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Histoire De St. Louis
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General SummaryAS Villehardouin was the first, so Jean de Joinville (1224–1319) was the second, of the great French chroniclers of the Middle Ages. Like Villehardouin, Joinville describes a crusade, in this case the crusade which St. Louis, king of France, undertook in 1248. Joinville accompanied his royal master to Egypt and the Holy Land, and shared all the perils of what proved to be a disastrous enterprise. The crusade is set forth at length in Joinville’s narrative. The most interesting passages are those which describe the French king, for whom Joinville felt unbounded admiration. St. Louis is generally considered a most remarkable figure in medieval history, at once one of the ablest and one of the noblest rulers France ever had. We are fortunate, therefore, in possessing Joinville’s biography, written when he was a very old man and St. Louis had long been dead. In St. Louis Joinville found realized a high ideal of Christian manhood, and he labors with success to paint a faithful portrait of the friend of his youth, who had been to him both king and saint.
187. How St. Louis Worshiped and Did Justice1
The rule of his land was so arranged that every day he heard the canonical hours sung, and a Requiem mass without song;
and then, if it was convenient, the mass of the day, or of the saint, with song. Every day he rested in his bed after having eaten, and when he had slept and rested, he said, privately in his chamber — he and one of his chaplains together — the office for the dead; and afterwards he heard vespers. At night he heard complines.
A Franciscan monk came to him at the castle of Hyères and said in his sermon, for the king’s instruction, that he had read the Bible and the books pertaining to heathen princes, and that he had never found, either among believers or unbelievers, that a kingdom had been lost or had changed lords, unless there had first been failure of justice. "Therefore let the king, who is going into France, take good heed," said he, "that he do justice well and speedily among his people, so that our Lord suffer his kingdom to remain in peace all the days of his life." It is said that the right worthy man, who thus instructed the king, lies buried at Marseilles, where our Lord, for his sake, performs many a fine miracle. . . . The king forgot not the teaching of the friar, but ruled his land very loyally and godly, as you shall hear. . . .
And when he came back from church, he would send for us and sit at the foot of his bed, and make us all sit round him, and ask if there were any whose cases could not be settled save by himself in person. And we named the litigants; and he would then send for them and ask, "Why do you not accept what our people offer?" And they would make reply, "Sire, because they offer us very little." Then would he say, "You would do well to accept what is proposed, as our people desire." And the saintly man endeavored thus, with all his power, to bring them into a straight and reasonable path.
Ofttimes it happened that he would go, after his mass, and seat himself in the wood of Vincennes, and lean against an oak and make us sit round him. And all those who had any case in hand came and spoke to him, without hindrance of usher or of any other person. Then would he ask, out of his own mouth, "Is there anyone who has a case in hand?" And
those who had a case in hand stood up. Then would he say, "Keep silence all, and you shall be heard in turn, one after the other." Then he would call Lord Peter of Fontaines and Lord Geoffroy of Villette, and say to one of them, "Settle me this case." And when he saw that there was anything to amend in the words of those who spoke on his behalf, or in the words of those who spoke on behalf of any other person, he would himself, out of his own mouth, amend what they had said. . . .
1 Joinville, , ch. xi, secs. 54–60.
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Chicago: "How St. Louis Worshiped and Did Justice," Histoire De St. Louis in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 389–390. Original Sources, accessed May 13, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=NMWA3951E8YJ295.
MLA: . "How St. Louis Worshiped and Did Justice." Histoire De St. Louis, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, pp. 389–390. Original Sources. 13 May. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=NMWA3951E8YJ295.
Harvard: , 'How St. Louis Worshiped and Did Justice' in Histoire De St. Louis. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.389–390. Original Sources, retrieved 13 May 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=NMWA3951E8YJ295.
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