Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly
Saint Louis, was
King of France from 1226 until his death. He was also styled Louis II,
Count of Artois from 1226 to 1237. Born at
Poissy, near
Paris, he was a member of the
House of Capet, the son of
Louis VIII and
Blanche of Castile. He established the
Parliament of Paris.
He is the only
canonized king of France; consequently, there are many places named after him, most notably
St. Louis, Missouri, in the
United States. Saint Louis was also a
tertiary of the Order of the Holy Trinity and Captives (known as the
Trinitarians). On 11 June 1256, the General Chapter of the Trinitarian Order formally affiliated Louis IX at the famous monastery of Cerfroid, which had been constructed by
Felix of Valois north of Paris.
Sources
Much of what is known of Louis's life comes from
Jean de Joinville's famous biography of Louis,
Life of Saint Louis. Joinville was a close friend, confidant, and counsellor to the king, and also participated as a witness in the papal inquest into Louis' life that ended with his
canonization in 1297 by
Pope Boniface VIII.
Two other important biographies were written by the king's
confessor,
Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and his
chaplain,
William of Chartres. The fourth important source of information is
William of Saint-Pathus' biography, which he wrote using the papal inquest mentioned above. While several individuals wrote biographies in the decades following the king's death, only Jean of Joinville, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and William of Chartres wrote from personal knowledge of the king.
Early life
Louis was born in 1214 at
Poissy, near
Paris, the son of
King Louis VIII and
Blanche of Castile. A member of the
House of Capet, Louis was twelve years old when his father died on 8 November 1226. He was crowned king within the month at
Reims cathedral. Because of Louis's youth, his mother ruled France as
regent during his minority.
His younger brother
Charles I of Sicily (1227–85) was created count of
Anjou, thus founding the second
Angevin dynasty.
No date is given for the beginning of Louis's personal rule. His contemporaries viewed his reign as co-rule between the king and his mother, though historians generally view the year 1234 as the year in which Louis began ruling personally, with his mother assuming a more advisory role. She continued as an important counselor to the king until her death in 1252.
On 27 May 1234, Louis married
Marguerite of Provence (1221 – 21 December 1295), whose sister
Eleanor was the wife of
Henry III of England.
Crusading
When he was 15, Louis' mother brought an end to the
Albigensian Crusade in 1229 after signing an agreement with Count
Raymond VII of Toulouse that cleared his father of wrong-doing.
Raymond VI of Toulouse had been suspected of murdering a preacher on a mission to convert the
Cathars.
Louis's
piety and kindness towards the poor was much celebrated. He went on two
crusades, in his mid-30s in 1248 (
Seventh Crusade) and then again in his mid-50s in 1270 (
Eighth Crusade).
He had begun with the rapid capture of the port of
Damietta in June 1249, an attack which did cause some disruption in the Muslim Ayyubid empire, especially as the current sultan was on his deathbed. But the march from Damietta towards
Cairo through the
Nile River Delta went slowly. During this time, the Ayyubid sultan died, and a sudden power shift took place, as the sultan's slave wife
Shajar al-Durr set events in motion which were to make her Queen, and eventually place the Egyptians' slave army of the
Mamluks in power. On 6 April 1250 Louis lost his army at the
Battle of Fariskur and was captured by the Egyptians. His release was eventually negotiated, in return for a ransom of 400,000
livres tournois (at the time France's annual revenue was only about 250,000
livres tournois, so it was necessary to obtain a loan from the Templars), and the surrender of the city of Damietta.
Following his release from Egyptian captivity, Louis spent four years in the crusader Kingdoms of
Acre,
Caesarea, and
Jaffe. Louis used his wealth to assist the crusaders in rebuilding their defenses and conducting diplomacy with the Islamic powers of
Syria and Egypt. Upon his departure from the Middle East, Louis left a significant garrison in the city of Acre for its defense against Islamic attacks. The historic presence of this French garrison in the Middle East was later used as a justification for the
French Mandate following the end of the
First World War.
Louis exchanged multiple letters and emissaries with
Mongol rulers of the period. During his first crusade in 1248, Louis was approached by envoys from
Eljigidei, the Mongol ruler of
Armenia and
Persia. Eljigidei suggested that King Louis should land in Egypt, while Eljigidei attacked Baghdad, in order to prevent the Saracens of Egypt and those of Syria from joining forces. Louis sent
André de Longjumeau, a Dominican priest, as an emissary to the Great Khan
Güyük Khan in
Mongolia. However, Güyük died before the emissary arrived at his court, and nothing concrete occurred. Louis dispatched another envoy to the Mongol court, the Franciscan
William of Rubruck, who went to visit the Great Khan
Möngke Khan in Mongolia.
Patron of arts and arbiter of Europe
Louis' patronage of the arts drove much innovation in
Gothic art and
architecture, and the style of his court radiated throughout Europe by both the purchase of art objects from Parisian masters for export and by the marriage of the king's daughters and female relatives to foreign husbands and their subsequent introduction of Parisian models elsewhere. Louis' personal chapel, the
Sainte-Chapelle in
Paris, was copied more than once by his descendants elsewhere. Louis most likely ordered the production of the
Morgan Bible, a masterpiece of medieval painting.
Saint Louis ruled during the so-called "golden century of Saint Louis", when the kingdom of
France was at its height in
Europe, both politically and economically. The king of France was regarded as a
primus inter pares among the kings and rulers of the continent. He commanded the largest army, and ruled the largest and most wealthy kingdom of Europe, a kingdom which was the European center of arts and intellectual thought (
La Sorbonne) at the time. The prestige and respect felt in Europe for King Louis IX was 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 of saintliness and fairness was already well established while he was alive, and on many occasions he was chosen as an arbiter in the quarrels opposing the rulers of Europe.
Shortly before 1256 Enguerrand IV of
Coucy arrested and without trial hanged three young squires of Laon whom he accused of poaching in his forest. In 1256 Louis had him arrested and brought to the
Louvre by his sergents. Enguerrand demanded judgment by his peers and trial by battle which was refused by the king because Louis thought it obsolete. Enguerrand was tried, sentenced and ordered to pay 12,000 livres. Part of the money was to pay for masses in perpetuity for the men he had hanged.
Religious Nature
The perception of Louis IX as the exemplary Christian prince was reinforced by his religious zeal. Louis was a devout Catholic, and he built the
Sainte-Chapelle ("Holy Chapel"), located within the royal palace complex (now the
Paris Hall of Justice), on the
Île de la Cité in the centre of Paris. The
Sainte Chapelle, a perfect example of the Rayonnant style of
Gothic architecture, was erected as a shrine for the
Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the
True Cross, precious
relics of the
Passion of
Jesus. Louis purchased these in 1239–41 from Emperor
Baldwin II of the
Latin Empire of
Constantinople, for the exorbitant sum of 135,000
livres (the chapel, on the other hand, cost only 60,000 livres to build).
Louis IX took very seriously his mission as "lieutenant of God on Earth", with which he had been invested when he was crowned in
Rheims. Thus, in order to fulfill his duty, he conducted two
crusades, and even though they were unsuccessful, they contributed to his prestige. Contemporaries would not have understood if the king of France did not lead a crusade to the
Holy Land. In order to finance his first crusade Louis ordered the expulsion of all
Jews engaged in
usury and the confiscation of their property, for use in his crusade. However, he did not cancel the debts owed by Christians. One-third of the debts was forgiven, but the other two-thirds was to be remitted to the royal treasury. Louis also ordered, at the urging of
Pope Gregory IX, the burning in Paris in 1243 of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the
Talmud and other Jewish books. Such legislation against the Talmud, not uncommon in the history of Christendom, was due to medieval courts' concerns that its production and circulation might weaken the faith of Christian individuals and threaten the Christian basis of society, the protection of which was the duty of any Christian monarch.
In addition to Louis's legislation against Jews and usury, he expanded the scope of the
Inquisition in France. The area most affected by this expansion was southern France where the
Cathar heresy had been strongest. The rate of these confiscations reached its highest levels in the years prior to his first crusade, and slowed upon his return to France in 1254.
Louis IX allowing himself to be whipped as
penance.
In all these deeds, Louis IX tried to fulfill the duty of France, which was seen as "the eldest daughter of the Church" (
la fille aînée de l'Église), a tradition of protector of the Church going back to the
Franks and
Charlemagne, who had been crowned by the Pope in
Rome in 800. Indeed, the official Latin title of the kings of France was
Rex Francorum, i.e. "king of the Franks", and the kings of France were also known by the title "most Christian king" (
Rex Christianissimus). The relationship between France and the papacy was at its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries, and most of the crusades were actually called by the popes from French soil. Eventually, in 1309,
Pope Clement V even left Rome and relocated to the French city of
Avignon, beginning the era known as the
Avignon Papacy (or, more disparagingly, the
"Babylonian captivity").
Ancestry
Issue
The remains of Louis, the first-born son who died at the age of 15.
- Blanche (1240 – 29 April 1243), died young
- Louis (25 February 1244 – January 1260)
- John (1248 - 1248), died young
Death and legacy
During his second crusade, Louis died at
Tunis, 25 August 1270, and was succeeded by his son,
Philip III. Louis was traditionally believed to have died from
bubonic plague but the cause is thought by modern scholars to have been
dysentery. The Bubonic Plague did not strike Europe until 1348, so the likelihood of him contracting and ultimately dying from the Bubonic Plague was very slim.
Christian tradition states that some of his entrails were buried directly on the spot in Tunisia, where a Tomb of Saint-Louis can still be visited today, whereas other parts of his entrails were sealed in an urn and placed in the
Basilica of Monreale,
Palermo, where they still remain. His corpse was taken, after a short stay at the
Basilica of Saint Dominic in
Bologna, to the French royal necropolis at
Saint-Denis, resting in
Lyon on the way. His tomb at Saint-Denis was a magnificent gilt brass monument designed in the late 14th century. It was melted down during the
French Wars of Religion, at which time the body of the king disappeared. Only one finger was rescued and is kept at Saint-Denis.
Veneration as a saint
Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the
canonization of Louis in 1297; he is the only French monarch to be declared a
saint.
Louis IX is often considered the model of the ideal Christian monarch. Because of the aura of holiness attached to his memory, many
kings of France were called Louis, especially in the
Bourbon dynasty, which directly descended from one of his younger sons.
The Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Louis is a
Roman Catholic religious order founded in 1842 and named in his honour.
Places named after Saint Louis
The cities of
San Luis Potosí in
Mexico;
St. Louis, Missouri;
Saint-Louis du Sénégal in
Senegal;
Saint-Louis in
Alsace; as well as
Lake Saint-Louis in
Quebec, and the
Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in
California are among the many places named after the king and saint.
The Cathedral Saint-Louis in
Versailles; the
Basilica of St. Louis, King of France and the
Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, both in St. Louis, Missouri; and the
Saint Louis Cathedral in
New Orleans were also named for the king. The French royal
Order of Saint Louis (1693–1790 and 1814–1830) as well as a hospital in the
10th arrondissement of Paris also bear his name.
Many places in
Brazil called
São Luís in
Portuguese are named after the French Saint Louis.
Famous portraits
A portrait of St. Louis hangs in the chamber of the
United States House of Representatives.
Saint Louis is also portrayed on a
frieze depicting a timeline of important lawgivers throughout world history in the
Courtroom at the
Supreme Court of the United States.
