We have heard a lot about Eleanor of Aquitaine recently, but not from the lady herself. Until now! I should explain that. Years ago I stumbled on Eleanor of Aquitaine and became wildly impressed. Available biographies did not plumb her depth of character, so I decided to write her memoirs, eventually publishing in “her” voice, “Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
Along the way I wrote notes about prominent factors in Eleanor’s life. Arleigh Johnson of Historical Fiction.com (URL below) graciously published this piece in a guest blog, giving me a chance to update one of those notes. Here is “On Courtly Love. Therapy, or Affection?” (Or, if you prefer, the title I use above, “The Mystery of Mystique.”)
The quoted dialogue below is Eleanor’s, from “Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a Turbulent Life: Eleanor of Aquitaine“:
“Men have written much, muttered more and understand nothing of our Court of Ladies and my Code of Poitiers,” says Eleanor, dictating her memoirs to her young scribe, Aline.
After troubled marriages to two kings, Eleanor staged a dramatic protest against her husband King Henry II’s lust for his mistress, Rosamond Clifford. She packed her household into seven ships and crossed the Channel to establish her “Court of Ladies” in Poitiers. In Eleanor’s day, noble and royal woman might be summarily cast off, sent to convents or housed in distant castles while their lords took new wives or mistresses. Eleanor comments from experience, “The Church continues to censure this failing in princes with a blind eye, a deaf ear and a silent tongue.” By abandoning Henry, Eleanor threw the first blow.
Around the year 1100, the concept of “courtly love” (amour courtois) or “fine love” (fin ‘amor) took root in the princely courts of Aquitaine, Provence and Burgundy. Courtly love described an attraction between a man and a woman who were not married to each other, but felt mutual passions that might involve erotic desire, spiritual or emotional attraction, respect, admiration, or passionate love. In an age when marriage most often consummated a loveless political alliance between families, courtly love was a path to genuine affection, respect or love. (For centuries, alliancewas the French word for a wedding ring.)
In parallel with courtly love, the code of chivalry grew through the twelfth century in French-speaking lands. Young men training to be knights learned more than martial arts. They learned respect for women. Many vowed to devote their duty and martial prowess to the service of a lady. A second reason why marriage and love seemed mutually exclusive in medieval Europe was that only the eldest son of a noble family was permitted to marry. This prevented multiple heirs dividing a family’s inheritance. Younger sons had to find love where they might. This they did, exchanging tokens, vows and passion with their lady, and wearing her colors in tournaments. Intriguingly, the lady was often from a higher social class.
The Church did not approve of courtly love. Young knights who had looked to priests for blessing and salvation now turned to their lady for reassurance and support.
Eleanor would have been aware of the disparity between the upbringing of firstborn sons and others. Here, she looks back on the fact that she might have married the king of France’s firstborn, Philip. “Philip had been born to grace; Philip had been bred to rule. By all accounts Philip was wise in learning, skilled in diplomacy, accomplished in arms, in the etiquette of courtly ways and at ease when conversing with women.” This last point made him a rare find. But marriage to Philip was not to be: “He was riding one day, escorted, of course, when a sow waddled out of the Seine and thrust her muddy carcass under his horse. What use were splendid knights in all their trappings, set against a pig? That was the end of Philip.”
Instead, Eleanor married King’s Son Number Two, Louis — the spare, not the heir, as British noble families say. Eleanor tells us that Louis “had been packed off at a tender age to the monastery at Notre Dame. Life on his knees, prayers ten times a day, mindless discipline attained through exhaustion imposed by the rule of bells, a diet of guilt and penance for sins he had neither the imagination nor opportunity to commit, and a thorough disgust for the agents of sin, we women. Mark me, he seldom saw one, saving likenesses of the Blessed Mary.”
As for the female side of a strange equation, Eleanor and her Court of Ladies did not originate courts of love, but her prestige reinforced the need for social evolution. After her thirty years of trials at the courts of two kings and quarrels with the patriarchal Church, her person and authority came to represent and empower amour courtois. Eleanor explains her position and her Court of Ladies: “If women are to be put to marriage without love, let us claim true love as our mystery. Love is as worthy of study as those mysteries claimed by the Church. Love! That was what we debated and judged at my Court of Ladies.”
Arleigh Johnson published the above on her HistoricalFiction.com blog (June 2, 2010), which is no longer online. Her current blog is historical-fiction.com
Photo: Casket with scenes of courtly love, British Museum, by Kotomi, CC BY-NC 2.0