individual in the government of the Angevin Empire,
but the evidence for her infl uence is slight. Narrative
sources deal mainly with the kings, and she appears
fl eetingly in them. Few charters are extant from Poitou,
which Eleanor governed in the 1160s and 1180s. In
other areas of the Angevin Empire, where more charters
survive, she attested infrequently—a refl ection, perhaps,
of the time spent early on bearing children and her long
interval of imprisonment.
Eleanor supported Henry II’s early endeavors to
expand and control Angevin lands and, later, her sons’
revolts against their father to obtain portions of those
lands; her independent policies are diffi cult to trace. Her
cultural infl uence may have been pervasive, however.
The movement of her court from southern to northern
France and England helped convey the ideals of courtly
love to the European nobility. Romantic themes found
full literary expression at the court of her daughter,
Marie countess of Champagne, who sponsored the work
of Chrétien de Troyes, and in her son Richard the Lion-
heart, whose love songs were sung throughout France.
Thus Eleanor is often viewed as a mirror of her
husbands’ and sons’ achievements. It is perhaps more
instructive to view her condition as fairly typical of
women of the upper nobility in the high Middle Ages.
Despite her talent and strength of character her key
roles involved bearing children and the transfer of land.
Married at fi fteen, she lost her fi rst child when he was
three years old, and she bore her last, John, in what was
likely to have been a diffi cult pregnancy, at 44. Her will-
ful nature embarrassed Louis VII, incurred the censure
of his clerical friends, and may have brought about
their divorce after fi fteen years of marriage (1137–52),
although there is some suggestion that Eleanor herself
engineered the split.
She protested the infi delity of her second husband,
Henry, whom she married at 30 (when he was only 19)
and to whom she would be wife for 37 years (1152–89).
This audacity, together with her power over her children
and her infl uence in Aquitaine and at the English and
Angevin courts, resulted in imprisonment at Winchester
for sixteen years (1173–89, when Henry died). After re-
gaining her freedom she acted as regent for both Richard
and John, realizing her potential only in widowhood.
Eleanor’s acts involved a reversal of Henrys oppres-
sion—amnesty for those awaiting judicial trial and a
relaxing of obligations imposed on abbeys—as well as
patronage. She protected Richard’s interests against the
ambitions of France’s Philip Augustus and Prince John.
Then, when Richard died in 1199, Eleanor undertook
goodwill visits on John’s behalf. Toward the end of her
life, dispirited and worn, she took up residence at the
Angevin abbey of Fontevrault, where she is buried.
See also Guilhem IX; Henry II; John; Richard IFurther Reading
Duby, Georges. Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-
Century France. Trans. Elborg Forster. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1978.
Kelly, Amy. Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1950.
Warren, W.L. Henry II. Rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1991.
Stephanie ChristelowELISABETH VON SCHÖNAU (1129–1164)
A Benedictine nun, visionary, mystic, and women’s
magistra (teacher) in the double monastery of Schönau
near St. Goarshausen, Elisabeth was strongly infl uenced
by Hildegard von Bingen and yet her accomplishments
were very different in scope and originality from the
renowned contemporary visionary. Elisabeth’s ecstasies,
visions, and auditions started in 1152. In her visions,
which were always accompanied by physical and mental
suffering, Elisabeth sees herself guided by an angel.
Although she had begun to set down her own spiri-
tual experiences in writing, in 1155 Elisabeth asked her
brother, Ekbert (the author of Sermones contra Catha-
ros, “Sermons against the Cathars,” and later the abbot of
Schönau), to join her at Schönau as her personal adviser
and scribe. Much of her text, including some of her lessELISABETH VON SCHÖNAUEleanor of Aquitane. Died 1204 in Fontevrault, France.
Tombs of the Plantagenet Kings. 13th c. © Erich Lessing/Art
Resources, New York.