I’d hoped to have a new blog posted this past week, but I was entangled with the Angevins. At least it was productive, for I was able to finish a key chapter for Lionheart, in which Richard had confrontations with the King of Sicily and then the King of France. Richard didn’t always play well with others, although it is hard to fault him for his feuding with Philippe Auguste, who could have taught Iago about treachery and betrayal.
Richard also got to meet Berengaria at long last in this chapter. Actually it wasn’t their first meeting, as I think they met about six years earlier at her father’s court in Navarre. Ambroise, the minstrel or jongleur who accompanied Richard on crusade and wrote a rhyming chronicle about it, says that “most dear the king did love her and revere; since he was Count of Poitiers, his wish had wished for her always.” Interestingly, the other major chronicle of the Third Crusade also says much the same thing: “Attracted by her graceful manner and high birth, he had desired her very much for a long time, since he was first Count of Poitou.”
Ambroise was most likely the only chronicler who actually saw Berengaria, describing her as “a fair and worthy damsel, true and good, of very gentle womanhood.” But the description that is most quoted is the snarky one from Richard of Devizes, who never laid eyes upon her—that she was “more prudent than pretty.” He also comments snidely that when Richard and Berengaria sailed from Sicily, she was “probably still a virgin.” For what it’s worth, apparently none of these chroniclers thought Richard’s sexual urges were anything but conventional. My favorite chronicler, William of Newburgh, calls Berengaria “a virgin of famous beauty and prudence,” but like Richard of Devizes, he never saw her either. We know that two of her paternal aunts were noted for their beauty, as was her younger sister Blanca. So while she may not have been another Helen of Troy, I think we can safely say that she wouldn’t have scared anyone when she went out in public. BTW, her real name was Berenguela; this was translated into French as Berengere or Berengiere, and eventually it would become Anglicized as the name by which history knows her, Berengaria. A shame, for Berenguela is lovely.
Moving from the twelfth to the thirteenth century, several of you had questions about the children of Joanna and Llewelyn Fawr. Ken kindly posted information from Joanna’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which was originally written by the Victorian historian Kate Norgate, and was subsequently updated by the British historian, A.D. Carr. I still stand by my position that we can only be positive that Joanna was the mother of Davydd and Elen. A. D. Carr says she was “probably” the mother of Gwladys and Margaret, but that is not a certainty. He cites no source for a daughter named Susanna, and I am rather skeptical of that since I’ve never heard a word about her before. I want to repeat, though, that I have not been able to keep current on research done since I wrote Here Be Dragons more than twenty years ago; the same is true for Richard III and Simon de Montfort. Happily, I am totally up to date on the Angevins, having had them as my royal roommates for the past fifteen years or so. The Oxford National Biography is a wonderful source for writers or those interested in the MA. I have information about subscribing to it, but I’ll put that in a comment to this blog.
Suzanne, you’d asked an interesting question earlier—why writers select certain scenes to dramatize. Part of the answer is simple practicality; writers know we can’t turn in 2,000 page books. So we have to leave certain scenes on the cutting room floor, especially if they involve secondary characters. That is why I did not dramatize Isabel Neville’s shipboard childbirth scene in Sunne, or why I did not dramatize the capture of the Scots king in Devil’s Brood, although both scenes would have been fun to do. I tend to follow my instincts when it comes to writing scenes about primary characters; I just seem to “know” when an episode or event needs to be brought center stage and when it can be relegated to the narrative account.
Shauna, you posed an interesting question, too, asking if there is any evidence that Joanna loved her father. Sadly, there is very little surviving evidence of medieval emotions; occasionally a chronicler will give us a glimpse into medieval hearts, as when one reported that King Henry III and his queen were grief-stricken at the death of their little deaf-mute daughter or when a chronicler noted that Richard III and Anne were devastated by the loss of their son. Sometimes a hint surfaces midst the dry facts of the Pipe Rolls, etc, as when Edward I’s crown had to be repaired because “it pleased the king to throw it into the fire.” This tantrum was caused by his discovery that his daughter Joanna, widow of the Earl of Gloucester, had dared to take one of Gloucester’s squires in a clandestine second marriage; despite Edward’s initial rage, Joanna eventually won him over.
So….I have to rely upon common sense and logical deductions about what we know of human nature. In Joanna’s case, she took a great risk in sending John a secret warning that his life might be endangered if he invaded Wales as planned. I can think of no other reason for her action except love for her father. I based my conclusions about her marriage to Llewelyn in great part upon his remarkable act, forgiving her for an adultery that was very damaging to him politically. By 1230, he was at the zenith of his power in Wales, and Henry III was no threat, a weak king who could not have punished Llewelyn for putting aside an unfaithful wife. Moreover, public opinion on both sides of the border would have been firmly on Llewelyn’s side had he done so; there was very little sympathy in the MA for faithless wives. But Llewelyn forgave Joanna and restored her to favor, despite her unpopularity with the Welsh. Even more significantly, he established a friary in her memory when she died. So it is difficult for me not to conclude that he loved this woman.
What of Joanna’s feelings, though? Here is where psychology rears its ugly head. From all that we know of Llewelyn, he was not a man to have nursed an unrequited love for 24 years, for that is how long they’d been wed at the time of her adulterous affair with William de Braose. If she hadn’t returned his love, his would eventually have withered and died. Theirs had to have been a marriage of genuine affection and respect in order for it to have survived such a severe test. And the proof that they were able to repair the damage done is that friary on Llanfaes.
Paula, I am so glad that you were impressed by the scene in Falls the Shadow between Simon de Montfort and Rabbi Jacob and his son, Benedict, for I am as proud of that chapter as I am of anything I’ve ever written. I wanted to show my readers how pre-carious life had become for Jews in the 13th century, culminating in their expulsion from England by Edward I in 1290. They were hated and scorned for being money-lenders, yet they’d been forced into this dubious profession, barred from joining the craft and trade guilds, from holding land, or attending universities. But I also wanted to do something more difficult—to show how a medieval Christian like Simon viewed Jews, that for him, it all came down to salvation. He recognized the courage it took for Jacob for to come to him and ask to have the rioters punished. He saw Jacob’s soul as one worth saving and he could not understand why Jacob would not embrace the True Faith, why he courted damnation.
This scene between these two men goes to the heart of the differences between their world and ours. In the MA, tolerance was not viewed as a virtue, and we find that very hard to understand. This was true for all of their major religions–Christian, Jewish, or Muslim; they were all sure that theirs was the only way to God, their faith the only means to gain salvation.
I am trying a new tactic to keep these blogs within a manageable length. I am going to answer some of your queries by posting comments of my own, as I did in thanking Steven for providing the URL to the William of Newburgh chronicle. So don’t assume I am ignoring you if I don’t respond to your questions in this blog; just check for my re-plies in the last blog!
And now on to a subject we seem to be discussing a lot lately—medieval sex! Paula, you ought to co-authoring this blog with me, as this is another of your queries–the belief that women must experience pleasure during sex to conceive, a question also addressed quite well by Elizabeth Chadwick. Elizabeth points out that there were various theories about sex, some of them quite contradictory. For example, there was a school of thought which held that a daughter was conceived only if there was a weakness in the man’s semen; this, however, did not keep them from still “blaming” the woman if she gave birth to a daughter, not a son! Aristotle’s teachings were quite influential in the MA, and many accepted his belief that the man provided the seed and the woman the material. But other medieval writers believed that both the man and the woman must provide “seed” for conception to occur. And there was indeed a belief that conception was linked to a woman’s sexual satisfaction. I’ve seen it suggested—but never with a citation for a medieval source—that this was one of the arguments which Louis’s advisers used to convince him to divorce Eleanor, insisting that she could never give him the son he so desperately needed because she no longer wanted to share his bed. You can see the dangers in this argument, though, for rape victims. By pure coincidence, I am dealing with this very question in my current Lionheart chapter, with a scene between Berengaria and Joanna in which they discuss the “marital debt” and the “sin of lust” and whether conception depended upon a woman’s sexual enjoyment. BTW, the marital debt was owed by both husband and wife; the marriage bed was the one place where the Church accorded men and women equal rights. The Church took this “obligation” so seriously that the marital debt was still owed even if one of the partners contracted leprosy.
I’m going to end this blog with a mystery. A reader asked me if any of you might be familiar with a novel about a young woman who moves from her home in the south of England to Northumbria to marry; toward the book’s end, the family meets Richard, Duke of York, father of “my” Edward and Richard. She can’t remember the author or title, so it’s a challenge. Anyone up to it?
July 12, 2009