France Part 1: Abbaye Royale de Fontevrauld or the dangers of turning up 20 years too late

[inulro]

Backstory: When I was about 14, I picked up a paperback of Norah Lofts' Queen in Waiting (no sniggering at the back!) which is a fictionalised account of the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. I quickly decided she was my favourite historical figure. Still is, for that matter.

The following year my family went to France for the summer. Before we went, my parents asked us what we wanted to do. The only thing that was really important to me was to go to Fontevrauld to make the pilgrimage to the place where Eleanor (and most of the Plantagenets) were buried. In those days, it wasn't even in the guidebooks - eventually I located the village on a map. So, we got to the abbey only to discover that back then it was only open about 3 days a week, and it wasn't that day. Unfortunately, despite this being really important to me, my parents wouldn't come back the next day. We were going to the Loire valley anyway, there's no shortage of interesting things to do instead in the area, and we weren't on a really tight schedule or anything, but no.

I never made it there in my subsequent trip as a student, because it was winter and I didn't have access to a car (it's still not that accessible on public transport).

So this time, we drove for two hours to get there. Since 1984, it's gone from being a ruin off the beaten path to one of France's premiere tourist destinations. It has been restored to within an inch of its life. There's a massive visitor centre as at Whitby & Fountains Abbeys.

The church is clinically white. It's an enormous building consisting of NOTHING but white stone. No decoration, tombs, anything. Four of the Plantagenet effigies - Eleanor, Henry II, Richard I and Isabella of Angoulême (wife of King John) survive, but they've been herded into the middle of the room and have a barrier around them. It's completely Bad and Wrong. I'd read about the "improvements" and expected to be somewhat disappointed, but not like this. For anyone who's spent considerable time in the medieval churches of Europe, it's downright surreal. Medieval folk were not minimalists.

I do know that they were all moved from their original places in the 1650s and that the church and indeed the monastery as a whole took a beating in the Revolution and after (it was a prison until 1973!), but I do wish I'd seen it in whatever state it was in in the 80s. It can't have been worse.

It wasn't a total waste of a day, because we also visited the castle at Chinon, which also has strong Plantagenet connections, as well as being the place where the Templars were imprisoned in 1307. It's also important in the Joan of Arc saga, but I'm less interested in that. Although the guidebook said there wasn't much left, it took well over an hour to go round and left me completely exhausted - there's lots of stairs you can still climb, including to the entrance of the tunnel connecting the two halves of the fortress. (The visit would be immeasurably improved by being able to go through, but apparently there's been a cave-in).

Comments

[scathe.livejournal.com]

It's a terrible shame about Fontevrauld - I've always wanted to visit there too, and it sounds as though I should have gone a decade or so ago...

[inulro.livejournal.com]

It's a washout from the Dorky Plantagenet Pilgrimage point of view, but is almost worth going to because the monastery as a whole is in a better state of preservation than any of the English ones I can think of.

One of these years I'll get to Grand Chartreuse, but I keep travelling in the west of France.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Was Eleanor of Aquitaine the mother of the Black Prince?

:? If so, she scored quite highly on the list of greatest black Britons, but I've never been able to work out where the African would've entered her family tree.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

The Black Prince wasn't black anyway - I think it's his armour that was. And he's about 100-odd years later than Eleanor, who was the mother of Richard I and King John.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but people with an agenda to push like to point to physical descriptions of the Black Prince's mother (broad nose, darkish skin, curly hair) and claim her as a black Briton, and suggest that his name wasn't just based on his armour.

As I've said, it's an agenda they're pushing, but it does make me wonder if there's any evidence for anything non-European in her ancestry or just wishful thinking.