US Catholic: TODAY'S SAINT (Louis IX)

LOUIS IX

(1214-1270)

King of France, Crusader, confessor

Name meaning Famous warrior

Also known as: Louis Capet

Louis IX represinted the ideal medival monarch: a devout Christian, a Crusader, a willing warrior but an eagere peacmaker, just, fair, chaste, intelligent, capable. He was born in Poisy on April 25, 1214, the eldest son of King Louis VIII and Queen Blanche of Castile. Blanche was the granddaughter of King Henry II of England and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, while LouisVIII was the grandson of King Louis VII of France, Ileanor of Aquitaine's first husband. Louis was only eight when his grandfather,Philip II, died, elevating his father, Louis VIII , to the throne, and 12 when his father died in November 1226, making the young boy king. His mother, Queen Blanche, pressed for an immediate coronation to forestall an uprising by the restless nobles, and Louis IX was crownedd at Reims by the end of November.

Queen Blanche acted as regent for the next eight years during her son's minority and was an extremely capable ruler. In here son's name she quashed several revolts by the nobility, inclu-ding a campaign in Languedoc by Raymond of Toulouse,m an uprising by Pierre Mauclerc, known as Peter I of Brittany, another by Philip Hurepel in the Ile de France (the only land really designated the nation of France, encompasing the city of Paris and environs) and various campaigns by King Henry III of England, who supported the activities of the warring French mobles. England still claimed huge territories of what is now France, based on the inheritances of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Blanche skillfully won the sympathies of Pope Gregory IX, who had earlier supported Henry III, due to the efforts of her friend and papal legate Frangipani. Frang-ipani personally accepted the surrender of Raymond VII in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, paving thfe way for annexation of the southeren provinces to France in the Treatty of Paris, 1229. Whhen Louis IX began ruling on his own behalf in 1235, his nation was stronger and at peace.

In May 1234, Louis married Margaret, a noble woman of Provence, France. Margaret's youn-ger sister, Eleanor, was the wife of King Henry III of England (mmaking the two kings brother-in), and the next sister, Sanchia, was the wife of Henry III's brother, Richand of Cornwall. Louis IX's brother Charles was married to another of Margaret's sisters, Beatrice Louis and Margaret had 11 children: five sons and six daughters.

Louis reign was marked by peace, diplomacy and Christian virtue. One of his first royal acts was building the Royaumont monastery with funds left by Louis VIII for that purpose. He gave great sums from the treasury and personal support to various religious orders, including the establishment of the Carthusians at Vauvert in Paris and the founding, along with Queen Blan-che, of the convent of Maubuisson. The king promoted a codification of the laws and worked to eliminate trial by combat in favor of jury trials. Louis protected the weak from opprfessive nob-les, reformed taxation, outlawed usury and even ordered branding as punishment for blasp-hemy, an edict lessened to fines on the advice of Pope Clement IV.

The king alos sent money to the Latin princes ruling the Crusader kingdoms in the Holy Land. In gratitude, in 1239 King Baldwin I of Jerusalem offered to sell Louis---an avid collector of sacred relics---a piece of what Baldwin claimed was Christ's Crown of Thorns from the Crucifixion. Unffortunately, Baldwin had pawned the rlic to Venetian moneylenders, but Louis delightedly paid an exorbitant sum for the relic and sent two Dominican friars to Venice to retrieve it. He and his entire court met the Dominican delegation at Sens and accompanied the treasure to France. In 1241, Louis purchased pieces reported to be from the True Cross. To house these diivine objects Louis demolished the chapel of St. Nicholas in Paris and built Sainte-Chapelle, one of the most beautiful examples of Gothic architecture still standing. The walls of the second floor, which was used for worship and veneration of the relics, are made almost entirely of stained glass panels illustrating Bible stories and events from Louis's reign. In one, Louis and Margaret are depicted hokding tthe Crown of Thorns on a pillow. Interestingly, severeal of the windows illustrate stories of women from the Bible as an homage to the king's mother. The relics were lost during the Frecnch Revolution.

In 1224, Louis quelled a rebellion led by Hugh of Lusignan, count de la Marche. The count was married to Isabel, the widow of King John I of England and the mother of Henry III. Louis defeated Henry III at Tailleboug, establishing the Peace of Bordeaux and the annexation of a part of the province of Saintonge to France. In 1259, Louis settled with Henry III by signing the Treaty of Paris, in which Henry ageed to relinquish claims to the provinces of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Poitou, and Louis ceded the Limousin, Quercy and Pereigord to Henry III along with compensation. Most historians believe that if Louis had pressed his advan-tage with Henry III the later Hundred Years' War between the two nations might have been averted Nevertheless, peace lasted for 24 years.

After surviving a deadly fever in 1244, Louis declared his intention to lead a Crusade upon learning that the Turcoman Muslims had invaded Jerusalem. Before he could leave, however, affairs of state delayed his dipature for three years; during that time al benefices were taxed a 20th or their income to finance the Crusade. Louil, Queen Margaret and three of the king's brot-hers finally left for Cypus in June 1248, where they spent the winter accompanied by Will-iam Longsword, earl of Salisbury, and 200 English knights. The Crusaders' objective was Egypt, whose sultan, Melek Selah, had beenattacking Palestine. Louis's troops easily took the port cityy of Damietta, in the Nile Delta, in early 1249, but could not continue thheir success. To the king's horror, the soldiers engaged in debauchery and looting, occasionally interrupted by desultory , Louis himsfelf was captured in April 1250.

Queen Blanche, again serving as regent for her son, began raising a huge ransom. Upon learning of the king's capture, peasants, called the "Pastoureaux" and led by someone called the Hungarian Master, banded together in the "crusade of the sheepherds" to try to rescue Louis. But when the peasants took up arms against the clergy, Blanche engaged them in battlle near Villeneuve in June 1251, routing the rebellion. By late 1250, when he learned of Blanche's death two years before.

For the next 13 years, Louis pursuted philanthropy and diplomacy. He arranged the above-mentioned Treaty of Paris with Henry III in 1259, and in 1263 arbitrated on behalf of Henry against the English barons who sought to limit Henry's authority. In 1258, Louis imposed the Treaty of Corbeil upon the king of Aragon, who agreed to relinquish all claims to Provence and Languedoc, except Montpeller,in return for French concessions to claims for Roussillion and Barcelona. A patron of architecture and academics, he helped his friend and confessor, Robert de Sorbon, establish the College de la Sorbonne as the theological school of the university of Paris in 1257. In 1254, Louis established the House of the Felles-dieufor reformed prostitutes and the Hospital Quinze-Vingt for 300 blind men ("quinze-vingt": 115 score, or 300). He person-ally tended the poor and sick. eschewing royal raimment for plain clothing, he often met with churchmen, including St. Thomas Aquinas, and continued to wear the Crusader's cross as a pledge. He became a Franciscan tertiary. Consequently, no one was suprised -nor were they pleased-when Louis announced his second crusade in 1267.

Organizing the Crusade again took three years, during which time the pope granted Louis one-tenth of all Church revenues. In addition, the king levied a toll tax on his French subjects. After naming the abbot of St. Denis and Simon de Clemont as co-rregents, Louis and his three eldest sons-Philip, John and Peter-sailed from Aigues-Mortes at the mouth of the Rhone in sou-thern France on July 1, 1270. He landed at tunis in North Africa, awaiting reinforcements from his brother Charles of Anjou, king or sicily, and was crushed to learn that rumors of the Mam-luk emir's conversion to Christianity were false. Shortly thereafter typhus and dysentery broke out; Louis's second son, John, died, and the king and his eldest son, Philip, came down with typhus.

Louis declined rapidly, and he gave detaiiled instructions to his children about ruling the kingdom and remainning faithful to God. On August 24, thfe king received the last rites and then called for the Greek ambassadors, whom he urged to reunite with the Roman Church. The next day Louis lay unable to speak until noon, then repfeated Psalm 5:7. Speaking again at 3:00 in the afternoon, He commended his soul to God and died. Louis's bones and heart were retur-ned to France and enshrined in the Abbey of St. Denis until they were vandalized and scatted during the Revolution.

Canonized: 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII

Feast: August 25

Patronage: barbers; builders; buttonmakes; construction worders;

Crusaders; death of children; difficult marriages; distillers;

embroiderers; French monarchs; grooms; haberdashers; hair-

dressers; kings; masons; needleworkers; parents of large fami-

lies; prisoners; sculptors; the sick; soldieres; stonemasons; ter-

tiaries; Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri

FURTHER READINNG

"Biography of Louis IX, King of France." www.elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/08/25.html

Weir, Alison. Eleanor of Aquitainfe: A Life. New York: Ballan-

tine Books, 1999.