Saint Louis IX
King of France
(1215-1270)
O.D.M. pinxit
The
mother of the incomparable Saint Louis IX of France, Blanche of
Castille, told him when he was still a child that she would rather see
him dead in a coffin than stained by a single mortal sin. He never
forgot her words. Raised to the throne and anointed in the Rheims
Cathedral at the age of twelve, while still remaining under his mother's
regency for several years, he made the defense of God's honor the aim
of his life.
Before
one year of their mutual sovereignty had ended, the Catholic armies of
France, by a particular blessing, had crushed the Albigensians of the
south who had risen up under a heretical prince, and forced them by
stringent penalties to respect the Catholic faith. Amid the cares of
government, the young prince daily recited the Divine Office and heard
two Masses. The most glorious churches in France are still memorials to
his piety, among them the beautiful Sainte Chapelle of
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, where the Crown of Thorns, the great
relic which he brought back from the Holy Land, is enshrined. When his
courtiers remonstrated with Louis for his law that blasphemers must be
branded on the lips, he replied, I would willingly have my own lips
branded if I could thereby root out blasphemy from my kingdom. A
fearless protector of the weak and the oppressed, a monarch whose
justice was universally recognized, he was chosen to arbitrate in all
the great feuds of his age.
In
1248, to rescue the land where Christ had walked, he gathered round him
the chivalry of France, and embarked for the East. He visited the holy
places; approaching Nazareth he dismounted, knelt down to pray, then
entered on foot. He visited the Holy House of Nazareth and on its wall a
fresco was afterwards painted, still visible when the House was
translated to Loreto, depicting him offering his manacles to the Mother
of God. Wherever he was: at home with his many children, facing the
infidel armies, in victory or in defeat, on a bed of sickness or as a
captive in chains, King Louis showed himself ever the same — the first,
the best, and the bravest of Christian knights.
When
he was a captive at Damietta, an Emir rushed into his tent brandishing a
dagger red with the blood of the Sultan, and threatened to stab him
also unless he would make him a knight. Louis calmly replied that no
unbeliever could perform the duties of a Christian knight. In the same
captivity he was offered his liberty on terms lawful in themselves, but
enforced by an oath which implied a blasphemy, and although the infidels
held their swords' points at his throat and threatened a massacre of
the Christians, Louis inflexibly refused.
The
death of his mother recalled him to France in 1252; but when order was
re-established he again set out for a second crusade. In August of 1270
his army landed at Tunis, won a victory over the enemy, then was laid
low by a malignant fever. Saint Louis was one of the victims. He
received the Viaticum kneeling by his camp bed, and gave up his life
with the same joy in which he had given all else for the honor of God.
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