2
Nearly thirteen years of Eleanor’s life passed before her wedding. According to St Ignatius’ view of education, her nature was formed long before she stepped onto the English stage. And yet before the date of her marriage with Edward we know nothing for certain about Eleanor. There is no record of her date of birth. There are no stories of her childhood. There are no letters by her or about her. She is named by no contemporaneous chronicler. About the only thing of which we can be sure is that she was at her father’s deathbed in 1252. The process of unearthing her childhood is therefore by no means straightforward.
Mercifully, however, Eleanor grew up in a country which was full of activity and which placed a premium on written record. From these records we can piece together three different perspectives on Eleanor’s childhood, each of which will show powerful influences which acted upon her and inevitably affected who she was. The first view we can get is the political record; it is possible to trace in outline the major events which punctuated her childhood and which provided the major talking points of those years. As Eleanor’s family was at the heart of these events, this shows us the circumstances in which she grew up, the major themes which occupied those around her – and the figure which dominated her childhood.
The other two perspectives are essentially cultural. One is broadly so, considering the administrative work which her father, King Ferdinand, was doing, in which his model of kingship and the multicultural aspects of the Iberian peninsula which made Castile such a different place to England, had considerable influence. The third is more intimate: to try to conjure up some kind of picture of the day-to-day life of a princess of thirteenth-century Castile. This can be done predominantly by considering the facts which we do know about her family and the culture of the Castilian court.
The first perspective must start with Eleanor’s own birth. There is no record of the date, simply because it was not a great event in Castile. Ferdinand already had plenty of children, and to the commentators one more was neither here nor there.
Eleanor’s birthdate has traditionally been given as 1244 or even 1246, thus suggesting that she was under ten years of age when married. There are still modern accounts which follow this orthodoxy, but it can now be convincingly rebutted by three pieces of solid evidence which show that Eleanor was in fact born in late 1241 and that she was thus just under thirteen years old at the time of her marriage.
The first piece of evidence as to the date of her birth is the fact that, in 1254, after their marriage, not only did Eleanor accompany Edward to Gascony, but they also set up their own household for about a year, rather than joining his parents in returning to England. It was, of course, absolutely normal practice for underage brides to be handed over to their future families, but the expectation was that they would then be educated and trained in the home of their new parents, rather than commencing married life. Children had to be raised and educated to fill their station in life, and even as they reached canonically marriageable age it appears to have been well appreciated that the risks of early childbirth were to be avoided if possible. Therefore the usual age at which a princess or high-status bride would be expected to enter onto married life was not earlier than fourteen. So to find Eleanor and Edward despatched onto married life with her aged only ten would be almost unheard of.
It would be completely unthinkable given that the queen to whom Eleanor was entrusted was Eleanor of Provence. Edward’s mother has received (in part justifiably) a fairly hard press over the years. However, one positive thing which is quite clear about her is that she was a very caring and dutiful mother, very much beyond the norms of the day. She had herself the unhappy experience of being married at a very young age, having been twelve years old when she was married to Henry III and having suffered from the pressures put on her to produce an heir. There is evidence that she had formed the view that even twelve was a young age for marriage. Therefore, had Eleanor been as young as ten, there is simply no way that she would have been left alone in Gascony for the first year of her marriage.1
The second piece of evidence is an impeccable, near-contemporary record of the birth of a daughter Eleanor to Ferdinand and Jeanne at an earlier date than 1244. Rodrigo of Toledo, who was chancellor of Castile and Ferdinand’s principal adviser for many years, writes in March 1243 in his great work De Rebus Hispaniae that Ferdinand and Jeanne had three children: Ferdinand, Eleanor and Louis. The fact that Eleanor is named second in this list raises a strong inference that she was indeed the second child of the marriage – particularly as it was frequently the case that sons be listed before daughters. The inference that she was the middle child chronologically also appears to be supported by external evidence: there is a three-and-a-half-year gap between the two sons first appearing as witnesses to Castilian royal charters. This rite of passage effectively marked the princes’ emergence into political society and was likely to have been undertaken at more or less the same age. So the fact that Ferdinand first appears in May 1252 and Louis in October 1255 indicates that there was a gap of more than three years in age between them.
The third and perhaps most conclusive piece of evidence for the approximate date of Eleanor’s birth is that at her memorial service in 1291 there was a procession of forty-nine bearers with candles. This being a slightly unusual number, it gives rise to a strong inference that it related to her age at death.2
It is possible to narrow the dates slightly more by considering these last two pieces of evidence together. The evidence of the candles strongly suggests an age at her death of forty-nine and hence of birth in 1241. However, if her age at death on 28 November 1290 was in fact forty-nine this would indicate that Eleanor must have been born before 28 November 1241. Counting back from this date would suggest that Eleanor would have been conceived by about the first week in March 1241. The Castilian evidence shows that it is unlikely that Ferdinand and Jeanne were cohabiting for a period of thirteen months prior to nearly the end of February 1241; he is recorded by the reliable Primera Cronica General (which he part authored) as being resident in Cordoba, assisting the Christian population of that city against the Moors of Seville, and being ‘reunited’ with Jeanne on his return to the north. A baby conceived at this period would be (premature births aside) born in mid- or late November 1241. One can therefore tentatively give Eleanor’s birthdate as somewhere from mid- to late November 1241.
This date also fits in well with what we know about the birth of Louis, whose appearance in the charters in late 1255 suggests a birthdate not later than late 1242, while he is referred to by Roderigo of Toledo as being very young (parvulus) in early 1243.3
As for pinning down an actual day, there is no way of doing this for certain. In the late thirteenth century more mind was paid to the anniversaries of people’s deaths, when memorial services were held, than the anniversaries of their birth. There is therefore no record of birthday celebrations to point the way. The only birthday which appears to rate a mention is ‘Domine Natalis’ – the Lord’s birthday. However, in my view there is some reason to suggest 23 November. This is because, as we shall see, both Edward and Ferdinand were to deliberately schedule important events for this date.
It therefore appears likely that Eleanor’s birth took place at Valladolid, where Ferdinand was staying in the winter of 1241/42. One thing we do know, however: Eleanor was named after her English great-grandmother Eleanor of England, wife of Alfonso VIII and daughter and namesake of Eleanor of Aquitaine.4
The political backdrop to Eleanor’s childhood, and particularly her early childhood before the death of her father, was indubitably predominantly the reconquest of Spain. This was an issue which informed all aspects of life in the Iberian peninsula at this time. Ferdinand’s progress in the 1220s and 1230s has already been outlined. Following Eleanor’s birth, the work of the reconquest still continued apace.
The immediate target in Eleanor’s first years was Murcia, which was taken in 1243 with Alfonso (and likely a good selection of the family) attending for a solemn entry into the city and consecration of the city’s mosque as a cathedral. Thereafter Ferdinand visited Palencia and Toledo, dealing with complaints and abuses raised by their citizens, before returning to Burgos in September for the veiling of his only other daughter, Berengaria, as a nun at the abbey of Las Huelgas.
The next year he was back on campaign, leading the attack on the territories round Jaén and besieging Arjona, which fell, along with Mula and Lorca, in the course of the year. During the course of campaigning he broke off to visit Andjar to see Queen Jeanne and escort her to Cordoba, where she lived during the Siege of Jaén, which continued until 1246. In 1245, with the siege still ongoing, Ferdinand took Cartagena. Jaén itself was finally taken in April 1246 and Ferdinand was substantially based there for eight months afterwards, ‘ensuring the prosperity and security’ of the newly conquered territory.5
Meanwhile, the formidable Berengaria died in early November 1246. She was buried alongside her parents, Alfonso VIII and Eleanor of England, and in the sight of her eldest granddaughter at the abbey of Las Huelgas. Eleanor will almost certainly have attended her deathbed and funeral, and while (still being aged under five) her personal memories of her grandmother will have been vague, the honour in which Berengaria continued to be held by the entire royal family will have ensured that she was presented to Eleanor throughout her childhood as a paradigm of what a Castilian princess should be: intelligent, capable, astute, regardless of self in her devotion to her duty and fiercely loyal to her family. For instance, Berengaria is recalled in the Primera Cronica General as ‘a very wise lady and a great expert and sharp in political affairs and [who] understood the risks of government’.6
Once Jaén was settled, the primary focus for Ferdinand and his elder sons, who had by now joined him on campaign, was the conquest of Seville. This occupied the majority of attention throughout 1247, although Guillena and Gerena were taken in 1247 with the support of the Emir of Granada, now a vassal of Castile. Seville was at this time the largest, most populous and best-defended town in Spain, with a ring of defensive fortresses and state-of-the-art twelfth-century walls and moats. Consequently its conquest was a long and bitter fight. For the defenders there were all the horrors of famine within the city as the siege tightened; accounts describe the defenders eating leather once all food had run out, and emerging with their health utterly shattered. And, lest anyone think that in Ferdinand’s family campaigning was a spectator sport, the accounts left by Alfonso X of his own direct involvement are supported by the death, during the fighting for Seville, of Ferdinand’s third son, the twenty-three-year-old Fernando.
By the latter months of 1248, however, the end was in sight. On 23 November 1248, terms of capitulation were signed. This was probably deliberately timed to coincide with Alfonso’s twenty-seventh birthday, but it is possible that it also coincided with Eleanor’s seventh birthday, which must have fallen very close indeed to this date. On 22 December, Ferdinand, carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary, made his formal entry into the city – symbolically and again doubtless designedly, on the feast day of the translation of St Isidore, Seville’s patron saint. The entire royal family and Peter, the brother of the King of Portugal, were present for the procession to the mosque. Like the mosque at Cordoba, this was now reconsecrated as a cathedral. This day, marking her father’s great triumph and attended by the entirety of her family, will undoubtedly have been one of the high points of Eleanor’s childhood.
Following the conquest of Seville Ferdinand made that city his base, superintending the works which he had in hand there and, in essence, attempting to remake this major city as an equally affluent Christian city. This was a considerable administrative process involving legal reforms (to which we shall return), granting houses and lands to suitable settlers and bringing artisans to work there, as well as building bridges with the existing community and the flourishing resident Jewish community there.7
At the start of December 1249, Eleanor’s eldest brother, Alfonso, was married to Yolande/Violante of Aragon at Valladolid. For future reference the latter name, which seems to suit her temperament better, will be used. This was an event at which Ferdinand was accompanied by Queen Jeanne. It is likely that Eleanor, too, will have been present on this occasion.
The year 1250 marked a return to campaigning; Ferdinand and his troops took swathes of towns near the Guadalquivir and Guadalete rivers. By winter he was starting to plan a North African Crusade, since, with the treaty of truce and co-operation concluded with the Emir of Granada and functioning well, there essentially remained nothing to conquer at home. Ferdinand was again generally in Seville for the years 1248–51, except when dealing with the pacification and security of the towns recently taken. It seems very probable that Queen Jeanne was likewise based there and that between the ages of seven and ten Eleanor, now of an age to be more at court, will likewise have spent the majority of her time there.
However, in the spring of 1252 King Ferdinand became ill with dropsy, which apparently progressed rapidly. The cause of these dropsical symptoms is unknown, but with heart problems evidenced in the Castilian royal family this seems a likely cause. By the end of May Ferdinand was plainly nearing his death and the entire family was called to his deathbed at Seville. Alfonso X left a detailed account of this event, which he says was attended by all Ferdinand’s children except Sancho, the nineteen-year-old Archbishop of Toledo, who was unable to attend; possibly because he was still studying at university in Paris. The Primera Cronica General actually mentions Eleanor and her brothers by name as being present.8
Ferdinand was confessed and then asked to be stripped of the trappings of royalty and to adopt a penitent’s clothing. Having done that, he called his queen and children around him. Ferdinand blessed Alfonso first and then each of his other children in order of age, making the sign of the cross over them and making them answer ‘Amen’ to his blessing. To Alfonso he gave a more detailed charges than to the rest. Three points in his instructions are of particular interest. First, he urged him to stand in place of a father to his siblings and to procure for each an establishment worthy of their birth. Secondly, he exhorted him to hold Queen Jeanne in the same affection and respect as if she were his own mother and give her all honours due to her; a pointed injunction which reflected certain disputes which had already arisen between the two.
He thirdly, and again rather pointedly, gave his charge for the future to Alfonso, saying,
I leave you all the lands on this side of the sea which the Moors won … one part of it conquered and one part laid under tribute. If you should manage to hold it all … then you are as good a king as I; and if you should enlarge it, you are better than I; and if you should lose any of it, you are not as good as I.
Ferdinand died on 30 May 1252. On 1 June his body was transferred from the Alcazar of Seville to the church of Santa Maria, where it was buried two days later beneath the statue of the Virgin Mary which he had carried into the city on his triumphal entry in 1248. On the same day Alfonso was acclaimed as King Alfonso X of Spain and accession celebrations were held in the Alcazar.9
The mourning for Ferdinand was widespread and seems to have been very genuine. The successes which he had achieved in the reconquest placed him at the forefront of Spanish warlike kings – indeed, of warlike kings worldwide. His respect for justice and his personal affability made him well respected even by those who had been his enemies, such as the Emir of Granada, who had become his loyal ally. Formally, he was remembered annually with a memorial service. Informally, it appears that his memory was constantly in the minds of his family.
The main events of Eleanor’s childhood thus have a predominant theme – war – and a predominant figure – her father. The death of Ferdinand offers a good perspective from which to judge the way in which he would have been seen by his daughter and the influence he would have on her as she grew up. The victories which he won were the fabric of her childhood. They should by no means be understated; they certainly were not by contemporaries or by historians. The achievements of Ferdinand as a campaigner were very significant indeed. He is still regarded as one of the great soldier kings of history, particularly in Spain where his feast day is still observed on the anniversary of his death, and his beatification was at least in part as a Crusader, the reconquest having been given Crusade status.
In practical terms his conquests added enormously to the size and the prestige of Castile; in effect, on his watch Castile expanded from covering a seventh of the peninsula to sprawling across the larger part of it, including gaining a corridor to the Mediterranean at Murcia. As for the national impact of the reconquest which Ferdinand achieved, even the somewhat terse Primera Cronica General confirms the sense of national fulfilment in the detail with which it recounts the entry into Seville and the terms in which it lauds the ‘sancto et noble et bienauenturado rey’. Further confirmation of the international repute which Ferdinand gained as a result of his conquests comes from the lips of the usually tart English chronicler Matthew Paris, who declared of Ferdinand ‘that king has done more for the honour and profit of Christ’s church than the pope and all his Crusaders … and all the Templars and Hospitallers’.
It is therefore inevitable that Ferdinand’s achievements, revered not just throughout his country but through Europe, would have been impressed on Eleanor from a young age. Equally it seems certain that, coming from a country with a warlike past and present and with a father famed around the world as a military leader, she would regard the business of war as being a central part of a king’s job.
Ferdinand’s influence will not have stopped there. Aside from his qualities as a warrior, Ferdinand was plainly an impressive personality. A Muslim writer, who obviously had no cause to think well of Ferdinand, described him as ‘a kind man with great political sense’. Alfonso, whose relationship with his father was not always smooth, described him as a handsome man with truly regal presence, well spoken and courtly as well as decisive, knowing the moment to act. The reference to his regal presence may well refer in part to his height; certainly at least one of his grandsons overtopped six feet two.10
Alfonso’s verdict also speaks to his good manners; but Alfonso’s experience of him, as well as that of his opponents, pays eloquent testimony to the iron fist in the velvet glove. A good example is the deathbed exchange recorded between the two above; Ferdinand’s guidance to his son was interesting and somewhat chilling. It shows a clear sense that goals had to be set and aspired to and that even kings had to be judged by their achievements.
This brings us to the second aspect of the life which Eleanor lived as a child: her opportunities to study the business of kingship at close range. One respect in which Ferdinand appears to have excelled as a ruler is in understanding the limits of military success unless consolidated with a view to peace. In this there is a surprising contrast with his bookish son Alfonso, who might rather be expected to emphasise this aspect. As can be seen from the outline above, each conquest made by Ferdinand appears to have been followed by a period of administrative activity while the new conquest was resettled and brought somewhat into line with the existing territories. Thus, after the conquest of Jaén he spent eight months there, turning the mosque into a cathedral, repairing fortifications, planning the next stage of the campaign and establishing privileges for Christian colonists. After the conquest of the important city of Seville, he spent at least a year on the business of resettlement and made it his base for the remainder of his life. At each of these administrative halts it is inevitable the court and his family would have assembled and spent time in the new location. Eleanor would thus have had a front-row seat to appreciate how the administrative business of kingship and conquest might be done.
What would Eleanor have seen? Under Ferdinand, the business of administration proceeded on a twofold basis. The first and most pressing part concerned the defence and population of the added lands. His technique here was to act quickly to place fortified sites – as well as certain civic and strategic buildings – under royal control, to increase or improve on their defensive capabilities where necessary, to distribute land among a range of his victorious troops and to introduce laws and incentives designed to facilitate permanent settlement by the Castilians in his train and other future economic migrants.11
The second part related to attempting to bring the legal systems in the various territories onto a similar footing to that in his existing Castilian lands. It would appear that Ferdinand appreciated that this was a matter which had to be approached sensitively, and it is here, in particular, that his sense seems to have exceeded that of his son. The law prevailing in the Iberian peninsula at the time had its source in the survival, after the Muslim invasion, of a modified version of the Visigothic Liber Judiciorum, which, crucially, appeared under different variations in different regions. Ferdinand’s technique was to grant (or impose) a specific fuero (a code or charter of privileges) to localities that lacked a known juridical tradition or whose laws were confused. But – and this is a key point – he would tend to select the fuero to be applied so as to reflect differences required by local circumstances. Thus, while limiting the degree of legal disparity among the various municipal codes, he made the imposition of new laws easier to swallow by respecting certain local aspects of the existing laws. So there were in operation in different localities the Fuero Juzgo as operated at Toledo, the Fuero Cuenca and the fuero of Cordoba.12
Ferdinand was also a thinker on the subject of the role and duties of kingship. He was the initiator and probable part author of the Setenario or ‘mirror for princes’ which was the forerunner of Alfonso’s more famous Siete Partidas. Both reflect an elevated view of the role of kingship and of the duties of a king, being intended as a didactic tool to assist the king in doing good and avoiding evil. After his death Alfonso continued his father’s work, writing extensively on the duties of a king. In particular he describes justice as the ‘mother of all good’, which unites men and says that a king should not desire to do anything contrary to law, referencing Justinian – ‘whatever he could do with justice constituted his power’ – and Solomon – ‘ a king who is just and loves justice governs his country and he who is too covetous destroys it’. Therefore during the course of her childhood Eleanor will have heard plenty of discussion on the subject of the nature of and requirements of kingship and will have imbibed the views that a king should be actively engaged in the promotion of justice, that he should do nothing contrary to right and that he should be involved in the making of good laws designed to promote the prosperity of the realm.13
The debate about legal systems and modes of kingship was a manifestation of a more fundamental aspect of life in Castile, which was in stark contrast to the world which Eleanor would find when she left the country on her marriage. In England and France stable boundaries and relatively peaceful times had enabled the development of a more structured society. The Iberian peninsula, by contrast, had been a mass of shifting borders for centuries. Castile, which had become an independent country fairly recently in the course of the struggle, was particularly geared to constant warfare and shifting of frontiers. It has in fact been repeatedly described as ‘a society organised for war’. Indeed, it was the castles which accompanied the warfare in the peninsula which gave Castile its name – and its coat of arms. Big, brutal red-brick and stone castles of the most functional variety were common, and while some were essentially trading and administrative bases, many were built for defence, or to mark the attacking line of the war as Castile advanced.
Reflecting this warlike emphasis, the kings of Castile thought also about military theory; in particular, in Part II of the Siete Partidas they set out a series of injunctions about military practice, which demonstrate that the work of the Roman writer Vegetius, whose work De Re Militarii was a handbook of best military practice probably compiled for the Emperor Theodosius, had been thoroughly studied and approved in Castilian military circles.14
Another effect of the pre-eminence of warfare was that in a number of respects Castilian society was much more fluid than was the case in other European monarchies. While noble rank and privileges were, here as elsewhere, largely for the warrior caste, the fact that more of the population was involved in warfare enabled more people to have access to joining the noble caste. In addition, the process of reconquest and its economic imperatives had forced the Catholics of Spain into close contact with Muslims and Jews and enabled them to see at first hand that these religious minorities were about as far from being ignorant or uncivilised as it was possible to be.
As regards the Muslim invaders, they had centuries before established in southern Spain an advanced agrarian economy involving complex irrigation systems which were novelties in Europe. Such innovations had given rise to prosperous towns and cities. For example Cordoba, often described by Arab historians as ‘the jewel of the world’, was the largest town in Western Europe, with a population of at least 100,000 in the thirteenth century – and this total was considerably down from its apogee when it reputedly accommodated 500,000 – a figure, it should be noted, that London did not attain until the eighteenth century.
The Muslims in Andalucia also had a much stronger intellectual heritage than did the Christian nations. Islam’s conquests of former centres of the Roman Empire had ensured that it was the heir to the knowledge of Europe’s Greco-Roman past – not least in terms of custody of books. All sorts of knowledge that would otherwise have been lost was saved, guarded and worked upon by Muslim scholars. For the rulers of Andalucia in the ninth to twelfth centuries did not just save the books, they patronised intellectuals and learning to a liberal extent. The result was that in the late twelfth century and early thirteenth century, if you wanted a piece of out-of-the-way knowledge, you were best to look for it in the libraries of the Iberian peninsula; in the thirteenth century, Gerard of Grenoble went to Toledo when he wanted to get hold of a fundamental work on astrology by the Greek astrologer Almaget. Castile was therefore a treasure house of intellectual resources.15
Nor was Muslim culture the only thriving culture in the peninsula. There was also a flourishing Jewish population both in Castile and in the reconquered Muslim territories. Overall, the Muslim incursion was probably a factor in pushing Christian–Jewish relations into a much more congenial framework than in any other country. But also in reconquered territories Christians, Muslims and Jews had already been living together in relative harmony – a tradition of convivencia wherein the Muslim rulers had offered both Jewish and Christian minorities considerable opportunities to flourish and to take part in public life. Overall, there was a closer and warmer relationship between Christians and Jews than was found elsewhere in Europe. Formally, as elsewhere, the Jewish population were the property of the Crown, and modern writers have suggested that convivencia was a mere fig leaf which does not do away with the reality of legal dependency. Yet a contemporary Jewish writer stated that in affairs of everyday life this vassalage was hardly felt. The Jewish population was well established and prosperous in a number of Castilian towns.16
From this population came a number of very well-to-do and well-educated men who distinguished themselves in the royal service. One example very close to home is that Queen Jeanne’s own personal physician was Jewish. However, there are records of many other Jewish luminaries at the courts of Ferdinand III and Alfonso X in the roles of advisers, secretaries and even ambassadors – operating at such a high level that they were gifted by the Crown with lands including houses, vineyards, olive groves, fields and mills – all in perpetuity and under their absolute control. For example, Eleanor’s brother Alfonso gifted the whole of a prosperous village called Paterna Harah outside Seville to a number of his favoured Jewish officials.
One particularly notable example may be given: Don Sol ibn Zadok of Toledo (Don Culema) was entrusted by Ferdinand III with collecting the tribute to be paid by the King of Granada, and later become both chief tax collector and ambassador under Alfonso X. On his death his extensive property included vineyards, olive groves, houses and warehouses ‘full of goods’ scattered throughout Seville, Carmona, Ecija and Toledo. His son Don Isaac thereafter became Alfonso’s chief financier until 1278. These men were true courtiers, with their own retinues, and were treated with great respect by the Christian community who feted them as men of great wealth and influence. So Todros Ben Judah Halevi describes a journey with Don Isaac and his retinue, travelling in regal style, showered with gifts by interested parties and dancing with well-born young ladies.17
Castilian kings had also encouraged Jewish businessmen to act as the vanguard of resettlement in recently reconquered areas, for example by the granting of tax breaks. More generally, the Castilian monarchs fought the corner of their Jewish subjects against papal interference. One particular bone of contention was the requirement under the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1213 that Jews wear clothing to distinguish them from Christians. This was opposed both by Ferdinand III and Cardinal Archbishop Roderigo of Toledo; interestingly, however, and chiming with the modern doubters of convivencia, they did so effectively on economic grounds. The Jews, they said, would simply move to Muslim territories and take their affluence with them. The result was a concession in 1219 that exempted the Jews of Castile from the requirement to wear a distinguishing mark.
The second vista over Eleanor’s childhood therefore shows us a world in which she saw the role of a king as both a soldier and as an administrator in the interests of the nation. The well-being of the country and the development of a cohesive national spirit was key. And, in this cause, interaction with those of other faiths as a matter of business or in the realm of the intellect was a matter of small moment.18
The third perspective over Eleanor’s life concerns the actual day-to-day surroundings and doings of her life.
It appears highly likely that her earliest memories were formed at least in part on campaign. As we have seen, Ferdinand was busy about the business of reconquest during this period. It appears that Jeanne accompanied Ferdinand on campaign most of the time, as his first wife Beatriz had also done and as Berengaria had done with both her husband and her son. Jeanne’s presence is specifically recorded in Andalucia in 1244 despite a perilous military situation; she was moved nearer to the field of operations in 1246 and she is also recorded living in camp at the Siege of Seville in 1248. One of Ferdinand’s biographers reports that he did not like to separate himself from Jeanne but took her on campaign and installed her somewhere safe but near enough the battlefield for him to visit. This, of course, would be entirely in keeping with Berengaria’s desire to ensure that Ferdinand did not ‘lower the tone’ of his reign by taking up with mistresses. While it is unlikely that the principle that an accompanied husband is less likely to stray would have been actively present to Eleanor’s mind in her early years, the idea of royalty – including royal women – on campaign would certainly have been a part of Eleanor’s accepted norms.
Whether we can conclude from this that Eleanor herself was directly familiar with the exigencies of campaign other than from passing visits is less certain. It is well established that in general children of royal and noble houses in this period were not likely to enjoy anything which the modern reader would recognise as ‘quality time’ with their parents. In their early years at least, contact was likely to be periodic and relatively formal. In addition, frequently children were substantially raised away from their parents, in an environment which was thought likely to maximise their chances of survival, since courts were justifiably considered in general unhelpful to this aim. However, the details of such fostering, even for royal heirs, are extraordinarily scanty; to use a case in point we have almost no material about Edward I’s upbringing and in particular his early years; and equally scholars lament the black hole of information about the early years and education of Alfonso X. What is known is that Ferdinand’s sons were brought up by surrogates in spartan conditions far from home; the future Alfonso X (later accompanied by his siblings) was sent to be raised in the Arlanzon lowlands near Burgos to ensure a healthy upbringing and direct contact with the people he was to rule. This served a dual purpose – the healthy upbringing in the country was there to promote survival, and the spartan conditions as a reflection of the warrior mindset of Castile, where pampered princes were not welcome.
It is doubtful that Eleanor, whose upbringing was not required to produce a warrior, was sent to the same spot as that chosen for Alfonso and the other sons, but it is quite likely that her early years were spent substantially in some pleasant country spot under the supervision of a governor, very likely with other royal or semi-royal children as part of the household. However, it is almost inevitable that she would, during a long campaign, have made visits to her parents in camp, and may well have moved her main residence to be within easy distance of operations. One way or another, therefore, we can be confident that she would have been familiar with the dislocations of campaigning, and also intimately familiar with military camps.
But equally she saw a life of almost unimaginable luxury. The campaigns were punctuated by stops in the major towns of Castile and Jeanne is attested spending considerable periods of time both at Cordoba and Seville. The former was not only huge by medieval standards, but had many beautiful fountains and hundreds of public baths; the figures range from around 300 to 900. Its streets were paved. At night they were lit and patrolled by guardians of the peace, a system not introduced in England until the nineteenth century. The cathedral-mosque is still regarded as one of the beauties of the world, with UNESCO World Heritage Site status, and was still more so until defaced by the sixteenth-century renovation which so appalled Emperor Charles V. Commentators speak breathlessly of the forest of multi-coloured columns of jasper, granite, onyx and marble, supporting red-and-white arches inspired by the Dome of the Rock, of the intricate decoration and of the beautiful courtyard. The markets of the city were plentiful, offering a wealth of meats and fruits: oranges and lemons, of course, but also figs, cherries, pomegranates, pears and apples. In addition spices, nuts and herbs were abundant. All in all, such was the reputation of Cordoba as a prosperous area that when it was reconquered, it was inundated with Spanish settlers.19
Seville, the Almohad centre of culture and development for the century previous to its conquest, was also comfortably more affluent and artistically brilliant than any Christian town in Europe. It had been on the receiving end of a huge programme of building and improvements including palaces, towers, quays and dykes, a repaired and improved Roman aqueduct, and extensive and busy warehouses on the bank of the river, served by vessels from all around the world. Its defences had been entirely reconstructed and two magnificent centrepiece buildings had been completed within the last century. The first was the Alcazar, commenced in 1171, guarded by a tower of gold on the banks of the river. The second was the mosque (later the cathedral), built in the last thirty years of the twelfth century, which rivalled even that of Cordoba. It boasted walls painted many colours and embellished with Persian battlements and arcades and it looked onto a courtyard planted with orange trees, which combined their fragrance with the sound of constantly playing fountains. Inside the viewer was overwhelmed by the sight of hundreds of marble columns ascending to a roof comprising domes of wood and stucco, elaborately decorated. The interior was further blessed with gilded mosaic pavements and elaborate alabaster lattices. More generally, the Arab writers of the time praised Seville for its luxury and plenty, overflowing with fine foods, lovely women, talented musicians and poets. Indeed, so well provided was it that it gave rise to a proverb: ‘If you were to ask for bird’s milk in Seville you would be able to get it.’20
So, although on the whole detailed records do not survive of the design and decorations of the palaces which fell to Ferdinand as part of the Reconquista, we can therefore expect that they too would have been ravishingly beautiful and boasted the last word in modern luxuries. Elegant palaces which took the local Hispano-Roman and Visigothic idiom and transformed it with subtle shifts of elevation and complex decoration, courtyards of finest white marble, stucco latticework of the most breathtaking complexity, delicate friezes in Kufic script, running water, luxurious baths and jewel-bright ceramic tiles – all were present and would have been familiar to Eleanor.
But what is certain about these palaces is that they had the most amazing gardens, and in particular water gardens; gardens marked out with flowing streams of water, derived from the sixth-century Persian concept of the ‘paradise’ (pairidaiza), a walled garden with a water axis. While in Spain the gardens were some way short of the full wonder achieved further east, the records show clearly that beautiful gardens did exist, principally of two sorts: the ‘pavilion on pool’ type and the ‘courtyard with a central pool’ type.
The palace at Seville inherited a wonderful set of Islamic gardens from its former owners. Records survive of one part of the gardens of the Alcazar of Seville where a sunken bed surrounded four watercourses which came to meet in a central circular pool – those four watercourses being designed to echo the supposed four rivers of Eden, a not unusual concept in Islamic gardens and one which was known as chahar bagh. As modern commentators have noted, this assists the viewer in perceiving the space around him or her; thus the garden is not merely beautiful, it is also harmonious and inspires a sense of peace and relaxation. This sense of harmony would be contributed to in many cases by the use of topiary, with trees trained and clipped into double or triple decked shapes and arranged in geometric patterns.21
Other wonderful ideas were also deployed. Recent excavations have revealed in the Alcazar gardens another garden, the patio of the Qasr al-Mubarak, with parterres 5 feet below the water channels and with the walls beneath shaped into a continuous arcade which was stuccoed and painted. Thus a person walking on the path, or seated in the pavilion which overlooked it, would be above the flower bushes and even, possibly, the fruit trees, but walking below among the trees there would be cool shade and beautifully decorated walls, with the sound of water all around. The effect of the sunken beds next to the watercourses would be, when viewed from above, to give the effect of a live carpet. The full effect of these breathtaking gardens has not survived; for example the existing, much-lauded, Patio of the Doncellas at Seville gives only the most distant impression of the loveliness of the earlier gardens.22
Sometimes the use of water would not simply be confined to simple flowing streams; fountains, and chutes involving noria or waterwheels would be included to enable water to be moved from a lower level and then tipped out on a higher level, to demonstrate man’s mastery over this most valuable of commodities. Such devices were apparently very popular in Spain, being mentioned in poems as giving sounds like the wails of parted lovers. Less poetic descriptions liken the sound to a distressed camel.
Still more wonderful features appeared in some gardens; the garden at Toledo of Ismail al-Mamun, which may have survived to Eleanor’s day, had a gold-encrusted stained-glass pavilion at the centre of a lake which could be covered in a cascade of water. Another very common feature in Islamic gardens was the use of ‘zoomorphic’ fountains: fountains shaped like animals, often lions. The Fountain of the Lions in the Alhambra, which may date in part to the eleventh century, is one example, but there was another at the Munyat al-Naura near Cordoba which boasted a gilded lion fountain with jewelled eyes, the water entering at the back of the lion and cascading from his mouth.23
Eleanor thus grew up among wonderfully lovely gardens designed to create a sense of harmony by considered use of the features of shade, scent, formal planting and flowing water. A description of the effect is given in relation to a famous garden in Cordoba:
The courtyard is of pure white marble, the stream traverses it, wriggling like a snake. There is a basin into which all waters fall. The roof [of the pavilion] is decorated in gold and blue and in these colours are decorated the sides and various parts. The garden has files of trees symmetrically aligned and its flowers smile from open buds. The foliage of the garden prevents the sun seeing the ground; and the breeze, blowing day and night over the garden is loaded with scents.24
If these were the external surroundings which formed Eleanor’s horizons as a child, what of the other aspects of a child’s life – family, education, play? We can come to some conclusions on this from looking at the childhood of the most prominent of her siblings, Alfonso X. His biographers note that his early spartan rearing was tempered by family security, extensive education and cultural opportunities, and that while he served an apprenticeship in war from a relatively young age he was also allowed much time for affairs of the mind. These factors, all important in a child’s experience, can be considered in turn.
The mention of ‘family security’ indicates that the royal family did at least meet as such on a regular basis. The closeness of the family bond implied by this phrase should perhaps not be overstated, given the quite spectacular, not to say murderous, way in which the sons of Ferdinand fell out in later years. However, there were plenty of members of the family with whom to form a relationship.
In the context of Eleanor’s experience of family, one point should be noted; the immediate family who would have been at least in regular attendance at court was predominantly male. Only one of Ferdinand’s daughters by his first marriage survived into adulthood, and, as noted above, she became a nun at Las Huelgas not long after Eleanor’s birth, having been resident there for much of her childhood after a miraculous escape from death. By contrast, Ferdinand’s sons almost all survived to adulthood. Her formidable grandmother died before Eleanor was five years old. Accordingly, it is unlikely that her childhood was one which was dominated by female ties, although she may well have been close to one cousin, Beatriz, who was very nearly the same age. It is correspondingly likely that she learnt to interact well with boys and young men from a young age and, given the warlike society of her country, that she learnt to appreciate the preoccupations of the warrior male.25
Among her brothers, her closest contacts would probably have been with the older ones rather than the younger ones, as the younger ones would be largely being raised away from court in a different location to her. Thus, her eldest half-brother, Alfonso, already twenty at the time of her birth, was an integral part of the campaign team and would be seen whenever she visited. Likewise, her next brother, Fernando, formed a part of the command structure until his death in 1248 and the third, Fadrique, was finishing his training in arms also. The other brothers who would be likely to have been close contacts are Enrique and Sancho, who were respectively ten years and eight years her senior and would have emerged from the schoolroom by the time she was old enough to form impressions. Hindsight confirms that these brothers were her closest contacts; they are the only siblings who ever visited Eleanor in England after her marriage, and it is with regard to these brothers and Fadrique that she appears to have exercised her influence both with Alfonso and elsewhere in later life.
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 chivalryAmadis 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 their 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 fulfilled.