Blanche de Castille loved her native land, which she never saw again after she left it to become the wife of Louis VIII., and she kept up as active relations as possible with her relatives, particularly with Queen Berengère; but she had too much good sense to flood her court with Spanish dependents and Spanish customs, and, therefore, we do not find a great number of Spaniards occupying important posts in the court. A certain number of her special attendants appear to have been Spaniards; we may note a lady in waiting called Mincia, who is often mentioned in the accounts, and who is granted money and horses for a journey into Spain. Then there are two Spaniards to whom gifts of clothing and the like are made at the time of the coronation of Queen Marguerite. But these and other Spaniards whose names one can pick out belonged to the personal suite of the queen, and had nothing to do with politics. There was nothing like the incursion of foreigners which, the people complained, Italianized France in the time of the Medicis.
Among the legitimate expenditures of the court, but rather surprising in the household of a saint, are certain sums set down for the payment of minstrels. Prince Robert of France loved to give presents to minstrels, and when he was knighted, in 1237, more than two hundred and twenty pounds went to the payment of these singers. The horses and their furnishings form no small item in the expenses, since most of the travelling had to be done on horseback, and a numerous retinue of mounted attendants must be provided. Common pack horses were not costly, but the easy-riding palfrey and the war horse ranged in price from thirty to seventy-five pounds. There were carriages and other vehicles also, though the carriages were few. The state of the roads, indeed, often precluded their use; we find Blanche de Castille excusing herself from going to Saint-Denis because the state of her health forbids her going on horseback: the roads were probably impassable; or, perhaps, it was in attempting this little journey that her carriage suffered the damages recorded in a bill of repairs of 1234, when it seems the unlucky vehicle needed new wheels. There was a carriage for la jeune reine Marguerite, too, and a new one was purchased in 1239.
Aside from the money expended in the actual maintenance of her family, Blanche herself spent, and taught Louis to spend, considerable sums in charity. With the miserable economic conditions prevailing in the Middle Ages, poverty must have been far more general and far more distressing than it has ever been since those days. During Blanche's regency the kingdom had been repeatedly ravaged in the course of the wars of the nobles, and there is record of famine, notably in the southwest of the kingdom, where one chronicler asserts that in 1235 he saw a hundred bodies buried in one day in a cemetery at Limoges. On their frequent journeys throughout the country, Blanche and Louis did what could be done to alleviate the condition of the unfortunate, who gathered on the wayside in crowds. There were regular officers to allot the alms properly, and considerable sums were distributed, usually at every stage on the journey. At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of money and of bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of the Church. One special charity of Queen Blanche's deserves notice. When a girl was to be married, one of the first questions was, and still is, in France, what dower her parents could give with her; if the dower were insufficient, the poor girl ran a serious risk of not being married at all. Blanche often came to the aid of deserving girls so situated, and her gifts were not confined to her immediate attendants and their families; for example, a poor woman from Anet, a stranger to the court, received one hundred sous parisis for the marriage of her daughter; and while on her way back from Angers, Blanche met a young girl of Nogent, to whom she gave fifteen pounds for her marriage.
Blanche had always been respectful in her attitude toward the Church, and pious in her habit of life; but she was never servile in her attitude toward churchmen, whom she would no more allow to interfere with her rule than the greatest of the barons. The higher clergy, as a body, were faithful to her; but, here and there, bishops and archbishops arrogated to themselves powers not theirs, or refused to recognize the rights of the crown, whereupon Blanche did not hesitate to join issue with them. One celebrated case is that of the riots at Beauvais, in 1233, when, under Blanche's direction, Louis restored order and asserted the royal power in spite of the objections of the bishop, and continued to sustain the position taken, even after an interdict had been proclaimed in Beauvais.
During the period between her two regencies, Blanche continued to reside at the court; her jealousy of Marguerite would in part account for her preferring this to retirement to some one of the chateaux belonging to her private estate. At the time, it must be remembered, the queen of Philippe Auguste, Ingeburge, was living in this way at Orléans. Queen Blanche, indeed, enjoyed a considerable revenue from her estates, which she generally intrusted to the care of the Knights Templars, the financial agents of many a crowned head in Europe. Part of her estates she administered in person. As a further occupation, she devoted herself to various charities. In 1242 the famous abbey of Notre Dame, generally known as Maubuisson, at Pontoise, was completed, thanks to the queen's munificence and to her careful supervision. Maubuisson, with its many dependencies, its beautiful gardens and buildings, became one of the most splendid monastic institutions in France. It was frequently visited and enriched with new gifts by its foundress and her son, and noble ladies chose it as the place to take the veil. One of these ladies, Countess Alix de Macon, became abbess of another convent, Notre Dame du Lys, near Melun, founded by Blanche de Castille.
The management of her estates and the foundation of convents did not, however, monopolize the queen's time and energies; she was always the careful mother, looking out for the interests of her children, and always the queen, ready to act or to decide promptly and firmly in the affairs of the kingdom. She arranged the marriages of her sons, Robert and Alphonse. The former married, in 1237, Mahaut, daughter of the Duke of Brabant, and there were magnificent festivities at Compiègne in honor of the event, the young prince being knighted and made Count of Artois. Alphonse, betrothed to the daughter of Raymond of Toulouse, was married in 1238. The next year Blanche provided a rich and most desirable bride for her nephew, Alphonse de Portugal, who had been reared at the French court. He married the widow of Philippe Hurepel, Mahaut de Boulogne, and was a faithful vassal of France until he became King of Portugal in 1248. For each of these weddings Blanche saw that there was suitable provision in the way of new and elegant clothes and entertainments in keeping with the occasion.
BLANCHE OF CASTILLE, MOTHER OF SAINT LOUIS
After the painting by Moreau de Tours
Aside from the money expended in the actual maintenance of her family, Blanche herself spent, and taught Louis to spend, considerable sums in charity. With the miserable economic conditions prevailing in the Middle Ages, poverty must have been far more general and far more distressing than it has ever been since those days. On their frequent journeys throughout the country, Blanche and Louis did what could be done to alleviate the condition of the unfortunate, who gathered on the wayside. At home, in Paris, there was a regular distribution of-money and of bread, with occasional special bounties on the feasts of the Church.