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extremely fluent - indeed a near genius - in Latin.6
This more intellectual bent may have been provided by having her copy manuscripts, and it was possibly from this that her remarkable, if rather zealous and bigoted, understanding of medieval theology and philosophy derived.
This was despite the fact that she was one of a family of ten, and that her parents appear to have been rather obscure, although described as "wealthy and engaged in worldly affairs." Presumably they were merchants at a time when business enjoyed a low standing in society.
Indeed, it was possible for a woman to receive some highly professional education, as evidenced by the case of the woman doctor investigated by the masters of medicine in Paris in 1322. This woman, Jacoba Felicie, was amongst a number of people who were thoroughly questioned after having been arrested for practicing medicine without a licence.
The doctors charged that she had visited patients, inspected their urine, felt their pulse, body and limbs and promised to cure them, as well as administering medicines. Patients were interviewed, including the lord Odo of the Hospital. He had called on Jacoba and her spouse Jean to cure him, which they had done by amongst other things administering doses of chamomile and meliot.
In her own defence, Jacoba argued very fully.
She said that if a statute, decree, admonition, prohibition and excommunication which the said dean and masters were trying to use against her had ever been made, this had been only once on account of and against ignorant women and inexperienced fools, who, untrained in the medical art and totally ignorant of its precepts, usurped the office of practising it. From their number she was excepted, being expert in the art of medicine and instructed in the precepts of the said art. For these reasons the regulations were not binding on her.
She further argued that the precept had been made 102 years before, indeed, sixty years before she was born, against certain ignorant women living at that time.
As well, she said it was more becoming for a women clever and expert to visit a sick woman and look into the secrets of nature and her private parts than a man. A woman would allow herself to die before she would reveal the secrets of her illness to a man, because of the virtue of the female sex and because of the shame she would endure.
Thus, the law held that lesser evils should be permitted so that greater ones may be avoided.7
One trusts that after her able and spirited defence, the female doctor was allowed to pursue her calling.
Whether or not she escaped the wrath of the medical fraternity, however, her case does reveal that women were able to gain access to higher education if they were willing to persist and to face the displeasure of their male colleagues.
However, for most women, formal education was probably a rarity, and all but unimagined if they were from the poorer estates.
And it should not be assumed that girls were any more interested in the advantages of education than children have been at any previous or later occasion in history.
But rather than considering that the narrow curriculum of medieval scholarship and the rigidities of a nunnery school were the determining factors in shaping the character of the Crusading woman, one should perhaps instead look to the real life influences of the times and family upon character.
In the case of Queen Eleanor, one of the most influential thinkers of her age, details of formal learning seem to be subsumed by her vivid experiences of childhood in a volatile family. These influences would have framed her understanding virtually from the moment of her birth.
It is widely thought that Eleanor's strong personality was largely formed through interaction with the men of her family, at least as much as with the women. Like most of the male members of her family, Eleanor's character appears tempestuous, passionate, strong willed and pleasure seeking, as well as persuasive, loving, intelligent, cultured, creative and fascinating. She was no boneless lady languishing for love in a tower. Rather, Eleanor was often the lady at the head of a mighty army, ready to do anything to gain her will.
Her female ancestors also lived their lives to the fullest, but she may not have had as much direct contact with them as she did with the men of her family.
Eleanor's grandmother - whom she never knew - was the same woman whose naked figure is said to have graced the shield of her grandfather during the First Crusade. It seems that grandfather William's legal wife, Philippa of Toulouse, found religion while William was away on his pilgrimage, a taste for piety that did not accord with his view of life.
So he replaced her with the lady of his shield - who must have won his affections before the Crusade. Thus, his new countess was Dangerosa, the lady of Chatellreault.
This well advertised lady was already the mother of a daughter named Anor. William entrenched his family ties (rather bewilderingly to a genealogist) by marrying this step daughter to his son William, born of the previous countess Philippa.
It was this unlikely union of the young William and Anor that produced a short lived boy named Agret, a daughter Eleanor (born in 1122 somewhere in the south) and another daughter, Petronilla.8
In typical tempestuous family fashion, Eleanor's father William X later made war on her grandfather William IX over the affair with Dangerosa, feeling his mother slighted. Eventually, grandfather Wiliam IX died excommunicated, when Eleanor was five.
Her father, William X, proved himself dangerous and strong willed, as well as dazzling, in his own right, and his court was a centre for troubadours from Spain, Italy and as far as Wales.
William's temper as well as his appetite and physical strength were legendary: he was said to be able to eat enough for eight men, and he threatened the saintly Bernard in his own church over a religious dispute.
Eleanor's mother Anor had her colour as well, being excommunicated over the support of an anti pope. She died when Eleanor was only eight.
It was William X who thus took on the raising of his daughter, after the death of his wife and his son.
He gave her an enviable upbringing, exposing her to the most glamorous minds of his
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