Navarre, Berengaria of
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==References== | ==References== | ||
| + | * Bard, Rachel. ''Queen Without A Country'' (historical novel), Literary Network Press, 2001. ISBN 9780971033382 | ||
* Bloss, C. A. ''Heroines of the crusades'', Rochester, Wanzer, Beardsley & co., 1853. {{OCLC|4567877}} | * Bloss, C. A. ''Heroines of the crusades'', Rochester, Wanzer, Beardsley & co., 1853. {{OCLC|4567877}} | ||
* Lofts, Norah. ''Queens of England'', Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. ISBN 9780385127806 | * Lofts, Norah. ''Queens of England'', Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. ISBN 9780385127806 | ||
Revision as of 20:14, 24 January 2009
| Berengaria of Navarre | |
|---|---|
| Queen consort of the English | |
| |
| Consort | 12 May 1191 – 6 April 1199 |
| Consort to | Richard I of England |
| Titles | |
| The Queen Dowager The Queen Infanta Berengaria of Navarre | |
| Royal House | House of Plantagenet House of Jiménez |
| Father | Sancho VI of Navarre |
| Mother | Sancha of Castile |
| Born | c. 1165-1170 |
| Died | 23 December 1230 (aged 59–65) |
Berengaria (Spanish: Berenguela, French: Bérengère; c. 1165-1170 – 23 December 1230), was the eldest daughter of Sancho VI of Navarre and Sancha of Castile. Her maternal grandparents were Alfonso VII of León and Berenguela of Barcelona. She was a fourth generation descendant of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (El Cid).
She married Richard I of England on the route of the Third Crusade, but spent very little time with him, they had no children and she is known as "the only English Queen to never set foot in England."
Berengaria was closely related to royalty in France and England as well as Spain. Her brother, Sancho el Fuerte, succeeded his father as king and her sister, Blanche, married Thibaut of Champagne, grandson of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France. Blanche and Tibaut's son succeeded Sancho VII as king of Navarre.
Berengaria was a witness at Blanche's marriage, and may have helped in arranging the marriage. Blanche took Berengaria in, when she was widowed and unable to claim her dower from king John and later when her city was under interdict. King John never paid the money owed Berengaria while he was alive, but his son, King Henry III, paid her what was due. Blanche and her son treated Berengaria as a close relation and even helped her to buy the land she needed to found her monastery.
When King John was defeated in Normandy, Philip Augustus gave her the county of Maine in return for her dower properties in Normandy. She ruled in Maine and established the l'Epau monastery at Le Mans, and lived in the abbey from 1204 until her death in 1230 and was buried at the abbey.
Marriage
Berengaria married Richard I of England on May 12 , 1191. As is the case with many of the medieval queens consort of the Kingdom of England, relatively little is known of her life. It seems that she and Richard did in fact meet once, years before their marriage, and writers of the time liked to claim that there was an attraction between them at that time. A few twentieth-century historians, however, have claimed that Richard was romantically involved with Berengaria's brother, the future Sancho VII.
Richard had been betrothed many years earlier to Princess Alys, sister of King Philip II of France. Alys, however, became the mistress of Richard's own father, King Henry II, and allegedly the mother of Henry's illegitimate child; a marriage between Richard and Alys was therefore technically impossible for religious reasons of affinity. Richard terminated his betrothal to Alys in 1190 while at Messina.
He had Berengaria brought to him by his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Since Richard was already on the Third Crusade, having wasted no time in setting off after his coronation, the two women had a long and difficult journey to catch up with him. They arrived in Sicily during Lent (when the marriage could not take place) in 1191 and were joined by Richard's sister Joan, the widowed Queen of Sicily. En route to the Holy Land, the ship carrying Berengaria and Joan went aground off the coast of Cyprus, and they were threatened by the island's ruler, Isaac Comnenus. Richard came to their rescue, captured the island, overthrew Comnenus, and married Berengaria in the Chapel of St. George at Limassol.
Queen consort
Whether the marriage was ever even consummated is a matter for conjecture. Richard's sexual orientation is hotly debated amongst revisionist historians; some claim homosexuality via phenomenon theory, while others present him as a notorious womanizer. Unreliable sources have recorded him having one bastard son, Philip of Cognac (d. c. 1211), and perhaps another. In any case, he certainly took his new wife with him for the first part of the crusade. They returned separately, but Richard was captured and imprisoned. Berengaria and Joan returned by sea, stopping in Rome as guests of the pope for six months. Berengaria remained in Europe, attempting to raise money for Richard's ransom. After his release, Richard returned to England and she did not joined him. The marriage was childless, and Berengaria was thought to be barren.
When Richard returned to England, he had to regain all the territory that had either been lost by his brother John or taken by King Philip of France. His focus was on his kingdom, not his queen. Richard was ordered by Pope Celestine III to reunite with Berengaria and to show fidelity to her in the future. Richard obeyed and took Berengaria to church every week thereafter. When he died in 1199, she was greatly distressed, perhaps more so at being deliberately overlooked as Queen of England and Cyprus. Some historians believe that Berengaria honestly loved her husband, while Richard's feelings for her were merely formal, as the marriage was a political rather than a romantic union.
Queen dowager
Berengaria never visited England during King Richard's lifetime; during the entirety of their marriage, Richard spent just three months in England. There is evidence, however, that she may have done so in the years following his death. The traditional description of her as "the only English queen never to set foot in the country" would still be literally true, as she did not visit England during the time she was Richard's consort. However, she certainly sent envoys to England several times, mainly to inquire about the pension she was due as Dowager Queen and Richard's widow, which King John was not paying her. She lived in near poverty because of John. Although Queen Eleanor intervened, and Pope Innocent III threatened him with an interdict if he did not pay Berengaria what was due, King John still owed her more than £4000 when he died. However, during the reign of his son Henry III of England, her payments were made as they were supposed to be.
When John lost Normandy to France, Berengaria petitioned the victorious Philip Augustus and he gave her the county of Maine in return for her dower properties in Normandy which he now controlled. She lived and ruled in Maine, in the city of Le Mans.
Berengaria founded the abbey of l'Epau and entered the convent life. She was directly involved in ruling Le Mans. She was involved in struggles with the local bishop over corrupt practices in his church and jurisdictional issues. Her authority over the city was recognized by the French crown. She even arbitrated disputes and appointed functionaries, but she came into conflict with the church when she tried to levy taxes. In a letter from pope Honorius III to the abbot of St. Genevieve and two Paris deans, when Berengaria and a "large multitude of people" came to the church for Palm Sunday services, the bishop and the chapter refused them entry and shut the doors in their face "to the confusion, injustice/injury, and scandal of many."[1]"
She lived in the abbey from 1204 until she died in 1230. She, and was buried in the abbey. A skeleton thought to be hers was discovered in 1960 during the restoration of the abbey.
In fiction
The story of Richard and Berengaria's marriage is fictionalized in the 1935 film The Crusades starring Loretta Young and Henry Wilcoxon, and was a prominent feature of the 1960s British television series, Richard the Lionheart, but both versions were highly romanticized and are not reliable sources of information about the queen.
Berengaria in Fiction
Novels featuring Berengaria include:
- The Passionate Brood by Margaret Campbell Barnes
- The Heart Of The Lion by Jean Plaidy
- Queen Without a Country by Rachel Bard
- My Lord Brother the Lionheart by Molly Costain Haycraft
- Shield of Three Lions and Banners of Gold, by Pamela Kaufman
- The Lute Player by Norah Lofts
- Standard of Honor by Jack Whyte
- Wyrd by Sue Gough
- The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott
| English royalty | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by: Eleanor of Aquitaine |
Queen consort of the English 12 May 1191 – 6 April 1199 |
Succeeded by: Isabella of Angoulême |
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Bard, Rachel. Queen Without A Country (historical novel), Literary Network Press, 2001. ISBN 9780971033382
- Bloss, C. A. Heroines of the crusades, Rochester, Wanzer, Beardsley & co., 1853. OCLC 4567877
- Lofts, Norah. Queens of England, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. ISBN 9780385127806
- Sauers, Victoria. Lionhearted queen : Berengaria of Navarre, Philadelphia: Blue Bear Press, 2000. ISBN 9780966629422
- Strickland, Agnes. Lives of the queens of England from the Norman conquest: With anecdotes of their courts (Published from official records and other authentic documents, private as well as public), Philadelphia : Lea & Blanchard, 1841. OCLC 8830518
- Trindade, Ann. Berengaria: In Search of Richard's Queen, 1999. ISBN 1851824340
- Weir, Alison. Britain's Royal Families: A Complete Genealogy, London, U.K.: The Bodley Head, 1999. ISBN 9780370313108
External links
George, Duke of Cumberland (1702-1707) · Mary of Modena (1685-1688) · Catherine of Braganza (1662-1685) · Henrietta Maria of France (1625-1649) · Anne of Denmark (1603-1619) · Philip II of Spain (1554-1558) · Lord Guildford Dudley (1553) · Catherine Parr (1543-1547) · Catherine Howard (1540-1542) · Anne of Cleves (1540) · Jane Seymour (1536-1537) · Anne Boleyn (1533-1536) · Catherine of Aragon (1509-1533) · Elizabeth of York (1486-1503) · Anne Neville (1483-1485) · Elizabeth Woodville (1464-1483) · Margaret of Anjou (1445-1471) · Catherine of Valois (1420-1422) · Joanna of Navarre (1403-1413) · Isabella of Valois (1396-1399) · Anne of Bohemia (1383-1394) · Philippa of Hainault (1328-1369) · Isabella of France (1308-1327) · Marguerite of France (1299-1307) · Eleanor of Castile (1272-1290) · Eleanor of Provence (1236-1272) · Isabella of Angoulême (1200-1216) · Berengaria of Navarre (1191-1199) · Eleanor of Aquitaine (1154-1189) · Matilda of Boulogne (1135-1152) · Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou (1141) · Adeliza of Louvain (1121-1135) · Matilda of Scotland (1100-1118) · Matilda of Flanders (1066-1083)
| English Royalty |
|---|
| House of Plantagenet |
| Matilda |
| Henry II |
| Geoffrey, Count of Nantes |
| William, Count of Poitou |
| Henry II |
| William, Count of Poitiers |
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| Richard I the Lionheart |
| Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany |
| John |
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