Louis IX Of France: The Saint King, Patron Of Kings. [1214-1270]

We have formerly discussed about two important royal characters during France's middle ages who left remarkable precedences on the art of kingship and also queenship for their successors over the centuries. To this particular Louis, subject of our post today, this could not be any different with him being the son of Queen Blanche. As we have noticed, he was particularly close to his mother and her influence over him was very perceptible in his deeds and policies, a path which we intend to explore as well as to enlighten for our readers the process in which Louis, as a man and then as a king, was turned into Saint Louis, the holy monarch who was the patron for another generations for the kings of France.

Louis was born on 25 April 1214 at Poissy, near Paris. He was the son and heir of King Louis VIII, then Prince Louis, the Lion of France, and his Queen, then Princess of France, Blanche de Castille. His baptism occurred in La Collégiale Notre-Dame church. His birth was followed by the birth of two brothers: Charles, King of Sicily and Count of Anjou, Robert, Count of Poitiers and Alphonse, Count of Toulouse. He had also a sister, Isabelle, who was, like him, later canonized as Saint Isabelle.

Where his education is concerned, Blanche herself chose the tutors for her son and heir to the French crown. He was thus instructed in Latin, public speaking, writing, military arts, government and we assume he must have received a religious education as well. He was nine years of age when his grandfather, Philip Augustus, had died and only twelve years old when his father, Louis VIII, died. As we have formerly said on the post concerning Queen Blanche, she was quick in making her son crowned at Reims Cathedral, within three weeks of the death of Louis's father and predecessor. It was a political and tactic move that helped consolidate her power as Queen regent, a position she would hold during her son's minority.

There is not much to discuss about Louis IX's youth, and the next important event of his life is his marriage to Marguerite de Provence, whose sisters were all to be, as herself, queens consorts: Eleanor, the sister with whom she was close the most, became Queen of England; Sanchia was married to Eleanor's husband (King Henry III) younger brother, Richard of Conrwall, and by this marriage she was Queen of Germany; and there's Beatrice, Queen of Sicily. Marguerite was only 13 years of age and she was chosen not only because of her beauty and wit, but due to her religious nature, which would please the king very much.

The match, as it turned out, despite being a politically one, became a loving one. And, as we have also mentioned in Blanche's post, a rivalry between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law grew as the attentions of the court were drawn to Marguerite's beauty and courtly manners. However, in spite of Blanche's great influence over her son, the pair managed to  have their moments together and Marguerite would give birth to 11 children to her loving husband as seen here:

"The new queen's religious zeal made her a well suited partner for the king. He enjoyed her company, and was pleased to show her the many public works he was making in Paris, both for its defense and for its health. They enjoyed riding together, reading and listening to music. This attention raised a certain amount of jealousy in his mother, who tried to keep them apart as much as she could."

Louis' piety nature would be seen in the next great political achievements that marked his reign, one of which being the first crusade that he was part of, as we shall see in the next paragraph:

"Louis and his followers landed in Egypt on 5 June 1249 and began his first crusade with the rapid capture of the port of Damietta. This attack caused some disruption in the Muslim Ayyubid empire, especially as the current sultan, Al-Malik as-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, was on his deathbed. However, the march from Damietta toward Caior through the Nile River Delta swent slowly. The rising of the Nile and the summer heat made it impossible for them to advance and follow up on their sucess. During this time, the Ayyubid sultan died, and the sultan's wife Shajar al-Durr set in motion a sudden power shift that would make her Queen and eventually place the Egyptian army of the Mamluks in power. On 6 April 1250 Louis lost his army at the Battle of Al Mansurah and was captured by the Egyptians. His release was eventually negotiated in return for a ransom of 400, 000 livres tournois (...) and the surrender of the city of Damietta."

On that particular aspect of Louis IX's crusade and his capture by the Muslims, Cecilia Gaspochkin, author of an article entitled as "The Captivity of Louis IX" tells us that:

"Louis had taken the cross in 1244 following a grave illness that threatened his life. Some have thought that Louis may have been inspired to take the cross by learning that the [...] Turks had retaken Jerusalem 1244 but it is not clear that the news had reached Louis by the time he fell sick. In 1245, Pope Innocent IV gave Louis' crusade official sanction at the First Council of Lyon. In 1248, after more than three years of preparation, Louis left Paris, and set sail a few months later [...]"

Furthermore,  

"[...] Louis and his men began to see their fortunes turn clearly downward. On February 9th, Louis ordered a bridge built across the river, and the army fought skirmishes daily against the Muslim forces. After a few weeks and upon the arrival of Turan Shah and his chief advisors, the Muslims began a blockade, cutting the French off from their supplies lines from Damietta and starving them out. The king and the sultan began talks which would have returned Damietta to the Muslims in the exchange of the lost territories of the Kingdom of Jesuralem, but these negotiations - if they had been serious- broke down when the Muslims demanded that Louis himself be delivered over as surety. Conditions in the camp began to deteriorate and illness began to spread. Louis himself would report on the catastrophic loss to illness of both men and horses at this stage, describing their sad reduction in numbers from plague and lack of food, and saying that there was no one in the camp that "did not mourn those who had died or were mortally ill". The French spent Good Friday and Easter Sunday in this state of despair and uncertainty, and on 5th April [...] Louis ordered a retreat to Damietta."

At one point, where despair seemed to prevail over reason, it was the king's pious character that certainly brought some victory to reason as: 

"Louis' men urged him to board one of the galleys going down river, but Louis refused, saying he would never abandon his people. Three decades later, Charles of Anjou still recalled how Louis snapped at him when Charles insisted that Louis was endangering the army by slowing its progress. 'If you find me a burden', the king replied, 'leave me behind since I will not desert my people.'"

Negotiations occurred in the meantime Louis was trying to calm his army, but failured was quite evident. There is a situation, which Gaspochkin retells us from the perspective of the account written by Joinville (one of the closest men, not from Church, to the king).

" In Joinville's bitter recollection, Marcel cried out to the French camp, "Lord Knights! Surrender yourselves- the king commands you to do so. Do not let the king be killed!" Joinville swears that the king had given no such order; but the French, not knowing this, surrendered, and the Egyptians, pressing their advantages, promptly ended the truce talks. All of Louis' men still in the field, both on land and water, were then taken into captivity. 

[...] Of his capture, Louis himself said that he, along with Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou, and the majority of those retreating by both land and water "were taken and put in chains, not without a very great slaughter of our men and the shedding of no little Christian blood". [...] Louis was taken by boat [...] back to Mansourah."

If the king had been previously ill during the crusade, which he had architected even against his mother's approval on the matter during the past four years with the consent of the pope, during his captivity his health deteriorated quite harshly to the point where his captor, Turah Shan, placed the king under his own doctor. Joinville recalls it bitterly that the Muslim physicians managed to make a better use of medicine than their own physicians. In captivity, however, must be reminded that he was treated well accordingly to his position, and even so this did not mean there had been no execution: some sources claim that the Muslim slaughtered over 30,000 French men.

Regarding the king's captivity, still, which is an important subject to be discussed because it reveals more about his zealous nature and pious character which would be highlighted when he was later canonized, the author tells us that:

"The captivity gave Louis time to reflect deeply about what had led there. All evidence points to a sense of personal despair or defeat. He was in a state of penintention introspection the whole time, taking count of his responsibility in the catastrophic outcome of the crusade, both with regards to his men and before God. In Europe, it was said that for three days he neither ate nor drank and longed for death. During his captivity, each time he exited his confinement he would lie in the ground on the form of a cross, and make the sign of cross all over his body."

But the captivity of the holy king also brought to internation light the shrewd nature of the queen consort, who was not only the first woman to accompany, until then, her husband the king to the crusades, but had also an important role during the negotiations to release Louis from captivity. That she did so whilst carrying one of Louis's child in her belly, Jean Tristan, makes the narrative of the story quite impressive.

"[...] In Damietta, the Queen was busy trying to raise 400,000 bezants needed to effect the transfer. She was clearly terrified. She asked that an elderly attendant vow to kill her before she could be captured if the Saracens took the city.[...]"

It also appears that an old knight acted as a midwife during the birth of Prince Jean. As a result of her role as a mediator queen during this process where her husband was captive under the hands of the muslims, upon their return to France, the Queen's shrewdness would make her sought by others of the court to mediate conflicts and others matters.

Eventually, however, the negotiations came to an end, after much intern trouble amidst Louis's enemies, and thus 

"On May 6th, Damietta was handed over to the emirs, and the king and other captives were released. The four galleys which held most of the prisoners had been anchored right outside the city the previous evening. [...] All the Christians within the walls of Damietta, led by Marguerite of Provence, were escorted out of the city and onto the ships. [...]"

Upon the death of his mother, the queen regent Blanche of Castille, which had distressed him quite much, Louis returned to France. Even though there were some critics where his crusade came to defeat, this did not diminish his popularity as king; on the contrary, his pious nature became wider known throughtout Europe and he was still seen as the model of Christian prince, for

"His empathy for the fellow captives and his sense of personal responsibility pierces through the centuries, and we might speculate about what role the experience of his own captivity had in his resolve."

As a result of this particular experience, we can tell how it reflected within his national politics, for Gasposchkin states that:

"The 'spirit of reform' which animated royal governance after 1254 and all the policies which it engendered, paired with the uncompromising moralization of his kingship, seem to have been borne from Louis' profound sense of personal responsibility for the crusade's failure and his sense of duty in legislating virtue throughout the kingdom, including the 'anti-corruption' campaigns of the 1250's and 1260's. Louis inaugurated a series of reforming measures [...] all designed to ensure as much as possible the just kingship to which Louis aspired. His desire to effect an ideal of Christian kingship born of his penitential ambition was probably also the impetus for his measures at peacemaking, both within and outside his realm. At least, his hagiographers think so."

He was also known for his patronage of arts, innovating and propagating the Gothic style in art and architecture. Louis was also responsible for commissioning the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to 

"host the crucifixion relics he acquired after 1239". He also "ordered the establishment of several professional guilds, one of which was the 'Oyeurs' or goose roasters from which of course the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs traces its origins."

Another heritance left by Louis's deeds as king of France lies on "the foundations for the famous college of theology later known as the Sorbonne were laid in Paris about the year 1257". Consequently, 

"The prestige and respect felt in Europe for King Louis IX were due more to the attraction that his benevolent personality created rather than to military domination. For his contemporaries, he was the quintessential example of the Christian prince and embodied the whole of Christendom in his person. His reputation for saintliness and fairness was already well established while he was still alive, and on many occasions he was chosen as an arbiter in quarrels among the rulers of Europe."

Following the year of 1258, where internation affairs were concerned, Louis and James I of Aragon entered in negotiations that led to the Treaty of Corbeil, under which both parts renounced to some territories: on Louis's part, he relinquished his feudal overlordship over the County of Barcelona and Roussillon; from James', he did the same by giving back to France's crowns the counties of Provence and Languedoc, among others. In 1259, the Treaty of Paris was signed between Louis and King Henry III, improving thus relationship between England and France after a few generations of early Plantagenets and the Capétiens. This treaty, whilst confirming some English lordship over some French's territories, confirmed the French's crown soberanity over Anjou, Normandy, Poitou, Maine and Touraine. As we can see, Louis's nature tended more for peace rather than going to war in spite of his failures at crusades.

And it's on the second crusade we are discussing now. In 24 March 1267, 

"In a parliament held at Paris, [...] Louis and his three sons took the cross. On hearing the reports of the missionaries, Louis resolved to land at Tunis, and he ordered his younger brother, Charles of Anjou, to join him there. The crusaders, among whom was Prince Edward of England, landed at Carthage 17 July 1270, but disease broke out in the camp. Many died of dysentery, and on 25 August, Louis himself died."

About his death, which is leading us to Louis's sainthood, author Cecilia Gaspochkin states that:

"[...]Louis IX died in North Africa, outside the walls of Tunis, on 25 August 1270. Efforts began to immediately to canonize him. In 1272 the pope elect, Gregory X, asked Louis's confessor Geoffrey of Beaulieu to write a vita and he commissioned Simon de Brie quietly to begin inquiries into Louis's sanctity. In 1275, churchmen from northern France wrote to Gregory to request expedition of Louis's canonization. A formal inquiry into his sanctity lasting over a year was held at Saint-Denis in 1282 and 1283. But it was not until 1297, as part of the negotiations between the pope (Boniface VIII) and the French king (Philippe IV, "the Fair") that the papacy formally canonized Louis."

We have seen, as this far we've been discussing about Louis's deeds as a king and his character as man that his peacemaker tendencies, aside of his piety and how he took his duty as lieutnant of God seriously as well as being the ruler who looks after his people, that there was much to have contributed for Louis's rise from merely being the model of a Christian prince to Saint Louis, the saint who would exercise a great influence over the next generation of kings of France. 

For a starter, the already mentioned author Gaspochkin, in her article "Louis IX and Liturgical Memory", indicates the paths which constituted in Louis's memory and how it was used for the end of the canonization through liturgy. In other words, 

"[...] the liturgy defined Louis's sanctity as people participated in it on a daily basis, as part of the lived and ritualized experience of devotion. It also functioned to construct a communal memory of Louis within a particular institutional and devotional context, creating a legitimizing canon that nourished institutional identity [...]. 

The text for None spoke of Louis, in heaven, having overcome his exile on earth: 'He sings praises to God, having left his exile; translated into joy, he was not mindful of his afflictions'. Another potent image-walking in the footsteps of Christ-was also evoked. [...] The first Matins responsory said 'Louis, the noble king among king of the French, [was] desirous from the very beginning to follow in the footsteps of Christ'."

Moreover, we are, once again, taken into the depths of his religiosity as she states that:

" The only way out of exile and home to God was through learning, contemplation and, above all, bodily asceticism. Lauda celestis thus detailed Louis's learning and ascetic chastisement of the flesh. The office spoke of Louis 'restoring his spirit with the nourishment of sacred doctrine' and of his 'many fasts, the tears of his vigils and disciplines, his pallor, the bluish aspect of a dead man, his hair shirt, the hardness of his bed, [which], it said, all revealed a body consummed by meagreness, subjugated to the spirit. Louis, said the office, chastised his flesh and bore the lashes from the iron chain of his confessor. Eventually, he was 'freed from prison, freed from his chains', to enter the kingdom of heaven."

We are presented to two instruments, services of the Church, whose participating in building the image of Louis IX as a saint and using all of his lifetime through the writings of Vita, as already mentioned: those would be the Cister order, a Benedictine order reformed in the 11th century alongside the intern reforms that marked Church's history in that time, and the Franscicans, a mendicant group of religious whose aim was to follow the example of life left by Saint Francis. And how far these groups took part in expanding Louis's memory to the extention that not only took part in his canonization but also as the patron of the next French kings?

To have a better comprehension of the methods used by the Cister Order, here's an excerpt of the already mentioned article "Louis IX and Liturgical Memory":

"The Cistercian office remembered Louis using core devotional ideals at the heart of the monastic contemplative vocation, in turn reifying, in the memory of the saint king, those very ideals to the religious community as it ritually performed the liturgy each year. [...] 

The themes of asceticism, penitence and obedience of the Cistercian office for Louis contrasted sharply with the interpretation of Louis's sanctity in the ritual memoralization at the royal court. [...] the secular royal tradition drew on the language of [...] an ideal of sacral kingship."

We have to keep in mind that by the time the process in which the Cistercian Order participated in linking the Capetian monarchy to the sacred monarchy presented in the Bible through the character of Solomon, for example, Philippe III and, in posteriority, Philippe IV (whom we have also discussed on this blog) were the monarchs whose kingship were being linked if not closely to the Church and its ideals. However, 

"[...] the office modelled -memorialized- Louis according to ideals current at the royal court in 1300, thus using Louis to legitimize those ideals while at the same time allowing the image, the memory and the symbol of Louis as saint in turn to represent these ideals, to associate Capetian kingship with biblical, Old Testament and Christian kingship."

Thus, 

"In comparison to Cistercian memorialization, which sought to valorize monastic contemplative ideals, and courtly memorialization, which emphazied the sacral quality of Louis's kingship, the Franciscans framed their liturgical memory of Louis in terms of the life and sanctity Saint Francis. [...] That is to say, the liturgy for Louis was explicitly designed to recall the liturgy for Saint Francis.[...]"

On the contrary of the methods used by Cistercians in the process of canonization, which worked closely to the ideals present at the court years after Louis's death, the mendicant order of the Franciscans sought for another path for doing it so. Through comparions between the lives of St Francis and Louis IX, it's interesting to notice that the latter's skills as warrior was used to point a less mundane aspect of it, despite the apparent contradiction (in using arms for a military purpose in the name of a peaceful God). As we see below, 

"For the Franciscans, what most exemplified Louis's sanctity was the crusade -and it was crusade understood in a very Franciscan way: as renunciation, service to the church and suffering. The bulk of the office was devoted to a celebration of Louis's crusade- just as the bulk of Francis' office was devoted to his renunciation. In particular, Louis's crusade was modelled as a parallel Francis's stigmata. Crusade and stigmata were both undestood on a metaphysical level [...] as the mystical moment of compassionate unification- that is, a co-suffering [...]- with Christ."

It is no wonder why, when writing about Louis' captivity in Egipty, author Cecilia Gasposchkin concludes that:

"[...] The hagiographical traditional that flourished in the years around his canonization was largely built upon the edifice of the vita written in the early 1270 by Louis' long time confessor (and companion in Egypt), Geoffrey of Beaulieu. Louis's captivity was featured prominently [...] in both traditions. The stories that took root and were repeated are illustrative of the ways in which his captivity had come to have moral and ideological meaning. His commitment to staying with his army and ensuring certain capture rather than fleeing alone, his willingness to remain prisoner in exchange for the freedom of others, his secure faith in the face of the infidel victors, and his refusal to take an oath to deny Christ were featured in almost all later accounts."

What is even more curious is, considering Louis's defeat in both crusades, the speech beneath the words of Pope Boniface VIII when he 

"suggested that God had actually allowed Louis to fall in captivity in order to demonstrate the core value of humility and endured suffering to the infidel. The captivity was, thus, merely an instrument of God's greater design."

Whether it was for political, mundane orders that Louis was no more a man or merely a king but, above all, a saint, we ought to remember that, underneath these titles, 

"He was renowed for his charity. Beggars were fed from his table, he ate their leavings, washed their feet, ministered to the wants of the lepers, and daily fed over one hundred poor. He founded many hospitals and houses: the House of the Filles-Dieu for reformed prostitutes; the Quinze-Vingt for 300 blind men (1254), hospitals at Pontoise, Vernon, Compiégne."

As it happened to the last Anglo-Saxon king, Edward, the Confessor, who likewise became a saint following similar purposes, Louis thus became St Louis, exercisizing in practice what few kings dared to do: to follow, with no doubt, the commandments left by Christ, to love and protect the poor, to defend the feeble and innocent, to practice justice and, furthermore, to practice charity. That he had flaws as a human being, this is certain during his lifetime, but the message is beyond that: it is what he could do as someone who received "too much" from the divine and how he used it for selfless purposes. 

That is how we end this post, to make it known that being a king or a queen whether be in the past or in our present days did not necessarily mean that there lied a power to be used poorly. Saint Louis taught us otherwise, that he did what he could to improve, if not change, a reality in which a greater purpose was expected of him. 

In attempting to stick to a bibliography that is not commonly used as reference (as far as we know) in observing the discussions concerning such important character for Christianity and France's history in the duality where Louis fits as a man and as divine being, we sought to bring a proposition that is to comprehend the extention of his deeds through the works of the men whose part certainly helped in building a even more humble image, fit for a Saint. That we hope to contribute to bring others perspectives, as we have done here this day, and propose a reflection alongsipe this discussion is our goal, but nothing more important than spreading knowledge.

Bibliography:

GASPOSCHKIN, Cecilia M..Louis IX and Liturgical Memory. "Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Culture." Edited by Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen and Mary Franklin-Brown.

GASPOCHKIN, Cecilia M. The Captivity of Louis IX. "Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae. Vol 18- 2013. Kings In Captivity; Macroeconomy: Economic Growth". Edited by Wojciech Falkowski, Marek Derwich, Tomasz Jasinski, Kryzstof Ozog, Andrzej Radziminsky, Pawel Derecki.

-http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/documentation/enlumine/fr/rechexperte_00.htm

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_IX_of_France

-https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-IX

-http://www.chainedesrotisseurs.com/news_online/story.php?ids=1473&title=