Eleanor tour to Medieval Aquitaine

May 17-29, 2003

Early Booking Price, before January 17, 2003: $3275

Regular Price, from January 17, 2003: $3575

Single Supplement $455, Deposit $600

Tour Director: Professor Peter Gravgaard

Itinerary

Day 1 (May 17, 2003)

Fly to Paris, France. (Please make sure your travel agent books you a flight arriving in Paris on Day 2 of the tour between 09:00 am and 12:00 noon.)

Day 2 (May 18, 2003)

You arrive at Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, Paris, where Peter Gravgaard will meet you at the MEETING POINT in Terminal One. He will take you to see Chartres Cathedral on the way to your hotel in Azay-le-Rideau.

Day 3 (May 19, 2003)

We begin the day with a visit to Chenonceaux Chateau, generally considered to be the most beautiful castle in France. King Henri II of France gave it to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers - his wife, Catherine de Medici - took it back after the king's death.

Next we visit Fontevraud Abbey where Eleanor retired and where she, her husband King Henry II of England (not to be confused with Henri II of France) and her son King Richard Lionheart of England, are buried. (This magnificent building was for years reduced to being a state prison, but has been under restoration for the last forty years and has now regained its former glory.)

Next we visit the Castle of Chinon, where Eleanor was imprisoned by Henry after her revolt against him in 1173, and where he died in 1189. This is also where, in later years, King Philip the Fair imprisoned the Knights Templar and where Joan of Arc was received by the Dauphin of France whom she recognized despite his disguise.

From Chinon we drive to our hotel near Poitiers passing through Richelieu, the town built by the great Cardinal, whom readers of Dumas will remember. We also pass Faye-la-Vineuse, which once belonged to Eleanor's uncle and which Henry took in November 1173. Time permitting, we will stop at Mirebeau to visit the scene of King John's dramatic rescue of his mother when, in 1202 she was besieged by her grandson, Arthur, and members of the hostile Lusignan family. From Mirebeau we drive to our hotel near Poitiers where we will stay for two nights.

Day 4 (May 20, 2003)

We will spend this morning seeing Poitiers which is, no doubt, the town in Aquitaine where the spirit of Queen Eleanor can be felt most strongly. We will visit the Great Hall where she celebrated her "Courts of Love" whatever form they may have taken: troubadour poetry and music or philosophical dissertations in the style of Peter Abelard. The building was constructed by Eleanor's grandfather, William IX of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine and the first troubadour (see Paul Blackburn, Proensa, in the Bibliography). He seems to have learnt to compose poetry from Arabic teachers, either at the court of Aragon where he spent much of his youth in a Moorish culture or during the First Crusade when he may have been captured by the Saracens. Alternatively, William may have been exposed both to Saracen poetry and the doctrines of Courtly Love while recuperating from his battle wounds in Antioch at the court of Bohemund I, the son of that great Norman, Robert Guiscard. Here too he would have established useful connections with the Hauteville family (Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemond were descendants of Tancred of Hauteville). Much later, in 1130, when Bohemond's son Bohemond II was killed, leaving a two year old daughter, Constance, it was Raymond of Poitiers who was chosen to marry her, thereby becoming Prince of Antioch. Here then, is the background for the meeting in Antioch between Raymond and Eleanor, uncle and niece.

The Great Hall is nowadays the Courthouse of Poitiers so that the performances of the troubadours have been replaced by the pleadings of the lawyers. The finest architecture of Poitiers is ecclesiastic: you must see Notre Dame la Grande with its interesting Romanesque facade and its astonishing Moorish-striped pillars. Other churches of note are the St Peter's Cathedral, the St Hilary, the St Radegond, the St Porchaire and finally the St John's Baptistery.

There will be time for shopping in Poitiers before we return our hotel in its park outside the city center.

Day 5 (May 21, 2003)

We begin the day with a visit to Angles-sur-l'Anglin, the impressive stronghold of the bishops of Poitiers, built on a ridge, high above the Anglin river. From here we drive to St Savin to see the abbey church with the finest Romanesque murals to be found in France - you had better bring your binoculars! Next we will visit the fortress of Morthemer where John Chandos, the English general, may have died in the dungeons after his defeat at nearby Lucssac-les-Chateaux. Our last visit today will be to the chapel of the Templars of Cressac, with frescoes depicting scenes from the Crusades: don't forget that Eleanor and King Louis VII of France participated in the Second Crusade, 1147-9.

From Cressac we drive to our hotel in the delightful little town of Brantome.

Day 6 (May 22, 2003)

Brantome is worth a closer look; it is the product of the abbey, which dominates the town; the oxbow which surrounds the town has been transformed into a charming water park with weirs, bridges and terraces. The nearest parallel is not so much Venice which desperate travel writers come up with, but rather Diane de Poitiers' Chenonceaux which I have already shown you. The ruling spirit of Brantome is Pierre de Bourdeilles, abbot of Brantome, who at the end of his life, retired here and wrote his lively memoirs, the juicy 'Vie des DamesGalantes' - see Bibliography.

From Brantome we drive to Piegut-Pluviers to see the little fortress which was buit by King Richard Lionheart. Next I will take you to Chalus, the castle which he besieged in 1199, and where he was killed by a bolt from a crossbow which hit him in the neck. The killer was promised life and liberty by Mercadier, the leader of the king's mercenaries. (The information about Richard Lionheart's death can easily be found in Alison Weir's excellent Eleanor of Aquitaine. By the Wrath of God, Queen of England, p. 319, see Bibliography.)

From Chalus I will take you to Hautefort, the great castle which once belonged to Bertran de Born, one of the best known troubadours - you will find him in Dante's Divine Comedy, where he is sentenced to Hell, carrying his severed head in his hand, a fitting punishment, since he had advised the sons of King Henry II of England to rebel against their father: the arms against the head. Hautefort is no longer a twelfth century castle, but a huge seventeenth-century construction.

From Bertran de Born's castle we will drive to Sergeac to see a well-conserved fortified church which once belonged to the Knights Templar; we will also stop in Domme to see the interesting graffitti written by the seventy Knights Templar who were prisoners here in the 'Porte des Tours' from 1307 to 1318. These are the most important Templar inscriptions in France. From Domme we will drive to our hotel in St-Cere.

Day 7 (May 23, 2003)

Today we drive from St-Cere along the Dordogne river; we will stop to see Carennac which I think, must be 'the most beautiful village in France' never mind the thousands of other villages making the same claim with document in hand to prove it. Carennac is lovely: I wish that I could copyright that statement and limit the number ofher visitors to the participants of the PLANTAGENET TOURS.

Our next find is Martel, a splendid town with beautiful townhouses, which constantly astonishes the visitors with new and unexpected marvels. It is associated with Charles Martel who in 732, stopped the Arabs under Abd-ar-Rahman in the battles of Tours and Poitiers. It was also here that the 'young King' (Henry, son of Henry II of England and Eleanor) died, allegedly from his bad conscience, after he has robbed the Pilgrim church of Rocamadour of its treasure to pay his soldiers.

From Martel we proceed to Souillac to see the fine Benedictine abbey with interesting sculptures.

On our way to Bordeaux we will pass St-Michel-de-Montaigne with the library tower of Montaigne, the first French philosopher, and Castillon-la-Bataille where the French defeated the English in 1453 and threw them out of France. We will spend the night in a hotel near Bordeaux.

Day 8 (May 24, 2003)

Eleanor and Louis (later King Louis VII) were married on 25 July 1137 in the St Andre Cathedral in Bordeaux, so we will make a visit there this morning. After a walk through the capital of Aquitaine we will drive to Vayres to see one of the prettiest castles of the Bordeaux region with its park and fortifications on the banks of the Dordogne river. King Henri IV of France owned Vayres once, and it is the kind of chateau which gives you an idea of Queen Eleanor's life as a young girl.

From Vayres we will drive to Blaye to see the castle of Jaufre Rudel, the troubadour whose love for a princess in faraway Tripoli - la Princess Lointaine, Edmond Rostand wrote a play about him - sent him out searching for her, only to find both her and his own death at the same time. The Rudel castle now stands like a toy house in the grounds of the enormous citadel of Blaye which was later built here by Vauban, Louis XIV's military architect.

From Blaye we drive via Saintes and Rochefort to La Rochelle, where we will spend the night.

Day 9 (May 25, 2003)

This morning we will go for a walk in La Rochelle, the town which Queen Eleanor promoted. The harbor may have been constructed by the Knights Templar, perhaps to receive their mysterious/mythical imports of silver from Latin America (notice that the name 'Guyana' or 'Guyenne' (in South America) comes from 'Aquaitaine'). While the import of silver cannot, I think, be proved at this time, the export of French convicts to Devil's Island in Guyenne is an old practice. It is arguably more likely that the port of La Rochelle was constructed for a profitable purpose, such as importing silver, than for the in-essential purpose of getting rid of convicts - you don't build harbors for that, but prisons. And the foundation of La Rochelle seems to have occurred during the time of the Knights Templar.

In later years La Rochelle became a stronghold for the Protestants (Edict of Nantes), and after the revocation of the Edict it took Cardinal Richelieu to defeat La Rochelle.

After our city walk we drive north through the Marais Poitevin (the marshlands from where Longfellow's Evangeline emigrated), and through Nantes and Rennes to Mont-Saint-Michel where we will spend the night.

Day 10 (May 26, 2003)

In the morning we will visit Mont-Saint-Michel, the abbey on the rocks off the coast of Normandy. Before going you might recall the first chapter of Henry Adams' Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, which begins, "The Archangel loved heights", and I hope you will be able to join him in this since there is quite a walk up to the top of the rock. Still, it is worth it - it is not for nothing that the highest building is called the 'merveille', the marvel!This is one of the finest things you will see on our ELEANOR TOUR.

From here we continue the day's further program - we will drive to Avranches to see the Patton Monument. This is where General Patton's tanks broke through the German lines and proceeded to surround them by driving east in a movement which was meant to enclose them when his tanks closed the 'Falaise gap'. The gap was never closed, but even so, the German tanks were largely destroyed by Allied air attacks, unable as they were to evade from the 'cauldron'.

From Avranches I will take you to Domfront where Eleanor and Henry had a residence. They celebrated Christmas here in 1161, and their daughter, Eleanor (later Eleanor of Castile) was baptised here. We know that several prominent writers of the age at some point visited Eleanor's court at Domfront: Achard de Saint-Victor, the philosopher (On the Trinity), was present at the baptism just mentioned; Robert Wace presented Eleanor with his translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, and also wrote Le Roman de Rou (the novel about Rollo, the Scandinavian ancestor of the Norman dukes) Chretien de Troyes seems to have stayed at Domfront when he wrote the Arthurian romances about Lancelot: Le Chevalier de la Charrette and Le Chevalier au Lion. It is interesting to see that Chretien borrowed the landscape of Domfront for his novel: when his hero walks over the bridge under the water the author may have had in mind a bridge/ford near the church of Notre-Dame-sous-l'Eau outside Domfront. Chretien found topics for his stories in the folklore of the Domfront region: Lancelot is inspired by St-Fraimbault, a local saint from Normandy, and there was a local belief that Arthur was buried in the Fosse-Arthour. It is possible that the stories about Arthur may have travelled from Britain to Normandy via the monks from Stogursey (near Bridgewater in Somerset, England) to their mother-house, Lonlay-l'Abbaye, northwest of Domfront. We drive to our hotel in Bayeux where we will stay fror two nights.

Day 11 (May 27, 2003)

This morning we visit the Bayeux Tapestry Exhibition which depicts the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. It also explains the background for the event - the settlement of the Danish and Norwegian Vikings in England: the Danelaw, between 790 and 1016, and in France:Normandy, between 841 and 911. Rolf (Rollo or Rou), who may have been a Norwegian Prince, became "Count of Rouen" and, in 1006, 'Duke of Normandy, built a navy, invaded England and defeated Harold in the Battle of Hastings.

After lunch we will visit the D-Day Museum in Bayeux before driving to Bloody Omaha Beach to see the monument and the cemetery for the American soldiers who fell during the attack on the German positions.

We will also visit the Pointe du Hoc, which was conquered by a Rangers battalion.

Day 12 (May 28, 2003)

Today we drive from Bayeux to Caen to see St Stephen's Church (the Abbaye aux Hommes) where William the Conqueror was buried. Our next visit is to Honfleur, the charming little town with a picturesque medieval fishing port ('le vieux bassin'), narrow streets, the residence of the King's representative ('la lieutenance') and the Musee Eugene Boudin - have a walk down the Rue de l'Homme de Bois and a good lunch near the Old Port!

From Honfleur we drive to Rouen where we will spend the night. In the evening we will have our FAREWELL DINNER.

Day 13 (May 29, 2003)

This is the last day of the Eleanor tour. We will drive you on to the motorway to Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, Paris so that you can catch your return flight to the USA. (please choose a flight departing no earlier than 11.00 hours.)

BONVOYAGE.

Bibliography

Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
Dante Aleghieri, The Divine Comedy
Reto Bezzola, Les origines et la formation de la litterature courtoise en Occident, Paris, 1958
Paul Blackburn, Proensa. An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry, Berkeley, 1978
Pierre de Brantome, La Vie des Dames Galantes
Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love
Chretien de Troyes, Le Conte du Graal, Livre de Poche
John Gillingham, The Life and Time of Richard I, 1973
Amy Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings, Harvard, 1950
Erich Kohler, L'Adventure chevaleresque. Ideal et realite dans le roman courtois, Paris 1973
Jacques Le Goff, La civilization de l'Occident medieval, Paris 1977
C S Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Oxford 1936
Gerard Lomenec'h, Alienor d'Aquitaine et les troubadours, Paris 1983
Marion Meade, Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, London, 1978
Rene Nelli, L'Erotique des Troubadours, Toulouse, 1963
Sidney Painter, William Marshall, Knight-Errant, Baron and Regent of England, Univ of Toronto Press, 1971
Linda Paterson, The World of the Troubadours, Cambridge Univ Press
The Quest of the Holy Grail, transl. M Materasso, Penguin, 1969
Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, Princeton Univ Press, 1983
W L Warren, King John
Alison Weir, Eleanor of Aquitaine, By the Wrath of God, Queen of England, London, 1999