Summary of Alison Weir's Eleanor Of Aquitaine

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 Feudal Europe was a military society dominated by men. Christianity governed the lives of everyone in feudal Europe, and the Pope’s decrees were ultimate authority for all spiritual and moral matters. Women had little place in this society.

#2 Eleanor of Aquitaine was heiress to one of the richest domains in mediaeval Europe. In the twelfth century, the county of Poitou and the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony covered a vast region in the southwest of what is now France, encompassing all the land between the River Loire in the north and the Pyrenees in the south.

#3 The region of Aquitaine was rich in resources, and its people were diverse and rich. It was a land of small walled cities, fortified keeps, moated castles, and wealthy monasteries. However, its rulers could not extend their power into the feudal wilderness beyond Poitiers.

#4 Eleanor was the daughter of a noble race. She was the first of a number of strong-minded women in the ducal family tree. She married a man named William, who was the first of a number of strong-minded men in the ducal family tree.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669352709

IRB Media

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Insights on Alison Weir's Eleanor of Aquitaine

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Feudal Europe was a military society dominated by men. Christianity governed the lives of everyone in feudal Europe, and the Pope’s decrees were ultimate authority for all spiritual and moral matters. Women had little place in this society.

#2

Eleanor of Aquitaine was heiress to one of the richest domains in mediaeval Europe. In the twelfth century, the county of Poitou and the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony covered a vast region in the southwest of what is now France, encompassing all the land between the River Loire in the north and the Pyrenees in the south.

#3

The region of Aquitaine was rich in resources, and its people were diverse and rich. It was a land of small walled cities, fortified keeps, moated castles, and wealthy monasteries. However, its rulers could not extend their power into the feudal wilderness beyond Poitiers.

#4

Eleanor was the daughter of a noble race. She was the first of a number of strong-minded women in the ducal family tree. She married a man named William, who was the first of a number of strong-minded men in the ducal family tree.

#5

The courtly love precepts were first developed by the poets of the south, the troubadours, in the twelfth century. They deified women, and laid down codes of courtesy, chivalry, and gentlemanly conduct. These ideals were to be echoed in the lays of the trouvères of northern France.

#6

The ideals of courtly love were at odds with contemporary notions of courtship and marriage, and were taken very seriously in the southern French culture of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s descendants.

#7

The Duke of Toulouse, William IX, led an army of 100,000 crusaders to the East in 1096. He was shocked by the Turks at Heraclea, and returned home to write poems about the exotic delights of the eastern courts.

#8

The Order of Fontevrault was a religious community that was founded by Robert d’Arbrissel in 1100. It was a revolutionary arrangement for its time, as it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and was led by an abbess. It became very popular with aristocratic ladies who wanted to retire or temporarily retreat from the world.

#9

The Duke had a passionate affair with the wife of his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault, named Dangerosa. When Philippa returned from a visit to Toulouse, she was shocked at what she found. She begged the papal legate to remonstrate with William, but it was useless.

#10

In 1127, William IX died, and his son, William X, inherited his domains. However, the ducal authority had been so weakened that it was difficult to govern. The Church was also torn by schism in 1130, with rival popes claiming the throne of St. Peter.

#11

Eleanor was raised in a feudal society, where women were treated as second class citizens. The Church Fathers, who followed St. Paul in preaching that a woman’s role was to learn in silence and be subject to her husband at home, supported this subjugation.

#12

Eleanor of Aquitaine was a notable exception to the rule that girls of good birth were not taught to read and write. She was taught to read in