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Theoretically speaking, however, some medieval writers seem to have been convinced of the importance of mothers in the development of the next generation.
Quasi scientific theories as to the influence of women on the development of male children, for example, are present in La Chanson du Chevalier du Cygne et de Godefroid de Bouillon.
This romance purports to tell the story of Count Eustace of Boulogne and his wife Ydain, daughter of the Knight of the Swan. Three sons were born to the couple: Eustace, Godfrey and Baldwin. Through her devotion to her husband, Ydain (unusually for the time) suckled the babes herself.
Because of her love, two of the boys rose to the greatest heights of success. Godfrey became the Defender of the Holy Sepulchre: Baldwin succeeded him as the first King of Jerusalem.
The unfortunate Eustace, however, remained a mere count.
According to the legend, Ydain had insisted on suckling the children. But one day she went to hear mass, and left her sons in the care of her maidens. Eustace woke and cried, at which a damosel fed him from her breast: the Countess returned and noticed the babe's chin was wet.
She inquired as to the cause of this, and her servant told her about the baby being fed during her absence.
Distraught, the countess collapsed into a chair, her heart shaking, and she bewailed that she was virtually a leper. Trembling with rage, she snatched up the baby, her face as black as coal with rage.
On the castle's huge table, she spread a purple quilt, and upon the quilt she rolled the baby back and forth on its stomach until it belched up its meal.
Despite her precautions, however, from that day the child Eustace proved less than his brothers, and the maid was forced to flee the presence of the wrathful countess for many months.1
At the heart of this confection is a fervent belief in the special powers of the mother in shaping the character of her son.
Observed from a distance, it might be judged that the life of medieval women was passive, when really noble women were very active, especially when it came to raising children. This may have been because women of the time were often very strong willed, determined people, with a view of existence often very different from our own.
According to Garreau there was in the middle ages a close resemblance between the manners of men and women: the rules separating the sexes - which largely apply even in the present era - had not been finally settled.
Men might dissolve in tears, and women speak without prudery. Women were perceived as intellectually superior, and great men and fierce warriors learned their behaviour from women, as in Richard Coeur de Lion, St Louis - brought up exclusively by Blanche of Castile - and Louis' fellow crusader Joinville, the pupil of his widowed mother.
Adams goes further when he claims a medieval belief in the superiority of women. Women, he says, ruled the household and the workshop, cared for the economy, supplied the intelligence and dictated taste.
Ultimately, he claimed, women always overcame the men.
William the Conqueror was so exasperated with Queen Mathilda's flaunting his bastardy that he dragged her behind his horse. But in the end he so regretted his behaviour that he gave her the money to build the Abbaye aux Dames: she won in the long run.2
One might comment that a rebellious slave is still a slave, and even the money required to build an abbey may be only partial compensation for being dragged behind a horse.
However, even though women lacked political, legal and frequently economic and military power, it is beyond question that many women were influential individuals in their own right, and that a great many of the most famous men of the time - and particularly those involved in the Crusades - were under the inspiration of a woman of strong character.
It is a commonplace of history now that Richard the Lionheart was overawed by his mother, who conducted his education, and whose guidance was strong during his conflicts with his father and later during his Crusade.
Popular belief - for which there is little or no documentary proof - has it that the relationship went beyond the acceptable bounds of mother and son, and that Richard as a result grew up self destructive and unable to form a relationship with people in general and women in particular. Finally, he brought about his own destruction through a kind of Oedipal rage created by his mother.
Similarly, the passionate force behind the Second Crusade was Bernard of Clairvaux, the man who was also largely responsible for refining the religious concepts eventually embodied in the ideals of chivalry.
In the opinion of historians of the Church such as J.T. McNeill, St Bernard represents the peak of the monastic spirit. The saint of chivalry was goaded by the influence of his mother. It was a vision of his mother that drove 22 year old Bernard from his worldly pursuits into the monastic way of life.
His mother Aleth traced her line to the ancient dukes of Burgundy. Aleth's father had educated her for a life in the cloister, an intention interrupted by marriage to Tescelin the Fair Haired, master of Fontaines-les-Dijon. Aleth and Tescelin produced six sons and a daughter, and in these children Aleth instilled some Latin and a great deal of piety, while denying them luxuries such as sweets. Her chief ambition rested with Bernard. Thus, she went to Chatillon with him when he went to school. During their time together at home in Dijon, she customarily had a company of priests to an annual dinner.
During one of these dinners, she fell ill, and, as her guests became her choir to intone a litany, she peacefully yielded up her spirit.
Bernard continued in his noble profession of arms after his mother's death, but at the same time it was his regular habit to say the seven penitential psalms for his mother, in silence, every day.
One day, while riding to aid his brothers in a siege, he saw his mother's face before him, with a look of reproach and disappointment. He immediately decided to devote himself to a monastic way of life. He chose the austere rule of the new order of Cistercian monks, who made their way of life in the purer air of the untamed wilderness. His companions were four of his five brothers, and thirty other young men.
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