[In the following essay, Chapman discusses the legend of Eleanor that resulted in the character of the demon Cassodorien in Richard Coeur de Lion, a thirteenth-century romance.]

In the thirteenth-century Middle English romance Richard Coeur de Lion,¹ the hero's mother is a beautiful stranger named Cassodorien, daughter to the King of Antioch. She asks that her marriage to Henry II “be done priuily,” and the next morning at mass she swoons just before the elevation of the host. Her explanation is: “For j am ρus jschent,/ I dar neuere see ρe sacrement.”² The stricken Henry does not take these signs amiss. After fifteen years he assents to the suggestion of an earl that Cassodorien be forced to see the sacrament. He is then astonished to see her fly out through the roof, carrying off their infant daughter and giving young Prince John a fall that breaks his arm. Richard's mother is, in short, a demon or fairy mistress of the widespread “Swan-Maiden” type.³

Supernatural parents, of course, are not rare in romance. Merlin, Lancelot, and Alexander are strangely-born. But it is rare that the historical parent of a recent historical monarch is represented as a demon. When Richard Coeur de Lion was written, Eleanor of Aquitaine had been dead a scant fifty years, and her memory had surely not perished.⁴ The English versifier could hardly have been ignorant of Eleanor's fame, and he must have assumed that his readers would identify Cassodorien with Eleanor. Was he, nevertheless, simply attributing supernatural parentage to Richard in order to account for that crusader's prodigious exploits? It is more likely that he was relating, from his French source, a legend which had become attached to Eleanor during the years closely following her death in 1204, which may indeed have been associated with her during her lifetime.

Eleanor was the kind of person who would attract legend in any age. She had an uncanny ability to get and keep the upper hand, she had sway over powerful men, her management was firm and aggressive. Yet she was full of beauty and grace, the patroness of troubadours. The monk Richard of Devizes, her contemporary, described her in superlatives: “Queen Alienor—an incomparable woman, beautiful and modest, influential yet moderate, humble and learned (qualities which are rarely found in a woman) who was old enough to have had two kings for husbands, and two kings for sons, even now indefatigable in any labour, and whose endurance was the admiration of her age.”⁵

It is not surprising that this “incomparable woman” accumulated a number of picturesque legends.⁶ Nor is it surprising that in spite of her virtues she was not universally admired, that her legend in fact is entirely derogatory. In the ballad Queen Eleanor's Confession she is an adultress. In the tale of Fair Rosamund Clifford she is the evil-doer, while the adultress Rosamund is a sweet unfortunate. Even Richard of Devizes, quite under her spell, was aware of certain putative royal indiscretions: “This very queen, in the time of her former husband, was at Jerusalem. Let no one speak more on that head: I know it well. Be silent.”⁷

Walter Map, a member of Henry II's ambulant court, propagated another of the unsavory speculations about his Queen:

He [Stephen] was succeeded by Henry, the son of Mathilda, and to him Eleanor, the Queen of France, cast glances of unholy love. She was the wife of that most pious King Louis, but she managed to secure an unlawful divorce and married Henry, and this in spite of the charge secretly made against her that she had shared Louis's bed with Henry's father, Geoffrey.⁸

Map may have intended an insult to Eleanor when he told the story of Henno-with-the-Teeth.⁹ Henno finds by the Norman shore a lovely maiden, who says she has been sent to marry the King of France. Henno marries her instead, begets children, and loses her in much the same way as Henry loses Cassodorien: she flies out through the roof when she is discovered, in her bath, to assume the shape of a dragon. The names and places in the story are more than vaguely suggestive of contemporary matters, and it may be conjectured that here the demon-legend began.¹⁰

In any event, the legend was well established soon after Eleanor's death. Philippe Mouskès in his chronique rimée (ca. 1240) draws an unflattering picture of Eleanor, and signalizes her diabolism: “Et quant vint à son desfublar,/ Si leur a dit: ‘Voiiés signar,/ Dont n’est mis cors prou délitables?/ Lou rés digat q’ère déables,/ Et q’eu ère riens à tos sens./ Malostruge et non cobinens.’ ”¹¹ He then recites the facts of her birth: the Count of Aquitaine while hunting meets a beautiful lady near a fountain; he marries her; they have children, including Eleanor; after a space the Countess flies through the church roof in the familiar way.¹²

The “Minstrel of Rheims” in one of his récits (ca. 1260), after rehearsing Eleanor's legendary attempt to elope with Saladin, attributes to Louis VII's barons a belief in her diabolic nature: “ ‘Par foi dient li baron, le mieudres consaus que nous vous sachiens donneir ce est que vous la laissiez aleir, car c’est uns diables, et se vous tenez longuement nous doutons qu’elle ne vous face mourir et ensorceller, et ainsi vous n’aurez nul enfant de li.’ ”¹³

The male side of Angevin house likewise attracted the legend of a demon ancestress. Giraldus Cambrensis tells the story of “a certain countess of Anjou, of remarkable beauty, but of unknown nation, … who was in the habit of coming very seldom to church.”¹⁴ Being restrained one day before the “celebration of the secret canon of the mass” she flies out through a lofty window of the church, and is never seen again. Caesar of Heisterbach observes that “even the kings now [ca. 1230] ruling in Britain, which we call England, are said to be descended from a phantom mother.”¹⁵

It is impossible to know precisely how this floating bit of folklore became attached to Eleanor. Walter Map may have been responsible, or the legend of the demon countess of Anjou may have been transferred, quite naturally, to her redoubtable successor. It seems clear, in any event, that it was not invented by the English writer of Richard Coeur de Lion, nor by the French author of his “book.” It had early been associated with Eleanor in the popular and literary mind. It was an accepted part of her thirteenth century reputation, and testifies in a striking way to her powerful hold on the imagination of her age.

Notes

1. Der Mittelenglische Versroman über Richard Löwenherz, ed. K. Brunner, Wiener Beiträge zur Englischen Philologie, XLII (Wien, 1913), vv. 43-234.

2. Ibid., vv. 193-194.

3. See E. S. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales (New York, 1891), pp. 255-332, for a discussion of the “Swan-Maiden” stories.

4. Eleanor's memory is still very lively: M. V. Rosenberg, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Boston, 1937); C. H. Walker, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Chapel Hill, 1950); Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Cambridge, Mass., 1950).

5. Richard of Devizes, Chronicle, in The Church Historians of England, trans. J. Stevenson (London, 1858), Vol. v, pt. 1, p. 258.

6. See E. Berger, “Les aventures de la reine Aliénor. Histoire et légende,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 1906, Acad´mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris, 1906), pp. 702-712; and F. M. Chambers, “Some Legends Concerning Eleanor of Aquitaine,” Speculum, XVI (1941), pp. 459-468.

7. Richard of Devizes, op. cit., p. 258.

8. Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, trans. F. Tupper and M. B. Ogle (London, 1924), p. 297.

9. Ibid., pp. 218-220.

10. This would not be the only place where Map uses one of his stories as an exemplum. In a kind of explicatio added to the story of King Herla, he complains about Henry II's zeal for rapid and continuous movements. See ibid., p. 18.

11. Philippe Mouskès, Chronique rimée, ed. Reiffenberg (Bruxelles, 1838), II, 244-245 (vv. 18704-711).

12. Ibid., II, 245-249 (vv. 18720-817).

13. Récits d’un ménéstrel de Reims au treizième siècle, ed. Natalis de Wailly (Paris, 1876), p. 6.

14. Giraldus Cambrensis, On the Instruction of Princes, in The Church Historians of England, trans. J. Stevenson (London, 1858), Vol. v, pt. 1, p. 224.

15. Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. H. Scott and C. C. Bland (London, 1929), p. 139.