Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
Eleanor came to Paris, a Queen of fifteen years old, in 1137,
bringing Poitiers and Guienne as the greatest dowry ever offered to
the French Crown. She brought also the tastes and manners of the
South, little in harmony with the tastes and manners of Saint
Bernard whose authority at court rivalled her own. The Abbe Suger
supported her, but the King leaned toward the Abbe Bernard. What
this puritan reaction meant is a matter to be studied by itself, if
one can find a cloister to study in; but it bore the mark of most
puritan reactions in its hostility to women. As long as the woman
remained docile, she ruled, through the Church; but the man feared
her and was jealous of her, and she of him. Bernard specially adored
the Virgin because she was an example of docile obedience to the
Trinity who atoned for the indocility of Eve, but Eve herself
remained the instrument of Satan, and French society as a whole
showed a taste for Eves.
[Genealogical chart showing the relationships among the three
queens.]
Eleanor could hardly be called docile. Whatever else she loved, she
certainly loved rule. She shared this passion to the full with her
only great successor and rival on the English throne, Queen
Elizabeth, and she happened to become Queen of France at the moment
when society was turning from worship of its military ideal, Saint
Michael, to worship of its social ideal, the Virgin. According to
the monk Orderic, men had begun to throw aside their old military
dress and manners even before the first crusade, in the days of
William Rufus (1087-1100), and to affect feminine fashions. In all
ages, priests and monks have denounced the growing vices of society,
with more or less reason; but there seems to have been a real
outbreak of display at about the time of the first crusade, which
set a deep mark on every sort of social expression, even down to the
shoes of the statues on the western portal of Chartres:--
A debauched fellow named Robert [said Orderic] was the first, about
the time of William Rufus, who introduced the practice of filling
the long points of the shoes with tow, and of turning them up like a
ram's horn. Hence he got the surname of Cornard; and this absurd
fashion was speedily adopted by great numbers of the nobility as a
proud distinction and sign of merit. At this time effeminacy was the
prevailing vice throughout the world ... They parted their hair from
the crown of the head on each side of the forehead, and their locks
grew long like women, and wore long shirts and tunics, closely tied
with points ... In our days, ancient customs are almost all changed
for new fashions. Our wanton youths are sunk in effeminacy ... They
insert their toes in things like serpents' tails which present to
view the shape of scorpions. Sweeping the dusty ground with the
prodigious trains of their robes and mantles, they cover their hands
with gloves ...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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