A letter from Eleanor of Aquitaine (1193)

Translated letter:

To the most holy Father and lord C, highest pontiff by the grace of God, A, by the same grace queen of England, duchess of Normandy, and countess of Anjou, greetings and to abound in inner mercy. My soul wearies of life. Whatever I feared has happened, so the expectation of harsher events cuts off every grace of consolation. When did I not fear graver dangers? When I think of my labor and grief, I am undone by pusillanimity of spirit and misfortune. I am indeed weakened, and old age, hastened by sorrows, announces the scarcity of my days to me. Many times I have written to you and frequently offered the sacrifice of my heart in a contrite and humbled spirit. But since I once began, I shall speak further to my Lord, though I be dust and ashes. Release me, lord, that I may weep a little for my sorrow. For I do not know by what pact the impulse of anxiety relaxes from lament and the profusion of tears. Lost, I have long awaited one, if there be any, who would alleviate a mother's sorrow, who would say "your son Joseph lives, and he is saved from the well, wild beasts have not devoured him." O worst beast, more cruel than any other, tigers or demons, who sold my son, a soldier of Christ, anointed of the Lord, a pilgrim of the crucified, bound in chains, to the emperor and betrayed him. Thus he has become a harsher adversary, and moved him from a prison to a labyrinth, from Scylla to Charybdis. From the days of Judas Iscariot, there has been none like him, who so violated the law of the highest, so maliciously betrayed the just. And these deeds were done in secret, in darkness, for they are works of darkness. Father of mercy, I pray to the fame of the abundance of your goodness, that you free the innocent from the mouth of the lion and the hand of the beast. What advantage is there to you in his blood, who was sought precisely from your hand? When we believed that the lord disposed to show mercy to my son through you, we rejoiced. But now the thing is turned upside-down: the devil triumphs far and wide, wisdom conquers malice and when the capture of my son is heard among the heathens, the applause of the uncircumcized resounds in the highways of Geth and in the cross-roads of Ascalon.(1) Alas, alas, the Lord pierced us with grave wounds and cruel castigation! The tyrant [Henry VI] tore out my entrails from me and committed iniquities despoiling churches in the land of the saints, destroyed many people with bitterness and sorrow. Against all these, his furor is not turned away, but his hand is still extended. He does not spare monks, recluses, hermits, nuns, or lepers. Law, human and divine, the fear of God, faith, religion and honor have perished. Awake, o Lord, why do you sleep, rise and do not cast us off forever. If the grief of this most unhappy sinner [Eleanor] does not, o highest pontiff, let at least the clamor of the poor, the sighs of the fettered, the blood of the murdered, the spoliation of churches and wide-spread oppression of the holy move you. See how the enemy reviles the holy. The enemies of the church thrive, they prolong their iniquity, they are comforted, adding prevarication, they pile iniquity on iniquity, so that blood touches blood, that their pride continuously ascends and the impiety of the young not only fills the measure of their fathers, but transcends it. Surely they were to be struck, even fulminated with terrifying anathema. Let the bishop of the world arise therefore, let your hand seize judgment like lightning, as Peter with one thrust annihilated Ananias and Sapphira, with one thrust Simon Magus, so you may kill the impious with the spirit of your lips. Otherwise you will seem to turn aside in your duty by consent to malice. For those who turn aside in duty the Lord will lead away with evildoers. Gird your sword on your thigh, o most powerful, the sword namely the spirit, which is the word of God. Let your hand seize judgment and with the power conferred on you by heaven take the staff of sinners from above the fate of the just, and with the shield of your good will protect my son. Do not let the son of iniquity harm the innocent any further. When the innocence of my son the king has witnesses near and far, you have no excuse from sin. What excuse could modify your sloth and lack of care, when it is clear to all that you have the power of freeing my son and lack the will? Was not every kingdom, all power of ruling, committed by God to the apostle Peter and through him to you? Blessed be the Lord who gave such power to men. No king, no emperor, no duke is exempted from the yoke of your jurisdiction. Where therefore is the zeal of Phineas? Where is the authority of Peter? Where is he who would say "the zeal for your house consumes me"? Let it not be in vain that you and your co-bishops were given the double swords.(2) Say to the evil, do not do evil and to the wicked, do not lift up your horn. Do not allow the revered succession of apostolic dignity in the heritage of Peter degenerate. Recognize your sovreignty, prove your zeal, be girded to the work of fortitude, and honor your ministry. Let your glory pass to your successors and another generation recognize how foolishly that tyrant presumed and how powerfully the Roman see punished that presumption. The crime will be converted to danger for you if your hands slacken and impunity add horns to the sinner. For if these things are done in fertile times, what will happen in arid times? I ask your paternity to recall what a friend my husband the king [Henry II], father of this king was to you and how faithful; consider how benign to paternal devotion his successor has been. Do not cut out of your heart with how much sollicitude I have always promoted the business of your legates with him. If my affection ever dulled towards you in your needs, I shall deservedly fall to my enemies. I shall now experience the promises of your cardinals to be words and pages; for trees are known not by their leaves(3) or their flowers, but by their fruits and we indeed know them by their fruits. What the tyrant is ashamed to say he should be ashamed that they did; he held them accomplices in malice who should have shown themselves avengers of it. I loved you not with tongue and word but in deed and truth. Will evil now be returned for good and hatred for love? If I might say one thing, saving the peace of my lord, I say to him what one reads that Joab reproached king David: "You love those who hate you and hate those who love you." Alas, how justice is disarmed, how miserably the keys of the church have lost their office, and where the glorious principate of Peter ought to be eminent, there pontifical authority is shamefully oppressed and vilified. The wolf rushes into the sheeppen, the lion into the church of God; a single beast devours it, and there is no one who rises to fight for the house of the Lord. But what I grieve for is closer to me and more intolerable: the tyrant crucifies my son; the highest pontiff hides it; there is no one to redeem or save him. If there is any consolation in you, any power of charity in Christ, any mercy, any compassion in your entrails, if finally the affection of the father savors pontifical anointment, let all the people hear that there is wisdom in you to make justice. But why do I go on? I rush to uncertainty and beat the air and our groans vanish in the wind. The obstinacy of the tyrant is harder than adamant and I know that no one can correct one whom God neglects. My speech falls on the earth and comes back to me empty; it will not prosper among those to whom it was sent. So the horrifying tempest of tribulations sinks me, the depth of the terrible abyss absorbs me, the pit of desperation extends its mouth over me. All our people give their hands to death and strike a contract with hell, wasting away and drying up in the fear and expectation which have come over the whole western world. But you, Lord God Sabaoth, who judge justly, see what I suffer, judge my cause. And since I find no judge on earth, I, miserable, appeal to no earthly judge but to your terrible tribunal. I, unfortunate, why do I follow the impulse of my vehement sorrow and put my mouth to heaven? But with equanimity, I ask, father, that your benignity accept that it issued from sorrow, not from deliberation. I have sinned, and if I may use the word of blessed Job, "what I have said, would that I had not said, therefore I say no more, and I put my finger over my mouth." Fare well.

Original letter:

Sanctissimo Patri, ac domino C. Dei gratia, S. pontifici, A. eadem gratia regina Angliae, ducissa Normanniae, et comitissa Andegaviae, salutem et misericordiae visceribus abundare. Taedet animam meam vitae meae. Quidquid enim verebar, accidit; et adhuc exspectatio durioris eventus omnem gratiam consolationis abscidit. "Quando ego non timui graviora pericula veris?" Laborem itaque et dolorem meum considerans, "a pusillanimitate spiritus et tempestate" (Psal. LIV) subvertor. Ego vero jam delibor, et doloribus festinata senectus paucitatem dierum meorum nuntiat mihi. Multoties vobis scripsi, atque sacrificium cordis in spiritu contrito et humiliato frequenter obtuli (Psal. L). "Quia" tamen "semel coepi, loquar adhuc ad Dominum meum, cum sim pulvis et cinis" (Gen. XVIII). Dimitte me, Domine, ut plangam paululum dolorem meum (Judic. XI). Nescio enim, quo pacto impetus anxietatis ex ipso planctu et lacrymarum profusione lentescit. Diu exspectavi ego perdita, si esset, qui leniret dolorem matris, qui diceret: "Joseph filius tuus vivit" (Gen. XLV), et eductus est de cisterna, nec eum fera pessima devoravit (Gen. XXXVII). O fera pessima, tigribus et lamiis, omnique fera crudelior, qui filium meum militem Christi, christum Domini, peregrinum crucifixi, vinculis alligatum imperatori vendidit et tradidit! Sic ei durior adversarius constitutus est, atque de ergastulo in labyrinthum, et de Scylla translatus est in Charybdim. A diebus Judae Iscariotis non est inventus similis illi, qui sic violaret legem Excelsi; qui ita malitiose traderet justum. Et haec in occulto, et in tenebris facta sunt: erant enim opera tenebrarum. "Memoriam abundantiae suavitatis tuae" (Psal. CXLIV), Pater misericordiae, precor, ut de ore leonis, et de manu bestiae, liberes innocentem. Et quae tibi utilitas in sanguine ejus (Psal. XXIX), qui de manu tua exactissime requiretur? Quia credebamus aliquando, quod disposuisset Dominus per vos filio meo facere misericordiam, "facti sumus laetantes" (Psal. CXXV). Nunc autem res in contrarium versa est: triumphat enim longe lateque diabolus, "sapientia vincit malitiam" (Sap. VII), et audita in gentibus filii mei captione personat in triviis Geth, et in compitis Ascalonis incircumcisorum solemnis applausus. Heu, heu, percussit nos Dominus plaga gravi et castigatione crudeli! A me viscera mea tyrannus avulsit, et ecclesias spolians "in terra sanctorum iniqua gessit" (Isa. XXVI), plebes innumeras amaritudine et moerore confecit (Thren. I). In his omnibus non est aversus furor ejus, sed adhuc manus ejus extenta. Non parcit monachis, non reclusis, non eremitis, non monialibus, non leprosis. Perierunt enim jus et fas, timor Dei, fides, religio et honestas. "Exsurge, quare obdormis, Domine; exsurge, et ne repellas in finem" (Psal. XLIII). Moveat te, summe pontifex, etsi non hujus peccatricis infelicissimae dolor, saltem clamor pauperum, compeditorum gemitus, interfectorum sanguis, ecclesiarum spoliatio, et generalis denique pressura sanctorum. Vide, "quanta malignatus est inimicus in sancto" (Psal. LXXIII). Invaluerunt hostes Ecclesiae, "prolongaverunt iniquitatem suam" (Psal. CXXVIII), confortati sunt addentes praevaricationem, iniquitatem apponunt iniquitati (Psal. LXVIII), ut sanguis sanguinem tangat, ut "superbia eorum ascendat semper" (Psal. LXXIII), et impietas modernorum mensuram patrum suorum non solum impleat, sed transcendat. Certe horrendo anathemate feriendi erant, aut potius fulminandi. Exsurgat igitur orbis episcopus, et arripiat quasi fulgur judicium manus tua, sicut Petrus uno ictu Ananiam et Saphiram (Act. V), et uno ictu Simonem Magum potuit delere de medio (Act. XIII), "sic spiritu labiorum tuorum interficias impios" (Isa. XI). Alioquin videberis declinare in obligationem malitiae per consensum. "Declinantes autem in obligationem, adducet Dominus cum operantibus iniquitatem" (Psal. CXXIV). "Accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum, potentissime" (Psal. XLIV); "gladio" scilicet "spiritus, quod est verbum Dei" (Ephes. VI). Arripiat judicium manus tua, et in potestate collata tibi coelitus tolle virgam peccatorum desuper sortem justi, "et scuto bonae voluntatis tuae" (Psal. V) protege filium meum, "et filius iniquitatis non apponat nocere" (Psal. LXXXVIII) ulterius innocenti. Cum innocentia regis filii mei testimonium habeat ab his qui prope sunt, et ab iis qui longe, non habetis excusationem de peccato. Quae enim excusatio possit vestram desidiam et incuriam palliare, cum omnibus liqueat, quod liberandi filium meum habetis potestatem, et subtrahitis voluntatem? Nonne Petro apostolo, et in eo vobis a Deo omne regnum, omnisque potestas regenda committitur? (Matth. XVI.) Benedictus autem Dominus, "qui talem potestatem dedit hominibus" (Matth. IX). Non rex, non imperator, aut dux a jugo vestrae jurisdictionis eximitur. Ubi est ergo zelus Phinees? ubi est auctoritas Petri? ubi est qui dicat: Zelus domus tuae comedit me? (Psal. LXVIII.) Appareat, quod non in vanum dati sunt vobis, et coepiscopis vestris "gladii ancipites in manibus" vestris (Psal. CXLIX). "Dicite iniquis: Nolite inique agere; et delinquentibus: Nolite exaltare cornu" (Psal. LXXIV). Non degeneret in haerede Petri dignitatis apostolicae reverenda successio. Vestrum agnoscite principatum, probate zelum, accingimini ad opus fortitudinis, et honorate ministerium vestrum (II Tim. IV); gloria vestra derivetur ad posteros, et "cognoscat generatio altera" (Psal. LXXVII), quam inaniter tyrannus ille praesumpserit, et quam potenter praesumptionem ejus sedes Romana punierit. Vobis equidem convertetur in discrimen et crimen, si remissas habeatis manus, et addat impunitas cornua peccatori. Si enim "in viridi haec facta sunt, in arido quid fiet?" (Luc. XXIII). Recolat, quaeso, vestra paternitas, quantus amicus vir meus rex, pater istius regis, et quam fidelis vobis fuerit; attendite quam benignus iste successor paternae devotionis exstiterit. Nec a corde vestro excidat, quanta ego sollicitudine per ipsum vestrorum negotia legatorum, imo vestra promoverim. Si etiam in vestris necessitatibus mea unquam circa vos affectio torpuit, "decidam merito ab inimicis meis inanis" (Psal. VII). Ego autem nunc experiar vestrorum promissa cardinalium verba esse et folia; arbores autem non a foliis, aut floribus, sed a fructibus cognoscuntur (Matth. VII). Et nos quidem a fructibus horum cognovimus eos (ibid.). Dicere pudet quod utinam eos fecisse pudeat, tyrannus eos habuit malitiae fautores, cujus se debuerant exhibuisse ultores. Dilexi vos, "non lingua et verbo, sed opere et veritate" (I Joan., III). Nunquid redditur pro bono malum, "et odium pro dilectione mea?" (Psal. CVIII.) Ut salva pace domini mei unum loquar, dico ei, quod quandoque Joab exprobrasse legitur David regi: "Diligis eos, qui te oderunt, et eos odio habes qui te diligunt" (II Reg. XIX). Heu, quomodo exarmatur scelus justitiae! quam miserabiliter claves Ecclesiae suum perdiderunt officium, et ubi gloriosus Petri principatus eminere debuerat, ibi contumeliosius opprimitur et vilescit pontificalis auctoritas! Lupus irruit in ovile, leo in Ecclesiam Dei, "et singularis ferus depascitur eam" (Psal. LXXIX), nec est qui pro domo Domini ex adverso ascendat: quodque familiarius et intolerabilius doleo, filium meum tyrannus cruciat; dissimulat hoc summus pontifex; "nec est, qui redimat, neque qui salvum faciat" (Psal. VII). Si qua ergo consolatio in vobis, si qua virtus charitatis in Christo, si qua miseratio, si qua compassionis viscera, si quid denique quod affectum Patris, et pontificalem sapiat unctionem, audiat omnis populus sapientiam esse in vobis ad faciendum judicium. Sed quid talibus immoror? curro in incertum, et aera verbero (I Cor. IX), atque in ventos nostri gemitus evanescunt. Obstinatio tyranni durior adamante est; et scio, quod quem Deus negligit, nemo poterit corrigere. Sermo meus in terram cecidit, et revertitur ad me vacuus (Sap. I), nec in his, ad quae missus est, prosperatur. Me igitur tribulationum tempestas horrenda demergit, me profundum absorbet abyssi terribilis, et urget super me puteus desperationis os suum (Psal. LXVIII). Populi nostri omnes dant manus suas morti, atque cum inferno percutiunt foedus tabescentes et arescentes prae timore et exspectatione, quae superveniunt universo orbi occidentali (Luc. XXI). Tu autem, Domine Deus Sabaoth, qui judicas juste, vide, quia "vim patior" (Isa. XXXVIII), judica causam meam. Et quia in terris judicem non invenio; ego misera, et nulli miserabilis terrenum judicem ad tuum terribile tribunal appello. Infelix ego, quare doloris mei vehementis impetum sequor, et os meum in coelum pono? sed aequanimiter, quaeso, Pater, sustineat benignitas vestra, quod ex dolore, non ex deliberatione processit. Peccavi ego; et, ut verbo beati Job utar, "quae dixi, utinam non dixissem, ideo non addam ultra" (Job XXXIX), et supponam digitum ori meo (Job XXI). Vale.

Historical context:

Eleanor addressed three letters to the pope during her son Richard's captivity in Germany which lasted some sixteen months. This the second letter was written after Leopold of Austria had handed Richard over to the emperor of Germany, Henry VI (February, 1193); though still filled with righteous indignation at papal inaction and ingratitude and imperial tyranny, it includes a much more personal expression of grief, discouragement, and disappointment. Eleanor also reminds the pope of papal claims to temporal jurisdiction which carry a responsibility to act. Eleanor eventually raised the needed ransom and Richard was released into her custody in 1194. (For a discussion of the authorship of the letters, see ep. 139 html.)

Scholarly notes:

(1) Geth and Ascalon are both biblical cities in Canaan.
(2) This is a loaded reminder of papal claims to temporal power, based in part on the two swords of Peter — if papal power is to be double, temporal as well as spiritual, then it must be used for justice in the temporal sphere.
(3) There is a pun here on folia, pages, and foliis, leaves.

Printed source:

PL206, ep.3, cc.1265-68; Rymer, Foedera, 1.25 (3rd ed.).

Date:

1193