruction of the Puebloan Indian society of Chaco, in what is now New Mexico, but originally extending into Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. He is primarily interested in its leaders, ritual and craft specialists, and commoners dur­ ing the time of its chief flourishing, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as understood from archaeological data alone. To this new material he adds biographies of key Euro-American archaeologists and other indi­ viduals from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who have made im­ portant discoveries about Chaco Canyon. Also provided are documents of archaeological description and narrative from early explorers’ journals and archaeological reports, narratives, and monographs. In his overview chapters, Reed discusses the cultural and environmental setting of Chaco Canyon; its history (in terms of exploration and research); the Puebloan society and how it emerged chronologically; the Chaco society and how it appeared in 1100 c.e.; the “Outliers,” or outlying communities of Chaco; Chaco as a ritual center of the eleventh-century Pueblo world; and, finally, what is and is not known about Chaco society. Reed con­ cludes that ritual and ceremony played an important role in Chacoan so­ ciety and that ritual specialists, or priests, conducted ceremonies, maintained ritual artifacts, and charted the ritual calendar. Its social or­ ganization matches no known social pattern or type: it was complicated, multiethnic, centered around ritual and ceremony, and without any overtly hierarchical political system. The Chacoans were ancestors to the later Pueblo people, part of a society that rose, fell, and evolved within a very short time period. The Rise of Islam, by Matthew Gordon, introduces the early history of

xxiii

xxiv

Series

the Islamic world, beginning in the late sixth century with the career of the Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-c. 632) on the Arabian Peninsula. From Muhammad’s birth in an environment of religious plurality—Christian­ ity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, along with paganism, were joined by Islam—to the collapse of the Islamic empire in the early tenth century, Gordon traces the history of the Islamic community. The book covers topics that include the life of the Prophet and divine revelation (the Qur’an) to the formation of the Islamic state, urbanization in the Islamic Near East, and the extraordinary culture of Islamic letters and scholar­ ship. In addition to a historical overview, Gordon examines the Caliphate and early Islamic Empire, urban society and economy, and the emergence, under the Abbasid Caliphs, of a “world religious tradition” up to the year 925 c.e. As editor of this series I am grateful to have had the help of Benjamin Burford, an undergraduate Century Scholar at Rice University assigned to me in 2002-2004 for this project; Gina Weaver, a third-year graduate student in English; and Cynthia Duffy, a second-year graduate student in English, who assisted me in target-reading select chapters from some of these books in an attempt to define an audience. For this purpose I would also like to thank Gale Stokes, former dean of humanities at Rice Uni­ versity, for the 2003 summer research grant and portions of the 2003-2004 annual research grant from Rice University that served that end. This series, in its mixture of traditional and new approaches to me­ dieval history and cultures, will ensure opportunities for dialogue in the classroom in its offerings of twelve different “libraries in books.” It should also propel discussion among graduate students and scholars by means of the gentle insistence throughout on the text as primal. Most especially, it invites response and further study. Given its mixture of East and West, North and South, the series symbolizes the necessity for global under­ standing, both of the Middle Ages and in the postmodern age. Jane Chance, Series Editor Houston, Texas February 19, 2004

Advisory Board Sharon Kinoshita Associate Professor of Literature (French Literature, World Literature, and Cultural Studies) University of California-Santa Cruz Christopher A. Snyder Chair, History and Politics Marymount University

Gwinn Vivian Archaeologist University of Arizona Museum Nancy Wu Associate Museum Educator Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters

Preface

Eleanor of Aquitaine was a remarkable woman. A very wealthy heiress, she was orphaned at the age of thirteen and married Louis, the heir of the king of France, upon whose death a few days later she became queen of France. After fifteen years, she divorced Louis VII and married his enemy, Henry of Anjou. Within two years, Henry had acceded to the English throne, and Eleanor became queen of England. But her marriage with Henry II was stormy, and twenty years later he imprisoned her, only releasing her when it suited him. However, she outlived both her hus­ bands and saw two of her daughters become queens and two of her sons crowned as kings. She had been on crusade, assisted Henry in adminis­ tering his empire, incited rebellions, undertaken some notable journeys, and remained keenly interested in government even in her old age. She became a legend in her own time and has continued to be so. She also lived in a remarkable age. The twelfth century saw signifi­ cant advances in both the intellectual and emotional spheres. Scholars explored new areas of philosophy and science and also began to reflect on relationship and what it meant to be human and an individual. For the troubadours and the writers of the new romances, who composed in the vernacular, the focus of their works was the expression of personal feelings and the image of the feminine. Women had had more significant parts to play in the first millennium than in the second, because with the militarization of Europe and the emergence of the universities, from which women were excluded, they lost much of their influence. This cre­ ated an imbalance in society, and it is within this context that Eleanor’s life should be reviewed. Chapter 1 gives a very brief historical framework of “Europe” since the

xxviii

Preface

decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Europe is, of course, a recent phenomenon, and indeed one which is still evolving. In order to facilitate orientation, I sometimes use national designations and have included two maps and two genealogical tables, which should provide the reader with some simple direction. There are three subsections in this chapter. An outline on feudalism is essential since it was not only the structural basis of society, but also its forms and rituals underlie some of the motifs in courtly love and in the songs of the troubadours. A brief review of the Church is included as, on the one hand, society was imbued with the tenets of Christianity and religious meaning, while on the other, the Church was a significant power in its own right. A final section describes the position of women and the development of marriage at this time. While contemporary sources are plentiful for research on feudalism and the Church, there is less on marriage and very little on women. Chapter 2 describes the cultural and philosophical background of the period and concentrates on the 150 years between the middle of the eleventh century and the end of the twelfth century, a period sometimes called the “Twelfth Century Awakening.” It was a period of extraordi­ nary intellectual inquiry and discovery and arguably as creative and dy­ namic as the Italian Renaissance of the sixteenth century. There are subsections on the cathedral schools and universities, Islamic influence on European thought, the classical revival, literature in the vernacular, and Gothic architecture. Chapter 2 reflects on a theme mentioned in the first chapter—that this was an era of openness and tolerance and also of the search for what it meant to be an individual. From the general I turn to the particular and devote both Chapters 3 and 4 to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Since the details of her life are unlikely to be known by many readers, I have chosen to treat this section of the book biographically, rather than focus on broad description, analysis of current works, or on interpretation. To understand the complexity of Eleanor’s life and the diverse histories about her, it is necessary to pro­ vide as clear a context as possible. It is understandable why so many peo­ ple have found it difficult to recount her story without romanticizing, because many of the details are of epic proportions. Finally, because there are so few primary sources for medieval women, focusing on Eleanor, even though she was a queen, provides some balance to a seemingly maledominated epoch. Women’s lives are illuminated further in the last two chapters, which

r reface

concentrate on the troubadours and courtly love. The troubadours and courtly love are important subjects not only because of Eleanor’s leg­ endary association with them, but also because they demonstrate the changing attitudes and ideas about women and relationships in the twelfth century. Treating them as separate subjects is somewhat artificial because they have many similarities, but they do need to be differenti­ ated. Chapter 5 explores the origins and emergence of troubadour cul­ ture in Occitania—the area in France where the langue d’oc was spoken—and its subsequent development. Another section discusses the different themes of the troubadour songs together with their chief early exponents; a very brief section looks at patronage and the female trou­ badours, the trobairitz. Finally, there is a short section on the demise of the troubadour culture. While the songs of the troubadours have often been closely associated with courtly love, much recent scholarship has been devoted to explor­ ing the latter from the perspective of the vernacular verse tales, known as romances. The introduction of Chapter 6 recounts the story of Abelard and Heloise, whose relationship provides a historical example of incom­ patible ideas about love and relationship. The next section summarizes two literary works, which once fueled the belief in the actual existence of both a code of love and courts of love. There follows a brief account on the emergence of Arthurian legend. The focus of the next section is a summary of the different origins and interpretations of courtly love, and finally, there is a short discussion about twelfth-century attitudes toward marriage and sexuality. The concluding interpretative essay endeavors to weave together these diverse threads, while teasing out the legendary aspects of Eleanor’s life. I reflect on the part that legends play in history and also suggest some possible parallels with the twenty-first century by focusing on the influ­ ence of both the troubadours and courtly love in our times. The biographical section inevitably cannot do justice to the dramatis personae in this era of exceptional individuals. Since it is intended to provide useful auxiliary information, I have included one biography of a place, Fontevraud Abbey, which played an important part in Eleanor’s history. I have also included biographies of two people, Saint Francis of Assisi and Hildegard of Bingen, neither of whom appear in the main text but serve to highlight some of the themes. I have also added a brief ac­ count of the story of Tristan and Iseult, as it is fundamental to any study

XX ix

XXX

rrejace

of courtly love. I recommend readers look at these short biographical details before the main chapters in order to familiarize themselves with some of the main characters. The primary documents are all preceded by brief introductions. The first seven relate to Eleanor and include extracts from chronicles; letters from Eleanor and one of her chief vassals to her youngest son, King John; and an abridged excerpt from Merlin’s prophecy. Three troubadour songs follow, after which there are two love letters by Abelard and Heloise. Finally, there are two excerpts from De Amore, “On Love,” by Andreas Capellanus, followed by an excerpt from Chrétien de Troyes’s romance, The Knight of the Cart. I have chosen the illustrations with the hope that reflection on them will stimulate a spirit of inquiry. Although the events that they depict took place more than eight hundred years ago, their history remains in a wide variety of media. So there are illustrations from manuscripts and engravings of seals, as well as photographs of a tomb, sculptures, and objects such as an ivory mirror and a vase. I have included two photographs of stone heads that were once believed to portray Eleanor and Henry in order to emphasize the importance of verifying historical sources and evidence. The chronology of events refers only to circumstances directly related to Eleanor. The selected annotated bibliography is brief. Interested read' ers can consult the bibliographies of the books listed for further refer­ ence.

Acknowledgments

I give special thanks to Justin and Lucy Swabey for their patience in help' ing me with the genealogical tables and the maps, to Rue Swabey' Salgado for reading the text, and to Jackie Keating for helping me with the index.

Chronology

1124

Eleanor is born at Poitiers or Bordeaux.

1137

Easter: death of William X. July: Eleanor marries Louis. King Louis VI dies. August: Eleanor and Louis VII are crowned in Poitiers and arrive in Paris as king and queen.

1141

Louis campaigns unsuccessfully in Toulouse.

1142-43

Louis ravages Champagne and burns Vitry.

1144

Consecration of the Abbey of Saint-Denis. De­ cember: fall of Edessa.

1145

Eleanor gives birth to Marie. Louis declares his in­ tention of taking the Cross.

1147

June 11: Louis and Eleanor leave on crusade and ar­ rive at Constantinople in October.

1148

March: Eleanor is taken under duress from Anti­ och.

1149

Eleanor and Louis return separately from the Latin East and visit Pope Eugenius.

1150

Eleanor gives birth to Alice.

1151

Suger dies. Geoffrey of Anjou and his son Henry visit Paris. Geoffrey dies.

ck

xxxiv

1151-52

Eleanor and Louis dismantle French administration in Aquitaine.

1152

March 21: annulment of Eleanor and Louis’s marriage. Eleanor returns to Poitiers and marries Henry Plantagenet on May 18.

1153

Henry campaigns in England. August: Eleanor gives birth to William.

1154

Louis remarries. King Stephen dies. Henry Planta­ genet becomes king. December 19: Eleanor and Henry are crowned at Westminster.

1155

Eleanor gives birth to Henry. Becket is appointed chancellor.

1155-56

Eleanor is co-regent while Henry is securing Anjou and Maine. Death of Prince William.

1156

Birth of Matilda. Eleanor takes the children to Nor­ mandy and joins Henry in Aquitaine. They spend Christmas at Bordeaux.

1157

Eleanor returns to London. September 8: Richard is born at Oxford.

1158

Becket goes to France to negotiate the marriage of Prince Henry to Margaret Capet, followed by Henry. September: Eleanor gives birth to Geoffrey. December: Eleanor goes to Normandy and spends Christmas with Henry at Cherbourg.

1159

Henry fails to revive Eleanor’s claim to Toulouse. Christmas: Eleanor is with Henry, Prince Henry, and Matilda at Falaise.

1160

Eleanor returns to England. September: Eleanor goes to Normandy with Matilda and Prince Henry. No­ vember: the negotiations for the marriage of Prince Henry to Margaret Capet are concluded and Mar­ garet probably joins Eleanor’s household. Christmas: Eleanor is with Henry and their children at Le Mans.

XXXV

1161

Birth of Eleanor. Eleanor spends Christmas with Henry at Bayeux.

1162

June 3: Becket is consecrated archbishop of Canterbury. Christmas: Eleanor is with Henry at Cher­ bourg.

1163

Henry and Eleanor take Matilda and Eleanor to Southampton. They spend Christmas at Berkhamsted. Henry spends the next three years in England.

1164

Eleanor probably spends Easter in London, summer in southern England, and Christmas with the court at Marlborough. The marriages of Marie and Alice Capet are celebrated.

1165

Henry goes to Europe to negotiate marriages for Matilda and Eleanor. May: Eleanor goes to Nor­ mandy with Matilda and Richard. Joanna is bom at Angers where Eleanor probably spends Christmas. August: Louis VII’s third wife, Adela, gives birth of Philip Augustus, heir to the French throne.

1166

Easter: Henry and Eleanor are at Angers. Henry takes possession of the duchy of Brittany and in June, Geoffrey is betrothed to Constance of Brit­ tany. Eleanor returns to England with Matilda. De­ cember: birth of John.

1167

Eleanor is in England supervising the departure of Matilda for her marriage to Henry, duke of Saxony. September: death of Empress Matilda. Eleanor joins Henry for the Christmas court at Argentan.

1168

Eleanor accompanies Henry to Poitou and survives an ambush near Poitiers. Christmas: Eleanor is with the princes at Poitiers, Henry stays at Argentan.

1169

Settlement of Montmirail, by which Henry prom­ ises Louis to partition his domains between his sons. Richard is betrothed to Alys Capet. Eleanor prob­ ably spends all the year in Poitou and Aquitaine.

ronology

xxxvi

Negotiations begin for the betrothal of Joanna to King William II of Sicily. Henry celebrates his Christmas court in Brittany with Geoffrey and Constance.

1170

Eleanor is in Caen with Prince Henry and Man garet. Henry goes to England. June: coronation of the Young King. Eleanor spends Christmas with Henry and their children at Bures in Normandy, while the Young King holds his own court in Win^ chester. December 29: Becket is murdered.

1171

Henry goes to Brittany, Normandy, and Ireland, spends Christmas in Dublin. Eleanor holds her Christmas court in Poitiers.

1172

Henry is formally absolved of Becket’s murder. The Young King is recrowned with Margaret. Richard is installed as duke of Aquitaine. Henry holds his Christmas court at Chinon with Eleanor, Richard, and Geoffrey.

1173

February: the Young King challenges his father’s gifts to John at Limoges. March: Eleanor, Richard, and Geoffrey go to Poitiers. The Young King ab' sconds from Henry’s custody in Normandy and goes to Paris. Rebellion breaks out. Eleanor leaves Poitou in secret but is captured and held by Henry.

1174

End of the “Great Revolt.” July: Henry takes Eleanor back to England. Henry holds his Christ' mas court in Argentan with his four sons.

Eleanor remains in captivity for another fifteen years; her whereabouts are largely unknown.

1175

Eleanor rejects a proposal that she divorce and rc^ tire to Fontevraud. Henry spends Christmas with the Young King at Windsor.

1176

Death of Rosamund Clifford. Joanna leaves for Sicily.

1177

Henry assigns Ireland to John, and the Princess Eleanor leaves for her marriage to Alfonso of Castile. Henry and his three eldest sons spend Christmas at Angers.

1179

August: Louis and Henry visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury.

1180

September: Louis dies, and is succeeded by Philip Augustus.

1182

Henry holds his court at Caen with all his sons, presided over by Margaret.

1183

Richard feuds with the Young King and Geoffrey. June 11: the Young King dies. Henry summons Eleanor to visit her dower lands in Normandy and then sends her back to England.

1184

Eleanor’s movements are less restricted. She is ah lowed to meet her children and grandchildren at Berkhamsted, Woodstock, Winchester, Westmin­ ster, and Windsor.

1185

Eleanor visits Normandy and Aquitaine.

1186

Henry and Eleanor return to England. August 19: Geoffrey is killed.

1187

Philip and Richard join forces against Henry. March: birth of Geoffrey’s posthumous son, Arthur. October: Jerusalem falls to Saladin. Richard, Henry, and Philip vow to go on crusade.

1188

Philip and Richard renew hostilities against Henry.

1189

Henry is forced to accept humiliating peace terms by Philip. July 6: Henry dies at Chinon and is buried at Fontevraud. July: death of Matilda. Eleanor is released and travels widely through Eng­ land. September 3: Richard’s coronation. He then leaves for France leaving Eleanor in control in Eng­ land.

ronology

XXXVlll

1190

Richard leaves on crusade. Eleanor fetches Berengaria from Navarre and travels with her to Sicily.

1191

Eleanor and Berengaria arrive at Messina. Eleanor returns via Rome where she meets Pope Celestine. May 12: Richard and Berengaria marry in Cyprus.

1192

February: Eleanor returns to England to counter John’s schemes to league with Philip. December: Richard is captured by Duke Leopold of Austria on his return from crusade.

1193

Eleanor raises money for Richard’s ransom and se* cures England against John and Philip.

1194

February 2: Eleanor is reunited with Richard in Germany. April 17: Richard’s second coronation. Reconciliation of John and Richard. Eleanor retires to Fontevraud.

1195

Arthur of Brittany is taken to Paris.

1199

April 6: Richard dies and is buried at Fontevraud. Arthur and Philip dispute John’s succession. Eleanor instigates military action in Anjou against Arthur’s allies. May 27: John’s coronation. Eleanor pays homage to Philip for her domains in AquL taine. September: Eleanor names John heir to her duchy. Joanna dies and is buried at Fontevraud.

1200

Eleanor travels to Castile and returns with Blanche for her betrothal to Philip’s son Louis.

1201

Eleanor is ill.

1202

Philip declares John a traitor and grants his lands to Arthur. Late July: Eleanor leaves Fontevraud for Poitiers, is besieged by Arthur at Mirebeau and is rescued by John. Arthur is captured and disappears.

1204

April 1: Eleanor dies at Fontevraud where she is buried.

Maps and

Genealogical Tables

o A

«

*

ENGLAND

I

SAXONY

London

ENGLISH CHANNEL Rheims y •Paris \

‘

GERMANY

FRANCE

ATLANTIC

Chinon

/

OCEAN \

Vezelay

AUSTRIA t

Vienna* y

Poitiers

AQUITAINE

•Bordeaux

GASCONY

CASTILE

SWABIA

Venice •

Bologna •

Barcelona • Madrid

• Toledo

Salerno • Cordoba ANDALUSIA

MEDITERANEAN SEA SICILY

NORTH AFRICA

Europe and the Latin East in the twelfth century.

Europe and the Latin East in the twelfth century

i

f

*

✓

I HUNGARY

BLACK SEA

EDESSA

THE LATIN EAST

Edessa •

•Antioch

)

Damascus

MEDITERANEAN SEA Jerusalem

EGYPT

xli

The Angevin Empire in 1154.

xlii

Louis VI king of France c. 1077-1137 I----Philip 1116-31

M•

m

Adelaide daughter of Humbert, count of Maurienne and Savoy c. 1092-1154

2. Constance 3. Adela Louis VII ml. Eleanor daughter of duchess of daughter of king of France Aquitaine Alfonso VII Theobald IV c.1121-1180 1124-1204 king of count of (div. 1152) Castile Blois and d.1160 Champagne d.1206

Marie 1145-98 m Henry count of Champagne d.c.1181

Alice 1150-C.93 ID.

Theobald V count of Blois d.U91

1 Philip II Augustus king of France 1165-1223

T Henry archbishop of Rheims d.1175

T Robert count of Dreux d. 1188

Isabella of Hainault 1170-1190 2.

lngeborg of Denmark (div) d. 1236

3.

Agnes of Meran d.1201

T Peter Constance ml. Eustace d.1176 lord of count of Courtney Boulogne d.c.1184 c. 1127-1153 m2. Raymond V count of Toulouse d.1194

Agnes ml. Alexius II ? emperor of Constantinople d.1183

4, Margaret ml. Henry the 1158-98 "Young King" of England 1155-83 2. Bela III king of Hungary d.1196

Alys 1160-1197 betrothed to Richard I king of England m William IE count of Ponthieu

The Capetian Kings of France in the twelfth century.

Louis VIII king of France 1187-1226

m

Blanche daughter of Alfonso VIII king of Castile 1183-1252

2. Emperor Andronicus d.1185

m I

William I "the Conqueror", 2nd count of Anjou king ofEngland 1027-87

Matilda c. 1032 - 83 daughter of Baldwin V, count of Flanders

--------- 1----------

Geoffrey m-? count of Anjou 1113-51

Matilda 1102-67

m. 1

I-----

Marie 1145-98 m. Henry, count of Champagne d.c.1181

William 1153-56

Stephen, king of England c. 1097-1154

Henry V Holy Roman emperor d. 1125

Eleanor m. 1 Henry II m.2 king ofEngland duchess of Aquitaine 1133-89 1124-1204

1—

Adela m Stephen c. 1062-1138 I count of Blois, I d.1102

Henry I king ofEngland 1068-1135

William II king ofEngland c.1056-1100

I

Louis VII king of France (div 1152) c. 1121-80 Alice, 1150-C.93 m. Theobald V count of Blois d. 1191

1

1

1

Henry the "Young King" 1155-83 m. Margaret 1158-98 daughter of Louis VII king of France 1

Matilda 1156-89 m. Henry duke of Saxony 1129-95

Richard I king ofEngland 1157-99

William b.&d. 1177

I 1

10 children

Eustace Count of Boulogne c. 1127-53

ni.

Berengaria c.ll63-aftl230 daughter of Sancho VI king of Navarre

1

r

1 Joanna Eleanor John Geoffrey 1165-99 1161-1214 duke of Brittany king ofEngland mJ 1166-1216 1158-86 m m.l William II m. Alfonso VIII Isabella king of Sicily king of Castile, Constance of Goucester (div) 1154-89 1156-1214 duchess of Brittany m.2 m.2 | 1162-1201 1 Isabelle Raymond VII of Angouleme 12 children count of Toulouse c. 1187-1246 (including 1156-1222 Arthur 1 Blanche, later 1187-1203 1 5 children married tn (probably murdered) 1 child by (1) Louis VIII of France) 3 children by (2)

------------- 1

Simplified genealogical tree showing the Norman kings, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s marriages, and her children.

CHAPTER 1

Narrative Historical Overview Eleanor of Aquitaine was bom at the beginning of the second century of the second millennium, probably in 1124. By the time of her death in 1204, there were substantial changes in the political, cultural, and reli­ gious map of Europe, the effects of which may still be discerned today. But the history of the twelfth century owes much to developments in the previous century, which in turn resonate with the events of the first mil­ lennium. After the fall of Rome in 410, imperial rule collapsed in western and northern Europe as a result of corrupt government and barbarian inva­ sions, although civilization around the Mediterranean was less severely disrupted. Urban life was much reduced, the extensive transport system decayed, scholarship practically ceased, and agriculture became more and more inefficient. The only modicum of central authority was the Church. In the seventh century the pope in Rome, who represented the Latin­ speaking churches of the west, was still subject to the Byzantine emperor at Constantinople in the east, and the pope’s claim to be the supreme leader of the Church was challenged by the Greek patriarchs at Con­ stantinople. Moreover, this Eastern Roman Empire was not strong enough to come to the aid of the popes, who were more or less forced to take on political and military responsibilities in order to defend Rome. Nevertheless, the ideal of a united Christian empire, Christendom, which had blossomed after the conversion of Constantine the Great in 312, was not forgotten. By the turn of the eighth century Europe faced new invaders from the south—followers of Islam whom the Latin Christians called “Saracens.” They overran almost the entire Iberian Peninsula—that is the country

2

ELEANOR, COURTLY LOVE, AND THE TROUBADOURS

we now know as Spain—except the north, but were halted in France, near Poitiers, where they were defeated in 732. Italy continued to be raw aged by the Lombards—originally members of a Germanic tribe who had migrated south—and in 756 the pope appealed to the Frankish king, Pepin III, for help. Pepin’s son Charlemagne was crowned on Christmas Day in 800, at Aachen, and recognized by Pope Leo III as the first env peror of the west in over three hundred years. This created problems in Constantinople where the Byzantine emperors believed themselves to be the legitimate heirs of ancient Rome. Charlemagne added new conquests to his territories, notably Saxony and Aquitaine, and his long reign brought stability to early medieval Europe. The ninth and tenth centuries saw further invasions by Vikings from the north, Bulgars from the east, and Arab pirates from the south. The Carolingian dynastic line after Charlemagne was largely ineffectual in combating these invaders, and Charlemagne’s successors granted many of their royal estates to various dukes, counts, and bishops who undertook their defense. Lords, such as the counts of Flanders and Paris, who were often descended from or related to the Carolingian kings, profited from the crisis, and added other lordships, frequently through marriage, to their domains. They exercised almost regalian powers of justice, conv mand, and constraint, through the services of lesser nobles and sworn re^ tainers, who were required to make an oath of fealty (an act of homage) to them in return for diverse grants, an administrative system known as feudalism. In 987, on the death of the last descendant of Charlemagne, the Frankish nobles elected Hugh Capet, “duke of the Franks,” as king of France. His successors were scarcely able to command the loyalty of the increasingly powerful and independent nobles. However, by ensuring that their sons were crowned king within their own lifetimes and insisting that the barons swear an oath of fealty to those sons, the Capetians managed to establish a dynasty. Louis VI (1108-37), aided by Abbe (Abbot) Suger, ruled astutely, asserting his authority and restoring respect for the king’s justice. He increased his power by exercising his lordship over church lands, peasants, and the towns, and where possible he insisted on oaths of fealty from his lords. His kingdom was centered on Paris, one of the thriving towns of this time, whose emerging university attracted many of the great minds of the age. His royal domain was, however, much smaller than most of the lordships in France.

Narrative Historical Overview

The other major powers in northwest Europe were Flanders, which benefited from the development of the cloth trade; and Normandy, which was created in 911 by one of the Capetian kings who ceded lands to Rollo, a Viking chieftain, on the condition that he and his followers con­ verted to Christianity. Norman dukes rose to prominence at the time of the second duke, William, who asserted control over his barons and in­ vaded England in 1066. His subsequent victory at Hastings earned him the English crown and the title “William the Conqueror”; thus he be­ came the most powerful lord in France, even though he owed loyalty to the Capetian king for his French domains. In 1135, Normandy was united with Anjou (which included Maine and Touraine) under Count Geof­ frey, who was Henry Il’s father. Brittany had retained its strongly Celtic tradition but was ravaged by the Vikings and was then later absorbed by Henry II. Both Blois and Champagne were culturally rich and formida­ ble rivals to France. Hence, at the time of Eleanor’s marriage to Louis Capet in 1137, there were several large principalities north of the Loire, coexisting sometimes peacefully and often not, under the titular author­ ity of the Cape tian king in Paris. In the South the most powerful domain was Aquitaine, Eleanor’s birthplace and inheritance, which had been created as a kingdom in 781 by Charlemagne for his infant son. By the beginning of the tenth cen­ tury, William, son of the count of Auvergne, became the first duke of Aquitaine, and his successors were also counts of Poitou and dukes of Gascony. Beyond the Pyrenees, the Islamic state, which had repulsed Charlemagne in the early ninth century, had flowered and then begun to shrink and fade. As the kings of Aragon, Leon, Castile, and Navarre es­ tablished themselves in the north in the middle of the eleventh century, the remainder of Islamic Spain suffered a series of internecine wars and gradual decline. Only in the south, in Andalusia, was Islamic political power able to thrive until the fifteenth century. While the Capetian kings were struggling to assert themselves as kings of France, the eastern Frankish kingdom under Charlemagne’s descen­ dants was still maintaining imperial pretensions from the Roman past. Territorially, this meant a union of those areas we now call Germany and Italy, and continuing rivalry with the Byzantine Empire based at Con­ stantinople. The rising power of the western Franks and the increasing strength and independence of the papacy, which the eastern Franks had done much to foster, frequently created tension. Apart from the rivalry

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between the eastern and western Franks, a further issue was who should actually rule the people, the secular or the religious authority. The addi­ tion in 1157 by Frederick 1 “Barbarossa”—ruler of the eastern Franks— of sacrum, meaning holy, to the name of his empire emphasized not only Frederick’s imperial ambition but also the claim by a secular state to uni­ versal authority above the Church. By the middle of the eleventh century social conditions had begun to improve. Forests were cleared, farming was becoming more efficient, the population expanded, and there was greater surplus wealth. Urban life began to revive and trade increased. The new guilds developed by the merchants, formed partly to protect their commercial interests, were often successful in reducing tolls and establishing their own courts of law to regulate their practices. From this grew the concept of a town as a cor­ porate body, with representation and the ability to negotiate for partic­ ular benefits, such as, for example, the right to divert profitable trade routes, hold markets, and standardize coinage as well as weights and measures for grain, liquid, and cloth. One of Eleanor’s first edicts on the death of her husband Henry II was to introduce such uniform standards in England. In the countryside innumerable small fortresses had been built for pro­ tection against the recurrent raids. These were initially small and prim­ itive, usually made of wood and surrounded by a stockade—sometimes further protected by a ditch or a moat—to shelter stock and people at times of attack. The lot of the common folk was harsh and restricted, dominated by the need to eke out an existence from the land. Their lives were governed by the dual demands of the seasons and by the calendar of religious feasts, which regulated the relations between the living and the dead, the mundane and the spiritual. Hunting was forbidden them so that supplementing a diet based largely on grain, nuts, wild fruit, and herbs could only be achieved by poaching. The wars and raids between their overlords and the various invaders mattered little to them, except that it was their crops and lands which were devastated. Sometimes it would seem that only the changing rhythms of nature sustained and nour­ ished them. By the end of the eleventh century many more substantial castles were being built in stone rather than wood, in commanding positions, which provided better security. However, these castles rarely had more than one communal room in which all activities took place. Consequently, there

Narrative Historical Overview

was little privacy and peasants and nobles mingled on a daily basis. While some of the lords and nobles took an interest in scholarship and were able to read and write, they spent much of their time feasting, hunting, and fighting. With the cessation of the barbarian raids, fighting became offensive rather than defensive, and tactics changed. Especially significant was the innovation of the longer, heavier couched lance, which was held in the right hand and could be retained after an encounter, unlike the earlier shorter version which was hurled like a javelin. These lances were heavyduty, said to be strong enough to breach walls. Their impact was most ef­ fective when used collaboratively, and consequently it was necessary for combatants to train as a team, exercises which developed into the tour­ naments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The reality of the early tournaments or mêlées of the twelfth century, which probably originated in northern France, was something very dif­ ferent from the later, more stylized events, which were held in marked off closed arenas. These mêlées took place in open countryside, where martial techniques such as ambushes and sorties could be practiced and perfected. Sometimes as many as two hundred knights took part in these exercises over an area of several miles, with the occasional provision of fenced off areas for refuge. The object was to capture and ransom as many opposing knights as possible, the only concession being that no one should be killed. There is no evidence that knights wore favors for their ladies, like ribbons or pieces of clothing, a practice that was later to be described in courtly romances: These first tournaments were considered a serious sport dedicated to the pursuit of glory and booty. Originally, there were no rules, and despite the ban on slaughter, knights did get killed; in 1186, Eleanor’s son Geoffrey was apparently trampled to death in a mêlée, Tournaments also often provided an excuse to settle personal feuds and vendettas. The Church did try to control the violence by prohibiting ecclesiastical burial in 1130 for knights killed in a tournament; later it endeavored to enforce control by insisting that any knight taking part in a mêlée be excommunicated. Tournaments were not permitted in England, though Lord Henry, duke of Normandy, spent vast sums and much of his time tourneying in France. Later his younger brother, Richard I, devised a unique solution to satisfy both his knights and his financial needs, by designating five areas in England where tour­ naments could be held, on payment of a license fee.

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This was the world into which Eleanor was born. It has been considered a world of open boundaries, both culturally and politically—generally tolerant, liberal, innovative, and full of vitality. It was a very mobile society which fostered trade, economic development, and an exchange of knowledge and ideas, It was open to both Russia and the Byzantine Empire, linked by commercial and economic ties and through aristocratic marriages. Despite continuing skirmishes with the Saracens, it was also open to the rich cultural heritage of Islam and the classical thought of Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, disseminated by the Arabs. Its contri­ bution was the humanism of the twelfth century and the free spirit of the troubadour culture of the south of France. Its closure came abruptly in 1204 with the capture of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, and the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 which, among other decrees, required Jews and the followers of Islam to wear distinctive clothing. It also sanctioned crusades at home against heretics, for example, the Albigensian Crusades of 1209-29. The modicum of re­ ligious tolerance, which had thrived in earlier centuries and had fostered open debate and cultural exchange, came to an end. The development of canon law (that is, matters over which the Church had jurisdiction) and civil law further strengthened both the papacy and the monarchy and advanced the separate spheres of Church and State, alienating peo­ ple from a sense of community and the personal bond which was inher­ ent in feudalism.

FEUDALISM The militarization of the European territories in response to the col­ lapse of the Roman Empire, the invasions of migrant tribes, and the en­ suing anarchy were all partly responsible for the creation of feudalism. Feudalism is, however, a generic term; it is complex and had many dif­ ferent forms and consequences, so what follows is only a brief outline. Its evolution lay in the necessity of providing defense against marauders, while simultaneously maintaining order, dispensing justice, and endeav­ oring to keep the land under cultivation. It also answered the need for social bonding which had existed earlier in the cohesion of the Germanic kin groups. Feudalism’s principal hallmark was the granting of land or fief by the king to his peers, both lay and ecclesiastical, in return for military aid

Narrative Historical Overview

and counsel. They in turn granted land to lesser nobles or peasants. These lords, or vassals, might be known as dukes, counts, earls, barons, or mar­ graves, depending on their original duties; for example, “duke” came from the Latin dux denoting military commander, while “count,” from comes, meant companion or member of the king’s household of specially trained warriors. In fact, by the eleventh century, these different titles were no longer indicative of specific status or prestige, and since these grants were frequently felt to be tainted with servility, many powerful lords and counts refused to admit their domains were actually fiefs. Moreover, ju­ dicial powers often became attached to property which dukes and counts might franchise out to lesser lords, making it difficult to enforce the king’s justice. This was especially true when the holder of a franchise was the Church. Feudal grants were formalized by the vassal kneeling and placing his hands in the king or lord’s hands in a ceremonial act of homage or fealty. This might be followed by the kiss of peace. Photo 1 (see the photo essay) depicts several such events and suggests that the oath was felt to have a sacred nature. The concept of the bond, the word given in loyalty, was fundamental to feudalism and was also an expression of human relation­ ship. It was a contractual relationship as well, so that if the king broke his word his vassal was released from his oath. Such oaths were renewed frequently—for example, at special feudal courts held at Christmas or Easter or at the marriage or coronation of the king’s heir. In return for the gift from the king, which might be the tenure of a certain amount of land, together with administrative, financial, and ju­ dicial powers (and the gifts varied greatly), the vassal promised to pro­ vide military service and financial aid. Such aid might be for the knighting of the king’s eldest son, the marriage of his eldest daughter, payment toward any possible ransom, and on his departure for crusade. However, such loyalties frequently clashed as, for example, with Henry IPs sons who owed service to both their father and the Capetian king, with whom their father was often at war. Gifts to lesser nobles and house­ hold retinue in exchange for military service might exclude land and in­ stead be the award of an office such as steward or seneschal, who regulated the household, or marshall who was responsible for the horses, or the services of a falconer, minstrel, or troubadour. It might also be board and lodging, or gifts such as a fortified dwelling, horses, and weaponry.

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This system led to extreme mobility, as kings and lords needed to en­ force these oaths in their far-flung estates and were constantly on the lookout for new land-hungry lords, who were prepared to offer military service in exchange for grants. Another result was that kings and lords often had several administrative centers in their various estates: Henry and Eleanor’s itinerant lifestyles and constant journeys need to be seen in this context. It also fostered the development of independent court cultures, as in Eleanor’s case, for example, since lords were frequently summoned to court to give counsel and be reminded of their binding oaths. Such meetings provided an opportunity for overlords to impress their vassals with the splendor and idiosyncratic style of their patron and an occasion to distribute largesse, that is, money or gifts freely given. Originally, feudal grants had been made at the discretion and whim of the king, but by the eleventh century many estates descended to the eld­ est son or nearest male relative (in the case of Aquitaine daughters could inherit), and resulted in the establishment of a hereditary aristocracy. However, it was still possible for a landless knight, like William Marshall, whose military prowess and chivalrous acts attracted a lord or king, to rise to noble rank. Richard I rewarded William for his loyalty to his fa­ ther by granting him marriage to the daughter of the earl of Pembroke, whose substantial property William then inherited. Peasants usually held plots of land granted by an overlord and were bound to him, as villeins or serfs, to provide agricultural produce and service. The lord was responsible for the villein’s protection in time of war or famine. He also held jurisdiction over his villeins, who could not marry without his permission and whose heirs had to pay relief, which was like an inheritance tax, in cash or kind, in order to continue occu­ pying the land. Villeins were also often required to grind their grain, for a price, at their lord’s mill or have their wine pressed in his press. Serfs were generally even less free and bound to their lords in much the same way as landless household slaves had been in Roman times. Abuse of such potentially autocratic power was sometimes mitigated by local custom, which could be upheld in the lord’s feudal court, and also by close and frequent personal contact at the harvest or feast days, in the halls and the castles. Since land-tenure was based on fealty to their overlords, peas­ ants were rarely able to travel more than a few miles beyond their vil­ lage, except perhaps on pilgrimage.

Narrative Historical Overview

Conditions varied greatly in different countries, but in all there would probably have been a few landless men, some tenants who owed rent and/or personal service to their lord, and some whose labor dues were entirely commuted to cash rents. In England, where the nobles were keen to exploit their land for subsistence and as cash crops, by living off the land and selling surplus produce, villeins were mostly bound to the land and labored a portion of the year for their lords. In parts of eastern Gcrmany and southern Italy serfs were little better off than slaves. In north­ ern France lords were more inclined to transfer their estates to the peasants in return for rents. In Occitania, a region in the south of France which included Aquitaine, free peasants often farmed their own land and, significantly, it appears that land was generally given freehold in return for an oath of fidelity without the encumbrance of vassalic service.

THE CHURCH AND THE CRUSADES Medieval society was imbued with religious sentiment, which mani­ fested in the population at large as a mixture of Christian, pagan, and folk elements. Spirituality was steeped in a belief in magic and the su­ pernatural. Most people believed the blessings, ceremonial rites of the sacraments, and formal intercessions performed by the clergy were effi­ cacious, whether to ensure a good harvest or prevent disasters such as famine, fire, or plague. Sacraments, such as baptism, for example, were symbolic religious ceremonies deemed to be sacred and essential for an individual’s spiritual well-being. Many cathedrals like Chartres were built on the sites of former temples or sacred groves. Devotion to local saints, such as that of Saint Valerie of Limoges (whose cult Eleanor revived when Richard was installed as duke of Aquitaine in 1172), was frequently based upon earlier pagan cults. Since the people were illiterate, they re­ lied on the rituals and ceremonies of the liturgy and sacraments not only to avert evil and further salvation, but also as a form of instruction and education. Pilgrimage to local and international shrines was an act of de­ votion and both literally and figuratively expanded people’s outlook. The head of the Church was the pope in Rome. His relationship with the secular powers was ambiguous and centered on the question of how much the Church could intervene in aspects of daily life, in the inter­ ests of salvation. The dilemma was compounded because the bishops were

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often beholden to their local lord or king, as fief or office holders, and they shared their lives with these secular cousins, feasting and hunting together. The early relationship between Henry II and Thomas Becket is an example of this. Yet while the papacy was sometimes dependent on the protection and goodwill of secular powers, it nevertheless had spirit tual weapons of its own to use against recalcitrant kings and nobles in an effort to assert its claim to universal authority. One such was excom­ munication, which cut an individual off from all contact with the rituals of the Christian community. Another was the interdict directed at an en­ tire community or state, and which withheld all the sacramental func­ tions of the Church from all the people. While the head of the Church was the pope, the people looked to the monasteries for spiritual leadership. The various monastic reforms from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, such as the Cluniac and Cistercian movements, had addressed issues of declining morality and behavior, and subsequently stimulated a new sense of spirituality in the lay population. In the past the monasteries had been places not only of scholarship and education but also of refuge, and indeed still remained safe havens for some, especially women; both Eleanor and her daughter Joanna retired to, and died at, Fontevraud, a double abbey of both monks and nuns under the rule of an abbess. Popes did try to regulate the endemic vio­ lence in society by instituting an edict called “The Peace of God,” which was solemnized in ritual and forbade violence against clerics, merchants, pilgrims, women, and peasants. This was expanded in the 1020s by “The Truce of God,” which prohibited any fighting on certain days and sea­ sons of the year. When Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade in 1095 in response to an appeal from the Byzantine Empire, which was being raided by Is­ lamic Turkish tribesmen, he renewed and generalized “The Truce of God,” promoting the concept of a new ideal—responsible and honorable Christian knighthood. According to eyewitness reports, the pope preached his sermon in a field outside Clermont and called on Frankish knights to march to the East to free Christians from the Islamic yoke and to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim control. The spontaneous response was Deus lo volt!—?‘God wills it!” The paradox inherent in inciting Chris­ tians to fight a bloody war was mediated by the call to go out under the banner of Christ for the conquest of evil and the protection of the weak: here lies one of the roots of chivalry. It would be an anachronism, how­

Narrative Historical Overview

ever, to call the First Crusade a “holy” war. The motives and origins of the crusades, or “taking the Cross,” as it was often known, were mixed and complex, and only later did the concept of a just war against the in­ fidel become an accepted convention. Private warfare was endemic in this period, which also saw a renewal of popular religious fervor. Urban II recognized the opportunity to chan­ nel these energies through the crusades, while simultaneously hoping to further his ambition to unite the eastern and western churches under his leadership. Many knights, however, took part in the crusade not because of religious fervor, but as an opportunity to acquire booty and new land. Another allure was the attraction of the Byzantine Empire and especially Constantinople, which was known for its wealth, luxury, and sophistica­ tion. Also, trading relations between Muslims and Christians were fre­ quently cordial and merchants from the west, who were feeling the pressure of competition in the limited shipping outlets of the Mediter­ ranean, were keen to expand their trade. Above all, it was the opportu­ nity to go on pilgrimage to the most sacred site in Christendom, for there already was a well-established pilgrimage route to Jerusalem. It was also significant that “taking the Cross” was preached as an act of penance, with the promise that it would reduce the time a person might have to spend in purgatory. Finally, going on crusade provided the laity with a way of serving God without having to take monastic vows. Despite the enormous complications of organizing such a diverse group of people, and the extraordinary hardship, suffering, and brutality many endured, the First Crusade was an astonishing success. The largest force was under the count of Toulouse; they were followed by smaller contin­ gents from Normandy, Blois, Flanders, and Germany and joined by thou­ sands of men and women along the way—peasants escaping serfdom and landless knights and their families seeking adventure and prosperity. Jerusalem had been captured by 1099, and the crusader states, which be­ came known as the Latin East or Outremer, “beyond the seas,” were es­ tablished. These consisted of the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, most of which were under the rule of the Franks. However, the continuing rivalry with the Byzantine Empire was divi­ sive. The new settlers found it difficult to maintain order and a military presence and frequently summoned aid from the west, so that during the subsequent decades many small forces set out for the Latin East. The pil­

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grim routes remained unsafe and led to the emergence of military orders of lay brothers, like the Templars, and the Knights of St. John known as Hospitalers, whose initial function was to protect the pilgrims, but soon evolved as a fighting force against the Muslims. The Second Crusade in 1146 was occasioned by appeals for aid after the fall of Edessa. The crusade was a failure and the Franks, under Louis VII, suffered heavy losses after their defeat at Damascus. Muslim resist' ance strengthened under Saladin and another crusade was called in 1187, when Saladin occupied Jerusalem. Fated to fail from the start, partly be' cause of the intense rivalry between the leaders—Richard I from Eng' land, the French king Philip II, and Frederick Barbarossa the Holy Roman Emperor—the crusaders failed to recapture Jerusalem, although Richard managed to wrest control of various coastal towns in the east' ern Mediterranean. In 1199, Pope Innocent III called a fourth crusade to recapture Jerusalem, but the original inspiration to save the Holy Land had dissipated in favor of economic motives, and the crusade was diverted by commercial and political influences. The crusaders did not even fight the Muslims, but were persuaded by the Venetians to sack Constantino' pie, which fell in 1204, creating a severe rift between the western and eastern cultures, churches, and people. That heritage remains today.

MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN Medieval society was traditionally thought of as comprising three classes: those who prayed, those who fought, and those who labored. In this male'Oriented hierarchy there was little space for women to enjoy any rights or exercise autonomy. Furthermore, by 1100, the former ma' trilineal descent of the Germanic tribes had mostly given way to patri' lineal descent, lessening the power of women, although as already noted women could still inherit in Aquitaine. It is difficult to get an accurate picture of women’s activities, since sources are scarce; generally only wid' ows could own property and have a separate legal status, because a wife’s business was subsumed under that of her husband. However, there is plenty of evidence of the managerial skill of women in all walks of life, whether acting on their own or for their husbands and in the interests of their families. Under pagan Roman law, marriage was a secular agreement made be' tween two families and divorce was common. Although the Church did

Narrative Historical Ove rview

try to restrict divorce, marriages were frequently annulled either on the grounds of consanguinity or failure to consummate. Consanguinity in marriage, which meant descent from a common ancestor within the third or fourth degree, was very common among the nobility, since intermar­ riage. enabled fortunes to be consolidated and controlled. Photo 2 shows a blank table of affinity taken from Gratian’s Decretum, which was used as an aid to determining the degrees of the relationship of prospective marriage partners. However, if problems occurred, consanguinity was often “discovered” later, especially if there was no male heir from the marriage or because a more desirable partner was sought. Eleanor’s mar­ riages to both Louis and Henry fell within the forbidden degrees of rela­ tionship. By the eleventh century marriage had become a sacrament, a rite ac­ knowledged as sacred. At a time when concubinage was common, this helped to elevate marriage, which at its worst had been viewed by the Church as an unfortunate institution, necessary to contain lust and pro­ vide for the procreation of children. In any event, marriage was gener­ ally believed second best to celibacy, many ecclesiastics sharing the view of the hermit-preacher Saint Peter Damian that the sexual act could only be justified by the need to procreate. For the nobility, marriage was also becoming the key to dynastic ambition, the eldest legitimate son being acclaimed his father’s heir. This was fairly recent; William the Conqueror was actually a bastard, though he acceded to the English throne. But mar­ riage rarely favored noblewomen, who were valued according to the prop­ erty and possible political alliances they might bring with them. Sentiment, affection, and romantic attachment rarely played a part. And while women were often distrusted and derided by the Church, the newly introduced cult of the Virgin Mary exalted a desexualized motherhood. We shall see that Eleanor and Henry’s marriage plans for their large family are evidence of careful considerations about how to extend their influence and further their dynastic ambitions and with which their daughters were expected to comply. Their sons, too, had little choice; be­ fore Richard I departed for the Latin East, Eleanor personally went to fetch a bride for him from Navarre, anxious lest he die on crusade with­ out a legitimate heir. Even when widowed, few women were able to make their own choices about remarriage, especially if they were heiresses or well connected. When Eleanor’s daughter Joanna was widowed, her brother Richard I proposed she marry a Muslim, Safadin, who was Sal­

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adin’s brother, and jointly rule Jerusalem with him. While some scholars have argued that this was a joke, it could only have appeared funny bc^ cause such arrangements were common: Richard’s suggestion is an CX" ample of another accepted contemporary convention—marriage was often used as a reward or as a peace offering. A notable exponent of im dependent thought especially in regard to marriage was Heloise, wife of the philosopher Peter Abelard, before their marriage was dissolved around 1120, when they both entered the Church. Their story will prch ace chapter on Courtly Love (Chapter 6). Despite the restrictions on women, many were sufficiently forceful to exercise authority and influence. Matilda, countess of Anjou and a for' mer empress, dropped her claim to the English throne in order to further the affairs of her son Henry, later known as Henry II. An experienced mediator, chroniclers report that she was the only person whose advice he would listen to. In reviewing Eleanor’s long career, there is evidence of her skill and versatility, even in adverse conditions. Her daughter Marie, countess of Champagne, was another formidable woman. She acted as regent when her husband and son were on crusade, and again after the death of her son and during her grandson’s minority. At a later date, in 1226, Eleanor’s granddaughter, Blanche of Castile, proved to be a notable regent during the minority of her son Louis, before he was old enough to be crowned as king. Thus, even when deprived of the potential of directly exercising power, noblewomen took many opportunities to assert their influence. They might endow religious foundations by granting income from their estates to a church or monastery, thereby ensuring that their particular spiritual interests (whether religious, social, or educational) were cm forced. They could further the interests of their families by helping to negotiate for suitable marriage partners. They could also act as patrons of the arts. While marriage may not have generally favored women, a forceful and ambitious noblewoman would often find ways of exercising power.

CHAPTER 2

The Twelfth Century Awakening As the new millennium dawned there was a stirring in the western world, which was soon to blossom into that intellectual ferment now known as the Twelfth Century Renaissance or Awakening. By the middle of the eleventh century “Europe”—that is the area from England in the north, Spain and Italy in the south, to around the Black Sea in the east—was enjoying a period of comparative calm, after centuries of migrations and invasions. The consequent population expansion, increased mobility, and growing urbanization created a more complex environment compared with that of a society previously based on an agricultural economy. New laws and systems of administration were needed to regulate the growing numbers of citizens and urban institutions, fueling a spirit of inquiry and intellectual discovery. Greater wealth led to an increase in commerce and trade, which fostered cultural exchange, the dissemination of ideas, and a desire for self-improvement. All areas of life were affected: art, science, literature, and religious and philosophical discourse. Above all, people began to reflect on themselves as individuals, and there was a new focus on relationship, beyond that of kin and the tribe. “Renaissance” literally means rebirth, and is an ambiguous term when used in the context of the twelfth century. Two of the greatest cultural achievements of this era, literature written in the vernacular and Gothic architecture, were actually innovations and in that sense we are not jus­ tified in talking about a rebirth. But certainly there was a revival in the field of scholarly endeavor, together with a renewed interest in classical texts, that is, the philosophical and literary works of the Greek and Roman civilizations. Since the collapse of Charlemagne’s empire in the

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ninth century, such scholarship had been mainly confined to the monas­ teries. Most of those monasteries were in Germany, but after the reforms of the tenth and eleventh centuries, they had become spiritual rather than academic centers, generally dedicated to the contemplative and not the intellectual life. However, they still maintained their libraries and books and ideas passed from one ecclesiastic to another as they traveled on Church business. Monasteries were also rest houses and pilgrimage des­ tinations and as such were international crossroads—meeting-places of clerics, laymen, pilgrims, traders, and nobles, who exchanged and dis­ seminated new ideas. Some of these travelers were proficient in Latin, which was still considered the language of scholarship, while others spoke only their native tongue. Greater peace and wealth are not always stimuli for increased curios­ ity and engagement with the world. There were other factors which helped to bring about this awakening. First were the new centers of ed­ ucation which took over from the monasteries; I shall mention just a few of the men who dedicated their energies to a critical study of the classi­ cal heritage. Then there was a very different contribution: the influence of Islamic civilization, especially from the Arab courts in Spain. The clas­ sical revival was also important, particularly the creative use of Latin, the writing of history and autobiography, and the codification of law. Finally, I shall describe two particular innovations in European culture, vernac­ ular literature and Gothic architecture. This cultural awakening was par­ alleled by the growth of a sense of the individual.

THE CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS AND THE UNIVERSITIES With the decline of the monasteries as intellectual centers, the cities and their cathedrals began to emerge as new centers of learning. In many cathedrals, for example, at Canterbury in England, there already was a tradition of discussion and debate between monks and canons; the latter were attached to the cathedrals as opposed to monasteries. It should also be noted that such public disputation had long been a characteristic of the numerous courts of the rival Muslim chieftains in eleventh-century Spain, known as the taifa courts, where Islamic, Jewish, and Christian scholars were accustomed to debating their religious differences. Open

The Twelfth Century Awak ening

debate often serves as a stimulus to greater tolerance and understanding. With increasing mobility these exchanges fostered an even greater cross fertilization of ideas. The revival of learning and interest in debate was further stimulated in the courts of kings, princes, and nobles, many of whom, like the English king Henry II, patronized poets and scholars. Be­ yond the requirement of recording their patrons’ deeds and illustrious an­ cestry, such patronage encouraged literary innovation along with open discussion of matters like courtesy, valor, and the heroic ideal. Initially, scholars and students sought intellectual inspiration and in­ struction by moving from town to town, following teachers of particular renown, several of whom, like Peter Abelard (1079-1142), were also peri­ patetic. “Peripatetic” comes from the Greek meaning to walk up and down and was believed to be a characteristic of the followers of Aristo­ tle. The most active centers were in northern France. One of the earli­ est was the cathedral school of Chartres, where Fulbert (c. 960-1028) was first the chancellor and then enthroned as bishop. He was an outstand­ ing teacher and many of his students remembered him for his exceptional warmth, openness, and friendship. Several of them also became teachers, for example, Bernard and Thierry, brothers from Brittany, both of whom were appointed as chancellors of the school and were famous too as pio­ neers in the intellectual revival. Bernard de Chartres (d. c. 1130) taught logic and grammar and attempted to reconcile Platonic ideas with Aris­ totelian thought; in endeavoring to relate the primitive word to its de­ rivatives, he was also searching for the ultimate (God) through the particular (man). Thierry (d. c. 1150), theologian and encyclopaedist, sought to harmonize Scripture (the sacred writings of Christianity) with Platonic metaphysical thought and promoted Arabian knowledge of sci­ ence. Other remarkable students at Chartres included William of Conches, Alain de Lille, Gilbert de la Porrée, and Bernard de Sylvestris. Like many of their contemporaries, these scholars were much influ­ enced by Muslim philosophy and their speculations suggest they were also inspired by the Kabbalah and Neoplatonist thought. This was the hall­ mark of the Chartres school—the belief that God, the cosmos, nature, and mankind could all be examined, reasoned, measured, and compre­ hended. In this attempt to find a mathematical structure of the universe, a rational system to explain God and the cosmos, we can glimpse that question which continues to exercise inquiring minds today: the rela­ tionship between religion and science, faith and reason. The interest in

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numerical relationships, in light and music and the architecture of the cosmos, was not only an intellectual exercise; the new cathedral of Chartres, built between 1194 and 1260, remains an imposing expression of this compelling search for an ultimate harmony. Other cities such as Orleans, Rheims, Paris, and Bologna also developed important schools and drew scholars from distant parts; for exam­ ple, Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and John of Salisbury (1115-80) both of whom studied in Paris and Bologna. The clerics who attended these schools not only wanted to satisfy their intellectual ap­ petites but were also keen to further their careers by training for the newly created appointments as royal and municipal administrators. By the 1150s, the schools in Paris were in the ascendancy, thanks largely to Peter Abelard who had lectured there earlier in the century on logic, faith, and ethics. His legacy was to establish the renown of northern France, and especially Paris, as an intellectual center, above all for the study of theology and philosophy. Of Abelard’s many and unique contri­ butions, one of the most influential was his book Sic et Non, “Yes and No,” written to teach his students how to think for themselves rather than accept conventional interpretations of biblical texts, such as the Scriptures and writings of the Church Fathers. Sic et Non demonstrated the application of dialectics (that is logic) to reconcile apparent contra­ dictions of meaning, and stressed the importance of reason as a comple­ ment to faith. The urban schools, like Orleans and Paris, offered ambitious clerics a much wider curriculum than they had previously known. In applying for admission to the seven liberal arts, they could study the trivium, that is grammar, rhetoric, and logic; as we have seen, the latter discipline flour­ ished in Paris. Or they might choose the quadrivium, which consisted of geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy; this was the focus of the school at Chartres, which had pioneered the scientific revival and the rediscovery of nature as a cosmic power. After this, students might study the four branches of philosophy. First there was the theoretical branch, that is, theology, physics, and mathematics. Then there was the practi­ cal branch, consisting of morals or ethics (personal, social, and political). The third was the logical, which related to discourse and the three arts of the trivium. Finally, there was the mechanical branch which included various technological and scientific topics, such as the work of process­

The Twelfth Century Awakening

ing wool, navigation, agriculture, medicine, and similar subjects. This hu­ manistic program offered students a chance to specialize according to their individual desires and needs. Although these early schools looked toward Paris, which was to re­ main the intellectual capital of Europe for a further two centuries, there were other important schools in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Eng­ land, each with its own unique history; for example, the nucleus of Ox­ ford University. In 1167 the various English masters and scholars who had been barred from Paris set themselves up in Oxford. It was an ideal situation, being near the royal courts at Woodstock and Windsor, yet since it was not a cathedral city, it was relatively independent from the Church. The initial faculties there were in theology, law, medicine, and the liberal arts, but in the 1200s it gained strength in theology, due to the establishment of several religious orders, especially the Dominicans and the Franciscans. Oxford also quickly became famous for scientific learning thanks to the work of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1170-1253), an English student from Paris, who advanced the Neoplatonic theories of light and numbers, and claimed that mathematics, or more specifically geometry, was essential for an understanding of natural philosophy and empirical investigation. Grossteste’s work established a tradition of schol­ arship at Oxford that was to be continued by other eminent early scien­ tists like Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. These schools were so successful that there was intense rivalry between them and the behavior of the students was often disorderly. Conse­ quently, it became necessary to regulate them, as well as dictate who had the right to confer degrees and licenses to teach. Generally, in northern Europe, licenses were granted to students by the chancellor or some other official of the cathedral, whereas in the south, masters formed themselves into guilds and granted their own licenses without interference from the Church. Toward the end of the twelfth century, scholars from famous schools like Paris or Bologna were allowed to teach anywhere. Soon other schools began to compete for the right to have their corporate existence recognized and their degrees and licenses accepted universally, an honor that might be conferred on them by a papal or imperial “bull,” or edict. Although it took another hundred years before most were independent from external ecclesiastical government, many of Europe’s famous uni­ versities trace their foundation back to these early cathedral schools.

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ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON EUROPEAN THOUGHT IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY While the urban schools and universities provided the environment in which the passion for knowledge could blossom and grow, much of the impetus for this new spirit of inquiry stemmed from the influence of U lamic culture on western thought during this period. This Islamic coiv tribution was based mainly on the Greek philosophical tradition, especially the works of Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, which had not previously been translated into Latin and were not therefore part of the cultural heritage of the Roman Empire. (Consider that even today, when we wish to talk about something completely foreign or unknown, we often say, “It’s all Greek to me.”) Islamic scholars had already translated much of Greek philosophy and science by the ninth century, and had then included their own glosses and commentaries, thereby adding their cultural insights to the classical heritage. These “new” texts, which were subsequently translated into Latin, began to appear in northern Europe around the middle of the eleventh century and came from three differ^ ent areas. First, many traveled north from southern Italy, while others came from the cosmopolitan court at Sicily. Most, however, derived from Spain, especially after 1085 when Alfonso VI of Castile captured Toledo, which had been under the control of his Muslim vassals since the eighth century. Italy had trading relations with Islamic Spain via her Mediterranean ports, and had also continued to maintain contact with the Byzantine Empire based at Constantinople, with its Arab and Greek population and Greek heritage. Of the new learning coming to Italy from Spain and Constantinople, and which was then studied in Italy (apart from law which will be discussed later), especially significant were the medical and scientific texts of largely Islamic origins. Medical schools flourished in Salerno in southern Italy, as well as at Montpellier in southern France and Toledo in Spain. Two of the great thinkers of this period, Averroes, a Spanish Muslim, and Maimonides, a Spanish Jew, were also practicing physicians. In fact, medicine in the universities was entirely a matter of book learning. Its practice, however, and its sister astrology (the two were believed to be connected, as indeed some still maintain today), generally lay in the hands of those on the fringes of Christian society, the Muslims and Jews, and remained so for another couple of centuries. The same is

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true of those scholars who were interested in technology and some of the more arcane aspects of science. Many royal courts employed Jewish and Muslim physicians and astrologers and some even had resident alchem­ ists. The new learning also reached northern Europe via Sicily. Although this island was just ten miles off the southwest tip of Italy, it had a very different historical heritage and was culturally rich and diverse. It had been both a Greek and Carthaginian colony before it became a province of Rome. In 827 it was occupied by Muslims from North Africa and con­ quered between 1061 and 1091 by two Norman brothers, Robert and Roger Guiscard. Despite their conquest, the island remained cosmopoli­ tan and multilingual; both Greek and Arabic were spoken as well as an Italian dialect. Roger II, who became king in 1130 and was duke of two Italian provinces, Apulia and Calabria, was also an intellectual. He spent the last fifteen years of his reign, from 1139 to 1154, in Palermo, where his court attracted the leading scientific scholars of this age. Sicily main­ tained close relations with Normandy and also with the school at Chartres, to which it bequeathed its Neoplatonic heritage. New ideas also came from the Iberian Peninsula. Andalusian civiliza­ tion in the courts of southern Spain, under the Caliphate of 930-1031, was much more advanced than anywhere else in Europe. Numerous schools had been founded there, many of which were free for the educa­ tion of the poor. At the great Muslim universities, like Cordoba, math­ ematics, medicine, philosophy, and literature were studied. Poetry, art, and architecture flourished in the royal courts of the southern towns, and public debates were often held between scholars and theologians of the three religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. This tradition of reason and rigorous logic in debate was one of the principle gifts of Islamic cul­ ture and culminated in the achievements of the Persian scholar Avicenna (980-1037), who endeavored to integrate Greek rationalism with Islamic thought. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars also collaborated on translat­ ing classical texts, in cities such as Toledo and Barcelona, long before they were known in northern Europe. The intellectual climate of Spain was later to attract the attention of scholars like Peter the Venerable (c. 1092-1156), who traveled to Toledo early in the twelfth century in order to commission a translation of the Qur’an. The tolerant environment of these Hispano-Arab courts was fiercely opposed by both Islamic ortho­

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doxy and the growing fundamentalism of the Christians in the north of Spain. In the early eleventh century the Almoravids, a nomadic people from the Sahara in central north Africa, overran northwest Africa. When the Arabic-speaking princes of the southern Spanish courts appealed to them for help against the Christian armies from the north, many Chris­ tian and Jewish scholars fled northward to France, Germany, and Italy. They took with them their unique cultural heritage, which Islam had done so much to enrich. After Toledo was wrested from Arab control in 1085, it still remained a cosmopolitan city and a school of translators was founded there. Scholars came from all over Europe and worked together, demonstrating that learning need know no boundaries and was the con­ cern of peoples of diverse races and faiths. The Latin translations of Greek and Arabic texts, which came north from southern Italy, Sicily, and Spain, included the works of Hippocrates and Galen on medicine, Ptolemy on geography and astronomy, Euclid on geometry, perspective, and optics, and Aristotle on philosophy and nat­ ural science. The scientific and medical writings of Avicenna also reached Europe through the commercial, intellectual, and courtly networks. This Islamic influence remains in our culture today, as can be seen from our vocabulary with words such as algebra, zero, cipher, almanac, zenith, nadir, alchemy, alcohol, elixir, syrup, bazaar, tariff, admiral, and damask, to name just a few.

THE CLASSICAL REVIVAL Together with the influence of Islamic thought in the western world, there was also a passionate revival of interest in the classics. The admi­ ration, respect, and indebtedness felt by the scholars of this period for that classical heritage is best expressed in the famous saying of Bernard of Chartres: “We are like dwarfs set on the shoulders of giants, from which we can see more and further things than they, not so much because of the keenness of our sight or the magnitude of our own stature, but be­ cause we are sustained and raised up by their gigantic greatness.” This increased vision celebrated by Bernard of Chartres included all the “new” learning in the cathedral and urban schools. Everything was taught in Latin, including the corpus of theological works and secular texts from the classical period in Rome and Greece. Aristotle, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Seneca, and Cicero were all scrutinized, glossed, enjoyed,

The Twelfth Century Awakening

reread, and reinterpreted, leading to a critical assessment of classical sources and a flowering of new verse. Typical of the latter is the Carmina Burana, a collection of songs dating from the tenth to the thirteenth cen­ turies (together with six religious plays) and popularized by composer Carl Orff in 1937. The majority were in Latin and thought to have been composed by Goliards, as the “wandering scholars” came to be known. Most of their songs resonate joyously of wine, women, and song, at times serious, often ribald and licentious, sometimes satirical yet also lyrical. What is particularly remarkable is their use of Latin, which suddenly be­ came the medium of the creative imagination, living and flexible, rather than the rigid, formal Latin that was the language of the Church and was later to be used by the thirteenth-century schoolmen. Classical Latin mythological and historical accounts were plagiarized and treated as legend. Although the pagan content of many of these works caused a dilemma for the Church, much was treated allegorically; thus Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom and patroness of the arts and trades, lost her divinity and came to stand for wisdom as a virtue. This delight in allegory was to have a profound effect on literature. So too, texts like Ovid’s The Art of Love and Cures for Love were widely copied, cited, imitated, and allegorized by people as diverse as the monks of Canterbury for the benefit of nuns, by Peter Abelard and Heloise in their exchange of letters, and by the troubadours. Apart from copying and imitating these classics, there was also a renewal of interest in letter writing, with numerous examples based on classical models for a myriad of occasions, including that important event when eloquence is ab­ solutely essential, the begging letter to parents or relatives from an im­ pecunious student. The models for letter writing consisted of a particular formula starting with the salutation, and then the exordium—a sort of introduction often with a proverb or quotation from the Scriptures. This would be followed by the narrative, the petition, and finally the conclusion. Several col­ lections of letters survive from this period, including the letters of Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm of Canterbury, and Peter the Venerable. There are also some anonymous letters written between monks and nuns from the more privileged monastic foundations. What is noticeable in most is the idiom of passionate friendship, influenced by Cicero’s De Amicitia, “Concerning Friendship,” which many of them display. The tradi­ tion was classical, but embraced by the new class of intellectuals. It

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became an expression of loving friendship and international cooperation, since many of them, like Saint Anselm, for example, who had lived in France, Italy, and England, corresponded with friends all over western Christendom. Furthermore, the expression of friendship in these letters suggests a growing interest in individual identity, in relationship with others, and in the exploration of personal feelings. This resurgence and delight in writing in Latin, with its elegant and eloquent expression, was not only reflected in secular verse and letters but also in historical works. After the fall of Rome, significant events were usually recorded by monks in the annals, chronicles, and hagiogra­ phies of their monasteries. The most important chroniclers were the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans, and the French, but there is little evidence in their work of any critical analysis. In some accounts, like John of Sal­ isbury’s Historia pontificalis, “Pontifical History” (c. 1163), events are de­ scribed in which the writer actually participated. Often medieval writers quoted extensively from official documents, but the emphasis was mostly on narrative (Norman and French), or a philosophical explanation of the present situation (German), rather than an attempt to understand the past. Some borrowed from classical writers; for example in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, “History of the Kings of Britain” (c. 1138), there are references to Troy from Virgil’s Aeneid, as well as sto­ ries about Alexander the Great. Geoffrey of Monmouth also promoted the legend of King Arthur as an actual event. Although this does not suggest a development in the comprehension of history, it demonstrates the desire to create an illustrious past and a glorious destiny. While few historians showed much awareness of the process of his­ torical change, there was a revival in both biography and autobiography, which had classical antecedents, for example, in the Confessions of Saint Augustine. An interest in our ancestors and inquiry into past events is indicative of a growing search for, and sense of, personal identity. Of the various autobiographical accounts in this period, two especially relate to our theme. First is Peter Abelard’s Historia calamitatum, “The Story of His Misfortunes” (1132), purportedly written for a friend. In it Abelard en­ deavors to trace how past patterns of behavior relate to the present and seeks a meaning for his experiences. A very different narrative is that of Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis (1081—1151) and advisor to Louis VI and VII of France. In his autobiography he gives descriptions of his adminis­ tration as abbot, his political activity, and the rebuilding of the abbey

The Twelfth Century Awakening

church. What is striking in his account is the diversity of his interests and the vitality of his vision. Miracles, logistics, enthusiasm, practicali­ ties, and philosophic speculation all have their place in this work, which resounds with the self-confidence and general interest that was charac­ teristic of many of his peers. The classical revival in Bologna in Italy focused on law. The schools in Italy had always been open to the laity as well as the clergy, unlike those in northern France, and many were centered on the study of law. The law taught here derived ultimately from Roman law. But practi­ tioners knew little of the major source books until an obscure lawyer named Irnerius (c. 1055-1125) annotated the entire Corpus Juris Civilis, “Body of Civil Law,” of Justinian, a Byzantine emperor of the sixth cen­ tury. Although there is little evidence that Irnerius’s text was widely used, the idea of a codified legal system established a precedent. With in­ creasing urbanization, commerce, and trade (and the consequent com­ plex relations), it became apparent that there was a need for a standardized system, which could offer greater universal validity than the numerous varieties of local custom prevalent under the feudal system. Irnerius’s work provided a model. His work influenced another obscure scholar called Gratian (c. 1109-c. 1159), a monk from Bologna. In compiling the Decretum, a col­ lection of over 4,000 texts on all aspects of canon or Church law, he ap­ plied the new concepts of logic to areas where there were inconsistencies and confusion, especially where there was evidence of a conflict between the Church and the State. Although he did not include practical solu­ tions to many of those problems he highlighted, these were suggested by his disciples who drew on Roman law. Mention must be made here too of the considerable achievement of Henry II, who set in motion a com­ prehensive program of the procedure of criminal justice, under the cen­ tral authority of his officials. He also developed the sworn jury system, new aspects of property law, and ensured that Common Law, not Roman Law, became the rule of the English courts.

LITERATURE IN THE VERNACULAR, AND GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE The vernacular had been used for literature before the twelfth century, specifically for recording heroic epics and sagas, which had originally

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been recited in Icelandic, Irish, and Anglo-Saxon and were then written down by Christian scribes. However, in this period, there was a new lit­ erary tradition, which was as much about content as language. Vernacu­ lar, the “speech of the people” or “the vulgar tongue,” was also called romanZy as opposed to Latin, which was both the medium of scholarship and an international language which could be understood all over Chris­ tendom. But from romanz comes the word “romance.” It was this literary form that was one of the greatest cultural achievements of the twelfth century. It developed particularly in France, and established a tradition that runs continuously from Chrétien de Troyes (fl. 1165-80) in French, Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170-1220) in German, Dante (1265-1321) in Italian, to William Langland (c. 1330-1400) and Geoffrey Chaucer (1345-1400) in English, and down to the poetic and prose works of today. As a genre, romance developed in the courtly cultures of northern France, in part influenced and colored by the songs of the troubadours. The movement paralleled the flowering of literary Latin which, as already noted, was renowned for its creativity and vitality. In fact, many of the first romances were based on classical themes, like those of the earlier vernacular tradition from northern France—the chansons de gestes or heroic tales of feudal society, such as “The Song of Roland.” However, when the romances dealt with themes taken from Arthurian legend, the perspective was very different from previous works. Influenced perhaps by the expression of emotion in the troubadours’ songs, there is more ex­ position and development of theme in the romances. There is also greater psychological depth and an increased exploration of human motives and values, reflecting a growing awareness of the individual self. While the writers of the twelfth century gazed inward, the twelfth­ century builders looked upward. Their contribution, Gothic architecture, was the other great cultural development of this era. When architecture changes it is an indication of the advent of a new spiritual focus; and so the new style celebrated a profusion of colored light, enormous space, and immense height. This aesthetic vision could only have been achieved by a combination of engineering and art. The lofty peaks of the new cathedrals were made possible by load-bearing flying buttresses at­ tached to the external walls, a structural innovation which also facili­ tated the insertion of the numerous windows. These technological advances can be attributed to a greater understanding of design, derived in part from the study of Euclid’s Elements. Other typical characteristics

The Twelfth Century Awakening

of Gothic are ribbed vaults and pointed arches, modifications of Arab invent ions, and the rose window. Gothic architecture was originally a French phenomenon, although it had national variations; for example, Salisbury Cathedral in England and Cologne in Germany. As the style evolved to High Gothic it became more and more intricate, a harbinger of that intellectual movement of the thirteenth century known as Scholasticism. Suger’s new Abbey of Saint-Denis is generally considered the cradle of Gothic. As the shrine of the patron saint of France, it was an impor­ tant pilgrimage center and Suger searched for the richest materials and most skilled craftsmen, so that his royal abbey would glorify the Capet­ ian kings as well. He was also dedicated to the idea that the apprecia­ tion of beauty was a stimulus to meditation and an approach to God: “It is only,” he wrote, “through symbols of beauty that our poor spirits can raise themselves from things temporal to things eternal.” The light in Suger’s abbey reflected through the stained glass windows and from the sparkling jeweled reliquaries, where holy relics were kept for display, ex­ pressed the delight of this new age. That same sense of play and joy in movement and living forms is apparent in the early Gothic sculptures on the west portal at Chartres. The carved figures with their serene gazes and flowing garments are nevertheless vigorous and alert, more natura­ listic than earlier works, and even if there is little obvious portraiture, there is an attempt to depict individual differences (see Photo 3). Besides the change in architectural style, there was also a development in religious practice, which began to move away from ritual to a more re­ flective emotional and subjective identification with the suffering hu­ manity of Christ. Sermons became important and good preachers drew on their own experience, personalizing and humanizing the Christian message. The Christian symbol changed from that of a fierce judge to a loving God; this was the particular message of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who also helped to further the cult of the Virgin Mary. As an ad­ vocate for the primacy of the heart, he was Abelard’s opponent, who stood for reason and the head. Rationality was finally to triumph in Scholasticism. Despite Abelard’s dictum diversa non adversa, “different but not adverse,” there was little space for his understanding of tolerat­ ing difference in the thirteenth century. It has been argued that this dynamic, new, spiritual and intellectual worldview led to the discovery of the individual. Certainly, there was a

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greater emphasis on self-expression in various forms, and a concurrent sense of the value of the individual, with all its implications for personal relationships, beliefs, and responsibility. The advent of the new cathe­ dral schools and revival of classical learning led to a growing confidence in rational thought as a means of solving problems, which in turn en­ couraged self-reflection. “Who is more contemptible,” asked John of Sal­ isbury, the man who is celebrated as the first English humanist, a friend of kings and saints, and who died in 1180 as bishop of Chartres. “Who is more contemptible,” he asked in 1159, “than he who scorns a knowl­ edge of himself?”

CHAPTER 3

Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France: Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage In the twelfth century, southwest France was described by a chronicler as one of the happiest and most fertile of the entire region. “Opulent Aquitaine,” wrote Henriger of Lobbes, “sweet as nectar thanks to its vincyards, dotted about with forests, overflowing with fruit of every kind and endowed with a superabundance of pasture-land.” Together with the neighboring county of Poitou, which had many thriving harbor towns, the duchy of Aquitaine enjoyed the benefits of a lucrative trade in those essential medieval commodities, salt and wine. The people of Aquitaine were said to live for pleasure. Although warlike, they were also deemed effeminate; they were close-shaven, wore their long hair in locks, and in­ dulged in frivolous dress. Compared to the north, the duchy was consid­ ered anarchic, yet it was also renowned for its lavish display of hospitality and the elegance of its magnificent courts. One of the nine lords who administered Aquitaine when Charle­ magne’s empire collapsed in the ninth century was William, who became the first duke of Aquitaine. Many of his descendants were notable men whose turbulent lives demonstrated warrior dispositions and frequent confrontations with the Church. Most famous was William IX (1071-1127), the ninth duke of Aquitaine and seventh count of Poitou, also known'as “the Troubadour,” who acceded to the dukedom before he was fifteen. After returning from the First Crusade in 1101, where most of his army was slaughtered, he was occupied much of the time in quar-

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railing with his neighbors, vassals, and local bishops. He also frequently went on military campaigns in Spain. He enjoyed writing poetry and composing chansons (songs) in the langue d’oc, the language spoken in the southern regions of France. The form and subject matter of his songs were innovative: lyrical verse that was set to music, and which celebrated the joys and pleasures of love. Eleven of his chansons have survived, in which women are portrayed both as carnal creatures to be possessed and enjoyed and also as idols on pedestals who had the right to bestow favors as they thought fit. Contemporary accounts confirm this ambivalence, naming him the most courtly man in the world and a fine knight, who was also rather forward in his attentions to women and a great deceiver of the ladies. William “the Troubadour” had no children by his first wife but had several daughters and two sons from his second marriage: his heir, William, and Raymond, who became Prince of Antioch. Their mother Philippa was the daughter and heiress of the count of Toulouse, which was later to provide the justification for Eleanor’s claim to that county. When, in 1118, William installed his mistress, the viscountess of Chatellerault (commonly known as “La Dangerosa” presumably for her seductiveness) in the ducal palace, Philippa retired to Fontevraud Abbey, where she died before the end of the year. La Dangerosa had given birth to a daughter called Aenor, by her husband the viscount. William, in a gesture which could certainly be seen as romantic as well as indifferent to dynastic considerations—whereby he would have sought a wealthier and better-connected daughter-in-law—arranged the marriage of his only son William (X) to Aenor: they were to be Eleanor’s parents. Eleanor was bom around 1124 in either Poitiers or Bordeaux. She had a brother and a younger sister, who was called Petronilla.Qn 1127 her fa­ ther succeeded to the dukedom on the death of William IX, and three years later both her mother and only brother died. Her father may have married again but there were no further children, so at the age of six Eleanor became the most important woman in his household^ ^ince women could inherit property in their own right in southern France, Eleanor was assured in her status as William’s heiress. In fact, women gen­ erally had a much higher public profile in the south than in the north of onsequently, it is likely that from an early age she was used to being the center of attention and carefully schooled in affairs of the state. there was little formal education for girls at this time, in

Marriage, Divorce, ana Remarriage

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most aristocratic households daughters were taught basic managerial and social skills. They needed to know how to supervise the running of large households on the frequent occasions when their husbands were absent on business, pilgrimage, or military campaign. Such education was likely to have been essentially pragmatic and would have included basic in­ struction in hospitality, feudal rights and obligations, military defense, the importance of patronage, and all the other diverse duties pertaining to running a household or, as in Eleanor’s case, a ducal court.^J However, Eleanor is likely to have had some more formal education. It is said she could read both the langue d’oc and Latin, even if she could not write them. All noble households employed numerous scribes and clerks to deal with correspondence, charters, accounts and such like,jso not every nobleman ,or woman learned to read,,and feweustill to write. Eleanor’s skill in acting on behalf of her second husband, for her sons, and in administering her domains in her later years is most likely to have been acquired experientially in her youth in Aquitaine and, while marmoney or land to religious foundations. Since religious houses were major landowners, with social and political associations, this enabled her to exercise some / / ' influence. Like her father and grandfather she patronized troubadours, \ and is said to have enjoyed romantic literature and poetry. She was ap-^ parently an accomplished rider and also liked to hunt with a hawk. Her father William X was known to be willful and violent-tempered. He was twenty-seven when he became duke, and throughout his brief rule, he quarreled with both his vassals and with the Church. Like all courts during this period, his was itinerant, and much of the time he would have been on the move. A fundamental feature of feudal lordship was to make a display of power, authority, and largesse in order to im­ press all his significantly powerful vassals. Residence in different castles and palaces was also essential, as landowners needed to maintain them­ selves and their retinues by living off local produce, and then, when it was exhausted, moving on to the next living larder.^Eleanor is likely to have traveled with him often. She seems to have developed an abiding love for her native land while on these chevauchées or journeys around their domains. This was reciprocated in the loyalty her vassals showed her in later years In 1130, William X was excommunicated for supporting the antipope against Innocent II. Five years later, when quarrelling with Bernard, the

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abbot of Clairvaux, he suffered some kind of seizure. Possibly it was this shock, combined with his continuing inability to pacify his enemies, that prompted him to make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in north­ west Spain. Whether he was seeking physical or spiritual aid against his enemies, troubled by a guilty conscience, or had some sense of forebod­ ing is unclear, but before his departure (^e summoned his barons to swearg

an oath of fealty to Eleanor as Lord of Aquitaine, Gascony, and PoitouTL Then leaving both his daughters in Bordeaux, he set out on pilgrimage in March 1137. / On his arrival at Compostela on Good Friday, April 9, he became mor\x tally ill. (One of his last deathbed actions was to send messengers to his overlord, King Louis VI of France, appointing him as Eleanor’s gu The news would have been taken swiftly and secretly because Eleanor was now a fabulously wealthy heiress and a valuable marriage prize. Louis, who was himself ailing, immediately realized that she would be a highly desirable consort for his own son, heir, and namesake. As titular king of France, Louis actually owned and administered an area considerably smaller than Eleanor’s patrimony; it had no access to the sea and was less fertile than the south. While the dukes of Aquitaine were his vassals, they themselves had many wealthy and powerful lords as their own vas­ sals, who were under an obligation to supply aid and support to them alone. Louis had ruled astutely, strengthening his boundaries, enforcing law and order, promoting religion, and encouraging an independent urban culture to counterbalance the power of his barons. However, he con­ stantly had to be aware of his enemies to the east, the Holy Roman Em­ peror and the Germans. Control over Aquitaine would give him access to the sea, more land, and the resources to maintain his security and en­ sure greater support against his other powerful neighbor, Count Geoffrey of Anjou. He immediately dispatched Prince Louis and his friend and chief administrator, Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis, to fetch Eleanor from Bordeaux. With them went an escort of five hundred knights, coffers of gold, jewels, and cloth and all the accoutrements to guarantee a lavish display and remind his southern vassals of his sovereignty. The young Prince Louis may have had less experience in courtly man­ ners or affairs of the realm than Eleanor, although he was three or four years older than she. Contemporary descriptions portray him as naive, sensitive, and prone to tears with an occasional tendency to temper

Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage

tantrums. Other contemporary accounts depict Eleanor as charming, wel­ coming, and lively. As a second son Louis had originally been destined for the Church, but when he was ten, his elder brother died in an acci­ dent. Louis was brought from the Abbey of Saint-Denis to be officially recognized as heir to the French kingdom and then sent back to the clois­ ters. Despite his age it seems he had had little opportunity of exercising any power. ^Fhis sudden proposed marriage might have been as great a surprise and challenge for him as it was for Eleanor, and the incompati­ bility of both their natures and cultures was soon to be apparenfT] The wedding, together with a ducal coronation, was celebrated in late July 1137 in Bordeaux (see Photo 4). On their way back to Paris at the beginning of August, news reached them of Louis VPs death. The cou­ ple then progressed to Poitiers for a dual coronation and to receive hom­ age from their vassals, ^leanor, who was thirteen years old and had so

recently been acknowledged as the duchess of Aquitaine and countess of Poitou, now became the queen of France as welQHer seventeen-year-old husband Louis VII gained from her control over far greater domains than his forefathers had administered, as well as a claim to the county of Toulouse. Whatever romantic notions Eleanor may have entertained about mar­ riage, she would also have been aware of practical considerations: mar­ riage was a relationship based on dynastic, economic, and political ambitions. Such partnerships were never equal and seldom concerned with personal fulfillment. Moreover^ Eleanor’s scope for pursuing any per-

sonal political aims was limited by her husband’s inexperience^ In f their arrival in Paris, Louis returned to his studies, the discipline cloister, and Abbé Suger’s supervision. Contemporary accounts suggest that while Eleanor endeavored to make the Cité palace more comfortable and hospitable, installing shutters, a chimney (a real innovation), and commissioning colorful tapestries, Louis kept vigils and maintained a monkish fast on Fridays. She also encouraged troubadours and jongleurs (professional entertainers) to entertain the court, fueling the rumors that southerners indulged in hedonism and moral levity. Soon the antagonism against her became apparent, as can be noted from Bernard of Clairvaux’s criticism of the foppish clothes of her entourage. As a “foreign” queen, extremely wealthy in her own right, speaking a different language, possibly cultivating her own allegiances, and with her own ducal retinue separate from the royal household, Eleanor may well

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have inspired suspicion and jealousy. More than that, it seems she was virtually excluded from any involvement in or discussion about the ad­ ministration of her domains. However, within the next few years she may have begun to exercise some influence on her young husband, whom it was said doted on heE^He undertook military campaigns for her in Poitiers and endeavored, in 1141, to fulfill her claim to Toulouse, but without the support of Theobald of Champagne, one of his chief vassals, the venture was a failure. He then interfered on Eleanor’s behalf in her sister’s problems. In 1142, Petronilla was having an adulterous affair with Count Ralph of Vermandois, who was married to Theobald’s sister. Ralph disowned his wife, and^it is likely that Eleanor put pressure on Louis to

authorize some of his compliant bishops to sanction the annulment of E"’ Ralph’s marriage to Theobald’s sister on the grounds of consanguinity, so £ that he could marry PetronillaTJ