Eleanor of Aquitaine Read online

  If the men appeared devilish to Prior Geoffrey, the women inspired even greater horror and caused Aquitaine’s sober neighbors to murmur that the whole of the duchy was no better than a huge brothel. While feudal times were not the best in which to be born female, still the position occupied by the women of Aquitaine was, everything considered, remarkably high. Perhaps because the power of the Church was relatively weak there, its customary puritanism and fierce misogyny had less influence, so that women came to expect, and receive, a place of prominence in society. Under the laws of the land they could inherit property in their own right, and some, on occasion, exercised great power as landowners. At their disposal were the means of elegance, and they took advantage of opulent fashions, cosmetics, and oriental perfumes to enhance their persons. Undoubtedly, their painted cheeks and charcoal-rimmed eyes, combined with their free and easy independence, supplied a basis for the charge that moral disorder was rife in Aquitaine. Unlike their counterparts in the northern countries, the women refused to be segregated among themselves or secluded in convents and, if discovered with a lover, they were neither shut up nor killed. While adultery in women was not actually condoned, it was not severely condemned either. In sex, sex roles, and religion, there was to be found a greater degree of tolerance in Aquitaine, a greater respect for the individual.

  As the twelfth century began, a phenomenon akin to a new religion began to grow in Aquitaine, one that sprang naturally from their leisurely civilization and the flourishing position of women in their culture. The new century saw the arrival of the troubadours and, with them, the advent of love as a serious, all-consuming occupation. The poets of the southland wrote not for gain but for pleasure, not in cultured Latin but in the mellifluous vernacular of the langue d’oc, not for men but primarily for the women of the great castles and manors. Windy chansons de geste, with their lofty deeds and blood-and-guts machismo, awoke no echoes of glory in the hearts of these elegant baronesses and countesses, already semidivinized. They longed to while away their evenings with songs of love in which women were cherished, adored, and romantically seduced. Under their eager patronage, there flowered a new school of poetry that touched on subjects never before covered by verse; one day the sweet new lyrical style of the troubadours emerging from the salons of these bluestockings born before their time would culminate in Petrarch and Dante.

  That such a radically different type of poetry should suddenly bud and then take firm root in the popular imagination of all classes was not at all accidental. For the very first troubadour was no low-born minstrel wandering the dusty Poitevin roads in search of a meal but the most powerful lord in the land.

  A Child in the Land of Love

  Duke William IX had always been an ardent lover of women. His vehemently sensual nature matured early, and he indulged his appetites with a lusty, pagan delight. It made little difference to him whether the woman was harlot or virgin, peasant or noble maiden. When William IX was fifteen, his father died, and the domain passed into his hands. If his barons believed that the amiable young man would be easy to manipulate, they soon discovered their mistake, because he quickly established himself as a lord worthy of respect. For all the lad’s notoriety as a Don Juan, he was intelligent, sensitive, and possessed of a genius for writing poetry that was not to blossom for another fifteen years.

  In 1088, when William was sixteen, he married the daughter of his northern neighbor, Fulk, count of Anjou, a man so disagreeable that he won the nickname “The Contrary.” Fulk’s daughter Ermengarde, beautiful and highly educated, appeared to be precisely the type of woman that William wanted, and not until after the wedding did he realize that she had inherited a streak of her father’s sour disposition. Ermengarde, he discovered, had good periods and bad periods, her moods swinging drastically between vivacity and the most alarming sullenness, although it was possible that William’s great weakness for chasing women contributed to her fits of bad temper. Moreover, she revealed a tendency to nag, a trait that thoroughly annoyed the carefree William, and the marriage got off to a bad start. After a quarrel, Ermengarde would retire to a convenient cloister, where she would sever all communication with the outside world, her husband included. But after a period of solitary retreat, she would suddenly reappear at court, magnificently dressed and smothered in jewels, behaving with a merriment that enchanted the courtiers and belied the fact that she had ever shown a sulky face. Her schizophrenic behavior soon proved too much for William, and since she had failed to conceive, he probably felt justified in sending her back to Anjou. The marriage was dissolved in 1091, and a year later Ermengarde married the duke of Brittany.

  William took his time about remarrying. Not until 1094 did he hastily journey south of the Pyrenees to Aragon, where King Sancho Ramirez had just been killed in battle, leaving his twenty-year-old queen, Philippa, a widow. Serious-minded, politically astute, she was not only a formidable woman but a great heiress, and this accounted for the fact that William was not the only suitor to cross the Pyrenees in pursuit of her hand. The daughter of Count William IV of Toulouse, the county of France adjoining Aquitaine on the southeast, Philippa was one of those emancipated southern women whom circumstances threw up every so often. Her father had married twice and sired two sons, neither of whom lived. Without a male to succeed him, Count William IV realized, of course, that he would leave no heir save his daughter, a greatly disturbing fact because, even though Toulousain custom permitted women to inherit, it was considered better that they inherit a minor fief rather than the entire county itself. When Philippa was twelve, William IV sent her to Aragon to be the wife of Sancho Ramirez, a destiny of sufficient brilliance that he hoped she would have no cause for complaint. Like all the Spanish Christian kingdoms, Aragon had a sizable Moorish population, and owing to the cultural exchange between Christians and Moors, especially in architecture and poetry, the Arabized court at Aragon had attained a degree of oriental luxury foreign to European courts.

  Two years after he had disposed of his daughter, Count William IV, discouraged and frustrated, suddenly resolved the crucial matter of succession by a most unusual step: He announced that he was departing for the Holy Land. In his absence—although it is perfectly clear that the count had no intention of returning—he appointed his brother, Raymond, count of Saint-Gilles, to rule in his stead. Within five years William was dead and his brother had assumed the title, despite the fact that Raymond’s claim to Toulouse was highly disputable. Nevertheless, in law, as in all things, might became right. Raymond was a fifty-year-old male on the scene, the reins of power already in his hands; his niece but a nineteen-year-old female living beyond the Pyrenees.

  Philippa, seething, could expect no help from her husband, since at that time he was fully occupied in a bitter campaign of reconquest against the Berber Moors, who had slowly managed to gain control of most of the Spanish peninsula. When Sancho Ramirez was killed by an arrow at the siege of Huesca, she determined to remarry as quickly as possible with the object of allying herself to a man who would help her regain her patrimony. It is not surprising that her choice fell upon Duke William of Aquitaine, a handsome man who knew how to woo a woman and who could offer a position worthy of her station in life. More important, however, William assured her that at the earliest opportunity she would get back Toulouse. He would see to it. Not that he had any intention of invading her native land; on the contrary, he greatly preferred occupations more pleasurable than war, although he always fought fearlessly when conflict could not be avoided. But momentous events beginning to take shape would enable him to make good his promise at a much earlier date than he or Philippa ever dreamed.

  Since Mohammed’s death in the seventh century, the banner of Islam had flown over Jerusalem. That the biblical holy places should fall into Moslem hands failed to disturb western Europe, for the Arabs, sharing Christian veneration for these places, welcomed and protected pilgrims. But in the eleventh century the barbarous Seljuk Turks, desert men mounted on camels and swift
small horses, swept over the rock-strewn valleys of Jerusalem and the sepulcher of Christ; pilgrims lucky enough to return told hair-raising tales of their treatment at the hands of Islam’s newest and fiercest champions, who viewed Christians as likely candidates for capture and enslavement. All of Christendom stood mute and horrified, and yet the idea of undertaking an expedition to drive out the Moslems from the Holy Land occurred to no one. Twenty-five years passed before the Christian nations decided that the scandal had become intolerable.

  On a hazy day in November 1095, in a field outside the town of Clermont in the Auvergne, a tall white-robed figure slowly mounted a platform, its gold canopy billowing slightly in the misty air. Below him on the dry brown grass clustered cardinals, bishops, and black-clad monks, and behind them the cloaked laymen, pilgrims who had walked hundreds of miles over mountain and meadow, barons and knights on their richly caparisoned bays and Arabian steeds, here and there a noble dame accompanied by her maid. The vaporous breaths of men and animals rose and mingled with the odor of sour human sweat. Among the restless throng waiting to hear the words of Pope Urban II at this gathering, thereafter to be known as the Council of Clermont, was Duke William IX. He watched as the pope stood for a moment between two shimmering crosses and then moved close to the edge of the platform, his slow, level words bringing an instant hush to the crowd.

  “O race of Franks, race beyond the mountains! We wish you to know what a serious matter has led us to your country, for it is the imminent peril threatening you and all the faithful that has brought us thither!

  “From the confines of Jerusalem and from the city of Constantinople a grievous report has gone forth and has been brought repeatedly to our ears.... A race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race wholly alienated from God, has violently invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by pillage and fire. They have led away a part of the captives into their own country, and a part they have killed by cruel tortures.

  “They have either destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of their own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their own uncleanness.”

  Muffled cries and whispers went up from the assembly as the slow, deep voice of Urban continued to describe how the invaders befouled the altars with filth from their bodies, how they circumcised Christians and poured the blood into the baptismal fonts, how they stabled their horses in the churches. The Turks were so degenerate that they ate meat on Fridays and coupled together like loathesome beasts. He called upon the girdled knights, arrogant with pride, to come to the defense of Christ. Fiercely chastizing them for their petty feuds, their habit of murdering and devouring one another in civil wars, he exhorted them to abandon their dissensions and make war against the infidel. “Enter upon the road of the Holy Sepulcher; wrest that land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves!”

  As the holy man spoke, they listened patiently, and then a shout rose from the sea of faces—Deus lo volt!—until the entire throng was standing, weeping, screaming a mighty roar from one throat, “God wills it!” Silencing them with uplifted arms, the pope answered, “God has drawn this cry from you. Let it be your battle cry; when you go against the enemy let this shout be raised—‘God wills it!’ ”

  Thus were kindled the fires of the First Crusade, igniting a flame that would burn for three centuries.

  As night began to fall, the excited crowd melted away through the twilight, following the sound of bells summoning them to vespers. Around fires blazing in the meadow many vowed to exchange their goods for shield and lance and set out for the Holy Land with the sign of the cross on their breasts. There they would mount a thousand crosses on the walls of Jerusalem, and then they would be washed clean of their sins. Duke William IX was not among those who spoke in this manner. Sometime later during Urban’s stay in Clermont William personally expressed sympathy for the pope’s Crusade, but he did not commit himself. Instead he invited the pope to visit his court, and, in view of the duke’s prestige and rank, Urban spent Christmas of 1095 in Limoges and the following January arrived in Poitiers, where William arranged a splendid reception in his honor. During their many meetings over the course of the next month, Urban must have sensed that, despite William’s promises of support, something was amiss; while the subject of their discussions is unknown, William may have hinted of a plan beginning to form in his mind. Since the day in November when Urban spoke at Clermont, one of the first and greatest lords to respond had been Philippa’s uncle, Count Raymond of Toulouse. Not only had Raymond been stirred to take the cross, but he was quickly emerging as the main organizer of the Crusade. With Raymond away, William thought, what better opportunity to advance his wife’s claim to the county of Toulouse? If he mentioned this line of reasoning to Urban, he must have met with thorough disapproval, for the pope had promised that the lands and family of any Crusader would be safeguarded in his absence, that any act of aggression would be regarded as a mortal sin and the perpetrator’s soul damned forever.

  For the moment William did nothing. In the fall of 1096, Count Raymond rode out from Toulouse at the head of an army numbering 100,000 crossbearers and including his young wife, Elvira, and an infant son, who would die on the journey. For Raymond, it was the beginning of a new life, because he had taken an oath never to return. Aging, blind in one eye, seeking a proper ending for his years, he would remain in Outremer, the land across the sea, and establish a new dynasty. Relinquishing his claim to the countship, he nevertheless stubbornly refused to return the domain to a woman; instead he left in charge his eldest son, Bertrand.

  Still William took no immediate action. Not until the spring of 1098 did he and Philippa march into her homeland, taking the city of Toulouse without a blow being struck or a life lost. Neither she nor William regarded the act as aggression—they were merely asserting a claim that they believed just and right—but others objected strenuously, and certain ecclesiastics hastened to Rome in an effort to persuade Urban that the duke should be excommunicated. The matter mushroomed to such heights that the bishop of Poitiers was forced to hurry to the papal court, where he interceded for his duke. On that occasion William escaped censure—later he would not be so fortunate—but his relations with the Church were never to be cordial again.

  The year following her return to Toulouse, Philippa gave birth to a son, who would later be called William the Toulousain after the city of his birth and who would become the father of Eleanor of Aquitaine. In that same year that William X was born, news began drifting back to Europe of the capture of Jerusalem by the crusading army. The Holy Land had been regained; Count Raymond and Duke Godfrey and the other great princes were said to be living in palaces encrusted with gold and jewels, wearing sables and silky gossamer robes and lolling on Damascene couches, where Sudanese slaves served them chilled wine. So far, few of the Crusaders had returned, but the tales of glory preceding them were widely believed. Meanwhile, the twenty-seven-year-old William, undisputed master of an enviable fief, was having second thoughts about the Crusade. Although not a particularly devout man, neither was he devoid of religious feeling. Still, his suddenly kindled desire to see the Holy Land had little to do with either religion or, as was the case with some enthusiastic Crusaders, plunder; rather William burned with a feverish desire to see something of the world. The Crusade was the great adventure of his generation, and he had missed it, a mistake he resolved to remedy by organizing an army of his own. In raising funds, he preferred to avoid imposing oppressive taxation on his people and instead attempted to mortgage his domain, a not uncommon step in those crusading times, although usually done on a smaller scale. His first feeler went out to William Rufus, king of England, an offer readily acceptable to the son of William the Conqueror because he believed that the duke would never be able to redeem the pledge. Before the transaction could be closed, however, Rufus was killed in a hunting accident. William’s next move must have outraged Philippa, who was happily sett
led—forever, she believed—in her palace at Toulouse. Her husband turned to Count Raymond’s son Bertrand, the man Philippa had displaced, and offered to mortgage her lands. They would, William recklessly promised, give up all rights to Toulouse in exchange for a sum that, even though considerable, Bertrand eagerly agreed to raise. Within a few months, Philippa found herself hustled back to Poitiers, where she was to rule in William’s absence, and William himself departed down the dusty white road toward the Rhine with an army of sixty thousand soldiers and pilgrims.

  His expedition turned out to be anything but romantic. On September 5, 1101, near the town of Heraclea in Asia Minor, the Turks swept down and annihilated his entire army. William, standing on a nearby hill and weeping bitterly, watched his forces slaughtered before he fled with a few survivors. Behind he left only corpses and rusting armor. Ordericus Vitalis would write that when William returned from the Crusade in 1102, “He sang before the princes and the great assemblies of Christians of the miseries of his captivity among the Saracens, using rhymed verse jovially modulated.” The chronicler was mistaken, for William had never been captured. After Heraclea, he sought asylum at the splendidly exotic court of Antioch. Bohemund I, prince of Antioch, was being held captive by the Moslems, but his nephew Tancred, acting as regent, gave William a warm reception and the opportunity to recover from his shocking defeat amid an atmosphere of luxury and pleasure. It was there that William familiarized himself with the Moorish songs then popular in Syria, and there is little doubt that his visit to Antioch helped to shape the poetry he would soon begin to write. In September 1102, William visited Jerusalem, where further campaigns against the Moslems were being planned by King Baldwin, but he declined to participate. War, never terribly appealing to him, certainly held no lure at this point.