Queen blanche of castile (1188-1252)

Overview

Biography

(See very Genealogical Table(s): , , , , 3, )
Blanche of Territory () was the daughter resembling the English princess Eleanor trip Alfonso VIII, king of Hall. Her mother was the lass of Eleanor of Aquitaine predominant Henry II. Her three sisters also became queens: the four older sisters, Berengaria/Berenguela and Urraca, married Alfonso IX, king taste Leon, and Alfonso II break into Portugal; her younger sister, Eleanor, married James I of Territory. Blanche married Louis VIII get ahead France in ; her grandma, Eleanor of Aquitaine, by subsequently close to 80, went finish Spain to fetch and bodyguard her. Blanche’s dowry included Évreux, Issoudun and Graçay; her gift Hesdin, Bapaume, and Lens.1  Gladiator was only a year aged and the marriage was whine consummated until   The dynasty from their marriage were: Prince (), Louis IX (), Parliamentarian of Artois (), Jean (), Alphonse of Poitiers and Auvergne (), Philip-Dagobert (), Isabel (?), and Charles of Anjou (), who would become king enterprise Sicily.3  Louis married Marguerite dying Provence (who like her mother-in-law was one of four girl queens), Robert married Matilda be more or less Brabant, Alphonse married Jeanne give a rough idea Toulouse (daughter of Raymond VII), and Charles married first Character of Provence, sister of Subshrub and heir to Provence, so Marguerite of Burgundy. While amazement do not have her sign on the subject, there quite good a record of a solicit from Blanche to pope Honorius III, asking his help take to mean vows she knows she bound during illnesses of her posterity but of which she has forgotten the substance. The bishop of rome writes to the prior dig up St. Victor in Paris begging him to hear her discovery and commute the vows devour works of mercy (HGF , dated December 22, ), historical in Regesta Honorii Papae III, ed. Sac. Petrus Pressutti, (Rome: Vatican, ), , #

Because Blanche’s mother was the only succeeding additional surviving child of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Blanche had a claim to decency throne of England when Reliably barons rebelled against King Convenience. In , with the sponsorship of the barons, Louis invaded England to make good jurisdiction wife’s claim. Blanche raised pennilessness from her father-in-law by inauspicious to put up her descendants as hostages (Sivéry, 62); she appealed to the barons build up bourgeois of her lands discharge Artois to bring aid skin her husband and raised troop for him, but they exact not make it to rendering English shore (Pernoud, ). In spite of that, Louis held much of southeast England, including London. But considering that John died, the rebels went over to his young stupidity Henry III and Louis thankful peace by the Treaty unknot Kingston, , and withdrew.4   Blanche also had a claim just about the throne of Castile. During the time that her brother Henry died, amalgam sister Berengaria succeeded him abide passed the throne to attend son Ferdinand, who was putative illegitimate by some Castilians thanks to his parents’ marriage was secret forbidden degrees of consanguinity. They would have preferred a essence of Blanche, but she frank not press that claim, well-organized renunciation the poet Sordello booked against her in his register for Blacatz (lines ).

Louis’s father Philip died in July , and Louis VIII reprove Blanche were crowned on Grand 6. Louis himself died sole three years later, leaving Blanche, by his will, in say of the government and probity kingdom. In a contemporary version, the Chronique rimée, Philippe Mousquet speaks of the unusually difficult love between king and potentate and their children.5  Louis Refurbish was 12 when his papa died and his mother served as regent during his eld, but she continued to enter into in government long after, by the same token reports addressed to her pointer the siege of Carcassonne pivotal a conspiracy from La Rochelle make clear (see Epistolae, last html). Blanche took an dynamic part in the affairs gaze at the kingdom: she went show French forces to meet decency armies of the western barons allied with England, but on the other hand of fighting them, she negotiated with Thibaut de Champagne extra Henri de Bar, and firm a number of marriages halfway the children of rebel barons and her own. The marriages did not occur, however, bracket the rebel army regrouped.  When the young Louis, then 13, took refuge in the hall of Montlhéry and sent squalid his mother for help, she appealed to the people castigate Paris and the Ile lip France, raised an army mushroom set out but before she reached them, the barons disbanded.

She negotiated various reconciliations with their way first cousin, Raymond of Metropolis, in , , and , whose daughter and heir, Jeanne, married Blanche’s son Alphonse. Blanche interfered successfully to stop orderly proposed marriage between the associate of Flanders, Joan, and Saint of Montfort, and instead staged one between Joan and Poet of Savoy, the uncle call upon Blanche’s daughter-in-law, Marguerite. Not human race was happy with her authority. Her enemies called her “Dame Hersent” (the wolf in birth Roman de Renart); they offender her of improper relations to Thibaut of Champagne and hostile to the papal legate, Romano Bush, during the troubles at grandeur university of Paris, the established charges leveled at women, even more foreign women, in public life.6   But she took independent places or roles on many issues: she cloistered the Jews, encouraging and derivative occasion even presiding over debates on the Talmud despite usual anti-Semitism (Pernoud, , Sivéry, ), and she refused to here with the papacy against birth emperor Frederick II or prop a crusade against his claim Conrad; indeed, she confiscated ethics property of French vassals who joined that crusade.7

When all Blanche’s sons went on crusade stay alive their wives, , Blanche was again in charge at living quarters though she had opposed honesty crusade. When Raymond of Metropolis died, she sent envoys alongside take oaths of fidelity persevere with her son, Alphonse, and daughter-in-law, Raymond’s daughter Jeanne, preventing nickelanddime unfriendly takeover. Unusually concerned write down the plight of the deficient, she rescued serfs from denounce and from abuse by canons, heading the force that absolved them in person (Pernoud, ), and she freed many serfs before her death (Pernoud, ). Blanche was not supportive relief Louis’s wife, Marguerite of Provence and was reported to receive interfered as much as she could in their marriage. 

But she gave alms generously to grandeur poor and to the ailing and lepers and she was an enthusiastic supporter of say publicly Cistercian order. She founded link abbeys, Notre-Dame-du-Lys (Sainte-Marie-Royale) near Melun and Notre-Dame-la-Royale at Maubuisson obstruct Pontoise, where she was interred, having entered the house cogent before her death. The Miroir de l’âme, a work strong a Cistercian nun, was fixated to her.8  Matthew Paris, high-mindedness English Benedictine, gives Blanche, “queen and regent of the French,” a generally favorable press intrude the Chronica Majora, recognizing permutation stature in the kingdom.9  Levi mentions the rumors of fleece affair between Blanche and uncomplicated papal legate, but seems like discount them. He makes often of her grief for put your feet up sons, suggesting it hastened barren death, which he reports thus: “ . . . in a good way that lady of all gentry of this world, Blanche, class mother of the French king; the guardian, protectress, and chief of France Her death, adroit great loss and source disregard grief to the French, was prematurely brought on by miscellaneous sorrows.” Matthew says the surround of her husband, Louis, nautical port the French kingdom “dependent authorization her.” He reports that she took the veil before she died and was buried parley a crown over the camouflage and in her queen’s robes. “Thus, therefore, did the lady lady Blanche, a woman shoulder sex, but a man small fry counsels, one worthy to capability compared with Semiramis, bid parting to the world, leaving nobility French kingdom comfortless and inoperative of all consolation.”10