Eleanor of Aquitaine

by Marion Meade

  From her court at Troyes, Marie had brought along a chaplain, Andreas Capellanus, who was called upon to assist in the work of writing a manual for the medieval male. Even though the chaplain set down in scholarly paragraphs the heretical doctrines dictated by the countess, the ideas were Marie’s and, of course, Eleanor’s; the cornerstone of their curriculum was love, their goal the guidance and education of the male to a higher level of consciousness. It is amusing that Marie should have been compelled to commission a male cleric as her ghostwriter in this attempt to dethrone masculine dominance, but even more amusing is Andreas’s reaction. Obviously, he addressed himself to the task at hand with considerable reservations, because at some later date, he added a furious epilogue disavowing the work and calling down heaven’s wrath on the female sex. Although Tractus de Amore et de Amoris Remedia (Treatise on Love and the Remedies of Love) bore Andreas’s name, it was Marie’s book, and the thirty-one articles of its Code of Love reflect the passions peculiar to women who have come into their own and feel confident enough to use their authority in unorthodox ways.

  Modeled on Ovid’s Art of Loving, the content owes little to the original, because in Ovid’s textbook, man, the master, employs the art of love to seduce women for his own pleasure; in Andreas’s treatise, the situation is reversed—the woman is the dominant figure, the man a pupil who must be carefully instructed until he becomes a fit partner for his lady. There is little that is poetic or ethereal about the principles set down in the code; rather it sets forth in practical terms the rules a man must remember when he deals with a woman: “Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, you must always try to ally yourself to the service of love”; “Thou shalt be in all things polite and courteous”; “Thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest”; “Thou shalt not exceed the desires of thy lover.” The themes of courtly love sung by the troubadour poets, those ungerminated seeds suggested by Eleanor’s grandfather, now emerged full-blown, the raw materials reworked by the feminine sensibility until they almost seem a manifesto for some Amazon culture. The ladies of troubadour poetry were very often silent, passive goddesses who were adored whether they liked it or not. Since troubadour love was not always mutual, there was no reason to dwell on qualities that might make a lover acceptable. In contrast, the type of love defined in De Amore is certainly a great deal freer, in that the woman is no longer passive or silent. In finding her voice, however, she has made her views known: She is supreme, a goddess to be approached with reverence, and the man is her property. No chattel to be bought and sold and traded at man’s whim, no sex object to be seduced or raped against her will, she holds the power to accept or reject a man and, however difficult the trials she sets for him, he must treat her with respect and humility.

  To put it at its mildest, these precepts were so radical, so subversive to the whole divinely ordained plan, as to boggle the mind of the average man—and at the same time so novel that they quickly spread through the courts of Europe, where they were eagerly taken up as the latest fashion by both men and women of the aristocracy. These rather incredible notions emanating from Poitiers must have caused certain sovereigns to blink. Certainly, Henry Plantagenet did not subscribe to a single article of Andreas’s Code of Love, nor did Louis Capet nor any self-respecting baron. No doubt Henry, who made it his business to keep abreast of developments in Poitiers, followed the new fads with amusement. Not only was his wife promulgating her sex as goddesses, but she sponsored courts of love in which confused men having problems with this new arrangement for the sexes might bring their questions before a tribunal of ladies for judgment. The women, sometimes sixty strong, sat on a raised dais in the Great Hall, while below them gathered the men, prepared to hear lengthy disputations on the nature of love, expositions on a man’s duty toward his lady. One “case” that piqued more than ordinary interest was this one: Can real love exist between a husband and wife? In Countess Marie’s opinion, it was doubtful whether love in the ideal sense could ever take place between spouses, but before giving a final judgment, she wished to refer the question to her mother. After due consideration, the queen allowed that it would be difficult to contradict her daughter, although she personally would find it admirable if a woman could find love in her marriage. One cannot help but sense the disillusionment behind her words. In fifty years she had not found romantic love with either of her husbands, and despite the tales of her adulteries, it is highly improbable that she found it outside of marriage either.

  Andreas’s description of formal tribunals of charming ladies, solemnly ruling on affairs of the heart and rendering verdicts to hapless males, is now generally dismissed as a twelfth-century conceit. While there is no historical evidence to prove the courts real in the sense that verdicts were taken seriously, nevertheless, that they did take place is well within the realm of probability. In an age when a woman was never her own mistress but always a minor in the tutelage of some male, when at the same time women like Eleanor were asserting their independence, the courts of love afforded a means of attacking male supremacy. Granted, the courts of love may have been an amusing game, but they still offered a direct challenge to the male establishment. And the fact is, the challenge was not totally unsuccessful either. Far from it. During the latter half of the twelfth century, the ideas made fashionable at Eleanor’s palace were to insinuate themselves through the upper social circles of Europe and persistently reverberate down the corridors of history to the twentieth century. Our code of etiquette with its rules that women take precedence, our image of the courteous, housebroken male, must be considered the dying gasps of a bold new innovation that the noblewomen of Poitiers may have initially imagined would be a lever to raise the status of women. Unfortunately, their attempts to elevate women to a position of emotional and spiritual supremacy simply presented men with a convenient loophole by which they could pay lip service to the idea while at the same time continuing to withhold from women the smallest shred of real power. This irony would not have escaped a hardheaded politician such as Eleanor.

  On Friday, December 25, 1170, the hunting lodge at Bures near Bayeux was decorated for Christmas. Logs burned on the hearth, jugglers and minstrels cavorted among the guests, and the hall shook with noise and boisterous laughter as it usually did when the Plantagenets came together. The remnants of the royal family, scattered these several years, had reassembled to celebrate their considerable blessings; Eleanor, stately grande dame who had forsaken a decorous Nativity at Poitiers for this murky castle where one stumbled over the hounds; Henry, his paunch more noticeable, his reddish hair flecked with salt; Richard, Geoffrey, Joanna, and, one chronicler claimed, even four-year-old John, making one of his rare public appearances. For a few days Eleanor and Henry had put aside past estrangement and gazed with the proud eyes of mother and father upon the dynasty they had created in happier days. It had been a consequential year for the family, one of those euphoric years when Eleanor and Henry could look back with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. The Plantagenet realm was at peace; thanks to Eleanor, Aquitaine was quiet for once, and Henry’s reforms in England promised increased revenue. At last Prince Henry, now known as the Young King, had been crowned at Westminster, and this year he kept his own Christmas court in England. Princess Eleanor, nine, had been betrothed to the twelve-year-old king of Castile, Alphonse VIII, and crossed the Pyrenees to confront her destiny. In early August, Henry had fallen gravely ill of a tertian fever, and so close to death had he come that his departure from the world had been prematurely reported in France. Chastened, he had made a will confirming his division of lands at Montmirail and vowing that if God permitted him to recover, he would make a pilgrimage to the monastery of Rocamadour in Quercy.

  And in that year, too, the king had made peace with “God’s doughty champion,” the archbishop of Canterbury. In July, Henry had held Thomas’s stirrup at Fréteval and then had thrown his arms around him. “My lord archbishop,” he had said, “let us
go back to our old love for each other and let each of us do all the good he can to the other and forget utterly the hatred that has gone before.” Admittedly, he had not given Thomas the customary kiss of peace but had sworn that “in my own land I will kiss his mouth and his hands and his feet a hundred times.” In the end, he had not accompanied Thomas back to England as he had half promised, but he did write to the Young King in October to notify him of their reconciliation: “Henry, king of England, to his son, Henry the king, greeting: Know that Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, has made peace with me according to my will. I therefore command that he and all his men shall have peace. You are to ensure that the archbishop and all his men who left England for his sake shall have all their possessions as they had them three months before the archbishop withdrew from England.... Written from Chinon.” He had grown weary of the tradesman’s son; he had done everything a king could possibly do to make amends, and now he preferred to forget the man. He would even ignore Thomas’s parting words when they last met at Chaumont in mid-October.

  “Go in peace,” Henry had said. “I will follow you and I will see you in Rouen or in England as soon as I can.” It was nothing more than conventional politeness, for he was in no hurry to see Thomas again.

  “My lord,” Thomas had replied, “my mind tells me that I will never see you again in this life.”

  His theatricality annoyed Henry, who said sharply, “Do you think I’m a traitor?”

  “Absit a te, domine,” Thomas had answered. “God forbid, my lord.”

  While still on the Continent, Thomas had taken precautions to arm himself with a weapon in case Henry failed to keep his agreement. He had requested and received from Pope Alexander letters suspending the prelates who had participated in the illegal coronation of the Young King, letters to be used at his discretion in an emergency. However, on the day before he crossed the Channel, already doubtful of Henry’s good intentions, he angrily sent ahead a messenger to deliver the letters excommunicating Archbishop Roger of York and the bishops of London and Salisbury.

  On Tuesday, December 1, Thomas and his party of faithful followers landed at Sandwich, six miles from Canterbury, after an absence of six years. At the port, some of the king’s men, surly and armed, attempted to seize the archbishop, but after being shown the king’s letter of safe conduct, they permitted him to pass unmolested. “As he set out for the city he was welcomed by the poor of the land as a victim sent from heaven, yea, even as an angel of God, with joy and thanksgiving.... And though the road was short, yet amidst the thronging and pressing crowds he could scarce reach Canterbury that day, where he was welcomed with the sound of trumpets and organs, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”

  A week later he set out for Winchester to visit his foster son, the Young King. “He had brought with him three costly chargers, of wondrous speed, beautiful in form, high-stepping, their delicate flanks rippling as they walked, their housing worked with flowers in various colours, which he intended to give as a gift to his new lord.” When he had ridden only as far as London, however, he was halted by a messenger from the Young King, forbidding him to continue or for that matter to visit any town or city in England; he was ordered to return immediately to Canterbury and remain there. On the trip back to Canterbury, Thomas’s knights, thoroughly frightened by the harsh tone of the message, rode with shield and lance to protect him.

  Meanwhile, the excommunicated archbishop of York and the bishops of London and Salisbury had crossed the Channel and hurried to Henry with their complaints. “Their evil accusations were doubled by falsehood. It was reported to the king that the archbishop was careering about the kingdom at the head of an army. The king asked for their advice. ‘Seek advice from your barons and your knights,’ said the archbishop of York. ‘It is not for us to say what should be done.’ At length another of them said, ‘My lord, while Thomas lives, you will not have peace or quiet, or see good days.’ ”

  Exasperated, the king “waxed furious and indignant beyond measure, and keeping too little restraint upon his fiery and ungovernable temper, poured forth wild words from the abundance of a distracted mind.”

  In the crowded hall at Bures on Christmas Day his voice carried over the din. He raged impotently at Thomas and then began to scream at his barons and clerks in the hall. “I have nourished and promoted in my realm idle and wretched knaves, disloyal to their lord, whom they suffer to be mocked thus shamefully by a low-born priest.” Since the king had expressed similar sentiments in almost identical words on previous occasions, undue attention was not paid to this outburst. Nor was it noticed when four of his barons, “men of noble birth and renowned in arms,” disappeared from the noisy hall.

  On Tuesday, December 29, Henry’s four barons, accompanied by an attendant, pushed their way into the main hall at Canterbury. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon, the winter light beginning to fail, and the household was just finishing its meal, although the archbishop had already retired to his room with his clerks to discuss business. Invited to dine, the visitors refused, saying only that they had urgent business with the archbishop. Once admitted to his room, they examined him silently for a few moments and then at last one said, lying, “We have brought you a message from the King oversea.” Shouting now, the knights accused Thomas of plotting to take away the Young King’s crown, abusing him for excommunication of the bishops, and threatening him with dire punishments if he did not leave England. The voices grew louder; shouts and curses punctuated the air; fists clenched and unclenched. Becket’s face was severe and decisive. “Stop your threats and still your brawling,” he ordered. “I have not come back to flee again.” At this, the knights “retired amidst tumult and insults,” rushing into the courtyard, where they gathered under a mulberry tree to strap on their hauberks, helmets, and mailed gauntlets.

  The archbishop calmly returned to his room. Soon afterward, the armored knights began to hack at the hall’s barricaded door “with swords, axes and hatchets.” Terrified, the monks urged Thomas to take refuge in the cathedral, but “he who had long since longed for martyrdom, now saw that the occasion to embrace it had seemingly arrived, and dreaded lest it should be deferred and even altogether lost if he took refuge in the church.” He sat motionless on his bed, visions of eternal grandeur jostling in his mind, and “when he would not be persuaded by argument or entreaties ... the monks seized hold of him, in spite of his resistance, and pulled, dragged and pushed him” into sanctuary. The monks who had been saying vespers in the cathedral broke off their chanting and ran to meet him; hearing heavy steps drawing closer and seeing unsheathed blades, they hurried to bolt the door, but Thomas wrenched them away. “God forbid that we should make His house into a fortress. Let everyone who wants to enter God’s church come in. May God’s will be done!”

  It was nearly five o’clock now. The cathedral trembled in darkness, with only a few flickering candles splashing rings of light on the stone. Suddenly shrill voices tore through the shadows. “Where is Thomas Becket, traitor to the king and the realm? Where is the archbishop?”

  The monks ran to hide, but Thomas did not move. “Lo, here I am,” he answered fearlessly, “no traitor to the king, but a priest. What do you seek from me?”

  “Absolve and restore to communion those whom you have excommunicated.”

  “I will not absolve them.”

  “Then you shall die this instant and receive your desert.”

  “I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain peace and liberty. But in the name of Almighty God I forbid you to harm any of my men, whether clerk or lay.”

  The knights, “those satellites of Satan,” rushed forward and tried to pull and drag him outside the church, but the archbishop clung to a pillar. Bowing his head as in prayer, he murmured the names of God and Saint Mary and the blessed martyr Saint Denis. A steel blade flashed through the air and sheared off the archbishop’s cap and part of the crown of his head. “Next he received a second blow
on the head, but still he stood firm and immovable. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows.” The awful blade fell again and “by this stroke the sword was dashed against the pavement, and the crown of his head, which was large, was separated from the head in such a way that the blood white with the brain and the brain no less red from the blood, dyed the floor of the cathedral with the white of the lily and the red of the rose.” The fifth murderer—no knight but a clerk—“placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and martyr and, horrible to relate, scattered the brains and blood about the pavement, crying out to the others, ‘Let us away, knights. This fellow will rise no more!’ ”