repay the borrowing of the Second Crusade. In Normandy and Anjou, much good land had been laid waste during the brief war with Louis’ coalition, leaving the knightly class impoverished and the peasants once again facing starvation after the drought of the long hot summer of 1152. Those great patrons of the arts Henry Beauclerc, Thibault of Champagne, William IX and Geoffrey the Fair were all dead. To rid himself of one more memory of Eleanor, Louis had banished from his court the trouvères and other entertainers she had employed and whom he accused of distracting men’s minds from their faith. 11
In these conditions, it was not hard for the largesse of the richest woman in France to attract the most talented troubadours to flatter and amuse her with their verse. They could not have found a more appreciative employer than the granddaughter of William IX, who had seen for herself the settings in Byzantium and the Holy Land of the great chansons de geste and whose catholic appetites in music and poetry covered everything from the Arthurian legends to love songs and sirventès .
At her court in Angers, she and her intimates were entertained by the best of European poetry and music. 12 The code of courtly love may or may not have originated there, but never was it better practised. As equal partner in the marriage with Henry, Eleanor reigned supreme in his absence. What better way of demonstrating this than by turning upside down the convention that every woman of whatever rank owed deference to her father, brothers and husband? At Angers it was men who were the supplicants and the ladies of the court who sat in judgement on them, and set convoluted tasks to test their admirers’ sincerity.
It used to be thought that the cult of courtly love spread from Eleanor’s courts at Angers and later in Poitiers through her daughter Marie de Champagne being called to run the household in Poitiers during 1168–73. Recent studies indicate that mother and daughter probably never met or even corresponded after the divorce from Louis. If their courts had much in common, it was because the two women exemplified the many twelfth-century noblewomen who evolved their own lifestyle during the absence of their husbands on campaign, pilgrimage and crusade. The role-reversal of courtly love, the poetry and songs, were an antidote to the emotional aridity of their lives, spent in politically arranged marriages, with sons sent away to be brought up by others and daughters dispatched as child brides, never to be seen again.
Since Eleanor’s troubadours were writing to please her, their verses represent an indication of her personal feelings, particularly valuable in the case of a twelfth-century character who left no personal letters. Though she could be as tough and ruthless as the Empress Matilda, Eleanor was not all piety and politics like her mother-in-law. She had another side to her personality that yearned for all the joys forbidden by her station in life – the joy of imagining herself the April Queen, abandoning herself to the caress of an adoring lover.
Who were these troubadours? The image of a penniless songsmith making his way from castle to castle with nothing but his voice, an ear for a good tune and a lute slung over his shoulder is misleading. Itinerant minstrels or jonglars scratched a living by travelling from one castle to the next, singing traditional and popular songs of the day, but the troubadours 13 who composed the songs and poetry were mostly of knightly families. What counted, however, was not noble birth, but nobility of soul. Guilhem Figuera was a tailor’s son and Bernat de Ventadorn the son of a sergeant-at-arms and a kitchen maid working in the bakery of the castle of Ventadorn.
Lowly birth did not mean they had anything to learn from the rules of courtly love as later codified by Andreas Capellanus at the court of Marie de Champagne. Rule XV: Every lover turns pale in the presence of his beloved. Rule XVI:
In these conditions, it was not hard for the largesse of the richest woman in France to attract the most talented troubadours to flatter and amuse her with their verse. They could not have found a more appreciative employer than the granddaughter of William IX, who had seen for herself the settings in Byzantium and the Holy Land of the great chansons de geste and whose catholic appetites in music and poetry covered everything from the Arthurian legends to love songs and sirventès .
At her court in Angers, she and her intimates were entertained by the best of European poetry and music. 12 The code of courtly love may or may not have originated there, but never was it better practised. As equal partner in the marriage with Henry, Eleanor reigned supreme in his absence. What better way of demonstrating this than by turning upside down the convention that every woman of whatever rank owed deference to her father, brothers and husband? At Angers it was men who were the supplicants and the ladies of the court who sat in judgement on them, and set convoluted tasks to test their admirers’ sincerity.
It used to be thought that the cult of courtly love spread from Eleanor’s courts at Angers and later in Poitiers through her daughter Marie de Champagne being called to run the household in Poitiers during 1168–73. Recent studies indicate that mother and daughter probably never met or even corresponded after the divorce from Louis. If their courts had much in common, it was because the two women exemplified the many twelfth-century noblewomen who evolved their own lifestyle during the absence of their husbands on campaign, pilgrimage and crusade. The role-reversal of courtly love, the poetry and songs, were an antidote to the emotional aridity of their lives, spent in politically arranged marriages, with sons sent away to be brought up by others and daughters dispatched as child brides, never to be seen again.
Since Eleanor’s troubadours were writing to please her, their verses represent an indication of her personal feelings, particularly valuable in the case of a twelfth-century character who left no personal letters. Though she could be as tough and ruthless as the Empress Matilda, Eleanor was not all piety and politics like her mother-in-law. She had another side to her personality that yearned for all the joys forbidden by her station in life – the joy of imagining herself the April Queen, abandoning herself to the caress of an adoring lover.
Who were these troubadours? The image of a penniless songsmith making his way from castle to castle with nothing but his voice, an ear for a good tune and a lute slung over his shoulder is misleading. Itinerant minstrels or jonglars scratched a living by travelling from one castle to the next, singing traditional and popular songs of the day, but the troubadours 13 who composed the songs and poetry were mostly of knightly families. What counted, however, was not noble birth, but nobility of soul. Guilhem Figuera was a tailor’s son and Bernat de Ventadorn the son of a sergeant-at-arms and a kitchen maid working in the bakery of the castle of Ventadorn.
Lowly birth did not mean they had anything to learn from the rules of courtly love as later codified by Andreas Capellanus at the court of Marie de Champagne. Rule XV: Every lover turns pale in the presence of his beloved. Rule XVI:
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