Eleanor of Aquitaine

Eleanor of Aquitaine (French: Aliénor or Éléonore; Occitan: Alienòr; Latin: Helienordis, Alienorde or Alianor; c. 1124 – 1 April 1204) was Duchess of Aquitaine from 1137 to 1204, Queen of France from 1137 to 1152 as the wife of King Louis VII, and Queen of England from 1154 to 1189 as the wife of King Henry II. As the reigning duchess of Aquitaine, she ruled jointly with her husbands and two of her sons, the English kings Richard I and John. As the heiress of the House of Poitiers, which controlled much of southwestern France, she was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages.

Quotes

• What afflicts the church and excites the murmur of the people and diminishes their esteem for you, is that, in spite of the tears and lamentations of whole provinces, you have not sent a single nuncio. Often for matters of little importance your cardinals have been sent to remote parts with sovereign powers, but in this desperate and deplorable affair, you have not sent so much as a single subdeacon or even an acolyte.
  The kings and princes of the earth have conspired against my son, the anointed of the Lord. One keeps him in chains while another ravages his lands; one holds him by the heels while the other flays him. And while this goes on, the sword of Saint Peter reposes in its scabbard. Three times you have promised to send legates and they have not been sent. In fact, they have rather been leashed than sent [potius ligati quam legati]. If my son were in prosperity, we should have seen them running at his call, for they well know the munificence of his recompense. Is this the meaning of your promises to me at Châteauroux, made with so many protestations of friend-ship and good faith? Alas! I know today that the promises of your cardinals are nothing but vain words. Trees are not known by their leaves, nor even by their blossoms, but by their fruits. In this wise we have known your cardinals.
  • Letter to Pope Celestine III (1192), in Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1950), ch. 28

• My posterity has been snatched from me...The young king and the Count of Britanny sleep in dust. Their unhappy mother is forced to live on, ceaselessly tormented by their memory...I have lost the staff of my age, the light of my eyes.
  • Letter to Pope Celestine III (1193), in Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1950), ch. 30

About

• Femina consilio prudens, pia, prole beata,
  Auxit amicitiis, auxit honore virum.
  • A woman both in Counsel wise,
    Religious, fruitful, meek,
    Who did increase her husband's friends
    And larged his honour eke.
  • Inscription on her tomb in Westminster Abbey. Walter Lovell, "Queen Eleanor's Crosses", Archaeological Journal, vol. 49, no. 1 (1892), pp. 38–9

External links

• Thomas Kinnersley, A Selection of Sepulchral Curiosities (New York, 1823), p. 196
• Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1841), p. 155