by Marion Meade
Despite Louis’s reports to Suger about Eleanor’s “joy” in their reunion, nothing had changed, neither his fantasies of reconciliation nor her determination to separate. She had been relieved to hear of his safe arrival in Sicily but not to the extent of entertaining second thoughts about a divorce. In late August, reunited for the moment, they began journeying eastward across the ankle of the Italian boot to Potenza, where they paid a courtesy call on King Roger. It was there at the Sicilian court that Eleanor must have first learned the news about Raymond of Antioch, news that would utterly blast any hope of reconciliation.
From his father Raymond had inherited charm and joviality, but unlike him, he also possessed a tendency toward fits of temporary rage that robbed him of all reason. His maddening encounter with Louis Capet sparked one of these aberrations, which, as it turned out, was far from temporary. Raymond believed, probably correctly, that Louis’s army could have crushed Nureddin, but at the same time, he could hardly have been unaware that his own forces were inadequate for such a task. While Louis had been dawdling beneath the walls of Damascus, Raymond had enjoyed some success in chasing Nureddin’s army out of Antioch, but the Turks returned the following spring. At that point, Raymond, like his neighbor Joscelin of Edessa, might have secured a truce with the Turkish leader. He did not. In an act of sheer bravado, as if to prove that he alone could fight an enemy that the Crusaders had refused to attack, he launched an offensive with only a few hundred knights and a thousand foot soldiers.
At first Nureddin, unable to believe that Raymond would have the effrontery to attack with such a feeble force, thought that this might be the advance guard of a much larger army, but his disbelief quickly turned to amusement when he discovered that Raymond had no reinforcements. Contemporary Christian historians were also at a loss in explaining the prince’s action, which they regarded as clearly suicidal. As William of Tyre pointed out, Raymond carelessly “exposed himself to the wiles of the enemy.”
On June 27, two months after Eleanor’s departure from the Holy Land, Raymond and his army were surrounded at the Fountain of Murad. Evidently Raymond made no attempt to save himself. “Wearied by killing and exhausted in spirit, he was slain by a stroke of the sword.” His death was celebrated as a great victory throughout Moslem Syria. His head and right arm had been cut off and carried to Nureddin, who sent the skull in a silver box to the caliph of Baghdad as proof that Allah’s most formidable enemy was truly dead.
Eleanor’s grief, the horror she felt over Raymond’s demise, her aching certainty that Louis’s refusal to help had cost the prince his life, made her turn on the king in bitter, impotent fury. Whatever deep hostility she had felt during the past eighteen months, disguised or repressed for the sake of royal dignity, could be held in check no longer. Her anger at being dragged from Antioch by armed knights was nothing compared to her fury at Raymond’s needless death and brought the marital discontentment to a head. Now she would have her divorce; nothing could shake her resolve.
Contemporary commentators do not indicate which direction Eleanor and Louis had intended to take after leaving Roger’s court at Potenza, but in view of Suger’s insistent letters asking Louis to make haste and the king’s replies such as might be made by a tardy schoolboy, their intention was probably to sail from Naples to Marseille. If so, these plans were now suddenly discarded and their arrival in Paris postponed still further, for the couple decided to seek the opinion of Pope Eugenius, who, driven from Rome five months earlier, now resided south of Rome in the town of Tusculum. Ultimately, the decision as to the legality of their marriage would rest with the pope, and being close by, they decided to consult him immediately. For both Eleanor and Louis, the decision to visit Eugenius was a gamble, but keeping in mind Louis’s tendency toward procrastination and Eleanor’s impulsiveness, it seems more likely that the queen was the one who pressed for an immediate opinion.
With Eleanor immersed in her personal sorrow, they began the journey north accompanied by an escort provided by Roger. According to one of Louis’s letters, she showed signs of being “seriously ill” shortly after they left Potenza, although Louis must have been aware of the precarious state of her health before they set out. Arriving at Monte Cassino on October 4, Eleanor collapsed, and they were obliged to stop at a Benedictine monastery. It would be presumptuous to attempt to diagnose an illness that occurred some eight hundred years ago, about which there are no medical records, much less a hint of the physical symptoms. But taking into consideration Eleanor’s state of mind at that time, it is possible to make some reasonably educated guesses. There was, to begin with, her growing distress during the year that she and Louis had spent in Jerusalem, the terrible uncertainty over her inability to take command of her own life, and the realization that, for the present at least, she was trapped. Her harrowing months at sea had, of course, weakened her physically, and although Eleanor would prove remarkably healthy during her entire life, she had not fully recovered when she received Louis’s summons to Brindisi. Adding to her unsettled state had come the news of Raymond’s death, and these various elements no doubt coalesced into a mental and physical breakdown.
It is, however, an indication of Eleanor’s extraordinary resilience and her determination to see her future settled that she was able to pull herself together sufficiently to resume the journey three days later. On October 9, they arrived at Tusculum, where Eugenius greeted Louis “with such tenderness and reverence that one would have said he was welcoming an angel of the Lord rather than a mortal man.” Considering that Louis was in disgrace all over Europe at this time, Eugenius behaved with immense understanding. It was not in his character to make needless reproaches, but despite what he may have privately thought of this unprecedented, impromptu visit by a king who had lately bungled the Church’s affairs beyond imagination and a queen come to plead for a divorce, he received them with equanimity. At once it was made clear that the purpose of their visit was not to discuss the Crusade, although undoubtedly the subject arose, but rather to have the pope act in the capacity of a marriage counselor, a role that he had been called upon to undertake in the past.
During that fall of 1149, John of Salisbury was a secretary at the papal court, and in his Historia Pontificalis, written four years later, he describes the two-day visit of the Frankish king and queen from his ringside observation post. John might have warned Eleanor of the reception she would receive from Eugenius, although it is quite unlikely that he would have intruded on her at that moment with anecdotes. Nevertheless, he recalled for his readers a similar visit to the court by a Count Hugh of Apulia. After a thorough investigation of the case, Eugenius denied the requested annulment, and then, to the astonishment of the court, he leaped down from his throne in tears and “in sight of all, great man though he was, lay at the feet of the count so that his mitre rolled in the dust.” From between the count’s feet he urged him to take back his wife and presented him with one of his own rings.
Eugenius, needless to add, was a staunch believer in marriage. If Eleanor was aware of this, it failed to deter her. Nothing in her background had bred any particular reverence for the mighty of the Church, but in her twenties, she must have felt obliged to mask any disrespectful feelings, especially on those occasions when she wanted something. Despite her emotional distress and the obvious fact that she was in no condition to take command of the situation, she understood the importance of gaining Eugenius’s sympathy.
The pontiff, adhering to the best twentieth-century counseling practices, heard each party’s grievances in separate interviews. It is unlikely that Eleanor expressed frankly the real sources of her discontentment with Louis. Contempt is a complicated emotion to fully explain in one session, which is all Eleanor had. Similarly, sexual frustration can be hinted at, but it would not have been a subject that Eleanor, a woman, could describe in any great detail to Eugenius, a man and a celibate man at that. In any case, either of these reasons for discarding a husband would have been interpreted
as feminine caprice, and Eleanor knew it. Instead, she concentrated on what she believed the most legitimate of her grievances, that is, the fact that their invalid marriage had displeased God and prevented her from bearing an heir to the throne. In truth, Eleanor cared nothing about consanguinity—freedom, not morality, preoccupied her now—nor at this point did she desire more children by Louis. She simply could think of no better excuse. Always the pragmatist, she counted on this “sin,” a popular one in divorce actions, to impress the pope, and she confidently awaited a favorable verdict.
In his interview, Louis went over similar ground but, of course, from his own viewpoint: the troubles in Antioch, the queen’s coldness and resentment, her penchant for playing at life, his qualms about the illegality of their union. No mention was made of adultery; on the contrary, he gave the unmistakable impression that he desperately wanted to keep his wife, and as very often happens in such cases, the specter of loss looming on the horizon only imbued Eleanor with greater desirability. With piety, sincerity, and probably tears, Louis firmly impressed the pope that “he loved the queen passionately, in an almost childish way.”
From the beginning Eleanor’s chances were blighted, for she had failed to reckon with the biases of a pope who considered himself a conciliator rather than a judge. Since consanguinity seemed to be the issue troubling Eleanor’s conscience. he would be happy to banish that fear from her mind at once. Both orally and in writing, he unhesitatingly confirmed her marriage, and should that not be strong enough, “he commanded under pain of anathema that no word should be spoken against it and that it should not be dissolved under any pretext whatever.” This ruling, which “plainly delighted” Louis, must have plainly horrified Eleanor. But Eugenius did not stop there; during the two-day. visit he harped at them every waking hour, striving, reported John of Salisbury, “by friendly converse to restore love between them.” Obviously, John was not referring to the restoration of Louis’s love. It was Eleanor on whom the pope exerted exceptionally strong pressure, but, taking into account her subsequent actions, it seems equally certain that he made little headway. Although she felt no love, indeed no positive emotion whatsoever for her husband, it was necessary, nonetheless, to smile, to dissemble, then to pretend she had accepted the pope’s reassurances.
On the final evening of their visit, Eugenius administered the coup de grace. If the queen wished to have another child—and it must have been apparent to the old man that physical love had vanished from the marriage—then he would be delighted to arrange that as well. With the satisfaction of a person who has left no stone unturned, he prepared a special bed for the Capets, and decking it with priceless hangings from his own chamber, he personally escorted them to it. In the graphic words of John of Salisbury, “the Pope made them sleep in the same bed.” Short of spending the night with them, Eugenius could not have done a more thorough job. Marriage counselor, sex therapist, well-meaning meddler par excellence, he prepared the stage for this charade, and Eleanor, hoisted on her own petard, had no choice but to perform her assigned role. That night the marriage was reconsummated. If there was ever a man incapable of raping a woman, it was Louis Capet, whose most confident couplings were those specifically endorsed and blessed by abbot or pope. In what state of despair Eleanor submitted will never be known, but technically at least, the act was against her will.
On their departure the next morning, the pope burst into tears. After loading their baggage with gifts, he effusively blessed them and the kingdom of the Franks “which was higher in his esteem than all the kingdoms of the world” and sent them on their way with an escort of cardinals. If Eleanor and Louis had arrived in Tusculum in a state of open antagonism, they left it in a far more unsettled mood. To all appearances, however, they seemed to be on good terms, at least Louis attempted to behave so. Scarcely had they traveled a few miles when a delegation of senators and noblemen from Rome came galloping toward them with the “keys” to the city. Louis, never happier than when being fussed over by a reverent crowd, was in his element. Upon reaching the outskirts of the city, the throngs of cheering Romans grew denser, and the king, followed by “nuns and boys” shouting “blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” was prevailed upon to spend the day touring the city’s shrines and holy places. His marriage mended, his wife restored to him, he may have overlooked the fact that Eleanor moved from shrine to shrine in the manner of a catatonic.
The hosannas over, they slipped quietly out of Rome the next day and began a series of forced marches into northern Italy and up over the Alps through the Jural Alpine pass. Some miles southeast of Paris, at Auxerre, they were met by Abbot Suger in response to a panicky note from the king imploring Suger to meet him secretly so that he might be informed of all plots and “how we must conduct ourselves toward all.” It was a silent, morose group that made its way toward the Île-de-France in the early days of November. The woodlands along the Seine were barren and damp under the autumn sun, but no one felt the chilly breath of approaching winter more deeply than Eleanor. As unsatisfactory as their papal visit had been, there existed no question in her mind that the final word on the divorce had not been spoken in Tusculum. Still, at that point, her future must have looked hopeless indeed.
The damp gray walls of the Cite Palace closed around Eleanor like a metaphorical dungeon from which there is no hope of escape. From the moment of their arrival, and for several months afterward, the Capets were the focus of whispers, rumors, and plots. Any popular rejoicing over their return was drowned by recriminations and angry mumblings of a decidedly seditious nature. There were demands for explanations, questions for which there could be no reasonable answers. The Church harked back to the inscrutable ways of the Almighty by pointing out that God’s judgments never erred and lessons could be learned from even the greatest of calamities. What appeared, for instance, to Abbot Bernard as “evil times” ordained by Heaven, others were not willing to accept so fatalistically, and they looked to the earthly plane for causes. Blame was freely attributed, with Manuel Comnenus, the barons of Jerusalem, Raymond of Antioch. Geoffrey de Rancon, and even the queen herself bearing a share. Criticism fell most heavily, however, on Louis. While still in Palestine, he had quarreled with his brother Robert, who had rushed home after Damascus with plans to depose the king. Like Eleanor, Robert was angered by Louis’s monkish posturings and decided, not without justification, that his brother might be happier at the Abbey of Clairvaux than upon the throne of France. It took all of Abbot Suger’s considerable acumen to suppress the rebellion and preserve the king’s birthright until he made up his mind to come home. Even so, there remained in the realm an atmosphere of sullenness that could not be dispelled by the feeble attempts of a few patriots to defend their sovereign. Surely, some Parisians suggested, ordinary decency, if not national pride, demanded that the Crusade and the king’s safe return be honored in some way. Probably prompted by Suger, a commemorative medal was coined, showing Louis seated in a chariot with the goddess of victory fluttering above. “To the king returning victorious from the Orient the citizens give joyful welcome,” read the inscription. Since this legend, so blatantly inaccurate, may have given rise to derisive mirth in some quarters, a second medal was struck to prove that an actual victory had occurred. The only confrontation with the enemy that might possibly have been interpreted as a victory was the minor incident at the Maeander River in Asia Minor, and therefore the medal read, “Turks killed and in flight on the shore of the Maeander,” a pathetic enough summation of Louis’s deeds and one better forgotten.
For Eleanor, the homecoming was made all the more desolating by the confirmation of a suspicion that she may have felt even while crossing the Alps. To her consternation, she realized that she was pregnant. Nothing could have sealed her future more decisively, for now there would be no divorce, no possibility of going back to Poitiers, nothing to look forward to but gray years stretching into the interminable future with a man she despised, her priest disguised as a king.
Louis, elated, behaved as though he had forgotten the marital trauma of the past two years. At last he could present an heir to his people. Even those Franks who had been busy blackening Eleanor’s name with gossip about her alleged depravity in Antioch were obliged to regard the queen with new respect. In hardly anyone’s mind, and certainly not in the king’s, did there arise the possibility that the child might be a girl. Surely a conception so meticulously choreographed by the pope himself could result in nothing but a healthy son.
To those who later recalled that winter, it seemed to be the coldest they had ever known. The Seine froze over, the wine criers disappeared from the streets, and in the bone-bitingly cold chambers of the Cite Palace, where Eleanor extracted what warmth she could from fires and braziers, there was ample time for reflection. Peering out through the slitted apertures that passed for windows, gazing at the winter mists ris- , ing from the Seine, there was nothing to remind her of the sun-sluiced gardens of Antioch. Except for her daughter, Marie, an infant when she left and now five years old, nothing had changed. The short, stout figure of the indispensable Suger still padded through the halls of the palace; Abbot Bernard still issued proclamations from the swamps of Clairvaux; the omnipresent Thierry Galeran still shadowed the king’s every move; Louis, prayerful as ever, visited Vitry-le-Brûlé, where he planted some cedars that he had carried home from the Holy Land. The fabric of the royal couple’s relationship patched together with the flimsiest of thread, they kept to their separate beds, and despite Louis’s solicitude when they met, they had nothing to say to each other. In those winter days when her hands and feet were half-paralyzed with cold and her body swelled under her robes, Eleanor experienced a special kind of anguish. Never before had life seemed so worthless, so devoid of warmth and joy. Even in her darkest moments in Jerusalem, she had deluded herself into believing that Pope Eugenius would confirm the consanguinity, but instead he had prepared a terrible trap into which she had permitted herself to be flung. Now, like a butterfly frozen in a cake of ice, she was thoroughly immobilized. She was twenty-eight, and nothing about life pleased her anymore.