Saint Louis IX of France

St. Louis was born at Poissy, in the diocese of Chartres, on April 25, 1214 AD, the feast of St. Mark. His parents were the future King Louis VIII and Blanche, daughter of the king of Castile. He was baptised at Poissy too, and in his personal letters St. Louis added the town to his own name, signing as of Poissy.

His mother brought him up under her own discipline and taught him to love God. St. Louis later recalled that she often told him she would rather he were dead than guilty of a mortal sin.

St. Louis's father, King Louis VIII, died of dysentery at Montpensier in November 1226 AD and named Queen Blanche regent. She had the twelve-year-old crowned at Reims on the first Sunday of Advent, November 29, 1226 AD. Queen Blanche had come from Spain and had no relatives in France.

Some barons asked her for great lands, and when she refused they gathered at Corbeil. They lay in wait for the boy at Montlhéry, and the people of Paris came out and brought him safely home. St. Louis later told Joinville that the whole road to Paris was crowded with people, armed and unarmed, praying Christ to give him long life.

The Latin emperors of Constantinople had pawned the Crown of Thorns to a Venetian noble, who could sell it if the loan went unpaid. St. Louis paid off the debt and had the relic brought to France in 1239 AD. On August 18, 1239 AD, he and his brothers walked barefoot, carrying it from Vincennes to Notre-Dame.

He pulled down the old palace chapel and built the Sainte-Chapelle (*the Holy Chapel*) on the same spot. Building began in 1242 AD, and the chapel was consecrated in 1248 AD at a cost of forty thousand livres. He appointed canons and chaplains to sing the Church's daily office there for ever, and he gave them large incomes.

In December 1244 AD St. Louis fell gravely ill at Pontoise and lay for some days as if dead. Queen Blanche touched his body with the relics of the Cross, the Crown of Thorns and the lance. As he recovered, he asked William, bishop of Paris, to receive his vow to go on crusade to win back Jerusalem and to put the badge of the cross on his shoulder.

His mother and his counsellors argued that he had taken the cross while out of his senses. St. Louis took the cross off and handed it over, then at once demanded it back. He said he would eat nothing until he wore it again.

St. Louis sailed in August 1248 AD, and the next year his army landed at Damietta in Egypt and took the city. In 1250 AD, as the army fell back from Mansourah, he was urged to escape by water and refused to leave his men. He was taken prisoner, and for his release he agreed to give up Damietta and to pay a ransom for his men.

He would not leave until the money was paid and the other prisoners were freed. He then stayed on in the Holy Land and fortified Jaffa and Sidon. There the news reached him that Queen Blanche, who had governed France while he was away, had died.

In April 1254 AD St. Louis sailed home from Acre with his wife, Queen Margaret of Provence, and their small children. After Mass he often sat against an oak in the wood of Vincennes, where anyone with a case could speak to him. In Paris he founded the Quinze-Vingts (*Fifteen Twenties*), a house for three hundred blind men.

Earlier in his reign, copies of the Talmud gathered in France with his help had been condemned and burned. On his return in 1254 AD he acted against the Talmud again, and in 1257 AD he seized all land held by Jews except their cemeteries and synagogues. By a decree of June 12, 1269 AD, he required the Jews to wear a badge.

In Lent 1267 AD St. Louis called his barons to Paris and took the cross a second time. He begged Joinville to come with him, and Joinville refused. A council held off Sardinia turned the fleet to Tunis, and in the camp there the king fell ill with dysentery and fever.

As his strength failed, he gave his eldest son, Philip, the teachings he had written for him, and he received the last sacraments. On August 25, 1270 AD, he could not speak from nine in the morning until noon. When his speech came back he said a verse of the psalms, and he died at about three that afternoon.

St. Louis was buried in the abbey of Saint-Denis, and miracles took place at his tomb. In 1271 AD a woman named Amelina, who had walked bent double for three years, walked upright again there. Pope Boniface VIII canonised him by a bull dated August 11, 1297 AD.

On August 25, 1298 AD, his body was taken up from its grave at Saint-Denis before the princes and prelates of France. Joinville was there, and the feast of St. Louis was kept for the first time that day.