Christy English

Eleanor and Music

Friday, July 8th, 2011 | Eleanor and Music, Eleanor of Aquitaine | No Comments

The Court of Love began in Aquitaine and Poitou by Eleanor’s grandfather, Duke William IX, the Troubadour Duke. Here is a song attributed to Duke William IX written about his own pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was raised surrounded by music, and she carried it with her to the gates of Constantinople, to Antioch, to Acre. When she married Henry II of England, she brought the music of troubadours and the Aquitaine to Normandy, Anjou and England.

Eleanor loved music all her life, and passed that love of music on to her son, Richard the Lionhearted and to her eldest daughter, Marie de France, who became a great patron of the arts  while she was Countess of Champagne.

Below are the lyrics to a song written by Bernart de Ventadorn, one of the troubadours who received Eleanor’s patronage during her marriage to Henry II.

Bernart de Ventadorn
Pel doutz chan quel rossinhols fai
At the sweet song which the nightingale makes
at night when I have fallen asleep,
I wake completely bewildered with joy,
pensive and thoughtful about love;
for this is my supreme vocation,
because I always receive joy willingly,
and my song begins with joy.

If anyone knew of the joy that I have,
and [that] joy were seen and heard,
all other joy would be slight
compared to that [which] I possess, for my joy is great.
Such a man becomes genial and eloquent,
because he believes [himself] to be fortunate and superior
in true love, of which I have twice as much!

When I contemplate her sprightly body,
how well it is made with all choice attributes,
her courtliness and her beautiful speech,
my praise will never mean advancement for me,
because I would need an entire year for it,
if I wished to be truthful about her,
she is so courtly and so good a being.

Those who think that I am here
do not at all know how my spirit
is intimate and easy with her,
although my body is far from her.
Know, the best messenger
that I have from her is my thought,
which recalls to me her beautiful appearance.

Lady, I am and will be yours,
ready for your service.
I am your man, sworn and pledged,
and yours I was since before;
and you are my first joy,
and thus will you be the last,
so long as life lasts me.

I do not know when I shall see you again,
but I go off among angry and married men.
For your sake I have parted from the king,
and I pray you that I may not be harmed
when I am present in court before you,
among ladies and knights,
frank, and gentle, and humble.

Hugh, my courteous messenger,
sing my song willingly
to the queen of the Normans.

(From A Bilingual Edition of the Love Songs of Bernart de Ventadorn in Occitan and English: Sugar and Salt. Trans. Ronnie Apter. Studies in Medieval Literature 17. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999. 212-215.)

The Waiting Game

Monday, July 4th, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine | 2 Comments

Medieval women, even powerful queens, spent a good deal of their lives waiting. Waiting for their husbands to come home from war, for their children to be born, for their sons to grow up. In July of 1137, Eleanor of Aquitaine, newly made duchess by her father’s death, found herself waiting behind the walls of Bordeaux for her fiance’ Louis VII to show up and marry her. I can only imagine how vexing it would be for a woman of power, even at the tender age of fifteen, to sit and wait for the next phase of her life to begin.

Eleanor spent a lot of her life waiting: for Louis to become a stronger man, for Henry to come home from battling and politics. After 1173, Eleanor waited for Henry to set her free from her prison walls, knowing that he probably never would. But each and every time, Eleanor did wait. She never gave up.

Louis never became a strong man, but Eleanor was finally able to annul that marriage and move on. For the first years of their marriage, Henry always did come home to her from his wars and his women. And when he didn’t, in 1167, she took herself and her children home to Aquitaine. And after her rebellion against Henry failed in 1173, Eleanor made it through fifteen years held imprisoned behind castle walls until her favorite son was king, and she was able to rule once more as Queen Dowager and Regent.

The waiting game is one we all must play. But I can think of few people who played it as well as Eleanor.

Passion and Possession

Friday, June 24th, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry II, Louis VII | No Comments

In her lifetime, Eleanor of Aquitaine found herself married to not one, but two kings. Her first husband came into her life when she was only fifteen years old. Her father dead, Eleanor had become Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right. Though the marriage contract between herself and Louis VII was still being negotiated when her father died, the papers had not yet been signed. The King of France was reluctant, because the contract was incredibly favorable to Eleanor, and listed a clause that was completely unheard of in 12^th century Europe. Namely, that the Duchy of Aquitaine and the County of Poitou did not go to Louis VII upon their marriage, but to Eleanor and Louis’ son, once he came of age.

A Modern Rendering of Louis VII of France

Eleanor and her ally, the Bishop of Limoges, finished negotiating the marriage contract and the King of France signed it. So Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine were married on July 25, 1137. Louis was a young man, only one year older than Eleanor herself. He had soft blond hair and blue eyes, and there is no doubt that he loved his queen with an unswerving devotion throughout their married life, and beyond. Louis had been raised to be a monk in the Church, and had taken on the role of young king only after his older brother’s death. From all accounts, Louis was a very devout man who put the needs of the Church ahead of Eleanor. And, even more to the point, Eleanor did not love Louis back.

A lack of love is no hindrance to a political marriage, and Eleanor had wanted to be the Queen of France. Her father had raised her in the midst of the political realities of the world, and she knew that her personal feelings should and must be set aside to maintain the alliance with Paris, and to make her son King of France as well as Duke of Aquitaine, a second Charlemagne.

In spite of their youth and Louis’ love for her, there was never a son born to them. Only two girls, whose births were separated by six years. Two princesses were not what Eleanor had married Louis VII for, and after fifteen years of marriage to a man who lived like a monk, she wanted her freedom.

In August 1151, Henry, the eighteen-year-old Duke of Normandy, came to Paris to be confirmed in his duchy. He was a strong man as well as an intelligent one, a politician who even at such a young age intended to reclaim the throne of England, which had been taken from his mother by the usurper, Stephen of Blois almost two decades before. When Henry and Eleanor met at her husband’s court, they made an instant alliance built on passion as well as power. Eleanor knew that her annulment would soon be announced and Henry of Normandy was just the man to step into the role of her second husband.

A Rendering from 1620 of King Henry II of England

Louis VII, who through Eleanor retained rights to Aquitaine and Poitou, lost all of her possessions when their marriage was annulled on March 21, 1152. And in May of that same year, when word reached Louis that Eleanor, his ex-wife, and Henry, his vassal, had married, Louis VII immediately attacked the border of Normandy, beginning a war.

Henry, a consummate politician, managed to make peace with Louis VII of France, who heart broken and humiliated, was furious at the marriage Eleanor had made. But with her first husband out of the picture, Eleanor and Henry went on to have their first son by the time Henry gained the crown of England in December 1154. Their alliance of passion combined with politics ruled an empire stretching from England and Wales, to encompass part of Ireland, as well as Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Gascony, Poitou and the Aquitaine.

During the first fourteen years of their marriage, Eleanor gave birth to eight children. Three of her sons by Henry went on to be crowned king. Henry the Younger, Richard the Lionhearted, and Prince John all wore the crown of England. Eleanor and Henry’s daughters made alliances as far away as Sicily and Saxony, binding kings and princes far and wide to support Henry and Eleanor’s power.

Though Henry took a lover, Rosemund de Clifford in 1166 and effectively ended the passionate connection that he and Eleanor had shared throughout their married life, Eleanor and Henry stayed allies until 1173, when she openly rebelled against Henry, along with their sons. Though this rebellion failed, and though Eleanor was held as a prisoner until Henry’s death in 1189, the first half of their marriage was still a passionate alliance between a man and a woman who faced each other as equals. In the end, they were torn apart by the one simple truth that Eleanor found hard to accept: there can be only one king.

The Traveling Novel

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Queen's Pawn, The Writing Life | 4 Comments

What a blessing, to come home from a fabulous conference and to find the German copies of THE QUEEN’S PAWN waiting for me. To see my own words written in a foreign tongue is a huge thrill. I can’t quite believe it, though I hold a copy of the novel in my hand. THE STORY OF THE QUEEN is the translated title…indeed, THE QUEEN’S PAWN is part of Eleanor’s story. And there is so much more to tell.

Winners Write the Histories

Friday, June 17th, 2011 | Eleanor of Aquitaine, Once It Is Sold, The Writing Life | 2 Comments

It is an old adage, and a true one, that winners write the histories. Sometimes the histories that survive are the tales told by an enemy. This is often true for Eleanor…so many enemies wrote her history. I am glad we are taking it back.

Apache is a Navaho word for enemy. Enemy is the name by with the Apache people are known to this day. Their true name is Inde, meaning the People.

“When the enemy writes your history, “enemy” is what he names you. But our history is written in the stars. It is written on our hearts.”