Saint Louis IX of France

Irish Jesuit Province

Saint Louis IX of FranceAuthor(s): Gregory MacDonaldSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 59, No. 701 (Nov., 1931), pp. 691-696Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513139 .

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81

SAINT LOUIS IX OF FRANCE

A MONG the books set for a history examination when I was at Oxford, was Joinville's History and Chronicle of the Most Christian King,

Saint Louis. In all conscience, this was a diffictult sub ject for the Protestant lecturer! One would devote va;st attention to the costumes of King and couirtiers or descrlbe with calre, at least commendable, the mistakes of the Saint's crusade in Egypt. Another would say that he miust be judged by the standards of his own time, that at least he was ilot priest-ridden, " and he realised the difference between Christianity and a medheval bishop." But few saw positive virtuie in this most holy of Kinlgs, for their eyes were fixed uipon his foreigii policy or hiis judicial reforms. Thty did not see that Louis was living the Imitation of Christ before Thomnas A Kempis wrote it. They did not see that Louis typified the ideal of French monarchy wlhich a peasant girl, Joan

of Arc, had in her mind when she tried to restore it. They did not see that Louis as a civiliser, or as the produict of a civilisation, was worth tein Napoleons or ten Cromwells, with all their reforms and victories and legacies of revolution.

Johnl Lord of Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, was the King's Boswell-though with none of Boswell's slavishness. He was with Louis throughout his first Crusade (1249-54) and attended hitm at various other timnes. T'he Chronticle was written in 1309 for the edifi cation of Louis' great-grandson (afterwards Louis X). It was written by an old man, never too old to recall the prowess of his youth and the deeds of his Kingly Image. He tells us how the Count of Soissons rode by in all the clamour of battle: " Seneschal, by God's

bonnet (such was his favourite oath) we slhall speak of this hour's work some day in ladies' bowers !" And again when Joinville was captured by the Saracens: "Then I crossed myself and knelt at the feet of one of them, who bore a, Danish axe, such as carpenters use,



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and I said: ' Thus died Saint Agnes. 2 H He was a saint in his own way, too, though melodramatic.

Louis IX. of France sanctified the high ideals of the Ages of Faith. iHis own century, the thirteenth, in par ticular, was one of colouir, of beauty, in mind and form and song. With Joinville we see it all, " quaintly coloured as the broidery of Bayeux."1 In Belloc's phrase he has opened a little window in the Past.

Througlh it we see Louiis treading" the paths of lhis gay garden in Paris, a fair king, clothed in camlet; we see

him go, as he was wont to do after his Mass "1 to the

wood of Vincennes, and sit, leaning against an oak, where we sat around him. And all those who had need of his counlsel came and spoke to him without hindrance of usher, or any other person." 1 We see him washing the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday. "1 Do you this, likewise?" he asks Joinville-and the answer is start lingly honest, "1 No, Sire, for it would make me sick !"

We see Louis on shipboard, rounding sailors up for con fession-explaining to the outraged master-mariner that he himself mrill take care of their ropes! When the Saracens attack the Crusaders with Greek Fire (a strange compound of combustibles, shot into) the camp, "l large as a barrel of vinegar," fiery as a meteor, and

diabolically efftcient) we find Louis then, at the side of his pallet, praying, "Fair Sire God, . protect my

people. "2 And we have here not only the spirit of the recluse

(" monkish "7 describes it at Oxford). Joinville tells of four occasions on which the King puts his body " in adventure of death " for his people. IHe gives us this vignette of his hero during the battle of Mansourah, in the Delta of the Nile:

" As I was there dismouinted with my knights, as I told you, and wounded also, the King came up with his battalions, and a great noise of shouting and trumpets and cymbals; and he halted on a raised causeway.

Never saw I so fair a knight! For he seemed by the

head and shoulder to tower above his people; and on his



SAINT LOUIS IX OF FRANCE 693

head was a golden helm, and in his hand was a sword of Allemaine.?'

In all justice, Louis was no strategian, gallant thotugh he might be. The expedition was a maze of mistakees and failures. It ended with the capture of the King. " on the day of Saint Kenelm," wrote Matthew of West

minster "there arrived newvs of thle capture of the King of Frunce, and of the rout of the whole Christian host, than which news none was ever heard of a more dolorons sort, especially in France, so that all Christendom wasted away with grief and sorrow." Louis was threatened with torture. "To these tlhre-ats the King replied that he was their captive, and they could do witlh him as they willed." So he was released, in the end, for a ransom of two hundred thousarid pounds (Paris) which he insisted on paying in full, to the dismay of his counicillors, " for the holy King so loved truth that he would never consent to lie to the Saracenis as to any covenant that he had made with thein." Leaving the disastrous sands of Egypt, he embarked on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he stayed three years. Crusad ing days were over, and the little Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem was slipping back' into the sea, whence it had come. Louis could do little now to advance the cause of Christianity in arms, but he could, and did, exemplify the true spirit of the Crutched Knight, the Lion-Heart

of Richard with the gown and cord of Francis. He had the piety of the saint, the courage of the king, the hope of true idealism.

Idealism, indeed ! Was there ever a more noble effort than that of Louis to convert the Grand Khan of Tar tary? Here was a courageotus missionary enterprise. " While the King was sojourning in Cyprus," Joinville tells us, "envoys came from the Tartars and gave him to understand that they would help him to conquer the

Kingdom of Jerusalem from the Saracens."' Unfor tunately the envoy was not officially accredited by the

Potentate involved; for Louis, in return, sent Friar William of Rubruck, a Flemish Franciscan, and another,

to whom the Khan denied all knowledge of the busi-ness.



604 THEE IRISH MONTHLY

He was, in fact, quite rude about the matter, though he used it to serve his own ends. The Friars were equip ped with a tent-chapel, which he had caused to be

fashioned all in scarlet: and in order to draw the Tartars to the Faith, he had caused all ouir creed to be imaged in the chapel: the Annunciation of the angel, the Nativity, the baptism that God was baptised withal, and all the Passion, and the Ascension, and the Coming of the Holy Ghost: and with the chapel did he send chalices, books, and all things for the saying of Mass before the King." But the Khan was a politician, for he at once invited to his camp several kings who had not yet submitted to him, and he put it thlus : " Lords, the King of France has sued for mercy, and has submitted himself to us: and behold, here is the tribute he has sent us: and if you do not submit yourselves to us we will send and fetch him for youir destruction."

The Old Man of the Mountain, in similar case, de fended his religion with great theological skill. Brother

Yves le Breton, who knew the Saracen tongue, and who was Louis's envoy, found a book at the head of the Old Man's Bed, in which were written many words spoken by Our Lord to Saint Peter. "; Now for God's sake, Sire," says Brother Yves, read often in this book, for these are very good words."n But the Old Man needs no such advice, "since our Lord Saint Peter is very dear

to me; for at the beginning of the world the soul of Abel, when he was killed, went into the body of Noah, and when Noah died it returned into the body of Abraham; and from the body of Abraham, when it died, it came into the body of Saint Peter what time God came on earth." And the further arguments of Brother Yves are wasted on this complacent genealogist.

There are many incidents in the Chronicle which illus trate the uprightness of Louis, as well as the humour of the Seneschal. On shipboard the King: found the Count of Anjou (his brother) gambling with my lord Walter of Nemours, " and he went thither, for he was weak by reason of sickness; and taking the dice and tables he threw them into the sea and he was very wroth. But



SAINT LOUIS IX OF FRANCE 695

my lord Walter fared best, for he had slipped a11 the moneys on the tables into his lap-there were many pieces-and carried them away."

Saint Louis had all Abraham Lincoln's love of illus trating a principle by means of an anecdote. "The sainted King told me once," is Joinville's introduction, and there follows, say, the story of the poor knight, to whom the Abbot of Cluny "s gave bread for the love of God." Certa'in Jews also partook of this hospitality; and one day the knight rose, leaning oni his crutch, with the request that the most learned Jew present might answer one question. i"faster," he asked, "I pray you, do you believe that the Blessed Virgin was a virgiin mother and is the motlher of God?" The Jew replied with candour, that of all this he believed nothing

Then the knight made answer that the Jew had acted

like a fool, i'nasmuch as-neither believing in her nor loving her-he had yet entered into lher monastery and house. 'And verily,' said the knight, ' you shall pay for it!' Whereupon, he lifted up his crutch, and he smote the Jew near the ear, and smote him to the earth.

And so ended the disputation." Louis himself thought that Jews were not to be argued with by the inex perienced. "And I tell you," said he, "I that no one, unless he be a very learned man, should dispute with them; but a layman, when he hears the Christian law uised ill, should not defend the Christian law, unless it be with his sword, and with that he should pierce the ill sayer in the midriff, so far as the sword will enter."

Yet, in a narrow prison on the Nile, Loulis's one care was to win the Saracen warders to the Faith.

The saint had many fine sayings. He would quote his gallant and holy mother's words, that she would rather see him dead at her feet than in mortal sin. He outdid

Polonius in the matter of dress: "I For men ouight to

clothe and arm their bodies in such wise that men of worth and age would never say, this one has done too much, nor young men say, this one has done too little?'

Speaking of what an evil thing it is to take other peoples'

goods, he would say, "To restore is a thing so grievous,



696 THE IRISH MONTHLY

that even in speaking the word ' restore ' scratches the throat, by reason of the r's that are in it, and these r's

a-re like so many rakes with which the Devil would draw down to himself those who wish to restore what they have taken from others. And very subtly does the Devil do this; for he works upon great usurers and great robbers in such sort that they give to God (in charities and alms) that which they ouight to ' restore' to men." What can the modern lecturer say of such a book?

That the Kiing's principles were wrong? That the Faith which they expressed was wrong? Or that the system of yesterday and to-day are both right-that Truth is two-faced-in denial of a traditional Englisl song

"One is One, and all alone, and ever more shall be

so "? At least we can see a meaning in history, and a truth

in history. We understand a thousand history-makers, about whom many very scholarly and very ignorant books are written. We, at least, can acclaim Louis the Saint as the true Roi Soleit of Europe.

FADED FLOWERS.

I send to you With these fresh flowers The fragrance of the hours That once we knew:

A tall pale lily royally arrayed, A bunch of wild blue-bells for memory Of blue-bells swinging in a forest glade, Wild poppies for our dreams, and willowy Grasses, for I know you love them too.

I send these few Sweet delicate flowers In memory of the hours Fragrant of you.

I kissed the flowers you sent, but ere I read Your words--they came and told me you were dead.

E. M. J. O.'BoYLE.



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Saint Louis IX of France