BIOGRAPHY Pierre Goubert: "Louis VII does not have a good reputation among those historians who deem it their duty to pass judgment. However, he had some character traits that were found later in his saintly great-grandson Louis IX [#3149] - quick intelligence, great desire for justice, and profound piety; nevertheless he was quite young and remained rather immature, imprudent, and lacking any great perseverance. A bit too devoted to the interests of the church, he cut a poor figure as a husband. ...Eleanor pushed her husband to intervene openly in the appointment of bishops and in other affairs of the Church, for which she had little love. She also incited him to attack his dangerous neighbor Thibaut of Champagne; the encounter was bloody and ended badly. Louis fell back under the influence of the clerics while his wife became more and more estranged from him. At the same time and far away, the Turks who had been contained for half a century by the Christian kingdoms established in Syria and Palestine attacked vigorously and took back Edessa in 1144. From then on, the pious king thought only about the Crusade that he would lead, after being urged on by the influential preaching of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and by the decision of [the Holy Roman] Emperor Conrad III to accompany him. By contrast [from the corrupt First Crusade, fifty years earlier], Louis VII's Christian zeal cannot be doubted. He departed from Vezelay on the Second Crusade in 1147. His failure to take Damascus the following year and his return to France in 1149 tarnished the history of the Crusades. In his absence he had left the kingdom in the hands of Abbot Suger, who died in 1151. But for the future of the monarchy and the kingdom of France, Louis VII's having dragged the queen along had a more important consequence, for rumor had it she had behaved very badly, or rather had been too good to a handsome Saracen who, to make matters worse, was a slave. Whether or not the affair took place, the frivolous lady from Poitou had produced only two daughters for the king, and he was tired of her. In spite of Suger and the pope, he found several bishops who were accommodating enough to annul the marriage, although it had been consummated. After a second and sterile union, a third wife, from Champagne, at last gave the king a son: the future Philip Augustus [#3132]. [Eleanor chose as her next husband Henry Plantagenet [#2960, our ancestor].] Already the count of Anjou and Maine as well as effective master of Normandy..., he became King of England in 1154. As vassals of the king of France, the couple held lands stretching from Dieppe to the Pyrenees. Furthermore, they had three sons: Henry [#2962], Richard the Lion-Hearted [#2963], and John Lackland [#2958, our ancestor]. A storm was brewing. In the face of impending disaster, Louis VII adopted the safe policy of sowing dissension and avoiding confrontation. He stirred up quarrels between Henry II and Eleanor (now herself disappointed), and between the father and his sons; he also received with great fuss the chancellor and primate of England Thomas a Becket, who had been exiled by his master. Moreover, his piety gave Louis VII a certain distinction. In Sens he welcomed Pope Alexander III and his court when they were exposed to the hostility of the [Holy Roman] Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. Approaching the lands of Aquitaine from the rear, Louis VII helped prelates and monks fight warring and brigand lords. He made his presence felt at Vezelay, Cluny, and Macon; in Beaujolais, in Forez, and even in Le Puy against the Polignacs, and in Mende where the count-bishop of Gevaudan swore homage to him. Undoubtedly the royal warriors did not always shine, but the many homages they received were good omens, and above all, these expeditions foreshadowed the future penetration of the lands along the Rhone and the border of Languedoc. All in all, in spite of the false starts and misfortunes (the most monumental of these was Eleanor, but who could have foreseen that?), this pious and often wise king deserves more credit than he is usually given for introducing the thirteenth century: the greatest century of the Capetians and of the Middle Ages as a whole."

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Record Change December 10, 1999