Eleanor of Aquitaine (41 page)

O good Jesus, who will grant me Your protection and hide me in Hell itself until Your fury passes away, until Your arrows, which are in me, by whose very vehemence my spirit is drunk up, shall cease? I long for death, I am weary of life, and though I thus die constantly, I yet desire to die more fully. I am reluctantly compelled to live, that my life may be the food of death and a means of torture. Blessed are those who pass away by a fortunate abortion and never know the capriciousness of this life, who do not know the waywardness of this life and the unpredictable events in our inconstant fate!

What do I do? Why do I yet live? Why do I, a wretched creature, delay? Why do I not go, that I may see him whom my soul loves, bound in beggary and irons? At such a time as this, how could a mother forget the son of her womb? Affection for their young appeases tigers, nay, even the fiercer witches.

Yet I fluctuate in doubt, for if I go away, I desert my son's kingdom, which is laid waste on all sides with fierce hostility, and in my absence it will be destitute of all counsel and solace. Again, if I stay, I shall not see the face of my son, that face which I so long for, and there will be no one who will study to procure the liberation of my son. But what I fear still more is that this most fastidious of young men will be tortured for an impossible sum of money, and, impatient of so much affliction, will be easily brought to the agonies of death.

O impious, cruel, and dreadful tyrant [i.e., the Emperor], who has not feared to lay sacrilegious hands on the Lord's Anointed; nor has the royal unction, nor the reverence due to a holy life, nor the fear of God, restrained you from such inhumanity.

Yet the Prince of the Apostles still rules and reigns in the Apostolic See, and his judicial rigour is set up as a means of resort. It rests with you, Father, to draw the sword of Peter against these evildoers, which for this purpose is set above peoples and kingdoms. The Cross of Christ excels the eagles of Caesar, the sword of Peter is a higher authority than the sword of Constantine, and the Apostolic See higher than the imperial power.

Is your power derived from God or from men? Did not the God of Gods speak to you through His apostle Peter, that whatsoever you bind on Earth shall be bound also in Heaven, and whatsoever you loose on Earth shall be loosed also in Heaven? Why then do you so long negligently, nay cruelly, delay to free my son, or is it rather that you do not dare? Perhaps you will say that this power is given to you over souls, not bodies: so be it, I will certainly be satisfied if you bind the souls of those who keep my son bound in prison.

It is your province to release my son, unless the fear of God has yielded to a human fear. Restore my son to me, then, O man of God, if indeed you are a man of God and not a man of mere blood. For know that if you are slow in releasing my son, from your hand will the Most High require his blood.

Alas, alas for us, when the chief shepherd has become a mercenary, when he flies from the face of the wolf, when he abandons in the jaws of a bloodthirsty beast the lamb put in his care, or even the chosen ram, the leader of the Lord's flock. The good shepherd instructs and informs other shepherds not to fly when they see a wolf approaching, but rather to lay down their lives for their sheep. Save, therefore, I entreat you, your own soul, while, by urgent embassies, salutary advice, by the thunders of excommunication, general interdicts and terrible sentences, you endeavour to procure the liberation, I will not say of your sheep, but of your son. Though late, you ought to give your life for him, for whom as yet you have refused to say or write one word. My son is tormented in bonds, yet you do not go to him, nor send anyone, nor are moved by the sorrow which moved Joseph. Christ sees this and is silent, but at the last judgement there shall be a fearful retribution for those who are negligent in doing God's work.

Three times you have promised us to send legates, yet they have not been sent. If my son were in prosperity, we should have seen them run in answer to his lightest call, expecting plentiful rewards from his munificent generosity and the public profit of his kingdom. But what profit could they consider more glorious than the freeing of a captive king and the restoring of peace to the people, quiet to the religious, and joy to all? But while the wolf comes upon its prey, the dogs are mute: either they cannot, or they will not, bark.

Is this the promise you made me at the Castello Pvadulphi,27 with such protestations of love and good faith? What benefit did you gain from giving my simple nature mere words, from mocking the faith of the innocent with a hollow trust? Alas, I know now that your cardinals' promises are but empty words. You alone, who were my hope after God and the trust of my people, force me to despair. Cursed be he who trusts in man!

Where is my refuge now? You, O Lord my God. The eyes of Your handmaiden are lifted up to You, O Lord, for You recognise my distress. You, O King of Kings, Lord of Lords, grant sovereignty to Your Son, and save the son of Your handmaiden. Do not visit upon him the crimes of his father or the wickedness of his mother.

We know from a certified public report that, after the death of the Bishop of Liege, whom the Emperor is said to have killed with a fatal blow from his sword, though wielded by a distant hand, he miserably imprisoned the Bishop of Ostia, four of his provincial bishops, and even the archbishops of Salerno and Treves. And the apostolic authority ought in no way to deny that unlawfully and tyrannically he has also taken possession of Sicily. The Emperor's fury is not satisfied with all these gains, but his hand is still stretched out. Fearful things he has already done, but worse are still certainly to be expected.

Where is the promise the Lord made to His Church: "I shall make thee the pride of ages, a joy from generation to generation"? Once the Church trod upon the necks of the proud with its own strength, and the laws of emperors obeyed the sacred canons. But now things have changed-- not only canons, but the makers of canons are restrained by base laws and profane customs. No one dare murmur about the detestable crimes of the powerful, which are tolerated, and canonical rigour falls on the sins of the poor alone.

The kings and princes of the Earth have conspired against my son, the Lord's Anointed. One tortures him in chains, another ravages his lands with a cruel enmity. The Supreme Pontiff sees all this, yet keeps the sword of Peter sheathed, and thus gives the sinner added boldness, his silence being presumed to indicate consent.

But I declare to you that the time of dissension foretold by the Apostle is at hand, when the son of eternal damnation shall be revealed. The fateful moment is at hand when the seamless tunic of Christ shall be rent again, when the net of Peter shall be broken, and the solid unity of the Catholic Church dissolved. These are the beginnings of sorrows. We feel bad things, we fear worse.

I am no prophetess, but my grief suggests many things about the troubles to come. Yet it also steals away the very words which it suggests. A sob stops my breath, my sadness saps the strength of my soul, and absorbing grief shuts up by its anxieties the vocal passages of my soul. Farewell.28

It appears that the Queen received no response to this letter. At eighty-seven, Celestine was of too timid a disposition to risk incurring the enmity of the Emperor, whose armies were even now invading papal territory and whose men had recently cut the throats of papal emissaries.29 For decades the papacy had been in conflict with the Empire, and all Celestine wanted was to preserve the peace so that he could target corruption within the Church. In any case, he was aware that, as a result of the recent schism, the standing of the papacy was poor, and any representations he might make on Richard's behalf to the Emperor would be treated with contempt.

* * *

In Lent, John returned to England ahead of his mercenary force, intent upon establishing himself as king. Having failed to enlist the support of William the Lyon, King of Scots, he was successful in hiring more mercenaries in Wales. He then went to London, where he demanded that the regency council surrender its powers to him. When the magnates refused, he did his best to convince them and the Queen that Richard would never return, repeating all kinds of alarmist rumours to that effect, which were then circulating in France. At one point, he even announced that Richard was dead, but no one believed him. The council's firm stand was supported by Geoffrey of York and William the Marshal, and it was boosted by Eleanor's refusal to be intimidated by her son, as well as by Richard's widespread popularity.

Making his intentions even clearer, John began stirring up rebellion, urging the magnates to join him and seizing several royal strongholds. He himself garrisoned Windsor Castle, to which Walter of Coutances and other magnates immediately laid siege. At the same time, Hugh de Puiset invested John's castle at Tickhill.

Meanwhile, Philip had invaded Normandy. On 12 April he took Gisors, then overran the Vexin, laying wide open the rest of the duchy to conquest. Having seized Neaufles, he marched on the capital, Rouen, where he set up his siege engines and demanded that the citizens surrender to him and deliver up his sister Alys.30 Robert de Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, the Seneschal of Rouen, whose lands had been restored to him by Eleanor in 1189, refused to comply, although he declared, with an air of menace, that he would be pleased to offer Philip the hospitality due to his master's overlord, and would also conduct him to visit his sister, provided he entered the castle alone and unarmed. Philip suspected a trap to take him prisoner and exchange him for Richard, and angrily demurred. In his fury at being thwarted, he had his own siege engines destroyed and ordered that every cask of wine from his stores be emptied into the Seine. Then he marched back to Paris, vowing that he would revisit Rouen with a rod of iron.31

Expecting John's army of Flemish mercenaries to arrive in England at any time, the Queen and council took urgent measures for the defence of the realm. "By order of Queen Eleanor, who then ruled England, at Passiontide and Easter and thereafter, nobles and common people, knights and peasants, flew to arms and guarded the sea coast that looks towards Flanders,"32 while fresh oaths of fealty to Richard were again exacted from the magnates. When the first mercenaries arrived, they were either killed or imprisoned in chains. Those who followed prudently turned their ships about and sailed back to Flanders.

This was the situation when Hubert Walter returned to England.

Not optimistic about Richard's chances of an early release, he urged the Queen and the regency council to adopt a conciliatory policy towards John. If Richard never returned, John would become king and might well exact vengeance on those who had opposed or offended him. Furthermore, John's cooperation in raising ransom money from his tenants might be needed. Eleanor and the magnates took Hubert's advice, and a truce was arrived at. Under its terms, John agreed to surrender Windsor and his castles of Wallingford and the Peak to his mother, who would hold them for a certain time; if Richard had not been released by then, she would return them to John.

Not having heard from the Pope, Eleanor had for a time held her peace, yet mounting anger and despair soon prompted her to send Celestine a second letter" berating him for his failure to help Richard and urging him to take some action:

To the reverend Father and Lord Celestine, by the grace of God, the Supreme Pontiff, Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England, Duchess of Normandy, Countess of Anjou, begs him to show himself to be a father to a pitiable mother.

I had decided to remain quiet in case a fullness of heart and a passionate grief might elicit some word against the chief of priests which was certainly less than cautious, and I was therefore accused of insolence and arrogance. Certainly grief is not that different from insanity while it is inflamed with its own force. It does not recognise a master, is afraid of no ally, it has no regard for anyone, and it does not spare them-- not even you.

So no one should be surprised if the modesty of my words is sharpened by the strength of my grief. I am mourning a loss that is not private, but my personal grief cannot be comforted-- it is set deep in the heart of my spirit.

Please listen to the cry of the afflicted, for our troubles have multiplied beyond number. You are the father of orphans, the judge of widows, the comforter of those who mourn and those who grieve, a city of refuge for everyone, and because of this, in a time of so much misery, you are expected to provide the sole relief for everyone from the authority of your power.

Our king is in a difficult position and he is overwhelmed by troubles from every direction. Look at the sorry state of his kingdom, the evil of the times, the cruelty of the tyrant who does not stop making an unjust war against the King because of his greed, and that tyrant who keeps him bound in prison-chains and kills him with fear.

If the Church of Rome keeps quiet about the great injuries to the Lord's Anointed, may God rise up and judge our plea. Where is the passion of John against Herod, the passion of Pope Alexander III, who solemnly and terribly excommunicated Frederick, father of this current prince, with the full authority of the Apostolic See? [The Emperor] has no due regard for the Apostolic keys, and he reckons the law of God merely as words.

All the more reason why you ought to seize the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God, much more firmly. May the Word of the Lord not have been stuck in your throat, may the mortal fear in you as a man not destroy the spirit of freedom. It is easier to suffer at the hands of men than to forsake the law of God. The enemies of Christ Crucified trust in their own strength-- their end is ruin, their glory will be in chaos.

But the time is nearly upon us when the hand of God will exact a timely vengeance upon them. For if they escape judgement during their human life, a more terrible divine judgement is hanging over them. Their present joy is a passing moment, for in truth their eternal punishment will be fire and worms.

Please, I beg you, do not let a worldly eminence deter you. What afflicts the Church and sets the people murmuring, and considerably diminishes their esteem for you, is that in such a crisis, in spite of the tears and lamentations of entire provinces, you have not sent to those princes a single nuncio from those around you. Often your cardinals, with sovereign powers, execute an embassy for matters of little importance to pagan regions. Yet for a cause so desperate and deplorable as this, you have not even sent even the humblest sub-deacon, not even one acolyte. For nowadays papal legates are sent for a profit, not in respect of Christ, not for the honour of the Church, nor for the peace of kingdoms, or for the safety of a people. But in freeing a king, what profit or result could be more glorious for you than to exalt the honour of the Sovereign Pontiff?