Louis IX of France

• 1. Introduction

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  Louis IX of France was crowned at Reims Cathedral on the 29th of November 1226, when he was just 12 years old. His father, Louis VIII, had died three weeks earlier. The boy who knelt before the bishop of Soissons would become the only king of France ever canonised as a saint of the Catholic Church. He is also the direct ancestor of every French king who came after him. His mother, Blanche of Castile, told him she would rather see him dead at her feet than commit a mortal sin. How does a child king grow into the man European rulers begged to settle their quarrels? Why did a monarch who reformed his courts and forbade trials by ordeal also order thousands of Jewish books burned? And why did a king who ruled the wealthiest realm in Europe die of dysentery on a beach in North Africa? The answers stretch from a great oak in the forest of Vincennes to a sickbed at Tunis.

• 2. The Queen Regent

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  Blanche of Castile ruled France as regent during Louis's minority, and her grip was firm. She confronted rebellious vassals and pressed the Capetian cause in the Albigensian Crusade, which had already dragged on for two decades. In 1229, when Louis was 15, she ended that crusade by signing an agreement with Raymond VII of Toulouse. The roots of the conflict ran back to Raymond VI, suspected of ordering the assassination of Pierre de Castelnau, a Catholic preacher who had tried to convert the Cathars. Blanche chose her son's tutors, who taught him Latin, public speaking, writing, military arts, and government. She also instilled in him the devout Christianity that would define his reign. When Louis married Margaret of Provence on the 27th of May 1234, the new queen's religious zeal made her a fitting partner. The couple are recorded to have got on well, riding together, reading, and listening to music. That closeness aroused jealousy in Blanche, who tried to keep them apart. Historians believe Louis began ruling personally in 1234, with his mother shifting to an advisory role. She kept a strong influence on him until her death in 1252.

• 3. The King's Justice

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  Enguerrand IV, Lord of Coucy, hanged three young squires of Laon without trial, accusing them of poaching in his forest. In 1256 Louis had the lord arrested and brought to the Louvre by his sergeants. Enguerrand demanded judgment by his peers and trial by battle, which the king refused as obsolete. He was tried, sentenced, and ordered to pay 12,000 livres, part of it for masses to be said in perpetuity for the souls of the men he had hanged. Louis built a royal justice mechanism that let petitioners appeal judgments directly to the monarch. He abolished trials by ordeal and combat, becoming the second European monarch after Frederick II to outlaw trial by ordeal. In their place he introduced the presumption of innocence into criminal proceedings. Before leaving on crusade in 1248, Louis sent enquêteurs across the kingdom to gather complaints of royal injustice and provide restitutions. Their reports, alongside the crusade's failure, drove a sweeping reform program. In December 1254 he promulgated the Great Reform Ordinance, governing the conduct of officials such as baillis and enquêteurs. A 1261 inquest into Mathieu de Beaune, bailli of Vermandois, collected testimonies from 247 witnesses to investigate corruption. By local legend, the king often sat under a great oak in the forest of Vincennes, hearing cases and rendering judgements himself.

• 4. The Most Christian King

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  Louis recited the Divine Office every day during his captivity in Egypt. His piety earned him the moniker of a "monk king", and the French kings carried the title "most Christian king", Rex Christianissimus. He saw France as "the eldest daughter of the Church", a tradition of protecting the faith reaching back to Charlemagne, crowned by Pope Leo III in Rome in 800. Louis built the Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité as a shrine for the crown of thorns and a fragment of the True Cross. He acquired these relics between 1239 and 1241 from Emperor Baldwin II of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Baldwin had pledged the crown of thorns as collateral to the Venetian merchant Niccolo Quirino, and Louis paid 135,000 livres to clear the debt. His devotion also turned harsh. In 1230 he forbade all usury, then used the anti-usury laws to extract funds from Jewish and Lombard moneylenders to pay for a future crusade. He oversaw the Disputation of Paris in 1240, after which Pope Gregory IX ordered all copies of the Talmud seized and destroyed. In 1242 Louis ordered the burning of 12,000 copies, along with other Jewish books. He ordered the Jewish population to wear a yellow badge of shame, set the punishment for blasphemy to mutilation of the tongue and lips, and expanded the Inquisition in France. He also founded hospitals and houses, including the Quinze-Vingt for 300 blind men in 1254.

• 5. A Golden Century

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  France stood at its height in Europe during what is called the golden century of Saint Louis, both politically and economically. He commanded the largest army and ruled the largest, wealthiest kingdom, regarded as "primus inter pares", first among equals, among the continent's rulers. The foundations of the college of theology later known as the Sorbonne were laid in Paris about the year 1257. His patronage drove innovation in Gothic art, and Parisian masters exported artwork across Europe. The Sainte-Chapelle, a prime example of the Rayonnant style, was copied more than once by his descendants elsewhere. Louis is believed to have ordered the deluxe illuminated Morgan Bible and Arsenal Bible. Paris became Europe's pre-eminent center of learning. William of Auvergne, whose Magisterium divinale spanned 1223 to 1240, tried to reconcile Aristotelian philosophy with Christian doctrine, and served on the regency council during the Seventh Crusade. The theologian Thomas Aquinas, though Italian by birth, did his most important work at the University of Paris, holding the Dominican chair in theology twice, from 1256 to 1259 and again from 1269 to 1272. His Summa Theologica synthesised Aristotle with Christian theology. The German Dominican Albertus Magnus was active at Paris from 1245 to 1248, his botanical and mineralogical studies prefiguring later scientific methods.

• 6. The Arbiter Of Europe

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  Henry III of England formally requested Louis to arbitrate his dispute with the barons in January 1264. Louis convened the Mise of Amiens, annulling the Provisions of Oxford and siding decisively with the king. The barons, led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, refused to accept it, and warfare resumed after 1264. Louis's prestige rested not on military dominance but on his fairness and personal integrity, and rulers across Europe sought his judgment. In 1258 he concluded the Treaty of Corbeil with James I of Aragon, renouncing French claims of feudal overlordship over Catalonia while James gave up claims to territories in southern France, among them Languedoc, Provence, Toulouse, and Quercy. James's daughter Isabella was betrothed to Louis's son Philip. In 1259 the Treaty of Paris settled matters with Henry III, who renounced claims to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou. In return Louis recognised Henry as Duke of Aquitaine and his vassal for Guyenne and Gascony. Louis's reach extended into Central Asia. He exchanged envoys with the Mongols, sending the Dominican André de Longjumeau to the Khagan Güyük Khan and later the Franciscan William of Rubruck to the court of Möngke. His relationship with Emperor Frederick II was far from cordial; Frederick allegedly sent secret letters to Sultan As-Salih Ayyub of Egypt, warning him of Louis's impending crusade.

• 7. Crusade And Captivity

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  Louis and his followers landed in Egypt on the 4th or the 5th of June 1249 and captured the port of Damietta. The march from Damietta toward Cairo through the Nile Delta went slowly, halted by the seasonal rising of the river and the summer heat. During this time the Ayyubid sultan Al-Malik as-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub died, and his wife Shajar al-Durr set in motion a power shift that would make her Queen and eventually bring the Mamluks to rule. On the 8th of February 1250, Louis lost his army at the Battle of Fariskur and was captured by the Egyptians. His release came in return for a ransom of 400,000 bezants, about 200,000 livres tournois, a little less than the French crown's annual income, plus the surrender of Damietta. After his release he spent four years fortifying the Kingdom of Jerusalem, focusing on Acre, Caesarea, and Jaffa. He set out from Acre on the 24th of April 1254 and reached France that July. On his return, disembarking at Hyères, Louis was met by the abbot of Cluny, who gave him and the queen two palfreys. When Joinville later asked whether the gift had swayed him toward the abbot's petition, Louis admitted it had. Joinville then advised that the king's justices should be forbidden from accepting gifts, lest they listen more willingly to those who gave them.

• 8. Tunis And Sainthood

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  In a parliament at Paris on the 24th of March 1267, Louis and his three sons "took the cross". On hearing the missionaries' reports, he resolved to land at Tunis and ordered his brother Charles of Anjou to join him. The crusaders, among them the English prince Edward Longshanks, landed at Carthage on the 17th of July 1270, but disease broke out in the camp. Louis died at Tunis on the 25th of August 1270, during an epidemic of dysentery that swept his army. His body was subjected to the process known as mos Teutonicus before most of his remains were returned to France. His brother Charles I of Naples preserved his heart and intestines and sent them to the Cathedral of Monreale near Palermo. Louis's bones were carried overland across Sicily, Italy, the Alps, and France, until they were interred at Saint-Denis in May 1271. Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed his canonisation in 1297, drawing on a papal inquest in which Jean de Joinville, the king's friend and counselor, testified. Joinville's Life of Saint Louis remains the richest source on the king, alongside biographies by his confessor Geoffrey of Beaulieu and his chaplain William of Chartres. The Cathedral of St Louis in Carthage, Tunisia, stands near where he died, named for the king who never reached Jerusalem on his final journey.