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Eleanor of Aquitaine's first marriage to the King of France)

       Jeanne was born at Angers, in Anjou. She spent her youth at her mother's courts at Winchester and Poitiers. She was Richard's favorite sister. In 1176, King William II of Sicily sent ambassadors to England to ask for Jeanne's hand in marriage. The betrothal was confirmed and on August 27 Jeanne set sail for Sicily, escorted by an uncle and the bishop of Norwich

       In Saint-Gilles, the home town of the Count of Toulouse, her entourage was met by representatives of the King of Sicily: After a hazardous voyage, the party arrived safely in Sicily, and on February 13, 1177, Jeanne married William II of Sicily and was crowned Queen of Sicily at Palermo Cathedral.

       They had one son, Bohemond, born in 1181, who died in infancy. Following William's death she was kept a prisoner by the new king, Tancred of Sicily. Her brother Richard I of England arrived in Italy in 1190, on the way to the Holy Land. He demanded her return, along with her dowry. Tancred balked at these demands so Richard seized a nearby monastery and the castle of La Bagnara. Deciding to spend the winter there he attacked and subdued the city of Messina. Outclassed, Tancred now agreed to the terms and sent back Jeanne's dowry.

       In March 1191 Eleanor of Aquitaine arrived in Messina with Richard's prospective bride, Berengaria of Navarre. Eleanor returned to England, leaving Berengaria in Jeanne's care. Richard decided to postpone his wedding. He put his sister and bride on a ship, and set sail for the Holy Land. Two days later the fleet was hit by a storm which destroyed several vessels and blew Jeanne and Berengaria's ship off course.

       Richard landed in Crete, but his sister and fiancée were stranded near Cyprus. The Despot of Cyprus, Isaac Comnenus was just about to capture them when Richard's fleet appeared. Both princesses were saved, but the ambitious Isaac made off with Richard's treasure. Richard pursued and captured Isaac, threw him into a dungeon, and sent Jeanne and Berengaria on to Acre in the Country of Tripoli, an Occitan speaking state belonging to the House of Toulouse.

       Once established in the Holy Land, Richard proposed marrying Jeanne to Saladin's brother, Al-Adil, and making the couple joint rulers of Jerusalem. This excellent plan failed as Jeanne declined to marry a Muslim, Al-Adil declined to marry a Christian and neither wanted to convert (which would in any case have largely defeated the object of the plan).

       Jeanne was married in 1196 to Raymond VI of Toulouse, with Quercy and the Agenais as her dowry. The marriage took place in Beaucaire, presided over by Richard I himself. The following year she bore a son, also called Raymond, later to become Raymond VII of Toulouse.

       Raymond does not seem to have treated his wife well, and Jeanne came to fear him and his nobles. In 1199, while pregnant with a second child, she was left to face a rebellion. She laid siege to the castle of the ringleaders, the lords of Saint-Félix-de-Caraman les Cassès. Fearing treachery from her own troops she fled to the Limousin, hoping for Richard's protection, but she found him dead at Chalus.

       She then fled to the court of her mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, at Rouen, where she found refuge. Jeanne subsequently asked to be admitted to Fontevraud Abbey. She died there in childbirth, aged thirty-four years old, a veiled nun. In the west at this time, cesarean operations invariably meant death for the mother, and in this case for the baby too. It was a second son who lived long enough to be baptized Richard after his recently dead uncle. Jeanne was buried at Fontevraud Abbey along with her brother Richard, and presumably her son Richard. Later they would be joined by Eleanor of Aquitaine and fifty years later by her first son Raymond VII of Toulouse.

      The Middle Ages

       The Schism of the Church

      The last fifty years of the eleventh century saw several major events which would have profound consequences for the future. In a vacuum we only hear the noise, when the dust settles we see the dirt.

      ​In 1054 the church of the east and west formally split in what scholars sometimes call the "Great Schism". The pope at Rome excommunicated his rival and enemy, the patriarch of Constantinople, who also excommunicated the pope and consigned his soul to hell. The churches thereafter would come to be called by separate names in order to distinguish them: the Roman Catholic Church in the west, and the Greek Orthodox Church in the east. "Catholic" merely means "universal," and "orthodox" means "correct"; of course, both churches considered themselves universal and correct. They maintained serious differences in Christian theology, but much of the long running dispute which had been going on for decades had more to do with politics than religion. It involved the support by the pope at Rome of the Norman invasion of Sicily, to which the Byzantine emperor had a claim, and it most especially involved the papal claim to superiority over all churchman, which was not recognized by the patriarch at Constantinople. Patriarch and Pope were merely honorary titles of bishops who were more equal than other bishops. Until this Great Schism, the unified religion of Christianity was seen as the one thing which was the unity in an otherwise fragmented world. Even though bishops and archbishops were separated by great distance, they rarely communicated, still the church was seen as one entity. From 1054 onward, that was no longer the case, and to this day the eastern and western churches have not reunited, although many attempts have been made at reconciliation.

       The Norman Conquest

      In 1066, William Duke of Normandy invaded England and made good his claim to be King of England as well as Duke of Normandy. He had the claim due to an earlier marriage between the two royal families. The Bayeux tapestry, a remarkable piece of embroidery, depicts the epic battle at Hastings in cartoon-like form. William brought much of his French speaking court to England with him, assigning titles and landholdings in return for financial support and local influence and support. The influence of French on the local language was considerable, and is a dividing line between Old English and Middle English. It was at this time that the English language adopted many Latin terms, via French. In an attempt to discover more about his new possessions, William ordered the creation of the Domesday Book, which listed every parcel of land in England, noting its extent and its value, its production and its ownership. This is an extremely valuable legacy and record for medieval English affairs. The Norman Conquest also embroiled England and France in wars for the next several centuries, since the King of England had holdings in France.

       The Battle of Manzikert

      In 1071, the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV Diogenes was defeated in battle at Manzikert which lies in eastern Anatolia, by a band of Seljuk Turks. The loss cost him a little territory and reputation…but that was all. However this was significant because the loss marks the arrival of the Turks into what has now become known as Turkey. The Turks were originally from central Asia and migrated westward in large numbers. Their presence was felt by the Byzantine Empire and by some of the Muslems of the Near East. It was the Byzantine Empire which lost much of its territory to the new invader, however, most of Asia Minor (todays Turkey) would soon be under their control, and the successor dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, took Constantinople itself in 1453, which ended the Roman Empire in the east. The Ottoman Empire controlled most of the Middle East until 1918. It isn’t surprising that the Turks western movement into Christianity move them to conversion to Islam, a religion which remains dominant in Turkey today.

       The Investiture Controversy

      A tumultuous crowd of Roman citizens and clergy raised Hildebrand to the papacy during the funeral solemnities for Pope Alexander II on April 22, 1073. He was enthroned immediately in the basilica of San Pietro in Vincoli even though he was not ordained a priest until June 29, the feast day of the apostles Peter and Paul, the patron saints of the Apostolic See and the city of Rome. Hildebrand’s elevation by the combination of citizens and clergy was a hostile reaction to the reordering of the papal election ordered at the 1059 Lateran Council, which had given the cardinal-bishops the leading voice in papal

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