Medieval Lives by Norman F. Cantor

Author:Norman F. Cantor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2015-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THE GLORY OF IT ALL

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE

“I am very tired,” said Queen Eleanor to her courtiers lounging on the grass outside of her palace in Poitiers in France on a warm September day in the year 1169, “of this interminable, nasty quarrel between my husband King Henry and Archbishop Thomas Becket. All this fuss over a handful of murderous and thieving priests. I once saw the king become so angry with the archbishop and his extreme demands upon the Crown that Henry took off all his clothes in public and began chewing straw.”

The courtiers laughed suitably, particularly Queen Eleanor’s daughter Countess Marie of Champagne, the countess’ intense, inscrutable chaplain Andrew, and the court poetess Marie de France.

Whether in London or in Poitiers, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s court was the most brilliant in Europe. She was always surrounded by literate and articulate nobility, by poets and artists, and by the more radical and provocative kind of university graduates seeking clerical or governmental posts. She welcomed lords and ladies of great wealth and bold private lives, poets attuned to fashionable eroticism, and brilliant young churchmen thirsting with ambition and love of both the earthly and heavenly variety.

Poitiers was where Eleanor had grown up until she was fifteen and whisked away to Paris to become Queen of France. She loved the old Roman city of Poitiers with its well-used churches and monasteries, its high protective walls, and its spacious houses. Lying halfway between Paris to the northeast and Bordeaux and Gascony to the southwest, Poitiers was the crossroads of French culture, the meeting place of the old Roman and the later Frankish worlds.

The landed wealth of Eleanor’s family, the ducal house of Aquitaine, lay especially in Bordeaux and Gascony, with its incomparable vineyards and access to the western sea. But here in Poitiers was a memory, a tradition, an aristocratic elegance, and a very old Latin culture that made Eleanor feel confident and relaxed, secure in her lineage, gender, and sensibility.

A sunny day, a familiar palace in the background, the deep green color of spacious lawns, an exquisitely prepared picnic lunch, the finest red vintages from her ancestral vineyards near Bordeaux, and the banter and wit of superior young people—this was the best that medieval society had to offer, in Eleanor’s view. It would have met the highest standards of good living among rich people at any time or place, whether the Rome of Cicero or the New York East Hampton crowd today.

“As the archbishop’s secretary and confidant, John of Salisbury,” said the queen to the well-known English cleric, humanist, and writer who had suddenly turned up at Eleanor of Aquitaine’s court, “I should think you could do something to settle this dispute and get the archbishop back from his exile in France to England. I don’t understand why Henry and Thomas profess such hatred for one another now. When Thomas was the king’s chancellor they used to go around drinking and carousing together, the closest of friends. The king used to give Thomas his used-up mistresses, and Thomas was glad to take them secondhand off the king’s hands.

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