Baldwin Flanders V Count Hainaut 1150-1195

Letters. [After October 1192] Letter VI. Eleanor of Aquitaine Queen Consort Franks and England [aged 70] to Pope Celestine.

To the reverend father and lord Celestine, by God's grace highest pontiff, Eleanora the miserable, and I would I could add the commiserated, queen of England, duchess of Normandy, countess of Anjou, entreating him to shew himself a father of mercy to a miserable mother.

I am prevented, O holiest pope, by the great distance which parts us, from addressing you personally$1 yet I must bewail my grief a little, and who shall assist me to write my words?.

I am all anxiety, internally and externally, whence my very words are full of grief. Without are fears, within contentions; nor have I a moment wherein to breathe freely from the tribulation of evils, and the grief occasioned by the troubles which ever find me out. I am all defiled with grief, and my bones cleave to my skin, for my flesh is wasted away. My years pass away in groanings, and I would they were altogether passed away. O that the whole blood of my body would now die, that the brain of my head and the marrow of my bones were so dissolved into tears that I might melt away in weeping! My very bowels are torn away from me; I have lost the light of my eyes, the staff of my old age: and, would God accede to my wishes, he would condemn me to perpetual blindness, that my wretched eyes might no longer behold the woes of my people. Who will grant me the boon of dying for thee, my son? O mother of mercy! look upon a mother so wretched; or if thy Son, the inexhausted fount of mercy, is avenging the sins of the mother on the son, let him exact vengeance from her who has alone sinned: let him punish me, the wicked one, and not amuse himself with the punishment of an innocent person. Let him who hath begun the task, who now bruises me, take away his hand and slay me; and this shall be my consolation, that, afflicting me with grief, he spares me not. O wretched me, yet pitied by none! why have I, the mistress of two kingdoms, the mother of two kings, reached the ignominy of a detested old age?.

My bowels are torn away, my very race is destroyed and passing away from me. The young king and the Earl of Bretagne sleep in the dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to live that she may be ever tortured with the memory of the dead. Two sons yet survived to my solace, who now survive only to distress me, a miserable and condemned creature: King Richard [aged 35] is detained in bonds, and John [aged 25], his brother, depopulates the captive's kingdom with the sword, and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord is become cruel towards me, and opposes me with a heavy hand. Truly his anger fights against me, when my very sons fight against each other, if, indeed, that can be called a fight in which one party languishes in bonds, and the other, adding grief to grief, tries, by cruel tyranny to usurp the exile's kingdom to himself.

O good Jesus! who will grant me thy protection, and hide me in hell itself till thy fury passes away, and till thy arrows whiqh are in me, by whose vehemence my very spirit is drunk up, shall cease? I long for death, I am weary of life; and though I thus die incessantly, I yet desire to die more fally; I am reluctantly compelled to live, that my life may be the food of death and a means of torture. O happy ye who pass away by a fortunate abortion, without experiencing the waywardness of this life and the unexpected events of an uncertain condition! What do I? why do I remain? why do I wretched, delay? why do I not go, that I may see him whom my soul loves, bound in beggary and irons? as though, at such a time, a mother could forget the son of her womb! Affection to their young softens tigers, nay, even the fiercer sorceresses.

Yet I fluctuate in doubt: for, if I go away, deserting my son's kingdom, which is laid waste on all sides with fierce hostility, it will in my absence be destitute of all counsel and solace; again, if I stay, I shall not see the face of my son, that face which I so long for. There will be none who will study to procure the liberation of my son, and, what I fear still more, the most delicate youth will be tormented for an impossible quantity of money, and, impatient of so much affliction, will easily be brought to the agonies of death. Oh, impious, cruel, and dreadful tyrant! who hast not feared to lay sacrilegious hands on the anointed of the Lord! nor has the royal unction, nor the reverence due to a holy life, nor the fear of God, restrained thee from such inhumanity!

Yet the prince of the apostles still rules and reigns in the apostolic seat, and his judicial rigour is set up as a means of resort: this one thing remains, that you, O father, draw against these evildoers the sword of Peter, which for this purpose is set over people and kingdoms. The cross of Christ excels the eagles of Ceasar, the sword of Peter the sword of Constantine, and the apostolic seat is placed above the imperial power. Is your power of God or of men? Has not the God of gods spoken to you by the Apostle Peter, that whatsoever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven? Wherefore, then, do you so long negligently, nay, cruelly, delay to free my son, or rather do not dare to do it? You will, perhaps, say that this power is given to you over souls, not over bodies: be it so; it will certainly suffice me if you will bind their souls who hold my son bound in prison. It is your province to loose my son, unless the fear of God has given way to human fear. Restore my son to me, then, O man of God, if indeed thou art a man of God and not a man of blood; for know that, if thou art sluggish in the liberation of my son, from thy hand will the Most High require his blood. Alas, alas for us, when the chief shepherd has become a mercenary, when he flies from the face of the wolf, when he leaves the little sheep committed to him, or rather the elect ram, the leader of the Lord's flock, in the jaws of the bloody beast of prey! The good Shepherd instructs and informs other shepherds not to fly when they see the wolf coming, but to lay down their lives for the sheep. Save, therefore, I entreat thee, thine own soul, whilst, by urgent embassies, by salutary advice, by the thunders of excommunication, by general interdicts, by terrible sentences, thou endeavourest to procure the liberation, I will not say of thy sheep merely, but of thy son. Though late, you ought to give your life for him, for whom, as yet, you have refused to write or speak a single word. The Son of God, as testifies the prophet, came down from heaven that he might bring up them that were bound from the pit in which was no water. Now, would not that which was fitting for God to do become the servant of God? My son is tormented in bonds, yet you go not down to him, nor send, nor are moved by the sorrow of Joseph. Christ sees this and is silent; yet at the last there shall be fearful retribution for those who do the work of God negligently. Ambassadors have been promised to us three times, but never sent; so that to speak the truth, they are bound rather than sent. If my son were in prosperity, they would eagerly hasten at his lightest call, because they would expect rich handfuls for their embassy from his great munificence and the public profit of the kingdom. But what profit could be more glorious to them than to liberate a captive king, to restore peace to the people, quiet to the religious, and joy to all? Now, truly, the sons of Ephraim, who bent and sent forth the bow, have turned round in the day of battle; and in the time of distress when the wolf comes upon the prey, they are dumb dogs who either cannot or will not bark. Is this the promise you made me at the castle of Ralph with such protestations of favour and good faith? What availed it to give words only to my simplicity, and to illude by a fond trust the wishes of the innocent? So, in olden time, was King Ahab forbidden to make alliance with Ben-hadad, and we have heard the fatal issue of their mutual love.*^ A heavenly providence prospered the wars of Judas, John, and Simon, the Maccabsean brothers, under happy auspices; but when they sent an embassy to secure the friendship of the Romans, they lost the help of God, and, not once alone, but often was their venal intimacy cause of bitter regret.* You alone, who were my hope after God, and the trust of my people, force me to despair. Cursed be he who trusteth in man. Where is now my refuge?.

Thou, O Lord my God. To thee, O Lord, who considerest my distress, are the eyes of thine handmaid lifted up. Thou, O King of kings and Lord of lords, look upon the face of thine Anointed, give empire to thy Son, and save the son of thine handmaid, nor visit upon him the crimes of his father or the wickedness of his mother!

We know by certain and public relation that the emperor, after the death of the Bishop of Liege (whom he is said to have slain with a fiital sword, though wielded by a remote hand [aged 42]), miserably imprisoned the Bishop of Ostia and four other provincials, the Bishop of Salerno, and the Archbishop of Treves; and the apostolic authority cannot deny that, to the perpetual prejudice of the Roman church, he has, in spite of embassies, supplications, and threats of the apostolic seat, taken possession of Sicily, which from the times of Constantine has been the patrimony of St. Peter. Yet with all this his fury is not yet turned away, but yet is his hand stretched forth. Fearful things he has already done, but worse are still certainly to be expected; for those who ought to be the Pillars of the church are swayed with reed-like lightness by every wind. Oh, would they but remember that it was through the negligence of Eli, the priest ministering in Shiloh, that the glory of the Lord passed away from Israel I. Nor is that a mere parable of the past, but of the present. For the Lord drove from Shiloh the tabernacle, his tabernacle, where he had dwelt amongst men, and gave their strength into captivity and, their beauty into the hands of the enemy.

It is imputed to your pusillanimity that the church is trampled upon, the faith perilled, liberty oppressed, deceit encouraged by patience, iniquity by impunity. Where is the promise of God when be said to his church, 'Thou shalt suck the milk of the Gentiles, and shalt suck the breasts of kings? I will make thee the pride of ages, and a joy from generation to generation. Once the church, by its own strength, trod upon the necks of the proud and the lofty, and the laws of emperors obeyed the' sacred canons. But things are changed, and not only the canons, but the very formers of the canons, are restrained by base laws and execrable customs. The detestable crimes of the powerful are borne with. None dare murmur, and canonical rigour falls on the sins of the poor alone. Therefore, not without reason did Anachar^is the philosopher compare laws and canons to spiders' webs, which reti^in weaker animals but let the stronger go. ^* The kings of the earth have set themselves, and the rulers have taken counsel together/*^ against my son, the anointed of the Lord. One binds him in chains, another devastates his lands with cruel hostility, or, to use a vulgar phrase. One clips and another plunders; one holds the foot and another skins it. The highest pontiff sees these things, and yet bids the sword of Peter slumber in its scabbard; so he adds boldness to the sinner, his silence being presumed to indicate consent. He who corrects^ not when he can and ought seems even to consent, and his dissimulating patience shall not want the scruple of hidden companionship.'* The time of dissension predicted by the apostle draws on, when the son of perdition shall be revealed; dangerous times are at hand, when the seamless garment of Christ is cut, the net of Peter is broken, and the solidity of Catholic unity dissolved. These are the beginnings of sorrows. We feel bad things; we fear worse. I am no prophetess, nor the daughter of a prophet, but grief has suggested many things about future disturbances; yet it steals away the very words which it suggests. A sob intercepts my breath, and absorbing grief shutS' up by its anxieties the vocal passages of my soul. Farewell.