Sharon Kay Penman's Blog, page 121

A royal divorce that changed history

I should have posted this yesterday, but I needed to verify the date first. On March 21st, 1152, a royal marriage ended, and the history of Christendom was forever changed. At Beaugency, France, Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine were declared to have been related within the prohibited degree, and their marriage was therefore annulled on grounds of consanguinity. Within two months, Eleanor would horrify Louis by wedding the young Duke of Normandy, Henry Fitz Empress, and to add insult to injury, she and Henry were related to the same degree as she and Louis were. Below is a scene from When Christ and his Saints Slept, beginning on p 613, between Eleanor and her nemesis, Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, who would later be canonized by the Catholic Church and who famously proclaimed that the Angevins were from the Devil and to the Devil they’d go. Henry and Eleanor’s sons seemed to have felt that gave them bragging rights. Anyway, I give you the queen and the cleric.

* * *
Abbot Bernard greeted her with frigid formality. He so resembled one of the patriarchs of old—pale and haggard, burning dark eyes and flowing long hair—that Eleanor wondered cynically if he’d deliberately cultivated the image. “I understand,” she said, “that you convinced Louis not to bring my daughters to Beaugency to bid me farewell. He told me that he would have done so—if not for you, my lord abbot.”
He was quite untroubled by the accusation. “That is true,” he said calmly. “I thought it was for the best. Such a meeting was bound to be painful.”
“Am I to believe, then, that you were acting out of Christian kindness?”
“I care for all of God’s lost lambs, Madame, even the foolish ones who keep straying into the hills where wolves prowl and dangers lurk. The Lord forgives much, provided that there is true repentance. It is always possible to come back into the fold, into grace.”
“With you as my guide? I’d rather take my chances with the wolves.”
“Take care, Madame, lest you imperil your immortal soul. You do but prove I have good reason to keep your daughters away from your baneful influence.” As wrathful as he was, the abbot still remembered to keep his voice down, for this was not a conversation for others to hear. “Your lack of gratitude should not surprise me, though, given your lamentable lack of decorum and discretion—“
“Gratitude? My apologies, my lord abbot. It seems I’ve been maligning you unfairly, for you do have a sense of humor, after all!”
“It is foolhardy to court danger, Madame, but it is lunacy to court damnation. You do indeed owe me a debt of gratitude. If not for my forbearance, you might have been cast aside for adultery rather than consanguinity.”
“It is also foolhardy, my lord abbot, to hold your foes too cheaply. Your convictions to the contrary, most women are not idiots. I could not have been accused of adultery, for you have no proof, and well you know it. And even if you’d found men willing to swear falsely that it was so, a verdict of adultery would have prohibited Louis from marrying again…as you well know, too.”
“I see no point in continuing this conversation. If you would spit upon salvation, so be it, then. I leave your sins to God. Fortunately for the king and for France, he is now free of your unholy spell, free to choose a wife devout and docile and virtuous, a wife who will give him the heir you could not.”
Eleanor’s eyes shone with a greenish glitter. “What a pity,” she said, that the Blessed Virgin Mary is not available, for she would have suited his needs admirably.”
Bernard drew in his breath with a sibilant hiss. “You are an evil woman, wanton and truly wicked, and you will indeed suffer for—“
“No—no, she is not!” Neither Eleanor nor the abbot had heard Louis’s approach, and they both spun around at the sudden sound of his voice. “You are wrong, Abbot Bernard,” he said, with a firmness Eleanor had seen him show all too rarely. “I know her far better than you, and there is no evil in her soul, only a misguided sense of…of levity.”
(omission)
There’d been times when she’d yearned for words sharp enough to draw blood, to leave ugly scars. She’d blamed Louis for much that had gone wrong in their marriage, for not being bolder or able to laugh at life’s perversities, for not being more like the swaggering, spirited, roguish men of her House, for no longer heeding her advice as he’d done in their first years together, for loving God far more than he could ever love her, and for the reluctant desire and sense of shame that he’d brought to their marriage bed.
But she’d not hated him for those failings—anger and frustration and occasional contempt, but not hatred. That had come only after Antioch, after Louis had accused her of harboring an incestuous passion for her uncle and threatened to have her bound and gagged and dragged away by force if need be. Ever a realist, she’d yielded, far too proud to fight a war she could not hope to win; she was learning that women must pick their battles with care, that strategy mattered more than strength. Eventually Louis had apologized and swore upon the True Cross that he knew her to be innocent. But by then it was too late. By then her uncle had been slain by the Turks, his impaled head rotting above the caliph’s palace in the hot Baghdad sun, and Eleanor could not look upon her husband without Raymond’s doomed and bloodied spectre coming between them.
But now that she’d regained her freedom, she found herself remembering how it had been at first for them, a fifteen year old bride and her sixteen year old bridegroom, shyly appealing, awed by her beauty and eager to please her. Before he’d begun to yearn for the peace of the cloister, before those poor souls had died in the flames of a Vitry church, before the miscarriage and daughters instead of sons, before his hair shirt and her disgrace, before the crusade and Antioch and Raymond’s needless death, before Abbot Bernard. For a poignant moment, she could see that long-lost youth reflected in the depths of translucent blue eyes. And then the memory faded and she was looking at a man decent and ineffectual and despairing, a man she could pity but not respect and never love.
* * *
Of course we now know that Eleanor was actually born in 1124, not the traditional date of 1122, so she was an even younger bride than we’d realized—only thirteen. It is interesting to speculate how different their history might have been had she given him even one of the sons she’d give Henry. We also know that it was the husband who determines the sex of the child, an ironic twist that Eleanor might have appreciated. But I suspect that she’d rather have had the glorious chaos of life with Henry, even with its bittersweet ending, than whatever Louis could have offered her. As I have her think in one of my novels, she was not made for safe harbors.

World's cutest video

Nothing medieval to report today, but I do have what may be the cutest baby-dog video ever made. I can guarantee that none of you can watch this without smiling, it is that joyful. And we all need joy, right? Especially since winter seems determined to overstay its welcome. I saw the first robin of spring yesterday; it was frozen to death.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFwmUl...

Birth of a princess, death of a king

On March 20th, 1140, England experienced a solar eclipse, which was duly recorded by a contemporary chronicle.

On March 20th, 1469, Cecily of York, the third daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, was born. Sir Thomas More called her “less fortunate than fair,” and she did endure a great deal of sorrow in her life. But her third marriage was apparently made for love, and I like to think she was happy with her husband, although they did not have many years together as she died young.

On March 20th, 1413, the first Lancastrian king, Henry IV, died. His health had deteriorated in the last years of his life and at one time, he apparently suffered from a disfiguring skin condition. Some claimed he’d been inflicted with leprosy as divine punishment for the execution of a prelate, the Archbishop of York, who’d taken part in a rebellion against Henry. But according to his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, his bones were examined in the 19th century and they concluded that he showed no signs of leprosy. I confess I wondered if 19th century science was advanced enough to draw such a conclusion, but I simply don’t know enough about Henry’s life to have a horse in that race. It had been predicted that he would die in Jerusalem, which must have discouraged him from taking part in any crusades, but he collapsed and died in the Jerusalem Chamber of the abbot of Westminster…..or so it is said. He is a major character in Brian Wainwright’s excellent novel Within the Fetterlock

Lastly, on March 20, 1549, Thomas Seymour was beheaded. Among his crimes was the suspicion that he’d seduced the young princess, Elizabeth. She was kept under close watch by hostile observers, and when they flung the news of his death at her, she responded with remarkable coolness, saying that “Today died a man of much wit, but little wisdom.” Of course by then she’d already learned one of life’s most painful lessons, that there was no one she dared trust.

Edward shows he was dangerous both on and off the battlefield

I was side-tracked yesterday writing about the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and his lamentable marital history, and as a result, I forgot that the 18th was an important date on the Yorkist calendar. So—a day late—I am shining the spotlight on one of Edward IV’s finer moments, in which he displayed ice-blooded courage and cynical craftiness that Machiavelli would have approved. On March 18th, 1471, four days after he’d landed in Yorkshire with his small band in an attempt to recover his lost crown, Edward was admitted into the city of York. It would later be won over by his brother Richard in his years as Lord of the North, but in 1471, this was not friendly territory for Yorkists. In the following scene from Sunne, pages 261-262, Richard and Will Hastings are nervously awaiting Edward’s return, fearing for his safety since he’d dared to ride alone into the city and fearing, too, that he’d fail to win the citizens over.
* * *
There was a sudden stir among the men. The iron-barred portcullis was rising; several horsemen were passing through the Walmgate barbican. The youth stationed to keep watch now forgot all protocol and yelled, “Tell Gloucester!” and Rob adjusted his scabbard, moving closer for a better view of the approaching riders.
Richard and Will Hastings were standing together, and Rob saw Richard grin suddenly, heard him say in a low voice, “The news be good, Will. That’s Tom Wrangwysh with them. If there’d been trouble, we’d see it in his face.”
Both city sheriffs were impassive, but Tom Wrangwysh and Thomas Conyers looked enormously well pleased with themselves, and Conyers blurted out their news even as he was dismounting. They were all welcome now within the city walls, and my lord of York did await them at the guildhall. If they would—
Tom Wrangwysh interrupted happily. “My lords, you should have seen him! You’d have thought he had an army at his back, so cool he was…There were many he did win over by his courage alone. And then he did speak to the people and made a marvelously fair speech in which he said he would content himself to be Duke of York and serve good King Harry and the crowds cheered him till we all were hoarse!”
Word was spreading swiftly; all around Rob, men were laughing and pounding each other on the back. Richard was trying to make himself heard over the uproar, but soon abandoned the attempt and watched with a grin as their men raised a cheer for His Grace of York and the city that was now willing to admit his army.
Rob moved to Richard’s side, just in time to hear Tom Wrangwysh confide, “My lord, however did His Grace think to lay claim to the duchy of York? I can say with certainty that had it not been for that, the city would’ve stayed closed to him.”
Richard laughed. “It was used once before, Tom. Harry of Lancaster’s grandfather did return from exile to claim only his duchy of Lancaster and, of course, deposed a king. My brother thought it only fitting that a gambit used by the first Lancastrian king should now serve York.”
* * *
Back to the 19th of March, on this date the swallows return to Capistrano. I’ve seen the magnificent mission there, but sadly, I’ve never been there on March 19th, even though I’ve been told it is not a dramatic surge of swallows, but more of a trickle effect.

Game of Thrones trailer

Here is the trailer for the new season of Game of Thrones. Just two weeks, people!
http://theclicker.today.com/_news/201...

The Wonder of the World, the last Templar, and a Tudor princess

On March 18th in 37AD, the Roman Senate proclaimed Caligula as the next emperor. Bad, bad move, one they came to greatly regret.

On March 18th, 1229, Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, son of Richard I’s nemesis Heinrich von Hohenstaufen and Constance of Sicily, crowned himself as King of Jerusalem. He had to put the crown on his own head because the patriarch of Jerusalem refused to do it. He had gained control of Jerusalem by negotiating with the Sultan of Egypt, al-Kamil, with whom he became quite friendly. Ironically, he was excommunicated at the time, the sentence having been passed upon him by the pope for what the Vatican saw as an unreasonable delay in going on crusade. Frederick typically ignored the excommunication, and the pope excommunicated him a second time; he ignored that one, too. The deal he struck with the sultan was viewed by many as a betrayal of Christendom, in part because Frederick himself was so controversial. Called the Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world, he was undeniably a brilliant man, a free thinker, and a significant figure on the political stage in the 13th century, although he was unable to secure the continuation of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. While I find him an undeniably intriguing man, there is a coldness about him that has always put me off. My idea of Hell would have been marriage to Frederick. He flaunted a harem, kept his wives in seclusion, and had numerous illegitimate offspring, as well as a continuing relationship with a mistress that lasted for many years.. His second wife’s story was probably the saddest one. Isabella or Yolanda was the Queen of Jerusalem, for her mother, Marie de Montferrat, had died giving birth to her. Frederick wanted her so that he could lay legal claim to the crown of Jerusalem and they were wed in 1225. Isabella was only 13, but that did not stop Frederick from consummating the marriage, for she gave birth to a daughter the following year at age 14. The daughter died the next year and Isabella herself died in childbirth in 1228, at age 16, after three years of a marriage that brought her little but misery; soon after her wedding, she was writing pitiful letters home to her father, complaining of Frederick’s ill treatment of her. After her death, Frederick would wed another Isabella, this one the sister of the King of England, Henry III. She gave Frederick five children in six years of marriage, dying in childbirth, too, at age 27, having had to bury three of those children.

Also on March 18th, 1314, the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney were burnt at the stake, victims of the greed of the French king, Philippe the Fair.

Lastly, on March 18th, 1496, Elizabeth of York gave birth to her fifth child by Henry Tudor, a daughter they christened Mary, who would later become the unwilling Queen of France. The year before, Elizabeth and Henry had lost their second daughter, named Elizabeth, at only three years of age, so I like to think that Mary’s birth was of some solace to her grieving mother.

St Patrick and David Blixt

Happy St Patrick’s Day to my friends and readers. I know not everyone is Irish, but who doesn’t celebrate it?

My friend David Blixt has a new book out, and since he is a wonderful writer, I am delighted to spread the word to my fellow book-lovers. I definitely will be reading his new one once I outrun that Ransom deadline nipping at my heels. I loved his Her Majesty’s Will, which is a hilarious account of an adventure by two young Englishmen named Will Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, who will prove themselves to be brilliant playwrights, but not such gifted spies.

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Ne...

Massacres at York and Monsegur and a queen's tragic death

On March 16, 1190 occurred one of the most tragic and shameful occurrences in the MA, the deaths of 150 Jews who’d taken refuge from a rampaging mob in the castle at York. After each crusade was preached, there was a wave of anti-Semitic violence, and the Third Crusade was no exception. It began on the day of Richard’s coronation in September 1189. Rulers did not look kindly upon rioting that threatened the King’s Peace and Richard took measures to make sure it did not happen again, hanging three of the rioters and sending out writs of warning to other cities of the realm. But once he left for Normandy at the end of the year, it broke out again in East Anglia, spreading like a malevolent pox to cities like Bury St Edmunds and Lincoln and eventually York.
In York a more sinister pattern emerged, as the mob was urged on by men of rank, men who owed money to Jewish money-lenders. The Jews took refuge in the royal castle, but they mistrusted the castellan and when he left the castle, they overpowered the garrison and took over the stronghold. The castellan then summoned the sheriff of Yorkshire, who happened to be the brother of the famous William Marshal. The sheriff then assaulted the castle, with the drunken mob happily joining in. By the time the sheriff and castellan realized they’d lost control, it was, of course, too late. The Jews held out for two days, but when they realized they were doomed, they chose to die by their own hands rather than be butchered by the mob. Husbands slit the throats of their wives and children, and then were slain by their rabbi and a money lender named Josce, a leader of the Jewish community. There were some who balked at suicide, about a score or so. They offered to accept Christian baptism and were promised that their lives would be spared. But when they emerged, they were seized by the mob and murdered. The mob leaders then forced their way into York Minster where the Jews kept their debt bonds and terrified the monks into giving them these bonds, which were burned right there in the nave of the church.
Richard, then in Normandy, was enraged when he learned of this and sent his chancellor, Longchamp, north with an army. By then the ringleaders had fled, of course, and the citizens of York swore it was not their doing, blaming the killing on strangers. Longchamp took hostages, imposed a heavy fine on York, and the castellan and the sheriff were both dismissed. There were no other outbreaks after this, but the York massacre continues to haunt us to this day. I still remember standing in the sunlight at Clifford’s Tower after I’d moved to York to research Sunne, reading a plaque about the horrors that had been committed on this spot and being thoroughly chilled, for I’d not heard about it before. It is often called the medieval Masada.
What was the reaction of medievals to this appalling crime? One chronicler, William of Newburgh, was clearly troubled by it, particularly the betrayal of the Jews who’d agreed to accept baptism. But another one, Richard of Devizes, was contemptuous of Winchester, for that was the one city in which a pogrom was stopped in its tracks by the local officials. As I’ve often said, anti-Semitism was the ugly underside of medieval life and very few were immune to this poison, for it was something they breathed in from birth, all the more toxic for having such strong religious underpinnings. I think that virtually all of the people I’ve written about over the years were anti-Semitic; it was mainly a matter of degree. Richard was furious about it, but I think his outrage was more likely due to this blatant defiance of royal authority. Despite this horrific occurrence, the 12th century was actually a more “tolerant” time for the Jews than the thirteenth century, which saw the imposition of yellow badges during the reign of Henry III and the expulsion of all the Jews from England by Edward I. The French king, Philippe Auguste, was more bigoted than his Angevin rival kings, for he apparently believed in the blood libel; he banished the Jews from Paris, confiscating their goods, of course, but later allowed them to return when he needed the money. The Jews were an important source of royal revenue in the MA, one reason why kings attempted to keep them safe.
I describe the massacre of the York Jews in some detail in Lionheart, pages 81-86, in which I also discuss an appalling crime that occurred in Blois when the Count of Blois attempted to distract attention from his affair with a Jewess by making the local Jews the scapegoats, having 31 men and women burned at the stake. Philippe did something similar upon his return to France in an effort to repair the damage done to his reputation by his abandonment of the crusade. While I’ve often tried to dramatize the perilous position of medieval Jews, I went into it in depth in Falls the Shadow in Chapter 31, in which Simon de Montfort confronted Jacob, the Jewish rabbi who’d courageously come to seek justice for those slain in a London pogrom. In some ways, I am most proud of that chapter, for I attempted to root an age-old evil in a medieval context. I did the same in Saints when Ranulf was rescued from bandits by two young Jewish peddlers. When he learns that they are Jews, he instinctively recoils, until common sense reasserts itself and he remembers that these men saved his life. Sadly, there were many in the MA who would have found it impossible to feel gratitude to Jews even under such circumstances. I was just reading about a German film, Lore, in which the children of a high-ranking Nazi officer are on their own as the war ends and are befriended by a young Jewish man. The film explores the conflicted feelings of Lore toward her benefactor, for she has been taught by her parents to hate Jews. I have not seen this film, but I would like to.
March 16th was also the date of another massacre, this one the burning of 200 Cathar men and women when the last Cathar stronghold, Monsegur, fell in 1244. Just as I’ve discussed medieval anti-Semitism, I’ve discussed, too, the Albigensian “Crusade,” one of the darker chapters in the Church’s history.
And on March 16h, 1485, Richard III’s queen, Anne Neville, died, three months from her 29th birthday. Sunne, page 856.
* * *
Church bells were still tolling throughout the city when a queer noontime darkness began to settle over London, and as people watched in awe , the sun was slowly blotted out, blackness radiating outward haloed in light. To a superstitious age, a solar eclipse was seen as a sign from God, was seen by all as an ill omen, and by many as proof that Richard had sinned against God in taking his nephew’s throne, for why else, people argued, should the sun go dark on the day of his wife’s death?
* * *

The Ides of March and buzzards

Another slow day on the medieval calendar. But it’s huge on the ancient history side of the aisle. March 15th is the Ides of March, when Julius Caesar was assassinated in the Senate. His last words are reported to have been “Et tu, Brute?” There is no confirmation that he actually said this, the quote coming from one William Shakespeare, who was a marvelous playwright but not such a great historian. But like so much of Master Shakespeare’s prose (A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!) it is so well entrenched in the public imagination by now that there is no point in questioning it.
Back to our time, March 15th is the date that the buzzards, aka turkey vultures, return to Hinckley, Ohio, as they’ve been doing every March since 1957. Sadly, the loyal buzzards are totally overlooked in favor of the admittedly cuter swallows who swoop down upon San Juan Capistrano four days later and get all the media attention. .

Against all odds

On March 14th, 1471, Edward of York, his brother Richard, and their small band of exiles landed on the Yorkshire coast near the fishing village of Ravenspur. They had sailed from Flushing on the 11th in heavy seas, losing the ship that carried their horses but evading the English fleet under command of the Earl of Warwick’s kinsman, the Bastard of Fauconberg. They’d planned to land in Norfolk, where they had Yorkist support, but when Edward prudently sent a scouting party ashore first, they learned that the Duke of Norfolk was under arrest and the Lancastrian Duke of Oxford was on the alert for them. They put out to sea again, then their ships were scattered in a storm. Richard and the three hundred men under his command came ashore near Ravenspur, and must have had a nerve-wracking night until in the morning they were able to find Edward and Will Hastings and the five hundred men on their ship and then unite with Edward’s brother-in-law Anthony Woodville and his two hundred men. Not a large army to attempt what many thought to be impossible—recover a lost throne. But Edward was one of those men at their best when things were at their worst, and paradoxically, at his worst when all was going well. He was blessed, too, with a brother he could trust implicitly, a luxury few kings enjoyed. And so they set forth bravely on their all or nothing gamble. Stay tuned for further developments.