Read Eleanor of Aquitaine Online
Authors: Marion Meade
Eleanor of Aquitaine (6 page)
And if these ladies were not sufficiently heroic, there was Radegonde, one of the patron saints of Poitiers. Since Eleanor had been a small child, she had ridden down the hill to the southernmost gate of the city where Radegonde had founded a convent almost six centuries earlier, and there in the dark crypt containing the saint’s coffin, she would place beside the tomb a tiny waxen heart and a lighted candle as she made her wish. In the sixth century, according to legend. Queen Radegonde had fled the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks, her brutal and licentious husband Clothaire in hot pursuit, and hidden herself in a newly sown cornfield, clutching her jewels and her two women companions. By God’s mercy, the corn immediately sprang up around them, the tall stalks hiding Radegonde only minutes before Clothaire came riding by. The learned queen was consecrated as a nun and later came to Poitiers, where she established the convent of Sainte-Croix. It was there that she burned with Platonic love for the Italian poet-priest Fortunatus, “the delight of my soul,” and there that she served him exquisite meals on dishes of crystal and silver. From the lives of these women Eleanor, as a small child, developed attitudes and feelings that she was never able wholly to escape: that a woman need not accept the fate men might decree, that she could take her life into her own hands and shape it to suit her heart’s desire.
Meanwhile, Eleanor’s father seemed to have paid scant attention to his daughter’s development, since he was constantly embroiled ,in troubles so all-consuming that he could think of little else. In his few years as duke, he had acquired the reputation of being a hothead. Always quick to provoke a fight, he had grown increasingly obstinate after the deaths of his wife and son. In 1130, for instance, when the Chair of Peter was being claimed by two popes, he brought down a host of difficulties upon his own head by enthusiastically supporting the antipope, a cardinal who called himself Anacletus II. The fact that an important lord like the duke of Aquitaine would fail to support Innocent II, who occupied the Holy See, was serious enough to aggravate the schism in the Church at that time and bring the renowned Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, sallying from his cloister to deal with this threat to “God’s business.”
No churchman of the day was more admired than Bernard. Unquestionably the most powerful single individual of the twelfth century, a maker of popes, a chastiser of kings, who listened to his advice and sometimes followed it, he had a gift for oratory that won him the name Doctor
Mellifluus,
“the honey-sweet doctor,” but his contemporaries claimed that the sight of him was sufficient to persuade audiences even before he opened his lips. In 1115, the twenty-five-year-old Bernard had taken thirteen Cistercian monks and settled in a wooded place in Champagne called Valley of the Wormwood, where, emphasizing poverty and manual labor, they built the Abbey of Clairvaux while sleeping on the ground and existing on coarse barley bread and boiled beech leaves. Not surprisingly, he nurtured a grim disapproval for the black-robed monks of Cluny and deplored the pernicious influence of their gilded cathedrals and stained-glass windows. Regarded as a saint during his lifetime and canonized after his death, Bernard utterly rejected the world in favor of the austerity and silence of the cloister, but, ironically, there was no monk who lived more frequently and for longer periods outside his abbey. When he learned that Duke William of Aquitaine supported the antipope, he hurried to Poitiers for the purpose of reasoning with the duke and bringing him into the camp of Innocent II. Meeting at the Abbey of Montierneuf, the two men discussed the matter for an entire week, after which time the duke, apparently moved by Bernard’s charismatic personality and his formidable powers of persuasion, expressed willingness to break with Anacletus.
Mellifluus,
“the honey-sweet doctor,” but his contemporaries claimed that the sight of him was sufficient to persuade audiences even before he opened his lips. In 1115, the twenty-five-year-old Bernard had taken thirteen Cistercian monks and settled in a wooded place in Champagne called Valley of the Wormwood, where, emphasizing poverty and manual labor, they built the Abbey of Clairvaux while sleeping on the ground and existing on coarse barley bread and boiled beech leaves. Not surprisingly, he nurtured a grim disapproval for the black-robed monks of Cluny and deplored the pernicious influence of their gilded cathedrals and stained-glass windows. Regarded as a saint during his lifetime and canonized after his death, Bernard utterly rejected the world in favor of the austerity and silence of the cloister, but, ironically, there was no monk who lived more frequently and for longer periods outside his abbey. When he learned that Duke William of Aquitaine supported the antipope, he hurried to Poitiers for the purpose of reasoning with the duke and bringing him into the camp of Innocent II. Meeting at the Abbey of Montierneuf, the two men discussed the matter for an entire week, after which time the duke, apparently moved by Bernard’s charismatic personality and his formidable powers of persuasion, expressed willingness to break with Anacletus.
Yet scarcely had Bernard left Poitiers before William resumed his militant partisanship of the antipope. In fact, he raced willy-nilly ahead and turned with even greater fury against the supporters of Innocent: The altar stone on which Bernard had said Mass was smashed, and William personally drove from Poitiers every ecclesiastic who supported Innocent and then proceeded to fill the offices with his own appointees. These actions inevitably led to his excommunication.
When Eleanor was thirteen, her father again clashed with the Church, and in that year of 1135 people said that God’s patience with her father had ended and that he had reached down to rescue the duke from damnation. At the time this momentous incident took place, William was away from home at his chateau in Parthenay, but God, through his emissary Bernard, found him just the same. News of a miracle travels on ghostly wings of air, and before her father returned to Poitiers, Eleanor must have already heard the incredible story being whispered among her high-born ladies and spoken of openly in kitchen and stable. Once more Bernard had come all the way from Champagne to seek out the intractable duke, but when he arrived at the château. William refused to see him. At last cooler heads prevailed, and then he had listened, full of truculence, as the holy man urged him to abandon the evil Anacletus and return to God. As it took a hard man to withstand the uncompromising eloquence of Bernard of Clairvaux, William gradually began to weaken and grudgingly promised that he would acknowledge Innocent. He would not, however, reinstate the expelled bishops; as a knight he could not, for he had sworn never to permit them in his domain again. Bernard sighed and stared at the duke in his deplorably fine and precious raiment, his huge muscular body radiating good health. Once, some fifteen years earlier, he had thundered, “Wine and white bread benefit the body, not the soul. The soul is not fattened out of frying pans.” If William was content to leave his soul malnourished, Bernard would find other means of fattening it.
The next morning the square outside the château was packed with people from leagues around; the lamest peasant had risen from his pallet to crowd into the Church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Couldre, where the worshipers all but mobbed the saint before he said Mass. Hardly anyone in the town was absent, including the excommunicated William, who, unable to step foot over the threshold, skulked outside on the porch, pacing fretfully to and fro as he watched Bernard at the altar. After the pax, still holding the Host upon the paten, Bernard turned around and caught sight of William in the doorway. With a sudden burst of inspiration, he slowly began to make his way down the aisle, the Host held triumphantly before him, his gaze never departing from the figure of the duke. If William could not come to God, then he would bring God to William. He called out to the duke, “We have petitioned you and you have spurned us. In the recent council, the servants of God at your footstool you have treated with contempt.” Trampling each other to inch close behind Bernard, the townspeople saw their prince staring at Bernard in amazement.
Thrusting the Host toward William, Bernard challenged: “Lo, here has come forth to you the Virgin’s son, the head and lord of that Church that you persecute. Your judge is present, in whose name every knee in heaven, on earth, below the earth is bowed. Do you spurn him? Do you treat him with the contempt with which you treat his servants?”
William, pale and silent, began to sway like a tree trunk, and then his whole body stiffened, and he fell face downward at the holy man’s feet. When the duke’s chevaliers ran to lift him up, he collapsed again. Afterward people could not remember all the things said by the holy man, but some swore that the duke had groaned like an epileptic and foamed at the mouth. They had been there and had seen it with their own eyes.
Bernard prodded the body at his feet, commanding William to rise. “The bishop of Poitiers whom you drove from his church is here. Go and make peace with him. Pledge yourself to him in the kiss of peace and restore him to his see. Then make satisfaction to God; render to him glory for your contempt.”
Slowly William struggled to his feet and staggered toward the hated bishop to give him the kiss of peace. When he returned to Poitiers a few days later, Eleanor could see a change in him, for his heart and mind had truly been seared at Parthenay, and it took some time before he recovered. Later that year he founded, as an act of reparation, a Cistercian abbey in the diocese of Saintes. He no longer growled curses upon his enemies, at least not within people’s hearing, and his face seemed sunk in melancholy lines for no apparent reason. Thinking seriously about the future for the first time since Aenor’s death, he reminded himself that it was long past time when he should have remarried, not that he had ever intended to do otherwise, but, easily distracted, he had shoved the problem aside to reconsider it at some later date. Although he had two illegitimate sons, William and Joscelin, he now resolved to beget a male child to inherit his duchy. Furthermore, he turned his attention to his daughters, who had reached marriageable age. While he berated himself for foolishly neglecting their future, there was good reason why he had avoided thinking about this business of succession and the dire consequences that would result should he die without male issue.
The law was far from fixed on the subject. Even though Eleanor might legally inherit, at the same time it was believed that a woman could not properly fulfill the obligations of a vassal. For one thing, she could not undertake military service and therefore might have to step aside when the forty-days-a-year soldiering had to be rendered. For this reason, feudal domains were kept, whenever possible, in the hands of men, and William understood that there were many in his own land who would take advantage of the situation. Had not his mother been evicted from the countesship of Toulouse by her uncle, Raymond of Saint-Gilles? Had not he himself a younger brother who, by ironic happenstance, was also named Raymond? Although he knew that the lad was far away in Outremer, where he had schemed his way into the lordship of the rich fief of Antioch, still it was wise to take no chances.
In 1136, in an effort to straighten out his life, William announced to Eleanor and Petronilla that soon they would have a stepmother. For some time he had been eyeing a young woman who pleased him, but unfortunately Emma, the daughter of Viscount Aymar of Limoges, was already married to Bardon of Cognac. Now, by good fortune, Emma had become a widow, and before Bardon had scarcely been laid to rest, William arranged for their betrothal. Throughout Aquitaine it was said that William had become a changed man, but if the Lord had humbled and softened the arrogant duke, he had not seen fit to give him common sense; he had selected a bride from the Limousin, where the nobility had been periodically at odds with the dukes of Aquitaine for a century or more.
The news of William’s betrothal brought immediate repercussions. In the Limousin, secret councils were hastily summoned among the counts of Angoulême, the viscounts of Limoges, the lords of Lusignan, and others with cause for concern. These testy vassals had chafed under the Aquitainian yoke for generations. If Emma, a possible coheiress of Limoges, bore a son—and even if she did not—it would mean an increase in William’s power over them. Clearly something must be done. For some weeks the plotting and scheming continued, and the end of it was that Count William of Angoulême volunteered to carry off the young woman and marry her himself, a decision in which Emma was not consulted. When news of Emma’s abduction and marriage reached the duke, he publicly uttered no word of complaint; in fact he reacted with such good grace that suspicions were immediately aroused, and the Limousin girded itself for a blood bath. Months passed without retribution, but still there was no doubt among the Limousin chieftains as to how the matter would end. William was a man of uncertain temper, and sooner or later he would wreak vengeance.
In the meantime, William’s discouragement deepened, and he longed to escape the disorders of his realm. In the summer of 1136, he received word that his northern neighbor, Count Geoffrey of Anjou, was planning an invasion of Normandy; the duke of Aquitaine, among others, was invited to aid in this ambitious enterprise. On many occasions Eleanor had heard her father speak of Geoffrey Plantagenet, although not always in complimentary terms. Geoffrey, she knew, was extraordinarily good looking. Geoffrey le Bel, people called him, “Geoffrey the Handsome.” Energetic and dashing, he had a certain flair that lesser lords tried to emulate, although probably no one else could have gotten away with wearing in his cap a sprig of planta genesta, the common broom plant. Geoffrey had married well, and even though he detested his cold, haughty wife, Matilda was nonetheless the daughter of King Henry of England, and it was through her that he was able to claim Normandy. Lately William had grown to admire the stylish Geoffrey, so that when the invitation arrived, he immediately accepted, perhaps hoping that a shift of scenery in the company of the buoyant count would act as a tonic to his flagging spirits. There followed a time of enthusiastic activity as the grindstones hummed along the edges of steel swords and the forge in the smithy blazed to shape new shields and hammer out stirrups, spears, and maces. In September the new arms were ready, and William’s troops rode forth on their great chargers.
To Eleanor’s surprise, however, her father returned unexpectedly only a few weeks later, the campaign having been temporarily abandoned when Geoffrey received a foot wound. After William’s return to Poitiers, he seemed more melancholy than ever. He would sit before the leaping fire in the Great Hall staring fitfully into the flames and leaving the wine in his goblet untouched. When he spoke, it was, as often as not, of nightmares, terrible anguished dreams filled with scattered cries, disjointed ravings, the air torn from earth to heaven by shrill, heart-rending screams. Once as immune to the inhumanity of war as any, now William felt hounded by memories of the devastation in which he had recently participated, and for the first time in his life he lost his appetite for combat, an alarming development for a medieval prince with a host of enemies.
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