Louis VII was a Capetian King of the Franks from 1137 until his death.
He was the son and successor of Louis VI and he married Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the
wealthiest and most powerful women in western Europe.
Eleanor brought the vast Duchy of Aquitaine as a dowry to Louis, thus temporarily extending
the Capetian lands to the Pyrenees, but their marriage was annulled in 1152 as no male heir
could be produced.
Immediately after the annulment of her marriage, Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, Duke of
Normandy and Count of Anjou, to whom she gave the Aquitaine, five sons, and three daughters.
When Henry became King of England in 1154, as Henry II, he ruled over a large empire,
spanning from Scotland to the Pyrenees, that would mark the beginning of the long rivalry
between France and England.
Louis VII's reign saw the founding of the University of Paris, and the disastrous Second
Crusade.
Louis and his famous counselor Abbot Suger pushed for a greater centralization of the
state and favoured the development French Gothic architecture, notably the construction
of Notre-Dame de Paris.
He died in 1180 and was succeeded by his son Philip II.
Early years Louis was born in 1120 in Paris, the second
son of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of Maurienne.
The early education of Prince Louis anticipated an ecclesiastical career-path.
He unexpectedly became the heir to the throne after the accidental death of his older brother,
Philip, in 1131.
A well-learned and exceptionally devout man, Louis VII was better suited for life as a
priest than as a monarch.
He spent much time of his youth in Saint-Denis, where he built a friendship with the Abbot
Suger, which served him well in his early years as king.
Early reign Following the death of William X, Duke of
Aquitaine, Louis VI moved quickly to have Prince Louis married to Eleanor, Duchess of
Aquitaine, heiress of William X, on 25 July 1137.
In this way, Louis VI sought to add the large, sprawling territory of the Aquitaine to his
family's holdings in France.
Shortly after the marriage, Louis VI died, on 1 August 1137, and Prince Louis became
King of France, reigning as "Louis VII."
The pairing of the monkish Louis VII and the high-spirited Eleanor was doomed to failure;
she reportedly once declared that she had thought to marry a king, only to find she'd
married a monk.
There was a marked difference between the frosty, reserved culture of the northern Íle
de France court where Louis had been raised and the rich, free-wheeling court life of
the Aquitaine with which Eleanor was familiar.
Louis and Eleanor had two daughters, Marie and Alix.
In the first part of his reign, Louis VII was vigorous and zealous in his prerogatives,
but after his Crusade, his piety limited his ability to become an effective statesman.
His accession was marked by no disturbances, other than uprisings by the burgesses of Orléans
and of Poitiers, who wished to organise communes.
He soon came into violent conflict with Pope Innocent II, however, when the archbishopric
of Bourges became vacant.
The King supported as candidate the chancellor Cadurc against the Pope's nominee Pierre de
la Chatre, swearing upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges.
The Pope thus imposed an interdict upon the King.
Louis VII then became involved in a war with Theobald II of Champagne by permitting Raoul
I of Vermandois, the seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife, Theobald II's niece,
and to marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, sister of the queen of France.
Champagne also sided with the Pope in the dispute over Bourges.
The war lasted two years and ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army.
Louis VII was personally involved in the assault and burning of the town of Vitry-le-François.
More than a thousand people who had sought refuge in the church died in the flames.
Overcome with guilt, and humiliated by ecclesiastical contempt, Louis admitted defeat, removed his
armies from Champagne and returned them to Theobald, accepting Pierre de la Chatre and
shunning Raoul and Petronilla.
Desiring to atone for his sins, he then declared on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention
of going on a crusade.
Bernard of Clairvaux assured its popularity by his preaching at Vezelay on Easter 1146.
Meanwhile in 1144, Geoffrey the Handsome, Count of Anjou, completed his conquest of
Normandy.
In exchange for being recognised as Duke of Normandy by Louis, Geoffrey surrendered half
of the Vexin—a region considered vital to Norman security—to Louis.
Considered a clever move by Louis at the time, it would later prove yet another step towards
Angevin rule.
In June 1147, in fulfilment of his vow to go on crusade, Louis VII and his queen, Eleanor,
set out from the Basilica of St Denis, first stopping in Metz, Lorraine, on the overland
route to Syria.
Soon they arrived to the Kingdom of Hungary where they were welcomed by the king Géza
II of Hungary, who was already waiting with the German emperor.
Due to his good relationships with Louis VII, Géza II asked the French king to be his son
Stephen's baptism godfather.
After receiving provisions from the Hungarian king, the armies continued the march to the
East.
Just beyond Laodicea the French army was ambushed by Turks.
The French were bombarded by arrows and heavy stones, the Turks swarmed down from the mountains
and the massacre began.
The historian Odo of Deuil reported:
During the fighting the King Louis lost his small and famous royal guard, but he remained
in good heart and nimbly and courageously scaled the side of the mountain by gripping
the tree roots … The enemy climbed after him, hoping to capture him, and the enemy
in the distance continued to fire arrows at him.
But God willed that his cuirass should protect him from the arrows, and to prevent himself
from being captured he defended the crag with his bloody sword, cutting off many heads and
hands.
Louis VII and his army finally reached the Holy Land in 1148.
His queen Eleanor supported her uncle, Raymond of Antioch, and prevailed upon Louis to help
Antioch against Aleppo.
But Louis VII's interest lay in Jerusalem, and so he slipped out of Antioch in secret.
He united with Conrad III of Germany and King Baldwin III of Jerusalem to lay siege to Damascus;
this ended in disaster and the project was abandoned.
Louis VII decided to leave the Holy Land, despite the protests of Eleanor, who still
wanted to help her doomed uncle Raymond of Antioch.
Louis VII and the French army returned home in 1149.
A shift in the status quo The expedition came to a great cost to the
royal treasury and military.
It also precipitated a conflict with Eleanor, leading to the annulment of their marriage
at the council of Beaugency in March 1152.
Perhaps the marriage to Eleanor might have continued if the royal couple had produced
a male heir, but this had not occurred.
The Council of Beaugency declared that Louis VII and Eleanor were too closely related for
their marriage to be legal.
Thus the marriage was annulled on 21 March 1152.
The pretext of kinship was the basis for annulment; in fact, it owed more to the state of hostility
between the two, and to the decreasing odds that their marriage would produce a male heir
to the throne of France.
On 18 May 1152, Eleanor married Henry, Count of Anjou, the future Henry II of England,
giving him the duchy of Aquitaine, three daughters, and five sons.
Louis VII led an ineffective war against Henry for having married without the authorization
of his suzerain; the result was a humiliation for the enemies of Henry and Eleanor, who
saw their troops routed, their lands ravaged, and their property stolen.
Louis reacted by coming down with a fever, and returned to the Ile-de France.
In 1154 Louis VII married Constance of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VII of Castile.
She, too, failed to give him a son and heir, bearing only two daughters, Marguerite of
France, and Alys.
Louis having produced no sons by 1157, Henry II of England began to believe that he might
never do so, and that the succession of France would consequently be left in question.
Determined to secure a claim for his family, he sent the Chancellor, Thomas Becket, to
press for a marriage between Princess Marguerite and Henry's heir, also called Henry.
Louis, surprisingly, agreed to this proposal, and by the Treaty of Gisors betrothed the
young pair, giving as a dowry the Norman Vexin and Gisors.
Constance died in childbirth on 4 October 1160, and five weeks later Louis VII married
Adèle of Champagne.
To counterbalance the advantage this would give the King of France, Henry II had the
marriage of their children celebrated at once.
Louis understood the danger of the growing Angevin power; however, through indecision
and lack of fiscal and military resources, compared to Henry II, he failed to oppose
Angevin hegemony effectively.
One of his few successes, in 1159, was his trip to Toulouse to aid Raymond V, Count of
Toulouse, who had been attacked by Henry II: after he entered into the city with a small
escort, claiming to be visiting his sister, the Countess, Henry declared that he could
not attack the city while his liege lord was inside, and went home.
Diplomacy At the same time the emperor Frederick I in
the east was making good the imperial claims on Arles.
When the schism broke out, Louis VII took the part of the Pope Alexander III, the enemy
of Frederick I, and after two comical failures of Frederick I to meet Louis VII at Saint
Jean de Losne, Louis VII definitely gave himself up to the cause of Alexander III, who lived
at Sens from 1163 to 1165.
Alexander III gave the King, in return for his loyal support, the golden rose.
More importantly for French – and English – history would be his support for Thomas
Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he tried to reconcile with Henry II.
Louis sided with Becket as much to damage Henry as out of piousness – yet even he
grew irritated with the stubbornness of the archbishop, asking when Becket refused Henry's
conciliations, "Do you wish to be more than a Saint?"
He also supported Henry's rebellious sons, and encouraged Plantagenet disunity by making
Henry's sons, rather than Henry himself, the feudal overlords of the Angevin territories
in France; but the rivalry amongst Henry's sons and Louis's own indecisiveness broke
up the coalition between them.
Finally, in 1177, the Pope intervened to bring the two Kings to terms at Vitry-le-François.
In 1165, Louis' third wife bore him a son and heir, Philip II Augustus.
Louis had him crowned at Reims in 1179, in the Capetian tradition.
Already stricken with paralysis, King Louis VII himself could not be present at the ceremony.
He died on 18 September 1180 at the Abbey at Saint-Pont, Allier and was in the Cistercian
Abbey of Barbeaux and was later moved to Saint-Denis in 1817
Marriages and children Louis married three times.
By Eleanor of Aquitaine, he had: Marie, married Henry I of Champagne
Alix, married Theobald V of Blois By Constance of Castile:
Margaret, married Henry the Young King; King Béla III of Hungary
Alys, engaged to Richard I of England; she married William IV, Count of Ponthieu
By Adele of Champagne: Philip II Augustus
Agnes, who was betrothed to Alexius II Comnenus but married Andronicus I Comnenus; Theodore
Branas Legacy
The reign of Louis VII was, from the point of view of royal territory and military power,
a difficult and unfortunate one.
Yet the royal authority made progress in the parts of France distant from the royal domains:
more direct and more frequent connection was made with distant vassals, a result largely
due to the alliance of the clergy with the crown.
Louis VII thus reaped the reward for services rendered the church during the least successful
portion of his reign.
His greater accomplishments lie in the development of agriculture, population, commerce, the
building of stone fortresses, as well as an intellectual renaissance.
Considering the significant disparity of political leverage and financial resources between Louis
VII and his Angevin rival, not to mention Henry II's superior military skills, Louis
VII should be credited with preserving the Capetian dynasty.
Fictional portrayals Louis is a character in Jean Anouilh's play
Becket.
In the 1964 film adaptation he was portrayed by John Gielgud, who was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
He was also portrayed by Charles Kay in the 1978 BBC TV drama series The Devil's Crown.
He has a role in Sharon Kay Penman's novels When Christ and His Saints Slept and Devil's
Brood.
The early part of Norah Lofts' biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine deals considerably with
Louis VII, seen through Eleanor's eyes and giving her side in their problematic relationship.
Louis is one of the main characters in Elizabeth Chadwick's latest novel The Summer Queen.
Ancestors Sources
Jones, Dan.
The Plantagenets:The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England.
New York: Viking Press.
ISBN 9780670026654.
Meade, Marion.
Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography.
Penguin.
ISBN 9780140153385.
References