Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Mother Queen Read Online Free Page A

his spiritual brethren. She may have taken more interest in his studies, as she later showed a knowledge of Aristotelian logic, and knew how to use the syllogism in argument. She may well have enjoyed the learned dissertations and disputations that the king arranged in the palace gardens. At this date Louis shared some of his wife’s pleasures too, and he seems to have been fond of hunting and the tournament. Deeply in love, he spent a good deal of his time with her and it is possible that he shared at least a little of her taste for poetry. They toured her duchy together, holding court in the great cities.
    In those early days Louis VII was full of energy and self-confidence. His asceticism saved him from his father’s greed and girth. He had begun well with a marriage that had trebled his domains, and there was every hope that his reign would be a glorious one. He felt himself a match for any of his vassals, and there was no one abroad to threaten him; Germany was torn by disputes over an imperial election, and England was distracted by the miseries of king Stephen’s anarchic rule.
    Honourable and straightforward to the point of naivety, Louis was becoming renowned for his courtesy, his kindness and generosity, and his simplicity. Once he lay down to sleep in a wood, guarded by only two knights, and when the count of Champagne chided him for his rashness, he replied ‘I can sleep alone in complete safety as I have no enemies’. In later life he showed an attractive unworldliness when talking to the Englishman Walter Map about the wealth of kings. Louis said that the monarchs of the Indies possessed jewels and lions, leopards and elephants; the rulers of Byzantium and Sicily had wonderful silks and precious metals; the German emperor commanded fine soldiers and war horses; and the king of England ‘lacks nothing — he has gold and silver, precious stones and silk, men and horses, all of them in abundance’. But as for the king of France, ‘We have nothing but bread, wine and contentment’.
    Louis has his modern admirers. Professor Fawtier tells us that ‘historians have been surprisingly slow to appreciate Louis VII at his true worth; and yet his saintly character strongly reminds us of his great-grandson St Louis’, and goes on to claim that he was essentially a realist. But on some occasions Louis was far from being either saintly or realistic. It is true that he continued his father’s policy with considerable success, eventually establishing complete and lasting control of the Ile de France; he also carried on the extension of the royal authority throughout France by issuing charters to the towns. Nevertheless, despite all his honesty and genuine benevolence Louis had a savage temper and a curiously unbalanced streak that on occasion affected his judgment disastrously.
    Masterful and fiercely energetic, Eleanor soon established almost complete control over her husband. Her first trial of strength when she came to Paris was with her mother-in-law. Adelaide of Savoy did not take to her youthful supplanter and soon retired to the estates in Champagne that had been her dowry. It is a testimony to the fifteen-year-old queen’s force of character that the battle was won so quicky. Adelaide consoled herself by marrying the lord of Montmorency and passed into obscurity.
    Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis was a different sort of adversary, all the stronger for his disarming kindness. This frail little monk of humble origin, who was both an aesthete and a mystic, had been the friend and counsellor of Louis VI and continued to advise Louis VII. He showed unusual compassion for the poor and their sufferings at the hand of rapacious lords. His influence showed in the king’s behaviour: building a hunting lodge at Fontainebleau Louis appropriated a peasant’s field by mistake; when he learned the truth, he ordered the manor to be demolished and returned the field. Perhaps from Suger too came Louis’s tolerance of Jews. But