However, this is certainly not to suggest that Eleanor was not close to Alfonso: it seems clear that Eleanor, either during her early years or after her father’s death, did have enough close contact with Alfonso to be very close to him as well; although never a playmate, he was plainly a beloved older brother and mentor and on the intellectual front, a friend.26
It was not only her immediate family who may well have formed the social circle around her at court. Her aunt Berengaria of León, who married John of Brienne in 1224 and moved to Constantinople, where he became regent for the young Emperor, appears to have maintained ties with the Castilian court until their deaths in 1237. Her daughter Marie married Emperor Baldwin II of Constantinople. However, her sons, Alphonse, Louis and Jean, though somewhat older than Eleanor and primarily based in France from 1244, certainly maintained close links themselves with the Castilian court. All of them are noted as relatively frequent features in Alfonso X’s witness lists, which indicates a close relationship. They will therefore have been known to Eleanor from her earliest years, and Jean in particular was probably fairly close to Eleanor in age.27
There was also plainly, given the presence of Peter of Portugal at the celebrations in Seville, some contact with other royal families in the peninsula. In particular, frequent contact was likely between the royal families of Castile and Aragon. King Jaime of Aragon (himself a distant cousin of Ferdinand) had a number of daughters near to Eleanor in age. Violante, who married Alfonso, was some five years Eleanor’s senior. Costanza, destined to marry Alfonso’s brother Manuel, and Isabelle, the future Queen of France, were respectively about a year older and two years younger than Eleanor. Also close to Eleanor in age was Jaime’s heir Pedro, who would later become Pedro III of Aragon. Violante’s marriage to Alfonso was celebrated at the end of December 1249 and Eleanor will have seen a good deal of her in the next five years until her own marriage. Whether in these early years the unhappiness of the Castilian royal marriage was already apparent cannot be known. However, at some point in those years Eleanor will have learnt about her brother’s growing family of children by his mistresses, a reinforcement to the lesson on which Queen Berengaria had been so keen, to keep one’s husband close.
One thing which was plainly central to the upbringing of the Castilian royal family was rigorous academic study. As we have already seen, Castile had acquired, through the Muslim invaders, a rich resource of learning and Eleanor’s ancestors were keen to foster intellectual study, with both Alfonso VIII and Alfonso IX founding universities and Ferdinand III continuing their work. Ferdinand III did not merely appreciate and encourage learning in the abstract, however, but also ensured that his children were participators in it. Alfonso X’s devotion to study was noted by observers from the time he emerged into open view in his early teens, and this implies that he was already well grounded in learning at that age. Thus Ferdinand plainly ensured that his children had good teachers from a young age. This is consistent with Alfonso’s own writings, which suggest that seven is the age for commencement of serious study and advise the choosing of good teachers for princes. Ferdinand was doubtless encouraged in this by the Dominican Order, whose emphasis on the importance of learning was an important part of their religious outlook.28
As for the substantive content of that learning, we know that the education which the children pursued was not narrow, nor purely religious. Instead their studies covered a broad humanistic base, and at least three of Ferdinand’s sons, Felipe, Sancho and Enrique, were sent for further study to the University of Paris. Alfonso himself actually left a description of the range of learning which a well-educated man should, in his view, have, and this can obviously be inferred to mirror his own. In his General Estoria he states that such a person should be learned in the seven liberal arts. The first three (or trivium) were rhetoric, grammar and logic – the three roads to teach the young mind how to get somewhere. The remaining four (quadrivium) are arithmetic and geometry, music, astrology, physics and metaphysics. As for languages, Alfonso wrote and spoke several, and was clearly able to read Latin well, even if the evidence for his writing in that language is thin.
There is yet further clear evidence that Ferdinand was very keen that his children should receive a good education. This is found in his commissioning of a book of the ‘mirror for princes’ variety called the Libro de Doze Sabios (Book of the Twelve Wise Men), which places in the mouths of twelve wise men statements from the Bible along with fables from Eastern didactic works, a fine example of the synthesis of cultures in play at Ferdinand’s court.
Raised in this rich academic tradition, in his turn Alfonso had the hunger for knowledge and for books that marks the intellectual and became world-famous for his intellectual curiosity and willingness to patronise scholars. From the start of his reign he employed distinguished academics of all disciplines and from a wide variety of countries and religions in a scriptorium at his court. One purpose for this was to translate as many books as possible from Old Arabic to Spanish so as to make accessible to himself and others the learning of the classical era, which then only existed in Arabic. Considerable original work was also done by his academics on mathematical and astronomical questions, and they produced under his guidance the primary set of astronomical tables in use until the late sixteenth century.29
In language, poetry and music, the family seems to have been particularly well taught – and matched their education with talent. Alfonso himself was in part at least the author of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a set of devotional poems set to music which borrow heavily from the tradition of the troubadours. Enrique of Castile, meanwhile, though less of an intellectual polymath than Alfonso, was a noted troubadour as well as being a soldier. He has recently been identified as the author of the distinguished tale of chivalry Amadis de Gaula, the story of the star-crossed love of King Perion of Gaul and Elisena of England and the adventures of their lovechild Amadis (the hero worshipped by Cervantes’ Don Quixote). It has been described as the foremost work of Spanish chivalrous literature of the age. The achievements of the two brothers therefore demonstrate again the level of education and culture which was current in the children of Ferdinand. This was the atmosphere in which Eleanor was raised.30
Fantastically enough, we have almost a first-hand account of the principles on which Eleanor’s later education would have been based. This is because Alfonso wrote extensively on the subject of learning, and indeed the upbringing of royal children. Since his accession, when Eleanor was just over ten, coincides with the time when Eleanor would be expected to be moving into more demanding education and spending more time at court in order to become familiar with the currents of political thought, one can expect her education to have been conducted entirely along the lines of Alfonso’s opinions and views.
The starting point here is that Alfonso had a passion for didacticism, both from his own inherent love of learning, and as an endeavour which in his view took man nearer to God. As he put it in his General Estoria, ‘every man who is full of virtues and knowledge resembles God, because through him all things come; and the more knowledge he has, the more he resembles God and the closer he becomes to His nature’. Therefore it will have been drummed into Eleanor that learning was next to godliness.
But Alfonso actually set out in his Siete Partidas the education which should be given to a prince, and to a princess. Interestingly, he considered that a princess should have the same tutors as a prince, thereby indicating that he considered that they should be as highly educated as their brothers. One can therefore (save as regards martial training) regard the rules for princes as being equally applicable to the princesses, and hence to Eleanor’s experience of education.
Generally Alfonso’s list of the training which a prince should have, in Title VII of Part II of the Siete Partidas, may be likened to that to be expected of a well-behaved Victorian child. There is an extensive litany of behaviour and deportment issues. Those raising the children should pay careful attention to t
heir rearing – the children should be very pure and refined in all their actions and kept in the company of pure and refined people only. Their tutors (of good family and judgment) should teach them to be elegant and clean and to eat tidily. They should be taught to speak properly and politely. They should not speak loudly, or in a very low tone, and they should not speak either very rapidly or very slowly. They should speak with no gesticulation and should use neither too many nor too few words. They should not listen with mouths open, and should walk gracefully, without dragging their feet or raising them too high. (It is interesting to see how universal are such preoccupations on the part of parents, even at a gap of several hundred years.) As for formal education, children should be taught to read and write, how to learn to know men and how to talk to those of all stations in life.31
For princesses there are special injunctions, doubtless to be attended to while their brothers gained proficiency in arms. They should be brought up with much greater supervision, to ensure they formed good habits as they would have a greater part in raising children in due course. ‘The most important thing in the world … is that for the sake of loyalty they should respect themselves and their husbands and consider carefully everything else which they have to do in order that they may have good habits and offer a good example to others.’
Interestingly, their supervisors ‘should especially prevent them from yielding to anger for … it is the one thing in the world which most quickly induces women to commit sin’. Indeed there is also considerable focus in Part V, which deals with a king’s attributes, on the importance of suppressing anger – there are two laws dealing with this alone. Even without the corroborative evidence of later events, which demonstrates that both Alfonso and Eleanor had on occasion very lively tempers, this would suggest that the royal family of Castile was very prone to anger, and that it was considered important to keep that unattractive trait controlled, or at least hidden, so far as possible.32
All in all, therefore, Eleanor will have had the finest education available to a child at that time, and one which will have emphasised the importance of both style and substance. Deportment was highly valued but so too were more substantial attainments. Eleanor’s education, like Alfonso’s own, will have covered the seven liberal arts. But one can also assume that a healthy knowledge of theology will have been part of the programme, since in Alfonso’s view (perhaps more so than his father’s) the purpose of an understanding of the liberal arts was to better understand the holy scriptures. Eleanor’s education is therefore likely to have been such as to naturally promote in her an independent and intellectual interest in doctrinal matters and a view that it was important, if one could, to study and attempt to understand as much as possible as a route towards God. What is more, Eleanor could herself write (a very unusual skill at the time). This fact is explained by the fact that Alfonso considered that this was necessary ‘in order to learn more easily what [one wants] to know, and to be better able to keep [one’s] secrets’.
Very much to the fore was the importance of discipline in learning. This learning will not have come without effort; the habit of work will have been inculcated early and emphasised repeatedly; and it will have been reinforced by the examples around her, particularly with her father and brother, who were unceasingly at work, and over no small range of material.
But the Castilian court was no narrow intellectual hothouse. The evidence establishes clearly that Ferdinand enjoyed a wide range of cultural pursuits and games. In the Setenario Alfonso pays tribute to his father as the perfection of a Christian knight and humanist prince, evoking the educated and sophisticated atmosphere of the court:
He knew well the art of hunting all game, as well as playing board games and chess, and other varied table games; he liked the singing of men and he himself knew how to sing; likewise he liked courtly troubadours and singers and jongleurs who could play instruments well. He liked all this very much and he was a discriminating connoisseur in this matter.
The fondness for the playing of troubadours and jongleurs is also reliably attested elsewhere. A number of well-known troubadours were associated with his court, and a troubadour-style composition of his own has been identified. The strong troubadour influence is reinforced both by Alfonso’s later devotion to wider culture, including music and poetry, and Enrique’s unmasking as a talented poet.33
Alfonso, too, was fond of games: he was a generous patron of chess experts, and on his death he was writing a book about pastimes and games. As for Eleanor, it seems safe to assume that the taste which she later had for chess was acquired in childhood, possibly even playing with her father in his illness. One therefore gets the picture of a court very full of business, but also very full of sophisticated diversions when the opportunity presented itself.
Nor were the diversions all sophisticated. As noted above, in summarising Ferdinand’s character, Alfonso emphasised his father’s passion for hunting. This passion is one Alfonso plainly shared. He writes in the Siete Partidas of the importance of physical fitness for a king. Hunting is then particularly singled out as an important part of a prince’s and king’s regime, although the intellectual justifications for this are a little thin; one rather senses that hunting was a very popular pastime indeed with the Castilian royal family and simply could not be left out.34
So at this point it is possible to review what we know about Eleanor at the time when the possibilities for her marriage first began to be considered. As a provable fact we know practically nothing, but from the wealth of material about the Castilian court it is possible to make some very strong inferences.
Eleanor was familiar with the most beautiful things that humankind could then create, in homes, decoration and gardens. She was used to the rich and varied diet available in the warm climate of her home and in some of the most affluent towns on earth: oranges, lemons, figs, pomegranates, spices – including, of course, saffron.
At the same time she was familiar with and used to a fairly peripatetic life, often ‘following the flag’. She was very used to the preoccupations of the warrior male and to a male-dominated society; and knew how to thrive in such an environment. She had been afforded a ringside seat at a key point in her country’s history and been enabled to see the importance of both the active and administrative sides of conquest, and to absorb a positive and detailed high-level debate about the role and duties of the ideal king, in particular the importance of justice.
Eleanor was educated to the very highest level, well beyond the usual limits of female education or even those of a prince. As for religion, devoutness was a given in that age, and with her education at the hands of the Dominicans and latterly under the influence of Alfonso X she was trained to believe in and to exercise an intellectual rather than emotional approach to religion. In terms of personal style, she was encouraged to adopt a decorous, discreet style somewhat different to the lively, probably flirtatious style approved in France and adopted by her mother.
However, Eleanor was no one-dimensional bookworm or would-be nun. In line with her family habits, she also regarded cultural amusements such as board games, music and poetry and physical ones such as hunting as an integral part of life.35
Finally what of her expectations for her future husband, an inevitable preoccupation for a royal princess? It is clear from the glowing terms in which Alfonso speaks of him that Ferdinand’s memory was constantly celebrated and venerated at the Castilian court. To Eleanor, Ferdinand was surely a hero and the perfect Christian knight. We can safely assume she worshipped her father and that, as the question of marriage began to be mooted, what Eleanor would hope fate would bring her would conform roughly to that ideal, possibly along the lines of the following list: tall, handsome, a great king (or one in the making), an intellectual, a sound administrator, a mighty soldier and a Crusader – and with something of a taste for hunting and the arts. Well educated as she was, she surely appreciated that she would be fortunate if half of the items on her wish list were fulfi
lled.
3
The English Side of the Equation
But what about the English side of the equation? What were the personalities and political currents which faced Eleanor on her marriage?
The picture must naturally start at the top, with Henry III. In 1255, when Eleanor was first to meet him, he was forty-eight years old and had been king for nearly forty years, having acceded to the throne in 1216 at the age of just nine, on the death of his father, King John.1
As a king, Henry was in almost all respects highly unsatisfactory. The political story which follows will illustrate why without need for much further explanation. However, he had two limited plus sides: he was a distinguished patron of the Church and of the arts, and he had a talent for showmanship. His taste for and appreciation of beauty and his profound piety induced him to be largely responsible for the magnificent building of Westminster Abbey. He also oversaw extensive redecorations in most of the southern royal palaces, including the Tower of London, which included paintings and carvings of the very highest quality. He adored metal and jewel work, pictures and sculpture; moreover, he had both good taste and an ability to communicate his vision of how things should be done to the many workmen who sought and gained his patronage.2
Eleanor of Castile: The Shadow Queen Page 7
