Berengaria "the Great"

Berengaria of Castile, queen regnant of Castile (died 8 November 1246)

The formidable twelfth-century ruler, Urraca of Castile and León, fought throughout her life to maintain the unity of her kingdom--her chief antagonist was her own husband, Alfonso I of Aragon.  She prevailed in the struggle, and after her death, her son inherited the throne, becoming Alfonso VII of Castile and León. 

An eighteenth-century sculpture
of Berengaria,
Madrid

But the kingdom whose unity Urraca had preserved was divided by her son: when Alfonso VII died in 1157, his older son became Sancho III, king of Castile, and his younger son became Ferdinand II of León. It was left to another queen regnant, Berengaria to reunite the two kingdoms.

Born in 1180, Berengaria (also known as Berenguela) was the eldest child of Urraca of Castile's great grandson, Alfonso VIII, and his wife, Eleanor of England. (Eleanor was the daughter of a woman we've met before, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the sister of another capable ruling woman, Blanche of Castile.)

Berengaria was her father's heir presumptive until the birth of Ferdinand in 1189. (Queen Eleanor of England had given birth to two boys, one in 1181 and another in 1184, but both had died soon after birth.)

Given her proximity to her father's throne, Berengaria was a very desirable match--a marriage contract between the princess and Conrad, one of the sons of Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman emperor, was agreed upon in 1187, and Conrad was knighted by Alfonso in 1188. 

But by 1191, the contract was dissolved--it may have been her grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who objected to Berengaria's marriage to the son of the Holy Roman emperor because of the political pressures such a union might place on her own French possessions.

The question became moot when Conrad was assassinated in 1196--perhaps by a woman he had raped, perhaps as a result of an infection from being bitten by the woman he was attempting to rape. In either case, Berengaria was lucky to avoid marriage to someone whose contemporaries described as "a man thoroughly given to adultery, fornication, defilement, and every foulness" (he wasn't totally condemned by this chronicler, however, who went on to add "nevertheless, he was vigorous and brave in battle and generous to his friends").

It was Berengaria's mother who seems to have been instrumental in arranging her daughter's marriage to Alfonso IX of León. It was an expedient choice: the king of León had invaded Castile (with the aid of Muslim forces, which had resulted in his excommunication).

Of course Alfonso already happened to have a wife--he had married Teresa of Portugal, his first cousin, in 1191, and by 1196, the couple had three children. In 1196, however, their marriage was annulled by Pope Celestine III. 

A manuscript illustration of Alfonso IX and
Berengaria of Castile

And so Alfonso married Berengaria, variously described as his first cousin, once removed, or his second cousin. Whatever their exact relationship, this marriage was also challenged on the basis of consanguinity, the kingdom placed under interdict by the pope.

Nevertheless, Berengaria and Alfonso remained together--they would have five children, despite their marriage being declared invalid in 1198. 

In 1204, although the couple had tried to secure a dispensation, the marriage was formally annulled, but the offending parties did manage to have their children declared legitimate. Berengaria returned to her father’s court in Castile.

The peace between Castile and León was disrupted by the separation of the royal pair. Alfonso attacked Castile again in 1204, though treaties between the two kingdoms were made in 1205, 1207, and 1209. The conflicts were exacerbated by Alfonso's efforts to disinherit his children by Berengaria in favor of his children by Teresa of Portugal.

When her father died in 1214, Berengaria became guardian and regent for the young Enrique I, her brother. (Enrique was born in 1204; Ferdinand had died in 1211). Although she was quickly replaced by disaffected Castilian nobles, when Enrique died in 1217 Berengaria herself became ruler of Castile. 

Her succession as queen regnant was problematic, however, in part because there was some question about whether she or her sister Blanca was the next legitimate heir to the throne, and in part because her former husband, Alfonso of León, was her son's closest male relative--and potential heir. After receiving the crown, therefore, Berengaria abdicated in favor of her son, who was recognized as King Ferdinand III

Berengaria's husband invaded Castile. Although he did not succeed in efforts to unseat the young king, Alfonso of León's opposition to Berengaria persisted; when he died in 1230, instead of naming Ferdinand to succeed him in León, his two daughters by his first wife were named as his heirs. 

Berengaria a advised her son "with great prudence," indicating how to gain León without shedding more blood. Negotiating with his half-sisters, Ferdinand exchanged rich dowries for the crown of León, thereby reuniting the kingdoms of Castile and León. 

Berengaria continued to play a significant role in the kingdom; she advised her son about military and political affairs until her death in 1246.

Berengaria's tomb,
Monasterio de las Huelgas de Burgos

There are two important new studies of Berengaria and her queenship: Janna Bianchini's The Queen's Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile and Miriam Shaddis's Political Women in the High Middle Ages: Berenguela of Castile and Her Family.

Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Other Women

Eleanor of Aquitaine (crowned queen of England, 19 December 1154)

Eleanor of Aquitaine was intelligent, well-educated, well-traveled, charismatic, and powerful, and today she is one of the most well-known women of the twelfth century. She lived in a time of of remarkably gifted and memorable women, many of whom I have posted about already this year: Urraca of León and Castile, the Empress Matilda, Melisende of Jerusalem, Heloise of Paris, Anna Comnena, Hildegard of Bingen . . . 

Eleanor of Aquitaine's effigy,
Abbey of Fontevrault 

I am assuming that the broad outline of Eleanor's life story is familiar--born between 1122 and 1124, she was heiress to her father's county of Poitou and his duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony, a vast territory that occupies more than one-quarter of modern France. She inherited this wealth and power after her father's death in April 1137. 

By July, she was married to Louis, the son and heir of King Louis VI, who promptly died in August of 1137, so that, within four months of her father's death, Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, was queen of France. She bore the French king two daughters: Marie of France, born in 1145, and Alix of France, born in 1150. 

She traveled with Louis on the Second Crusade, from 1145 to 1149 (her eldest daughter was born right before Eleanor departed for the Holy Land, her younger daughter on her return). 

While on Crusade, and before the birth of her second daughter, Eleanor decided that her marriage was invalid and sought an annulment on the basis of consanguinity. Although her request was at first rejected (by Pope Eugene III), after a second daughter was born, leaving Louis still without a male heir, an annulment was granted on 11 March 1152. After fifteen years, the couple's marriage was declared invalid--although their children were declared to be legitimate.

Eleanor remarried almost immediately. On 18 May 1152, she married Henry, duke of Normandy. In 1154, he became King Henry II of England, with Eleanor's coronation taking place on 19 December. And, interesting to note: the marriage of Eleanor and Louis was annulled because, as third cousins once removed, they were too closely related; Eleanor and Henry were also third cousins.

The marriage was productive, certainly--with Henry, Eleanor gave birth to five sons and three daughters. It was also tumultuous; as I've noted elsewhere, Henry had Eleanor imprisoned for sixteen years, between 1173 and 1189. But after Henry's death on 6 July 1189, Eleanor was freed and resumed a rich and full life.

She was regent of England for Richard when he left on the Third Crusade later in that year, and she negotiated his ransom and release, traveling to Germany to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor in order to secure his freedom on 4 February 1194.

Eleanor of Aquitaine's seal

After Richard's death, her youngest son, John, became king of England. She served and advised him until her death on 1 April 1204, when she was in her eighties. 

I could write an impossibly long and detailed post about Eleanor of Aquitaine, since her life seems to have taken on mythic (and frequently fantastical) proportions, but, instead, I thought I'd a few details about some of the other women in her family--other women who add more to the on-going discussion of family values and traditional marriage in this blog.

I've already had a bit to say about Eleanor's period of imprisonment--even queens, when they became "inconvenient" for one reason or another, could simply be removed from sight and held captive. And I've already noted that among the many ways of discrediting women, accusing them of incest seems to be particularly popular (Eleanor was accused of incestuous adultery with her uncle, Raymond of Poitiers, a charge that still finds its way into a great deal of popular history today.) But wait! There's so much more:

Eleanor of Aquitaine's grandfather was the renowned troubadour William IX, duke of Aquitaine, whose wife, Philippa, countess of Toulouse, was forced to retire to the Abbey of Fontevrault when her husband refused to give up his mistress, the aptly named Dangerose de l' Isle Bouchard. Although Dangerose seems to have been a more-than-willing partner, William was excommunicated for having abducted her. (She was married to his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault.)

While his wife Philippa was occupied in Toulouse, William had moved his mistress into the Maubergeonne tower of his castle in Poitiers--thus earning Dangerose the nickname La Maubergeonne. When Philippa returned to Poitiers from Toulouse, she found that her husband William would not move his mistress out. Despite appeals to secular and spiritual authorities, no one came to Philippa's aid, and she spent the last two years of her life in the abbey, from 1116 until her death on 28 November 1118.

The death of Philippa of Toulouse brought another inconvenient woman into the picture--Ermengarde of Anjou. Many popular biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine assert that Ermengarde was William IX's first wife--one whose marriage was dissolved after two years--but scholarly opinion seems to cast grave doubt on that part of the story.

But Ermengarde of Anjou does seem to have been in Fontevrault when Philippa arrived, and after Philippa's death, Ermengarde seems also to have demanded of the Council of Reims that it once again excommunicate the duke of Aquitaine and force him to renounce his mistress. That did not happen. 

In the mean time, the duke and his mistress arranged for the marriage of his son, William, to her daughter, Aenor de Châtellerault, in 1121--in this example of "traditional" marriage, then, Eleanor's maternal grandmother was her grandfather's mistress . . . 

Eleanor of Aquitaine's sister, Petronilla of Aquitaine, offers another interesting story about marriage and family. Born about the 1125, Petronilla accompanied Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137 when she married Louis. In 1141, while on a progress through Eleanor's many territories, Petronilla became involved with Raoul of Vermandois, the seneschal of France--decades her senior and, inconveniently, already married. Raoul's wife was Eleanor, the daughter of Stephen of Blois and Adela of Normandy (who happened to be William the Conqueror's daughter . . . )

Despite the fact that Raoul of Vermandois had been married to Eleanor since 1125 (and she had dutifully given her husband a son and heir), and apparently with Eleanor of Aquitaine's encouragement and support, Raoul was able to annul his marriage and replace his first wife with Petronilla. 

Theobald of Champagne, the brother of Raoul's rejected wife, went to war over the insult to his sister--a war that lasted for two years, from 1142 to 1144, and that drew Louis into battle and, after the fiery and bloody sacking of the town of Vitry-sur-Marne, was said to "haunt his days and nights" and to have broken his spirit.

Meanwhile, Theobald had offered his abandoned sister his protection, and he protested to Pope Innocent III, who excommunicated both Raoul and Petronilla. The excommunication was lifted, the pope ordering Raoul to give up his relationship with Petronilla. After Raoul refused, he and Petronilla were excommunicated for a second time. 

Pressures continued, particularly on Louis, who was warned that he was endangering his own salvation--but, conveniently, Innocent III died and his successor, Celestine II, again lifted the excommunication and recognized the validity of the marriage. (Details about Petronilla's later life are extremely few, and those who claim she lived until 1193 are pretty much living in a fact-free zone. There are a few reference to a Petronilla in English financial records, the "Pipe Rolls" in the 1150s, which may be to this Petronilla, but it's not at all clear.)

As for the next generation, I've already noted, in a post earlier this year, about Eleanor of Aquitaine's journey with Berengaria of Navarre, who married Eleanor's son, King Richard "the Lionheart." 

Eleanor's eldest daughter with Louis of France, Marie of France, married Henry of Champagne. Interestingly, Henry of Champagne was the brother of Louis' second wife, Adela of Champagne. In other words, Marie of France was married to her stepmother's brother. And oh, by the way, Queen Adela and Marie's husband, Henry, were the children of Theobald of Champagne--the same guy Louis went to war with over the Raoul and Petronilla affair. 

Eleanor's youngest daughter with Louis of France, Alix of France, married Theobald V, count of Blois--who was also the brother of her father's second wife, Adela of Champagne, and of Henry of Champagne, her sister's husband.

Eleanor's daughters with Henry were Matilda of England (born 1156), Eleanor of England (born 1162), and Joan of England (born 1165).

Matilda, also called Maud, named after her paternal grandmother, was married to Henry, duke of Saxony and Bavaria. She was regent for her husband between 1172 and 1173, while he was on Crusade in the Holy Land. (Henry and Matilda were exiled from Germany on two occasions, when they took refuge in her father's court in Normandy.)

Eleanor of England was married to Alfonso VIII of Castile, becoming queen of Castile--by circumstances and undoubtedly by her own strengths, she wielded great power and influence in Castile as queen. Her daughter Blanca of Castile became queen of France--and, as I've noted in an earlier post this year, in 1199, when Eleanor of Aquitaine was in her late 70s, she traveled to Castile to select one of her granddaughters as a bride for Louis, the son of Louis VII. She was ambushed and held captive on her trip, but the indefatigable Eleanor negotiated her release and arrived in Castile in January of 1200. 

After deciding that Blanca was the right choice, Eleanor and her twelve-year-old granddaughter left Castile in March and traveled back over the Pyrenees and into Bordeaux, on their way to Normandy. Caught up in violence and bloodshed on the way, this was one journey Eleanor of Aquitaine could not complete--too ill to travel farther, she retired to the abbey of Fontevrault while Blanca continued on, becoming Queen Blanche of France. (I've also posted about Eleanor of Castile, queen of England, who was Eleanor of England's great granddaughter and Eleanor of Aquitaine's great great granddaughter.)

Joan of England, Eleanor's youngest daughter, was married to William II of Sicily in 1177 and was crowned queen of Sicily. After William's death in 1189, as I've noted in an earlier post, Joan was imprisoned by her husband's successor, Tancred. Ultimately released by her brother Richard, as he stopped in Sicily on his way to the Holy Land, Joan accompanied her brother and his wife, Berengaria, on the Third Crusade. 

Richard toyed with the idea of marrying his widowed sister to Saladin's brother, setting the two up as rulers of Jerusalem, but that plan didn't work out. Instead, Joan married the much-married Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, in 1196. This was not a happy marriage; nevertheless, while he was away fighting, a pregnant Joan had raised an army to counter a rebellion against Raymond in Toulouse. She was betrayed by some of her own men, barely escaping with her life. She had ridden north to seek help from her brother, King Richard, only to learn of his death while she was en route. She turned to her mother for assistance and wound up in the abbey of Fontevrault. She died in childbirth there, just thirty-three years old. 

There are many biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine, quite a few popular and exciting, some fairly scholarly. I'd recommend the chapter on Eleanor in Lisa Hilton's Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens, but if you're really looking for more--by which I mean something of the mythologizing of a life that really needs no embroidering, I'd take a look at Michael Evans's Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine. It's hideously expensive--interlibrary loan?--but really excellent. 

There's a wonderful selection of letters to and from Eleanor of Aquitaine at Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Letters.

Update, December 2019: For a new, myth-busting biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Sara Cockerill's Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England and Mother of Empires, will be published in the spring of 2020. In the mean time, you will enjoy her conversation on the "myth and reality" of  Eleanor on the BBC's History Extra podcast (click here).

Blanche of Castile: Following in Her Grandmother's Footsteps

Blanche of Castile, queen of France (born 4 March 1188)

Blanche of Castile was the daughter of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his English wife, Eleanor Plantagenet--who was herself the daughter of the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine.* As queen of Castile, Eleanor Plantagenet had considerable influence, her political acuity and ability recognized by her husband, who specified in his will of 1204 that, should he die before his son and heir reached the age of his majority, Eleanor should act as regent of Castile.

Blanche of Castile,
from a contemporary ms. 

But Queen Eleanor did not live long enough to act as regent for her son, Enrique, when he became king--she died on 31 October 1214, just days after King Alfonso's death. Instead, her daughter, Berengaria, acted as regent for her brother, who was just ten years old.

Like her sister, Blanche would also prove to be a capable--and successful--ruler, when she was regent of France not once but twice, from 1226 to 1234, and then again from 1248 to 1252.

In the year 1200, the twelve-year-old Prince Louis of France was married to Blanca de Castilla, then aged eleven--in a historically fascinating note, Blanca's eighty-year-old grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, traveled to Castile in order to accompany her granddaughter on her journey to France. 

Now in France, where the Spanish Blanca was known as Blanche, she had her first child in 1205.

Over the course of the next twenty years, Blanche gave birth to at least eleven more children (and perhaps as many as thirteen--accounts vary). Her husband Louis became king of France in 1223. By 1225, aware that he was becoming increasingly ill, Louis named his wife Blanche of Castile as co-regent of France and as the sole guardian for his son and heir. When when Louis VIII died in 1226, his son was twelve years old. Blanche finessed any question of co-regency by having her son crowned as King Louis IX within a month of his father's death. 

Although she was to become one of the most long-serving and successful regents in France, Blanche was not the first woman to serve in this capacity--indeed, there was a long tradition of powerful women who had shared in government extending back to the time of Hugh Capet and his wife, Adelaide of Aquitaine (fl. 960s-1006), and Constance of Arles (c. 986-1032), the wife of Robert II, Adelaide's son.

The first woman to serve officially as regent of France seems to have been Adèle of Champagne (c. 1140-1206), the third of Louis VII's wives. During her twenty-year marriage to Louis, Adèle proved a "capable and energetic" queen. She attempted to take control of the government for her fifteen-year-old son, Philip, after Louis VII's death in 1180 but was unable to do so. Ten years later, in 1190, when he went on Crusade, Philip II appointed his mother as co-regent in his absence

But certainly one of the most successful and well-known women to have functioned as regent of France is Blanche of Castile. In his discussion of the long tradition of female regents in France, historian André Poulet indicates something of the breadth of her "absolute power" as queen-regent when it was her turn to take up the role: she "legislated, dealt with foreign powers, waged war, arranged marriages." "In short," he concludes, she "imposed herself as sovereign of the realm."

Although her son reached the age of majority in 1236, Blanche maintained her influence. As Poulet notes, although Louis IX was "under [his mother's] sway far longer than was stipulated by law," he nevertheless "respected her command of statecraft and recalled her to affairs of state when he went on crusade in 1248." 

Then, instead of appointing his wife, Margaret of Provence, to function as regent in the event a regency were needed, Louis IX turned once more to his mother. Although she opposed his crusading venture, Blanche again assumed her role as regent of France. After her son was captured in 1250, she added the job of raising his ransom to her responsibilities as regent. She died in 1252, while her son was still in the Holy Land.

Maubuisson Abbey, founded by Blanche of Castile,
and site of her burial

It is interesting to place Blanche of Castile in the of a powerful family of women--her grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine; her mother, Eleanor Plantagenet of England, queen of Castile; her sister Berengaria, who acted not only as regent of Castile for her younger brother, but who became queen regnant of Castile after his death (though her only way of maintaining power was to abdicate in favor of her son); her sister Urraca, who became queen of Portugal (named as regent, though she died before assuming the role); and her sister Eleanor, who became queen of Aragon. 

A new, full-length biography of Blanche of Castile is desperately needed, though Régine Pernoud's 1975 Blanche of Castile is very enjoyable. There is also an excellent assessment of Blanche of Castile, by Miriam Shadis, in Kathleen Nolan's Capetian Women.

Update: And here it is, a new scholarly biography, Lindy Grant's Blanche of Castile: Queen of France (Yale University Press, 2017).

*This post has been adapted from The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (Palgrave Macmillan).