Histoires de famine. La patente au Moyen Age Collection dirigee par Martin Aurell 4 Plantageriets et Capetiens: confrontations et heritages EDITE PAR MARTIN AURELL ET NOEL-YVES TONNERRE BREPOLS '\ I " )_:_ Lj Patronage, Politics and Piety in the Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine Nicholas VINCENT In 1959, H.G. Richardson wrote that Eleanor of Aquitaine 'has been less than happy in her biographers", Even in Richardson's day, this was something of an understatement, since Eleanor has in fact inspired some of the very worst historical writing devoted to the European Middle Ages. Adopted as a figurehead by literary romantics and more recently by feminist historians, the Eleanor of history has been overshadowed by an Eleanor of wishful-thinking and make-believe. The tone here is set by Amy Kelly's biography, first published in 1950. Attempting to enter the mind-set of her heroine after the manner of Sir Walter Scott, Kelly conjures up a fantasy world of courtly love, fair damsels and daring deeds. 'The highhearted Plan- tagenets are marble still. The dusty sunlight falls softly where they sleep', Kelly concludes, in fine pre-Raphaelite mode but with about as much understanding of optical physics as of the reality of twelfth-century kingship". Even the most sober and distinguished of scholars, some of them far too distinguished to cite here by name, have been tempted to tread in Kelly's footsteps. On the one hand they admit that very little is or can be known of Eleanor's personality or daily life. On the other hand, and in direct contradiction of the admitted facts, they then pile conjecture upon conjecture in pursuit of an Eleanor whom even the novelists amongst us might find unduly fantasmagorical. To cite only two recent examples, both from historians who really should know better, the best-selling claims of Professor Simon Schama that Eleanor established a 'troubadour court' at Poitiers, and the even more remark- able statement in a textbook published in 2003 that 'there are references to Eleanor of Aquitaine leading 300 of her women dressed as Amazons during the Second Crusade' are both in their way as extraordinary as any of the claims made by Hol- lywood scriptwriters for King Arthur, or by Alexandre Dumas for the domestic life of Louis XIV3. Fortunately, for those of us able, Perseus-like, to resist the allure of the Eleanor of Mills and Boon and the 'romans roses', there is a real Eleanor still to be recap- tured. She is to be found in more than a hundred references in the twelfth-century chroniclers, in several dozen dull but nonetheless significant entries in the Pipe Rolls of the twelfth-century kings of England, and above all in the surviving charters or mentions of charters that she herself issued or that were issued in her name. I H. G. Richardson, "The Letters and Charters of Eleanor of Aquitaine", English Historical Review, 74, 1959, p.193. 2 A. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, Cambridge Mass., 1950, here quoting from the first English edition, London, Cassell and Co., 1952, p. 387. 3 S. Scharna, A History oj Britain: At The Edge of the World 7 3000BC-AD1603, London, 2000, p.152; C. Daniell, From Norman Conquest to Magna Carta: England 1066-1215, London, 2003, p.92. 17 NICHOLAS VINCENT In recent times, at least four scholars - Edmond-Rene Labande, H.G. Richardson, Jane Martindale and Marie Hivergneaux - have attempted to employ this factual evidence in their pursuit of an Eleanor very much more plausible than the Eleanor of fantasy'. Richardson and Hivergneaux in particular have drawn attention to the significance of Eleanor's charters. Richardson, in an article published in 1959, attempted on the basis of some 50 documents to demonstrate that Eleanor pos- sessed no chancery establishment of her own. Hivemeaux, in an article published in 2000, based upon a collection almost twice the size of Richardson's, demon- strated with great subtlety how the survivingcharter evidence can be used to delin- eate at least half a dozen distinct periods within Eleanor's career, each period being marked by significant differences in her exercise of power. The present investiga- tion, inspired by what I trust is a far more comprehensive collection of charters _ more than 150 all told - is intended to supplement and to some extent to correct various of these earlier studies. Readers willbe relieved to learn that I do not intend here to deal with the vexed questions of whether Eleanor was a good or a bad mother, whether she was handsome or ugly, or whether she did or did not like French poetry: questions, I would suggest, that are as impossible to answer as what her favourite colour may have been, or whether for breakfast she preferred apples or crispy bacon. Instead, I wish to set out what can be discovered from Eleanor's charters of the queen's patronage and authority, of the people who surrounded her, and in conclusion of the extent to which she should, or perhaps should not, be deemed to merit yet further detailed investigation. The first and most obvious feature of Eleanor's charters is their sheer number. Although we must assume that the vast majority of documents issued in her name have vanished without trace, we nonetheless have nearly 160 charters or mentions of charters now lost. This is greatly in excess of the number that survives for any other twelfth-or indeed thirteenth-century Queen of England, up to and including the empress Matilda, defacto ruler of large parts of England and Normandy during the 1140s5. Professor Jean Dufour's forthcoming edition of the charters of the queens of France will likewisereveal no Carolingian or Capetian example to rival that of Eleanor. The extent of the collection of her charters points to two themes that will loom large hereafter: firstly that Eleanor was an extraordinarily wealthy woman, and secondly that at significant moments in her life, between 1154 and • E.-R. Labande, "Pour une image veridique d'Alienor d'Aquitaine", Bulktin de la Sociite des Antiquaim de l'Ouest 4th series 2, 1952, p.175-234; H. G. Richardson, "Letters and Charters", (see n. I) p.193-213; J. Martindale, "Eleanor of Aquitaine", Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth, ed. J. Nelson, London, 1992, p.17-50;J. Martindale, "Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Last Years", The &ign of King John, ed. S. Church, Woodbridge, 1999, p.137-64; M. Hivergneaux, "Alienor d'Aquitaine: Le pouvoir d'une femme ä la lurniere de ses chartes (1152-1204)", La Cour Plantagmit (1154-1204): Actes du Colloque tenu a Thouars du 30 Aiml au 2 Mai 1999, ed. M. Aurell, Poitiers, 2000, p.63-87. 5 For the slightly less than 100 surviving charters of the empress Matilda, see the survey by M. Chibnall, "The Charters of the Empress Matilda", Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy. Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. G. Garnett, and J. Hudson, Cambridge, 1994, p. 276-96. For other twelfth- century English queens, I have been able to collect less than 20 charters of Berengaria of Navarre, wife of Richard I. The four 'English' charters of Isabella of Angouleme, wife of King john, are published in N. Vincent, "Isabella of Angouleme .john'sjezebel", KingJohn, (see n. 4) p.216-19, with a more extensive collection of charters issued in her capacity as countess of Angouleme and La Marche after 1219 assem- bled by R. C. Watson, "The Counts of Angoulerne from the 9th to the 13th Century", Unpublished University of East Anglia Ph.D. Thesis, 1979. 18 PATRONAGE, POLITICS AND PIETY IN THE CHARTERS OF ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE 1160, between 1168 and 1173, from 1189 to 1194, and again in 1199, she exercised a degree of political influence in England or Aquitaine that was far greater than that enjoyed by most other medieval queens. The charters themselves can be divided, in accordance with Marie Hiverneaux's analysis, between a number of distinct periods within Eleanor's career. Thus, we have six charters issued by Eleanor as Queen of France before 1152, all relating to her estate in Aquitaine". Four charters concern her period as duchess of Aquitaine and Normandy between 1152 and 11547. Twenty-fivewere issued as regent or queen of England between 1154 and her imprisonment in 1174, three of them concern- ing Normandy or Maine, the remaining twenty-two England". A further twenty-six concern Aquitaine during this period, ten of them perhaps issued during her brief visit to the duchy in 1156-71,the other sixteen undoubtedly granted between 1168 and 1173, when Eleanor attempted to rule in Aquitaine in association with, and as guardian for, her son Richard!", From her years of captivity after 1174, we have but a single charter, issued at Aleneon for the nuns of Fontevraud in 118511• Thereafter, with her release on the accession of Richard I, we have five charters issued as regent for Richard in England between 1189 and 119412, twenty-two charters issued after 1189 concerning her dower lands in England!", and two or three concerned with her dower or with other affairs in Normandy!". Above all, we have more than sixty charters issued for Aquitaine after 1189, fourteen of them concerning Eleanor's jurisdiction there during the reign of Richard Jl5, no less than thirty-eight issued in the single year 1199, following the death of Richard, when Eleanor enjoyed a brief period of personal rule within the duchy", and twelve probably to be dated to the final years of her life between 1200 and 120417• Divided chronologically into only two periods, before and after the death of Henry II, the collection contains 66 charters issued during Eleanor's first sixtyfiveyears before 1189, or roughly 1 char- ter a year, set against 93 issued during the last fifteen years of her life: a survival rate more than six times as great as that before 1189, distorted by the extraordinary survival of nearly 40 charters from the one year 1199.