Eleanor of Aquitaine Read Online Free PDF Page A

shouted, “I will kill you if you do not absolve me!” The startled bishop pretended to comply with absolution, but when at last William released him, he calmly finished reading out the excommunication. Then he thrust forward his neck and said meekly, “Strike, then. Go ahead, strike.” Hesitating for a moment, the duke sheathed his sword and replied with one of the tart remarks for which he was famous. “Oh, no.” he retorted. “I don’t love you enough to send you to paradise.”
    The following year William’s quarrels with the Church escalated after an incident that astonished even the blasé Aquitainians. Under the pretext of keeping Poitou obedient, he had fallen into the habit of making extensive journeys around the county; Philippa, once again in control of Toulouse, rarely accompanied him. On one of these trips he made the acquaintance of a viscountess with the provocative name of Dangereuse, the wife of Viscount Aimery of Châtellerault. This most immoderate lady formed an exuberant attachment for William who, to understate the matter, reciprocated. Later that year while Philippa was in Toulouse, William cemented his relationship with the beautiful viscountess by setting off at a gallop along the Clain River road to Châtellerault, where, the story goes, he snatched the faintly protesting lady from her bedchamber and carried her back to Poitiers.
    It is unlikely that the eager viscountess protested vehemently, if at all, for she seemed quite prepared to abandon husband and children for the dashing duke. At home, William installed her in his new keep, known as the Maubergeonne Tower, which he had recently added to the ducal palace, and before long the amused Poitevins were calling his mistress La Maubergeonne. There was no question of hiding Dangereuse, nor did the lovers apparently practice discretion. Therefore, when Philippa returned from Toulouse and discovered a rival living in her own palace, her patience was sorely tried. Eyes blazing, she appealed first to her friends at court, then to the Church. With little trouble she was able to persuade the papal legate. Giraud, to speak to her husband about his imprudent behavior. But William replied jokingly to the legate, who happened to be as bald as an egg, “Curls will grow on your pate before I shall part with the viscountess.” Although William’s sentence of excommunication was renewed, he failed to take the matter seriously and, to Philippa’s disgust, had a portrait of Dangereuse painted on his shield.
    By 1116, Philippa could no longer tolerate the situation. She had wept bitterly over her husband’s affair with the elegant viscountess, a woman younger and prettier than herself. For years she had been obliged to put up with his infidelities, with songs and poems of his sexual conquests, with his blithely pawning her heritage to Bertrand so that he could play the crusading hero at her expense. She had borne him seven children and managed his lands with admirable efficiency, and now, in repayment, he had mortified her by bringing a strumpet into her palace. Her heart full of rancor, gathering the remains of her shredded pride, Philippa withdrew from a situation at once ridiculous and demeaning by retreating to the Abbey of Fontevrault. William did not attempt to stop her.
    Since Fontevrault’s beginnings some twenty years earlier, this remarkable religious institution had become a popular mecca for aristocratic women. If its abbesses were widows plucked from the nobility, they were no less high-born than the women who came there as novices or those who merely sought a restful retreat after an active career as wife and mother. Among the women living there when Philippa arrived was, ironically, William’s first wife, Ermengarde, who vacillated between the secular and the religious throughout her life. A benefactress of the Abbey of Clairvaux, she also built the monastery of Buzay near Nantes and would end her life as a nun. She and Philippa, it is