England and Aquitaine in the century before the Norman Conquest

Abstract

A commonplace among English historians today is the importance of English ties with Aquitaine during the later Middle Ages. For some three centuries, historical events came to link the destinies of these two countries and peoples who otherwise differed strikingly in economy, language and culture in general, with lasting consequences for both. It has long been taken for granted by both English and French historians that this association came about abruptly in the 1150s as a result of the ascent to the English throne of Henry of Anjou who, through his marriage to Eleanor, heiress of the duchy of Aquitaine, became the sovereign of that enormous territorial principality. Till the present no one has suspected that any significant ties existed between the Anglo-Saxons and Aquitanians prior to that time. To be sure, the Anglo-Saxons had been in contact with the late Carolingian kings in the tenth century and with the Normans in the eleventh, but those were purely northern French phenomena. So too were the important Anglo-Saxon relations with the monks of Fleury-sur-Loire in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries, but these were not known to have had any repercussions in Aquitaine far to the south.