Ermengarde of Anjou
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Ermengarde of Anjou, daughter of Count Fulk IV of Anjou and Hildegarde de Beaugency, was successively Duchess of Aquitaine, Brittany, and the patron of Fontevraud Abbey. She was born in Angers around 1067.
Having lost her mother at a young age, she received a good education and grew to be pious and concerned about religious reform, especially over the struggle against the secular appropriation of church property. She was also noted for her beauty in her youth.
Her first wedding, in 1089, was to the young duke and poet, William IX of Aquitaine. However, the marriage proved a dismal failure. Her husband was a voracious philanderer, who infuriated his wife with his affairs. She suffered from severe mood-swings, vacillating between vivacity and sullenness, and would nag her husband. She also had a habit of retiring in bad temper to a cloister after an argument, cutting off all contact with the outside world, before suddenly making a reappearance in the court as if her absence had never occurred. Such behaviour, coupled with her failure to conceive a child, led William to send her back to her father and have the marriage dissolved (in 1091). Her behaviour during her marriage to the Duke has been described by both Marion Meade and Alison Weir as schizophrenic, with Weir adding a suggestion of manic depression.
In 1093, her father married her to Duke Alan IV of Brittany, probably to secure an alliance against Normandy, now controlled by William the Conqueror’s son, Robert Curthose. Her husband left for Palestine in 1096 to take part in the First Crusade and she assumed control of the Duchy from then until 1101.
She spent little time in Rennes or the west of Brittany, preferring Nantes and the Saumur region. Influenced by Robert of Arbrissel, she approved the expansion of the abbey at Fontevraud, to which she withdrew on two occasions. An admirer of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (to whose abbey she made donations), she favoured the creation of Cistercian abbeys. She was also a benefactress of the monastery of Buzay, near Nantes.
By 1116, Ermengarde was living in Fontevrault Abbey, where she reputedly became a friend of her first husband's second wife, Duchess Philippa of Aquitaine.
In 1118, after the death of Philippa, Ermengarde decided to avenge her deceased friend. She went south from Fontevrault to the court of her former husband, Duke William of Aquitaine, where she demanded to be recognised as the rightful Duchess. William ignored this remarkable request. Accordingly, in October 1119, she suddenly appeared at the Council of Reims, being held by Pope Calixtus II, demanding that the Pope excommunicate William, oust his mistress from the ducal palace, and restore herself to her rightful place as the Duchess of Aquitaine. The Pope "declined to accommodate her"; however, Ermengarde continued to trouble William for several years afterwards.
Ermengarde at one point went on Crusade to Palestine; she returned ten years later, and some historians believe her life ended in Jerusalem at the convent of Saint Anne. But obituary lists at the abbey of Saint-Saveur de Redon record a date of death in 1147 in Redon where her husband was buried. Certainly, it is believed that she died a nun.
